News The Legend of Ochi Get Ready to Fall in Love With a New Magical Creature in The Legend of Ochi Just look at those EARS! By Molly Templeton | Published on October 16, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share If the trailer for A24’s upcoming film The Legend of Ochi is anything to go by, writer-director Isaiah Saxon’s film may immediately leap into the annals of Kid-Friendly Films What Make Us All Sob Hopelessly (sharing space with The Neverending Story and The Iron Giant, among so many others). As is the case with so many A24 releases, the film stars Willem Dafoe; here be plays a curiously dressed man who seems to be training children to face whatever lives in the woods on their “small island in the Black Sea.” But the creature Yuri (Helena Zengel) finds in the woods is anything but terrifying. Small, scared, and absolutely adorable, it clearly needs her help. The brief synopsis says: In a remote northern village, a young girl, Yuri, is raised to never go outside after dark and to fear the reclusive forest creatures known as the ochi. When a baby ochi is left behind by its pack, she embarks on the adventure of a lifetime to reunite it with its family. I have seen mere seconds of footage of this tiny creature and I am incredibly invested in its safe return to its family. It is unclear whether the rest of the cast—which includes Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard and Chernobyl’s Emily Watson—feels similarly, or is too brainwashed by Willem Dafoe to lend Yuri and the ochi a helping hand. Director Saxon is making his feature film debut with The Legend of Ochi, but has previously directed music videos for the likes of Bjokr (“Wanderlust”) and Grizzly Bear (“Knife”). He is also one of the three filmmakers behind the animation studio Encyclopedia Pictura. The Legend of Ochi is in theaters February 28, 2025.[end-mark] The post Get Ready to Fall in Love With a New Magical Creature in <i>The Legend of Ochi</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books The Limits of Horror: Stephen King’s Pet Sematary (Part 12) By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on October 16, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we continue Stephen King’s Pet Sematary with Chapters 36-37. The novel was first published in 1983. Spoilers ahead! Content warning for child death. “It’s probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience… when the nightmare grows black enough, one… evil begets another, until finally blackness seems to cover everything… At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one’s sense of humor begins to reassert itself.” Not that Louis Creed is thinking sanely following Gage’s funeral. Rational thought ceased well before the fistfight broke out at the funeral parlor. Since the accident, Rachel has dragged herself around the house, hair uncombed, eyes blank. She speaks in disjointed, senseless phrases. Ellie, too, talks little. She carries a photo of herself and Gage everywhere she goes. Louis barely notices their condition; he constantly replays a mind-movie about what would have happened if he’d been quick enough to grab Gage. It’s his PA Steve who administers sedatives to Rachel and Ellie. It’s Jud who handles the funeral arrangements, as he did for Norma. Steve and Jud stay with Rachel and Ellie while Louis goes to the funeral home for the morning viewing—not that Gage’s coffin is, or can, be open. Gage’s newest game had been to run away. Three days earlier, he ran down the lawn toward Route 15, heedless of Louis and Rachel’s yells to stop. Nor did Gage heed the drone of the approaching ten-wheeler. Louis made a desperate flying tackle, but his fingers slipped off Gage’s jacket, and then Gage was in the road, where the truck struck and dragged him down the road. Louis endures the commiserations of friends and neighbors, absently counting how many times he hears each standard expression of sympathy. Then Rachel’s parents arrive. Louis is moved to forget his long quarrel with them, especially Irwin, who has never considered Louis a worthy husband for Rachel. But Irwin refuses to shake hands and pulls Dory away, to Gage’s small rosewood coffin. Rachel manages to attend the afternoon viewing. At lunch, she bursts into tears. Louis can’t comfort her. Church, murderer of small creatures, somehow holds him back. It’s Steve who embraces her, his eyes reproaching Louis, while Jud’s stay lowered as if in shame. In the afternoon, Irwin confronts Louis while Rachel is with Dory, smelling of Scotch. He’s just told Rachel that this is the inevitable result of marrying against her parents’ wishes. Louis is incredulous with horror. Irwin pours out a list of Louis’s crimes: how he lured Rachel into marriage, turning her into a “scullery maid,” how he let Irwin’s grandson be run down in the road like a “chipmunk.” He’s a killer of children! In front of the mourners, Louis punches Irwin in the mouth. Irwin jostles Gage’s coffin and breaks a vase of flowers. Rachel rushes in and screams at Louis not to hurt her father. But it’s Irwin who chops Louis in the throat, then kicks him while he’s down. Still screaming, Rachel breaks from her mother. Louis manages to catch