Star of Spider-Noir told fan convention he ‘spoke with love’ at seeing gifted actors for ever gearing up for superhero fight scenes
Nicolas Cage, whose recent credits include the Sony Marvel series Spider-Noir, has criticised the Marvel Cinematic Universe, calling it an overfunded and embarrassing spectacle.
“I do say this with love,” said Cage at a fan convention in Texas. “When I see these 50-plus and otherwise intelligent and remarkably gifted thespians putting on these ridiculous outfits and getting ready for the fight – let’s face it, it’s all cutting to the fight – it’s hard for me not to be reminded that the MCU is becoming a well-funded and glorified WWE.”
Continue reading...(Blue Note)
In the jazz-soul singer’s ‘expression of queer liberation’, stars from Chaka Khan to Bill Callahan to Cynthia Erivo duet on equally varied songs from Cher to the Human League and beyond
It’s fair to say that Meshell Ndegeocello has made a career out of declining to stay in one place too long. Since helping spark the neo soul genre with her 1993 debut album, Plantation Lullabies, she has variously worked in the fields of jazz, R&B, alternative rock, reggae, fusion and gospel. Her last album, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, seemed intent on defying any kind of classification, leaping from Afrobeat funk to electronic abstraction to a closing track that sounded not unlike the xx: it won a Grammy for best alternative jazz album, which slightly smacked of the awards’ organisers throwing up their hands in defeat after a lengthy and fruitless attempt to decide in which category it might belong.
Even if you knew absolutely nothing about Ndegeocello’s eclectic musical history, you could get a sense of her restlessness just from looking at the back cover of Synonym, a collection of cover versions rendered as duets. The source material picks from the oeuvres of Bob Dylan, Jennifer Lopez, the Human League, Barbra Streisand and Chris Cornell’s short-lived grunge supergroup Temple of the Dog, among others. Her collaborators range from Bill Callahan and Cat Power to Chaka Khan and Cynthia Erivo, by way of jazz pianist Robert Glasper.
Continue reading...Now a $15bn industry, astrology is more mainstream in the US than ever. But its practitioners are still debating: who gets to have authority on the celestial bodies?
“The dwarf planets change everything,” said the woman with the smart haircut as she made a mind blown gesture with her fingertips, temples to air.
I am at the United Astrology Conference, the largest professional gathering of astrologers in the world, in downtown Chicago. Around me, vendors are hoping to excite the 1,500 attenders, flogging books, tracts, affiliations, proprietary apps and various software programs that have replaced the laborious chart-drawing of yore.
Continue reading...Every day, trillions of dollars, oil and gas and 99% of the world’s web traffic move through undersea pipelines that bear no state’s protection. With superpowers and corporations vying for control, should we be worried about this new wild west?
On Christmas Day 2024, six weeks before Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were due to disconnect themselves from Russia’s power grid, a Finnish engineer was just about to sit down to lunch when his phone rang. He was responsible for the Finnish side of the undersea cables that keep Finland and the Baltic states supplied with electricity, and one was malfunctioning. Within a couple of hours, authorities knew that a Cook Islands-registered tanker called the Eagle S, part of the shadow fleet carrying sanctioned Russian oil, in this case to Egypt, had sailed over the cable at the moment and location at which it had stopped working. The coastguard hailed the Eagle S. Were their anchors up? Yes, they replied – though they did not seem to check – and sailed on.
Three hours later the ship hit another four cables in quick succession, nearly hobbling internet provision in Finland and Estonia – and was minutes away from a major electricity cable and the Balticconnector, which supplies the two countries with gas. Finland scrambled the border guard, which pulled up alongside the tanker and demanded the crew take up its anchor. But the Eagle S was not in Finnish territorial waters: the authorities could not force the captain to comply, and they did not know who or what might come to his aid.
Continue reading...Hostile states could access cameras, microphones or GPS, says intelligence agency amid concerns over Chinese imports
Drivers have been warned that the smart features built into modern cars such as microphones, cameras and GPS trackers could be used by hostile states to spy on them.
The Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) called for “awareness of espionage risks around modern vehicles”, including microphones that can by switched on remotely to listen to conversations.
Continue reading...‘SAME FILM – DIFFERENT TRUTH’ is the marketing solution for the film’s poor reception by critics. Or, as Cruise says in the ad, ‘Fuck those people!’
‘You know what? Fuck those people!” The speaker is Tom Cruise in his serious-fatsuit role of Digger, in the bold new online ad which gives the finger to his film’s bad reviews and the haters. His words are now repurposed to address loathsome critics. The ad’s message is that a provocative, passionate film like this is divisive. You should make your own mind up. Which is true of course. Although it is just as true for films getting across-the-board raves.
The last movie to try this was Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis: it too ran an ad campaign rebranding the existence of bad reviews (though like Digger it also had plenty of good reviews) as evidence of genius which had yet to be appreciated. This campaign went terribly wrong when it was pointed out that bad reviews it had quoted for Apocalypse Now and The Godfather were in fact made up.
