News Oregon Trail Time to Get Typhoid! Classic Oregon Trail Video Game to Get Movie Treatment You have died of dysentery. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on October 28, 2024 Screenshot: MECC Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: MECC If you’re of a certain age, you remember the grade school video game The Oregon Trail. The 8-bit game was a staple of many classrooms, starting as a text-based game in the 1970s, and in it you could create a family trying to traverse the land we now call the United States in a covered wagon. The going was tough—so many rivers to ford!—and death from things like typhoid and dysentery was commonplace. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Apple was developing a feature adaptation of the classic game. Directing duo Will Speck and Josh Gordon, whose credits include Blades of Glory and The Switch are on board. Artists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, The Greatest Showman, Dear Evan Hansen) are also attached to create some musical-level songs for the production. The plot of the film isn’t known yet, though chances are good at least one person will suffer a broken bone, typhoid and/or dysentery, perhaps while attempting to ford a river. There might even be some attempted hunting of buffalo, deer, and rabbits, if we’re lucky. The Lucas Bros., who wrote the screenplay for Judas and the Black Messiah, will be penning the script, so the ball is in their court for what gems from the game make their way into the film. Given the musical component, it also seems like the movie will attempt to be in the vein of Barbie, perhaps with the same existential motif weaved through it. The project is still in its early days, so no news yet on casting, much less when we’ll see those covered wagons once again. [end-mark] The post Time to Get Typhoid! Classic <i>Oregon Trail</i> Video Game to Get Movie Treatment appeared first on Reactor.

Books book review Frenzied, Vicious, Revolutionary: Metal From Heaven by august clarke A review of august clarke’s new fantasy novel. By Alex Brown | Published on October 28, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share How to describe august clarke’s new adult fantasy novel Metal from Heaven? Frenzied. Vicious. Lusty. Brutal. Unforgiving. Hallucinatory. Lurid. Gut-wrenching. Revolutionary. Relentless. Venomous. Provoking. Unabashedly queer. Fucking bonkers. Marney’s story begins in death. Like others in the ichorite factory owned by entrepreneur-turned-tycoon Yann Industry Chauncey, the Honeycutts left their ruined homeland for the promise of economic opportunity in the big city. What they found instead were lies and suffering. Working in the factory processing ichorite, a mineral with magical properties that can be used in everything from fabric to armor to utensils to train cars, is soul-crushing, made worse when children born to those laborers are “lustertouched.” These kids are severely allergic to ichorite, and it’s killing them. As Marney ages, she discovers she also has the inexplicable ability to manipulate it, although it makes her feel like her brain is melting out of her ears when she does it. The Honeycutts lead the rest of the factory workers in a strike and are slaughtered for their efforts. Only young Marney survives.  Eventually Marney is collected by a group of bandits and rebels hiding away in an anarchist commune far from Chaunceyco. There she learns to see the world not just for what it is right now but what it could be. I don’t want to explain too much about the lavish world clarke has created or the riveting characters they filled it with. This is the kind of book that is best experienced first hand as clarke gradually peels back the onion layers. I’ll just say it is greater than the sum of its premise and doesn’t end the way you expect. clarke writes in second person for most of the book, but the “you” who Marney talks to appears infrequently enough that it often feels first person POV. First person is extremely common in young adult, where clarke got their publishing start, but unusual in adult fantasy. It’s a challenge when you have readers used to third person omniscient and knowing what’s going on in the heads of the main characters who now only get to see through Marney’s lustertouched eyes. Keeping the focus tight on Marney’s conversation with “you” allows clarke to meander in the narrative more, to play with style and structure more, and to get lost in the wilderness that is Marney’s thoughts. Although the plot would’ve been tighter with third person omniscient, the story itself and the reading experience would’ve been much less interesting. It would’ve been yet another story about a bunch of rebels taking on an oppressive system.  