Irwin’s foot and trip him. When Irwin sprawls against the coffin, he sends it crashing to the floor. The casket latch breaks. Mercifully Gage doesn’t spill out, but Louis glimpses him before the lid falls shut. He sits on the floor, weeping, unable to respond to Rachel’s continued screams. A crazy image fills his mind: He’s at Disney World with Gage, and Gage is laughing as he shakes hands with Goofy. Back home, he puts Rachel to bed and administers another sedating shot. He tries to apologize for the fight, but she shrugs him off. How bad is she? Pretty bad, she says. Terrible in fact. Louis has no answer. He’s suddenly resentful of her, Steve, all the mourners. Why must he be the “eternal supplier?” He can’t do much more for Ellie, who sits watching TV in her bedroom, squashed into Gage’s director’s chair and gripping his photo. She gets into bed, then calmly tells Louis she’s going to pray to God for Gage to come back. Don’t say God can’t bring people back to life, because she heard in Sunday School how Jesus brought back Lazarus. She’s going to carry the photo, sit in Gage’s chair, eat his favorite cereal, read his books. She’s going to get his things ready… in case. She understands, Louis thinks, that someone has to keep Gage alive, at least in memory. He stays until she’s cried herself to sleep. Then he goes downstairs to get drunk. Church reclines opposite his chair, ready to run if Louis decides to dispense more kicks. Louis drinks to Gage, demands to know what Church has to say. Church only stares back with his dull, strange eyes. Eight or nine beers later, the thought comes naturally to Louis’s mind: When are you going to do it? When are you going to bury Gage in the annex to the Pet Sematary? Lazarus, come forth. A chill of “elemental force” shakes Louis. He remembers the afternoon when he carried Gage up to nap and was struck with cold premonition. He remembers Jud’s shock when he asked if anyone ever put a person in the Micmac burying ground. Don’t even think about that, but Louis has to. Church changed, but the family has adapted. Or is that rationalization? Church isn’t really a cat anymore. What if Gage came back… not human? Still, the idea has glamour. There’s a knock on the door. Louis overcomes his fear of what might be outside and opens to find Jud—and lets him in. What’s Cyclopean: “…the day had sung and gibbered with absurdity” may honestly be the best use of “gibbered” I’ve encountered. The Degenerate Dutch: The text keeps underscoring Irwin’s Jewishness. The Yiddish swearing, and the comparison to the at-the-time-current Israeli prime minister, don’t help. He’s the only character whose Judaism is emphasized, and the least sympathetic of the three Jewish characters; Rachel’s unobservant and seems not to be passing on any of the culture to her children. Libronomicon: Louis speculates darkly on the purpose and title of the funeral guestbook: My Deathbook? Funeral Autographs? The Day We Planted Gage? Alien concepts such as lunch are compared to Louis’s teenage science fiction reading: Heinlein, Leinster, and Dickson. Madness Takes Its Toll: Black humor marks “the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down”. Not that “wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity” sounds all that appealing under the circumstances. Anne’s Commentary “It’s probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience.” In his opening to Chapter 36, King echoes the solemn cadences of Lovecraft’s iconic “Call of Cthulhu” lead-in, while obliquely challenging its premise that the human mind is mercifully unable to “correlate all its contents.” By “contents,” Lovecraft means knowledge. By “any limit,” King refers to emotional capacity, specifically that for horror. He doesn’t think there’s any merciful cut-off point beyond which a person cannot be more horrified, nor should there be. Horror is a reaction to horrors, that is, to things both dreadful and evil, and horrors tend to breed like werebunnies, “horror spawn[ing] horror” until their “blackness seems to cover everything.” Lovecraft imagines that if humanity—the grand collective “we”—ever integrates its “dissociated” bits of knowledge into a true understanding of reality, it will either retreat from that overarching knowledge into a safe new “dark age,” or it will “go mad.” Sticking to the individual human mind, King imagines a similar choice. If horrors (hence horror) are limitless, a person suffering from “a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity” must either fall back upon their sense of humor (their embrace of the irrational, of which both laughter and denial are tactics) or break down utterly bonkers (the irrational embracing the person in an inescapable bearhug.) Louis Creed, steeped as he is in the horror of Gage’s death, has reached no ultimate either/or junction. He’s functioning within the immediate reality of his loss, barely engaging with burial preparations. His conspicuous failure is in supporting Rachel and Ellie; with two mind-movies constantly playing before his inner eyes – what did happen to Gage, what might have happened if only – he has little bandwidth for their needs. And there’s something beyond normal shock in his withdrawal. At