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Researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with Consumer Reports, evaluated how much modern cars spy in their drivers:
To determine this, CR dug through thousands of pages of automakers’ privacy policies and asked questions of 15 different automakersBMW, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Stellantis, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, and Volkswagen. We also reviewed corporate, regulatory, and legal filings from data brokers operating in the “insurtech” industrythe technology companies and data brokers that help insurance companies set their rates. And we spoke to several car privacy experts, who, at industry conferences and in market reports, have described the profit potential of individual driving data as the “new oil.”
We found that while some automakers may obtain your “permission” to collect your driving data, you may agree without knowing you’ve done so. For example, after buying a new car, when you first turn on the infotainment systemthe onboard display that can allow you to control heat and AC, GPS navigation, music, and moreyou are usually shown a series of consent forms, including ones about privacy policies. Those forms can also pop up on a connected mobile app. Many of us simply accept their terms without reading through them.
Basically, your car’s manufacturer has you under constant surveillance, and they use that data against you.
The companies on the receiving end of your data, our investigation has found, include car insurers and lenders that are partners in “telematics data exchanges,” which compile driving data on millions of drivers, thousands of data brokers that create personalized risk scores, companies selling infotainment and WiFi hotspot products, and even local and state government agencies working on planning, traffic, and safety initiatives.
Remember the adage “If you’re not the customer, then you’re the product”? (The sentiment is older than you think.) Turns out that with modern internet-connected everything, you’re the product even if you are the customer.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Niet alleen toekomstige woningbouwprojecten krijgen steeds moeilijker een aansluiting op het stroomnet, ook bouwprojecten die bijna klaar zijn, lopen hier inmiddels tegenaan. Zelfs nieuwbouwwoningen die te koop staan en woningen die al zijn verkocht, kunnen vaak niet op tijd op het stroomnet worden aangesloten, waarschuwt brancheorganisatie WoningBouwersNL.
Door het overvolle stroomnet verwachten bouwbedrijven volgend jaar een daling van de woningbouwproductie met 25 procent, oplopend richting 40 procent in 2028. De bouwkoepel baseert zich op een inventarisatie onder zijn leden.
"De inventarisatie laat zien dat de gevolgen niet beperkt blijven tot één regio of één netbeheerder. Leden melden problemen bij verschillende netbeheerders en plaatsing op een prioriteitenlijst biedt nog geen zekerheid", aldus WoningBouwersNL.
De organisatie gaf onlangs al aan dat de ambitie van het kabinet om jaarlijks 100.000 woningen te bouwen onhaalbaar is met het budget dat daarvoor wordt uitgetrokken.
LUXEMBURG (ANP) - Het onmiddellijk stopzetten van de EU-begrotingssteun aan Sierra Leone is volgens justitieminister David van Weel geen te grof middel om de regering van het Afrikaanse land te bewegen de veroordeelde drugscrimineel Jos Leydekkers ('Bolle Jos') aan Nederland uit te leveren. "Sierra Leone kan dit binnen 24 uur oplossen door deze man op te pakken en uit te leveren aan ons", zei Van Weel, voor de vergadering met de EU-ministers van Justitie.
"Het is geld dat we direct overmaken aan de regering die onderdak biedt aan deze crimineel", zei Van Weel. "Die crimineel maakt uiteindelijk ontzettend veel kapot, ook voor de bevolking van Sierra Leone."
Van Weel vindt het stopzetten van de EU-begrotingshulp een "heel belangrijk signaal". Het gaat volgens hem niet zozeer om de omvang van het bedrag. "Daar zal Sierra Leone niet direct van onder de indruk zijn. Maar hiermee wordt vanuit de Europese Commissie een duidelijk signaal gegeven dat Sierra Leone moet stoppen met het bieden van onderdak aan deze criminelen."
peaceful-jp-scenery has added a photo to the pool:
Umi Jigoku
海地獄
Despite the heavy rain and dense fog, I visited another famous spot Umi Jigoku (Sea Hell). It is one of the hot springs that originated 1,200 years ago.
雨で霧が凄かったのですが、もう一つ有名な所、海地獄です。1200年前に生まれた熱泉の一つとなります。
Beppu city, Oita pref, Japan
peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:
Umi Jigoku
海地獄
Despite the heavy rain and dense fog, I visited another famous spot Umi Jigoku (Sea Hell). It is one of the hot springs that originated 1,200 years ago.
雨で霧が凄かったのですが、もう一つ有名な所、海地獄です。1200年前に生まれた熱泉の一つとなります。
Beppu city, Oita pref, Japan
AI kan ons helpen om ons dagelijks werk ook een beetje verlichten. Dat zei Rob Jetten (dit weten we zeker, hij stond voor een camera met een bouwhelm op) een paar weken geleden. Wij vragen ons af hoe dat precies werkt, want we zagen gisteren allemaal berichten over een tweet van Rob Jetten over de dood van Paulien Cornelisse die volgens AI door AI is geschreven, al kan AI dat niet precies bepalen omdat AI eigenlijk meer woorden nodig heeft om AI-patronen te herkennen. Maar nu zeggen mensen van D66 dat de tweet juist wel "handgeschreven" is, en dus niet door AI. Dat geloven wij best, want een beetje AI schrapt de zin 'de strijd tegen kanker mocht ze niet winnen' en heeft het niet over 'impact', of misschien wel, of misschien niet, maar tering jantje Rob Jetten wanneer komt die verlichting dan want dit is zo intens verdrietig allemaal man.