Buy the Book Metal from Heaven august clarke Buy Book Metal from Heaven august clarke Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The prose is, well, it’s astonishing. It’s the literary equivalent of biting into a ripe mango picked fresh off the tree or seeing a favorite piece of art in person for the first time. Take, for example, this description of Marney manipulating ichorite:  Nearness brought the suffering on before the fit even started. I ground my teeth, slapped my palms down, and jerked my hands backwards. The roof of the train clung to my palms. It peeled back like a blanket. Colors clapped, the world undulated and jellied around me, my tongue swelled, my gums went soft, my guts rigid, the sky was a whirl of orange and magenta molten poisonous candy pressing hard against my face. The world seethed around my body. A horrible delusion took me, and I imagined for a moment, imagined so concretely that my body responded with jitters and gooseflesh and appropriate recoil, that the ichorite roof had squeezed my hands, touched me like hands would touch me, or like how a sea anemone might wriggle around its little prey. Fucking ridiculous. The way clarke writes mirrors the agony and ecstasy Marney feels when the luster explodes in her. She’s being born anew and dying all at once. clarke couldn’t get this level of harrowing nuance in third person.  There is subtext to the subtext, layers colliding into layers like the back of a piece of cross-stitch. There are bits of socialist and communist rhetoric, of leftist politics and anti-capitalism slogans, of understanding the difference between compromising your morals and building a coalition of people with different reasons and methods but the same goal, of realizing the world is bigger than your conservative upbringing let you think, of refashioning your relationship with religion after breaking free of its bigotry, of coming to terms with your queerness by seeing how it brushes up against the values you were raised with.  The term “crawly” is a good example of this. A crawly is kind of like our version of “queer;” it’s both an identity and a descriptive term, and it’s both a hurtful slur and a reclaimed status: “She and her crawlies, all of them crawlies, filthy rotten repulsive vile violent wicked depraved little crawlies, menaced upright women and harrowed polite society.” Marney is described as having “crawly hair” and her surprise at feeling energized, rather than disgusted, by that is a key moment in her character development. She explores her gender identity through the expansion of the term: I sat at the bar sipping brown liquor with great care while an older girlcrawly, of the generation who said girlcrawly and boycrawly, of which I’d be a boycrawly, cut my hair.  Normally when I read books for review, I can get through them pretty quickly, but this took me weeks to finish. I’ve never read that slow in my life. It wasn’t that it was difficult to work through, more that I wanted to digest each sentence thoroughly before moving to the next. It was like getting a seven course meal prepared by a Michelin-star chef, then another, then another, and so on for seventeen glorious chapters. From their Scapegracers trilogy, I knew august clarke could write, but in Metal from Heaven it’s like oh shit, they can write write.[end-mark] Metal From Heaven is published by Erewhon Books.Read excerpts here and here. The post Frenzied, Vicious, Revolutionary: <i>Metal From Heaven</i> by august clarke appeared first on Reactor.