the between-viewings restaurant lunch, Louis wants to go to his weeping wife, knows it’s his responsibility, but he can’t do it, and here’s why: “It was the cat that got in his way.” We know, we know. Jud has said often enough that a resurrected Church is fruit of the seed Louis planted in Micmac ground, and so Louis’s to tend. He bought Church and all Church’s small victims. The terrible question is whether, in spite of Victor Pascow’s ghostly warnings and that on-the-stairs premonition of doom in September and those compounding weirdnesses en route to the Pet Sematary “annex,” he also bought Gage’s death on ill-omened Route 15. Having bought the glamour of the secret place beyond the deadfall, having wanted to buy it, what will Louis buy next? What’s the biggest, baddest reason why Church gets in the way of Louis accepting his most critical post-Gage responsibilities? Is it because Church is a constant proof that dead isn’t necessarily dead? That the living can coexist with the formerly loved undead with reasonable comfort? How much more than the living Church has Louis loved the living Gage? How much more would he be able to love an undead Gage? After all, such a Gage would be able to go to Disney World with Louis. He’d able to laugh at a handshake from Goofy. That image comes so powerfully into Louis’s head at the nadir of the funeral home festivities, while he sits weeping on the floor by Gage’s coffin. It couldn’t have been just an exhausted bit of wishful thinking. It must have been another premonition, right? What about the wild idea he’d had when they first approached their new house in Ludlow, how sweet it would be to leave his travel-weary and irritable family behind, Church too, and run for a new life in Disney World. How much sweeter to run not all alone but with Gage, to whom Louis must owe a greater chance at another life than he’d could ever have owed to Church. On the Thanksgiving night when Church died, Ellie dreamed in Chicago that her cat had been run over. In Chapter 37, she tells Louis that she believes Gage could return because of the Lazarus story she heard in Sunday school. I wonder if Ellie believes the more strongly in his potential revival because some similar clairvoyance has suggested there is someone who can bring about this miracle. Someone as near to her as God is supposed to be. Someone who might play God, unless Jud has come to Louis on the night before his son’s burial for the reason I’m thinking. Ruthanna’s Commentary Ow. I read this week’s chapters. Then I hugged my wife. I didn’t hug my kids, because they were asleep and don’t appreciate getting woken up even when their mama has been shaken by a scary book—and they definitely didn’t want to hear about what made this particular book so scary. Give me unnamable monsters. Give me reality-breaking apocalypses. Give me asshole narrators getting eaten by grues. All will get a more thoughtful analysis, and a happier reader, than a toddler killed by something that kills real toddlers every day. As I said last time, “One chapter I can be rolling my eyes at Louis’s unthinking sexism and almost-gentle toxic masculinity, the next I can tear up over the all-too-adult emotions associated with parenting… and beg Louis to more regularly tell his son he loves him.” This week’s reading is very much the latter: brutal and effective, allowing little critical distance. Sometimes when I’m writing, I hit a scene where my mantra is “just write what’s true”. These are somehow both the hardest and easiest scenes to write. Hard because figuring out what’s true versus what’s authorial flinch is huge and raw. And easy because it’s raw; if you can get past that reluctance to face the thing on the page, it just comes pouring out. My suspicion is that King was in that space for this section. It’s all pain and all ugly, human responses to it. This is not to say that we’re free of unthinking sexism—but we’re shown where it becomes unbearable. Female grief is treated as dangerous. Rachel and Ellie must be medicated, must have men judge whether they’re up for the funeral, must have their sanity judged based on the strange things that they say or don’t say in the aftermath of the unimaginable. That’s wildly unfair. But male grief is treated as unacceptable. Louis doesn’t get a sedative, just told to hold it together for his wife and daughter. He’s not allowed to not be up for the funeral, or to be going through motions beneath the ocean-deep weight of shock. Even his horrible father-in-law—Irwin says and does unforgiveable things because anger is his only acceptable outlet. No rich, loamy soil is allowed to flourish in a man’s heart. That’s wildly unfair, too. But Louis assures the coffin seller that he and Rachel have never made distinctions about blue versus pink clothing. Throughout these scenes, like Louis, we keep circling back to the gap between prophecy and aftermath. We get all the desperate counterfactual imaginings – Louis trying to wish himself into the world that King described in his introduction, the terrifying near-miss. We get increasingly layered levels of detail, with just enough held back to imply nightmarish images. We get the platitudes that friends and family offer, more for their own sakes than for the central mourners’. Louis absolutely does not want to consider the brevity and extent of his son’s suffering.  Jewish etiquette tip: “His memory for a blessing” is not only an appropriate platitude in most situations, but doesn’t claim to soften the bad thing that happened, and makes no assumptions about specific metaphysical beliefs. We can always hope that eventually the memory of the loved dead will give more comfort than pain. It even works for the un-loved dead, because you can get quite a lot of blessing from remembering that you don’t have to deal with them anymore. Rachel’s father, for example – wouldn’t it be nice to not have to deal with him? And for the reader, wouldn’t it be nice to not have to wonder whether the rich, daughter-protecting, goyish-son-in-law-hating Jew is based on Shylock? Then Louis is at long last home, barely able to hug his daughter and unable to comfort his wife, and the idea of mutual comfort stays unexamined. So beer it is, to cushion pain if not ease it, and to allow examination of a truly terrible idea. It sure is terrible. And since we’re just at the beginning of Part II, it seems all too likely that Louis and Jud are likely to follow it—over the hill, through the woods, and all the way off a metaphorical cliff. We’re taking a break next week, because Ruthanna’s traveling and doesn’t want to deal with time zone calculations. Join us again in two weeks for the all-too-online horror of Manish Melwani’s “Mammoth”.[end-mark] The post The Limits of Horror: Stephen King’s <i>Pet Sematary</i> (Part 12) appeared first on Reactor.

This episode belongs to DOOM! That’s right, Doctor Doom himself attempts to conquer the WIZARDS podcast by sitting in with Mike Schwartz to discuss the comic book news of 1999 including a First Look at CONTINUE READING... The post WIZARDS The Podcast Guide To Comics | Episode 99 appeared first on The Retro Network.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton may be gone, but they won’t be forgotten, certainly not by the hard-hit residents and businesses of the Southeast. The immense economic devastation and loss of life wrought by those hurricanes—and, in the case of Milton, the tornadoes it spawned—will be felt for years to come in Florida and western North Carolina. The hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of residents whose homes and lives were shattered by Helene and Milton will never be the same, but they will rebuild them as best they can. That is, after all, the indomitable American spirit. Meanwhile, nonprofits and religious charities, such as the Red Cross and evangelist Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, are on the front lines of recovery efforts as partisan political battles rage over the allocation of federal disaster relief aid. The Biden-Harris administration disputes Republicans’ assertions that hundreds of millions of dollars of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds it has spent on the care and feeding of the millions of illegal immigrants it has waved into the country was misspent and is money that could have—and rightly should have—gone instead to American citizens who lost their homes, and in some cases, all of their earthly possessions to the hurricanes. Many remain without electricity to this day. Adding insult to injury, this comes amid a tone-deaf Biden-Harris administration announcing on Oct. 4 that it was shoveling $157 million in humanitarian assistance to Lebanon, which is caught in the crossfire of Israel–Hezbollah fighting. According to NBC News, that $157 million “brings the total humanitarian assistance provided to support vulnerable populations in Lebanon and Syria to nearly $386 million as of fiscal year 2024.” The announcement came just one day before Milton intensified from a tropical disturbance into a hurricane. “This funding will address new and existing needs of internally displaced persons and refugee populations inside Lebanon and the communities that host them. The assistance will also support those fleeing to neighboring Syria,” the State Department said. All those millions of dollars would be much better spent helping “internally displaced” North Carolinians and Floridians who fled Helene and Milton to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. According to Business Insider, preliminary estimates by the Fitch Ratings credit rating service say Milton caused between $30 billion and $50 billion in damage. As of Oct. 12, its death toll stood at 23. The comparable figures for Helene were 250 deaths and $40 billion in damage. The newest federal largesse for Lebanon amid back-to-back U.S. hurricanes called to mind a spoken-word recording that dominated radio airwaves and the Top 40 charts half a century ago. In late 1973 and early 1974, two separate recordings of Toronto CFRB radio broadcaster Gordon Sinclair’s editorial “The Americans (A Canadian’s Opinion)” lauded U.S. generosity in sending disaster-recovery aid overseas. The first version was released on record by Byron MacGregor, a news anchor of a different radio station, CKLW in Windsor, Ontario, near Detroit, recited over a recording of “America the