Top Democrats and Trumpophobes scream that former President Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler’s fascist twin. English translation: Trump is a Republican. John Kelly, Trump’s disgruntled former chief of staff, said last week that Trump matches “the general definition of fascist” and “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.” Relying, as usual, on anonymous sources, The Atlantic’s fabulist-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, “reported” that Trump said in the White House, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”  “This is absolutely false,” Trump spokesman Alex Pfeiffer replied. “President Trump never said this.” Regardless, Vice President Kamala Harris predicted on CNN that, if reelected, Trump would be “a president who admires dictators and is a fascist.” Referring to Trump’s appearance in Manhattan on Sunday, Hillary Rodham Clinton told CNN on Thursday that “Trump is actually reenacting the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939.” The pro-Nazi German American Bund (aka Amerikadeutscher Volksbund) staged an infamous Hitler lovefest at a different Madison Square Garden on the eve of World War II, complete with swastika armbands and stiff-armed salutes. That venue was demolished in 1968, soon after today’s Madison Square Garden opened a mile away. Wearing a black sweater that paired perfectly with her soul, Clinton added: “President Franklin Roosevelt was appalled that neo-Nazis, fascists in America were lining up to essentially pledge their support for the kind of government that they were seeing in Germany. … [P]lease, open your eyes to the danger that this man poses to our country.” Then-President Donald Trump visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem on May 22, 2017. (Official White House photo: Dan Hansen)  Trump sold out Madison Square Garden in three hours. Do Harris, Clinton, and other Democrats believe that Trump’s 19,500 rally guests are Nazis? Concerning the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2020, and proudly will do so in November, are we all Nazis, too? Wednesday’s University of Chicago/GenForward survey found that 26% of black men aged 18 to 40 back Trump, up from 19% in 2020, per The Washington Post/Edison Research exit poll. Are these men black Nazis? And what of the 12% of black women who support Trump in the University of Chicago’s study, up from 9% in 2020? Are they black Eva Brauns? Just like Hitler, the absurd and repugnant charge that Trump resembles the bloodthirsty, Jew-hating, tyrannical warmonger fails on two fronts: First, Trump’s top presidential aides included his orthodox-Jewish daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Trump welcomed his Jewish grandchildren and celebrated Hanukkah at the White House. In his first term, he moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump’s staunchly pro-Israel policies culminated in the Abraham Accords. These four peace deals between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Morocco strengthened—not weakened—the Jewish state. Trump rejected the censorship that Harris and Democrats crave. He shredded government regulations, threw no opponents behind barbed wire, invaded zero countries, and launched no wars—a 40-year first. Trump’s first-term record would make Hitler vomit. Second, rather than a powerful accusation, “Trump = Hitler” is an exhausted cliché. Amid these repulsive, synthetic smears, Trump is in excellent and crowded company. Democrats routinely call Republicans fascists, Nazis, and “just like Hitler”—in much the same fashion as salmon swim upstream: frantically, instinctively, and predictably. As Halsten Willis detailed Wednesday in The Washington Examiner, Democrats have been equating Republicans with Nazis for at least 60 years. Then-Democratic California Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Sr. decried the 1964 GOP Convention acceptance speech by Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Brown said it “had the stench of fascism. All we needed to hear was ‘Heil, Hitler.’” Four years later, the Democrat president nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, said: “If the British had not fought in 1940, Hitler would have been in London, and if Democrats do not fight in 1968, Nixon will be in the White House.”  After Republican President Gerald R. Ford pardoned Nixon post-Watergate, the American Civil Liberties Union declared, “If Ford’s principle had been the rule in Nuremberg, the Nazi leaders would have been let off, and only the people, who carried out their schemes, would have been tried.” Then-Rep. William Clay, D-Mo., claimed that President Ronald Reagan hoped to “replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from ‘Mein Kampf,‘” Hitler’s notorious manifesto. Democratic über-donor George Soros said that Republican President George W. Bush embraced the “supremacist ideology of Nazi Germany,” as radio host Larry Elder recalled. NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said in 2006: “The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.” Wisconsin’s