Beautiful” by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. It reportedly sold 3.5 million copies and reached No. 1 on the trade publication Cashbox’s bestseller chart and No. 4 on rival Billboard’s chart. MacGregor donated all proceeds to the Red Cross. Subsequently released on record by Sinclair himself in early 1974 with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” playing in the background, “The Americans” again made the Top 40, though it reached only No. 24 on the Billboard chart. A third version, narrated by country music singer Tex Ritter and released posthumously, topped out at No. 35 on the country chart. In the original editorial that thrice became a 45-rpm recording, Sinclair, then 73, recounted how, as a youngster six decades earlier, he had read of floods on the Yellow and Yangtze rivers in China in the early 20th century. “Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did, that’s who. They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Ganges and the Niger,” he said on his June 5, 1973, broadcast. “Today, the rich bottom land of the Mississippi is underwater, and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help.” That was a reference to the Mississippi River flood that occurred between March and May of that year. Spawned by torrential rain, it inundated more than 17 million acres and damaged more than 30,000 homes. It caused nearly $170 million in damage in the Mississippi River Delta. (According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, that’s the equivalent of $1.22 billion today.) Sinclair noted the seeming ingratitude of some foreign recipients of U.S. financial and material assistance and lamented the lack of reciprocity when the U.S. itself was stricken by natural disasters. “When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it’s the United States that hurries in to help. Managua, Nicaragua, is one of the most recent examples,” Sinclair’s editorial said. “So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes—nobody has helped. “I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name to me even one time when someone raced to the help of Americans in trouble?” he said. No, I can’t, but now would be a good time for them to start. Originally published at WashingtonTimes.com The post Hurricane Relief vs. Money for Migrants, Largesse for Lebanon appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Vice President Kamala Harris has a problem with veterans. They overwhelmingly support her opponent—favoring former President Donald Trump by a lopsided 61%-37%, according to the latest Pew Research Center survey. For years, civilians have been sold a narrative that just isn’t true. Democrats and liberals in the media invested heavily in trying to portray Trump as a leader at odds with America’s men and women in uniform. But veterans themselves never bought the story. They’ve been one of the Republicans’ most steadfast constituencies. Trump won about six out of 10 veterans in each of the past two presidential elections, and he’s on track to match that performance this year. Veterans like JD Vance better than Tim Walz, too. Both vice presidential contenders are veterans themselves, though Harris’ running mate has been criticized by men who served alongside him in the National Guard who say Walz lied about his rank and exited the service just in time to avoid being sent to war in Iraq. While Walz does well with civilians, Pew’s poll of veterans finds they prefer the ex-Marine on Trump’s ticket: 53% of vets view Vance favorably, while only 34% have a positive impression of Walz. The Pew study suggests veteran discontent with Harris isn’t simply the result of a partisan tilt toward the GOP among vets. Overall, less than a quarter of those polled—23%—say Harris would make things better for veterans if she became president, compared with 55% who say Trump would do so. Even among veterans who support Harris, 33% say she won’t make much difference either way if she wins the White House, and 5% say she’d actually make things worse. Trump’s supporters, on the other hand, have little doubt: 83% of those backing him say he’d make things better for vets. Whenever a high-profile general disparages Trump, as former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley recently did in Bob Woodward’s book “War,” his opinion makes headlines. The sentiments of ordinary soldiers, and veterans, get much less attention. There’s a cultural gulf between these sides. Politically vocal generals and the national security officials who sign their names to open letters supporting Harris for president are Washington insiders—creatures of “the Swamp.” Their perspectives and interests aren’t those of the regular service member or vet. When Milley, now retired, trashes Trump using standard Democratic campaign rhetoric—”now I realize he’s a total fascist,” he told Woodward—he’s speaking the language of his clique. It’s also the language of his bank account. Since leaving the Army, Milley has been making a mint as a consultant and a lecturer on the high-end circuit: “He is represented by the same high-powered speakers’ agency as Hillary Clinton,” notes Ken Klippenstein in The Intercept. Klippenstein was recently suspended from X—the social media site formerly known as Twitter—or sharing hacked information about the Republican ticket. He can’t be suspected of any sympathy for Trump when he exposes Milley’s “cashing in.” The kind of institutions that pay top-dollar for Hillary Rodham Clinton don’t expect to hear anything different from a speaker like Milley, and he knows it. If veterans are a bedrock of Trump’s support, swamp creatures like Milley are a core constituency for Harris. Trump is running against them as much as against her, and veterans are well aware of it—yet they’re with Trump, not the Swamp. The top brass long misled America about the war in Afghanistan, which they insisted we were winning, and it was the troops who paid the price. The fact that Harris has the backing of Washington’s foreign policy establishment is for many voters a compelling reason to reject her. Voters across the swing states trust Trump over Harris in matters of war and peace. Fully 50% of those voters say Trump is better suited to handle the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with only 39% expressing more confidence in Harris, according to polling by The Wall Street Journal. Trump holds an even bigger lead when it comes to which candidate that battleground voters trust to handle the Israel-Hamas war: 48% say Trump, just 33% say Harris. Every year, the Biden-Harris administration has delivered a foreign policy disaster—the lethally botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Hamas massacre of more than 1,000 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, and the extension of the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East throughout 2024. No wonder voters in the states most likely to decide the election want Trump’s foreign policy, not more of what President Joe Biden and Harris have given us these past nearly four years. Veterans, in particular, know the cost of failed leadership. They’ve paid it before, and if Harris wins, their brothers and sisters in arms will pay it again. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Why Veterans Are Voting for Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. European digital rights network EDRi is warning that the EU is rushing the rollout of its digital identification system in an increasingly undemocratic way, without properly addressing the issues of privacy, security, and safety, as the bloc is “chasing an unrealistic deadline.” eID Wallet, regulated by the Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services (eIDAS) rules, is close to getting implemented, but the EU is accused of choosing to move forward too quickly, without first ensuring that proper protections are in place. EDRi member epicenter.works has been making these warnings for several years now, noting that eIDAS itself, adopted in April, mandates the main privacy and security protections, something the EU is nonetheless avoiding. According to the organization, the safeguards that should be built into the Wallet won’t be there as the system is implemented, amid what seems like typical EU confusion, purposeful or otherwise. Namely, the EU Commission is said to be ignoring some eIDAS provisions adopted this year, choosing instead to stick to the version it proposed in 2021, and doing this over the heads of both the EU Parliament and the Council. What makes something of this kind possible is a host of technical implementing acts, and it is in these acts that the Commission has been able to get its original regulation proposal to “reflect,” the digital rights group believes. One of the implementing acts set for adoption on November 17 regards key safeguards “against the risk of over-identification and over-sharing of personal information – that is, the regulation of who may ask which information from users.” But, a number of acts will have to be reopened within a year, making tax money another “victim” of the EU’s almost inexplicable rush to get eID Wallet up and running. Money will be wasted on a large scale, EDRi is warning. “This essentially means tax money will be spent on a large-scale software project in the middle of which fundamental requirements are going to change (for example, for interoperability of the Wallet between member-states),” the network says. The way to address the problems, according to EDRi, is for the EU to decide on a major change of course, i.e., give up on the fast implementation and instead opt to include all the personal data and other key protections in a way that will not “trade people’s safety and security for an unrealistically fast implementation of a tech tool that threatens our fundamental rights.” Otherwise, EU member countries should “reject the draft implementing acts in their upcoming meeting in mid-October,” EDRi states. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post EU’s Digital ID Push Sparks Fears Over Privacy and Rushed Rollout appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Third Trump Assassination Suspect 'Hiding in Fear For His Life'

Less than 200 years ago, the self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ sparked a devastating war in China.

These findings may help explain the link between weed and psychosis.