Republican then-governor “Scott Walker is a fascist,” Libcom.org announced in 2011. South Carolina Democratic Party boss Dick Harpootlian said in 2012 that the Palmetto State’s Republican then-Gov. Nikki Haley “was down in the bunker, à la Eva Braun,” Hitler’s girlfriend and (for a few hours before their April 1945 murder-suicide) wife. California Democratic Party chief John Burton said that a 2012 speech by 2% milquetoast then-Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., reminded him that “Joseph Goebbels’ concept was the big lie.” Nazi Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment Paul Joseph Goebbels was arguably Hitler’s closest and most loyal confidant. President Joe Biden slammed Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri for questioning the fairness of Pennsylvania’s 2020 elections. Such insolence, Biden said, recalled “Goebbels and the great lie.” “This tired, old, baseless trope lacks insight and intelligence,” Willis wrote. “Most importantly, it is dishonest.” Lesson: Regarding any similarity to Hitler, Donald Trump is nothing special. If every Republican is Hitler, then no Republican is Hitler.  Then-President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump watch as Rabbi Moshe Moskowitz lights a menorah at a White House Hanukkah reception on Dec. 11, 2019. (Official photo: Andrea Hanks) Democrats claim that Trump spouts divisive, violent political rhetoric. But, of course, Democrats call Trump Hitler, denounce half of America as Nazis, and peddle potentially explosive statements and sadistic fantasies. Meanwhile, Trump literally dodges bullets. “Democrats want to see someone get up there and give a knuckle sandwich to Donald Trump,” MSNBC host Joy Reid said on Oct. 1, after Trump’s second assassination attempt. “I think that the people who want the fistfight are the base of the Democratic Party.” Echoing a short-subject Mexican film, Los Angeles’ Superchief Gallery features a lifelike rubber head of Trump that patrons can kick around a mini-soccer field. L.A.’s Subliminal Projects Gallery showcases a nude statue of Trump with its private parts chopped off and the bloody wound shielded with a bandage. And let’s forgo the “both sides do it” rubbish. Imagine the glass-shattering shrieks if conservatives produced a video of fraternity bros playing volleyball with a mock-up of Harris’ head. Laughter? Arrests would be more likely.  If psychological projection were a felony, the entire Democratic Party would be in federal prison. On Oct. 12, Riverside County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested Vem Miller, 49, of Las Vegas outside a Trump rally in Coachella, California. Officials say that Miller was “illegally in possession of a shotgun, a loaded handgun, and a high-capacity magazine.” He also allegedly carried bogus VIP passes, false press ID, multiple driver’s licenses with different names, and “fake passports” while operating an unregistered SUV with phony license plates. Was Miller “100% a Trump supporter,” as he pleads, or had law enforcement “probably stopped another assassination attempt,” as Sheriff Chad Bianco suspects? Regardless, absent felony charges (!) Bianco freed Miller on $5,000 bond. After all of this, with any luck, America on Nov. 5 will flush the clogged toilet that is the modern Democratic Party. Given today’s low-flow commodes, voters should flush twice.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Democrats’ ‘Trump = Hitler’ Sloganeering Is an Exhausted Cliché appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Italy is loved by those who know it as providing a “sweet life in a beautiful country” – but, not one, at least as far as its authorities are concerned, that appears to be very tech-savvy. Perhaps the concepts clash intrinsically – or perhaps it’s just another example of bureaucratic inadequacy brought about by politicians who should know better. Either way, reports are now detailing the latest “anti-piracy” blunder made possible by Italy’s much-criticized Piracy Shield, this time hitting Google Drive. The first problem is the “Piracy Shield” itself – designed as a platform bringing to life an administrative mechanism, in a way, critics say is prone to unfairly affecting otherwise innocent actors by way of “over-blocking” supposed pirated content. A particular beneficiary – because this is Italy we’re talking about – is the top-tier football league, Serie A, and preventing unauthorized streaming of games. But then, the regulatory scene set that way has now led to a nationwide block of Google Drive in what appears to have been another Piracy Shield-induced fiasco. Piracy Shield lets telecom regulator AGCOM mark an IP address as responsible for piracy, and then ISPs and VPNs are under obligation to quickly block it. Having previously, in another blunder stemming from the same regulatory circumstances, done that with Cloudflare, it was now Google Drive’s turn (and reportedly, partially YouTube’s). The target of AGCOM-ordered blocking here was drive.usercontent.google.com, apparently mistaken for a pirated content broadcasting domain. What it actually does is provide a backbone to the Drive service – meaning that during the time it was blocked, about 20% of users in Italy were still unable to access Drive, 12 hours into this. That’s a long time for those whose work may depend on it, and given Google’s gargantuan presence in the space, that would be a lot of people in most countries. There are alternative collaborative tools, but equally, there’s nothing to currently reassure Italians; those, too, couldn’t get blocked thanks to Piracy Shield’s many flawed provisions. One of the most obvious ones is that ISPs can basically forward copyright holders’ blocking requests (and the list of domains up for the chop can be extensive.) And, haste clearly makes waste. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Italy’s Piracy Blunder Blocks Google Drive appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

A cat hid under a stool at an animal shelter, but on the night she was taken into a home, they found her with kittens. Eden and her kittensFosterKittenMamaEden, the tabby, came to an animal shelter with another cat. Scared, she avoided the staff and kept herself tucked under a stool. "She needed a quiet place to relax and come out of her shell," the staff shared.While the other cat was quickly adopted, Eden's stay extended as she continued to hide, overwhelmed by the shelter environment. Determined to gain her trust, the staff began socializing her using a scratcher.Instantly, she arched her back and began "kneading" as if the soothing touch flipped a switch. Eden was very shy and hid under a stool at the shelterWichitaAnimalShelterAs Eden grew more comfortable and allowed touch, they confirmed what they had suspected. "A volunteer realized she was very pregnant," Heidi Shoemaker, founder of Foster Kitten Mama, shared.Thanks to many compassionate volunteers, she was rescued and transported to a foster home with Heidi. She slowly warmed up to the staff, and they discovered she was pregnantWichitaAnimalShelterHeidi sat with Eden for an hour, easing her worries after the stressful move. She treated her flea-ridden coat and gave her plenty of food to fill her belly. Unexpectedly, that night, Eden went into labor.She lay in her nesting box, seemingly relieved to have Heidi by her side, supporting her throughout the process. On the night she arrived in her foster home, she went into laborFosterKittenMamaBy the next day, Eden had three little kittens blissfully nursing - two cow kittens (Evan and Everette) and a house panther (Elysse) who quickly proved to be the drama in the family with her loud, demanding screams.During the first few days, Eden needed plenty of help and encouragement to stay in the nest and feed her kittens. She gave birth to three kittensFosterKittenMama"I covered half of her pen over her nesting box, which seemed to help give her more security. Not all mamas know what to do right away, and Eden was definitely one of those. But, with help, she's now doing exactly what she needs to for her little ones to grow and thrive."With food served in bed, Eden began to warm up to her foster mom and grew more trusting each day. FosterKittenMamaEverette was the first to open his eyes, curiously peering at the world beyond the nest, and soon, his siblings followed suit. Their mom catered to their every whim, making sure they were fed, clean, and loved.Though still a bit scared, Eden constantly made "biscuits" (kneading her blanket) and allowed some petting from her foster mom. FosterKittenMamaAs the kittens' legs grew stronger, they waddled around, eager to break out of the confines of their nest. Even though their mom enjoyed her breaks, at the slightest peep, she'd rush back to her babies.Once the trio graduated to a spacious playpen, they wasted no time diving into the water bowl and playing with toys. FosterKittenMamaBefore long, they conquered their first summit of a cat post, quickly honing their climbing skills.At six weeks old, the kittens have reached many milestones and are growing by leaps and bounds. "Eden is getting so much better the more I sit with her. It just takes patience, compassion, and time to undo the bad things that have happened to them." EvanFosterKittenMamaThis beautiful family of four is flourishing as Eden raises her last litter in an environment filled with love and comfort."Eden has been doing a fantastic job mothering. I'm so thankful I was able to give her a safe spot and all the support she needs." Everette and ElysseFosterKittenMamaShare this story with your friends. More on Eden and her kittens and Foster Kitten Mama on Instagram and Facebook.Related story: Family and Their Cat Change Everything for Little 4-week-old Kitten in a World He Cannot See

Leftist Outrage at the Washington Post Continues

Heart racing, trembling hands, nervous laughter – we experienced it all.

Something to read next time you're on the throne.

Taieri Pet was first documented nearly 130 years ago – and it was back again last month.

From their analysis of G20 countries, UNESCO are calling for “strong measures to reinforce gender equality.”