From the moment we first looked up at the stars and wondered about our place in the cosmos, to the revolutionary advances of modern physics and biology, scientific inquiry has unraveled many mysteries that once seemed beyond our grasp. We’ve mapped the human genome, explored the quantum realm, and even captured the first image of a black hole. Yet, even in this golden age of discovery, there remain questions that linger, untouched by the reach of our most sophisticated theories and tools. These mysteries are not just abstract philosophical musings; they are at the heart of the most advanced fields of cosmology, physics, and neuroscience today. And with every new discovery comes the sobering realization that the more we learn, the more we uncover questions that seem impossible to answer. The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. The Mystery of What Came Before the Big Bang For over a century, the Big Bang has been the leading theory of the universe’s origins. According to this model, the universe began as a singularity—a point of infinite density and temperature—around 13.8 billion years ago. From this singularity, space and time itself expanded, leading to the formation of galaxies, stars, and eventually, life. But one question remains unanswered: What came before the Big Bang? “There is no ‘before’ the Big Bang in a classical sense because time itself was created at the Big Bang,” explains Dr. Katie Mack, a theoretical astrophysicist at North Carolina State University. Mack’s point reflects a core challenge in cosmology: the limits of our understanding are bound by the laws of physics, which break down in the singularity. Some physicists have proposed that the universe could be part of a cyclical process—a series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches—where the universe expands and contracts infinitely. Others speculate about the existence of a multiverse, with our universe being just one of many. However, the truth remains elusive. Current theories like loop quantum cosmology, which suggests the universe underwent a “bounce” before the Big Bang, offer a speculative glimpse into what might have happened. But without observational evidence or a way to test these hypotheses, they remain largely theoretical. As cosmologist Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology points out, “We are probably always going to have to confront the reality that there are certain things, especially involving the origin of the universe, that we may never be able to test or prove.” The End of the Universe: Heat Death or a New Beginning? While the birth of the universe is shrouded in mystery, its eventual fate is equally confusing. According to current cosmological models, the universe is not only expanding but doing so at an accelerating rate. If the current rate of expansion continues unchecked, it will lead to what scientists call the “heat death” of the universe. In this scenario, galaxies, stars, and eventually atoms will drift so far apart that no meaningful interactions will occur. The universe will become a cold, dark, and empty expanse—a state known as maximum entropy. This theory, widely supported by observational data, suggests that all energy in the universe will be evenly distributed, making all processes, including life, impossible. However, there are other possible fates. Some physicists propose the “Big Rip,” where the expansion of the universe accelerates to the point that it tears galaxies, stars, and even atoms apart. Another theory is the “Big Crunch,” where the universe’s expansion could reverse, leading to a collapse back into a singularity—possibly setting the stage for another Big Bang. Yet, despite advanced models and measurements, no one can predict with certainty how the universe will end. As Dr. Robert Caldwell, a theoretical physicist at Dartmouth College, notes, “The ultimate fate of the universe is still a moving target. Our understanding of dark energy is still in its infancy, and what we think we know now could be dramatically overturned in the future.” The Meaning of Life: Beyond Science’s Reach The question of life’s meaning transcends the boundaries of science and enters the realm of philosophy, religion, and consciousness. While biology can explain the mechanisms of life—how DNA replicates or how neurons fire—it has yet to explain why life exists at all. For centuries, thinkers have grappled with the purpose of human existence, and in recent years, science has tried to weigh in. One of the most promising avenues of inquiry has been the study of consciousness. Neuroscientists have made significant strides in understanding how the brain generates subjective experiences, but the “hard problem” of consciousness—the question of how and why these experiences occur—remains unsolved. “The hard problem of consciousness is unlike any other scientific question,” says Dr. David Chalmers, a cognitive scientist at New York University. “We can describe brain processes in terms of electrical activity, but we can’t explain why these processes give rise to the feeling of being aware.” This gap in understanding has led some researchers to propose that consciousness is fundamental to the universe, much like space and time. Known as panpsychism, this theory suggests that even the simplest particles have some form of consciousness. While this idea remains controversial, it points to the limitations of materialism in explaining the full spectrum of human experience. The deeper issue, however, is whether science is equipped to answer questions about meaning at all. As evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has argued, life may have no inherent purpose beyond survival and reproduction. Yet many find this answer unsatisfying. In the words of philosopher Thomas Nagel, “There are many questions—about life, morality, and the nature of the universe—that may be beyond the scope of scientific inquiry. To dismiss them as irrelevant because they can’t be tested is to ignore a central aspect of the human condition.” The Limits of Science The Big Bang, the fate of the universe, and the meaning of life are three monumental questions that touch on the very nature of existence. Despite incredible advancements in physics, cosmology, and neuroscience, these mysteries remain unsolved and, perhaps, unsolvable. Theoretical models offer glimpses of possible answers, but they are, at best, approximations of a deeper truth that may forever lie beyond our grasp. As Dr. Sean Carroll suggests, “There are profound aspects of the universe that we can study scientifically, but we shouldn’t be surprised if we bump up against some boundaries of knowledge.” The post Three Secrets of the Universe That Science Will Never Uncover appeared first on Anomalien.com.