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The Truman Show 2 still hasn't materialized almost three decades since 1998's The Truman Show, so where is all the Truman Show 2 news? The Truman Show 2 still hasn't been made.

With the popularity of Jim Carrey's original movie, fans have been waiting for any The Truman Show 2 updates for a number of years. 1998's The Truman Show starred Carrey as the mild-mannered Truman Burbank — an unassuming Average Joe living in a seemingly idyllic town and leading a normal life. However, unbeknownst to Truman, his entire life has been a reality TV show. Every moment, from his birth to his first kiss to his serene life at the start of the movie, is staged. The Truman Show's unique premise — years before reality TV shows like Big Brother — made for a funny, compelling, and thought-provoking movie that won Carrey a Golden Globe and was nominated for three Oscars. By modern standards, The Truman Show 2 would seem like a sure thing — but, of course, there's no Truman Show 2.

Given The Truman Show's success, the fact there's never been a The Truman Show 2 release date put forward by a studio — even for a since-axed project — is perplexing. It's been 25 years since the original, but speculation around The Truman Show 2 has been ongoing — especially in the age of social media when its themes of invasion of privacy and where the line is for entertainment make The Truman Show 2 possibly more poignant than ever. Plus, with movies like Top Gun: Maverick proving it is never too late to return to a franchise, the time could be right for The Truman Show 2 to pick up after The Truman Show's ending. There have been almost three decades of rumors and misinformation when it comes to The Truman Show 2, so pinning down how close it's come to actually happening can be tricky. The Truman Show 2: Latest News Jim Carrey smiling and pointing in The Truman Show

After no real The Truman Show 2 new to speak of for years, a potential idea for how to carry on the story of a The Truman Show sequel was put forward in June 2023. The Truman Show writer Andrew Niccol pitched an idea for a series taking place after the Jim Carrey movie. The series would, in lieu of a feature-length The Truman Show 2, focus on the in-universe spinoffs that happened in the wake of Truman exiting his own show, focusing now on different characters who are also unknowing and unwilling reality TV stars. Niccol explained "there would be a network with multiple channels all starring a subject born on the show. If I set it in New York City, there would be girl living on the Upper East Side, a boy from Harlem."

Niccol continued to describe how these competing shows would soon begin to overlap with the unwilling stars suddenly forming a connection with each other. In a clever way, Niccol acknowledged how two people in this situation would be drawn to each other as "both sense that the other is acting differently from anyone they’ve ever met…because for the first time, they’ve met someone who is not acting!" It would be an interesting way of continuing the story instead of making The Truman Show 2, one that maintains the unique premise without simply remaking The Truman Show. The Truman Show 2 Is Not Confirmed Jim Carrey on the verge of tears in The Truman Show

There has been no confirmation on The Truman Show 2 ever happening as either a sequel, reboot, or TV series. Despite the success of the original movie and some ideas being thrown around over the years, no follow-up has ever been greenlit, and there's currently no The Truman Show 2 release date on the horizon. There have been multiple rumors since the release of The Truman Show that Jim Carrey is making The Truman Show 2, but these have all been false — although their frequency (and the fact they still emerge decades later) proves just how high demand actually is for a The Truman Show sequel. The Truman Show 2: Cast Jim Carrey looking in the mirror in The Truman Show

While it seems like The Truman Show 2 cast would obviously include Jim Carrey, that seems unlikely now even if the sequel did get off the ground. Carrey has been somewhat reluctant to make sequels in the past with Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, and Sonic the Hedgehog are the only franchises he's returned to. While there was a time when the actor might have been persuaded to play Truman Burbank again, it seems unlikely now given Carrey announcing his retirement.

If Carrey were to turn down the sequel, it seems unlikely the filmmakers would try to recast him and would instead take the story in a new direction. If that is the case, there are few returning cast members from the original that would make sense for the cast of The Truman Show 2. However, it is possible Ed Harris could return as Christof, the creator of the show. A sequel to The Truman Show could find him attempting to recreate his hit show following its collapse in the original movie, for example, or be facing legal repercussions and social backlash decades later for creating the show in the first place. The Truman Show 2: Story Details An image of Truman Burbank standing with his arms outstretched in The Truman Show

There are a number of interesting directions The Truman Show story could take if there is indeed a continuation. The Truman Show ending finds Truman finally leaving the world he has known and venturing out into the real world, effectively ending the show. Having the sequel come more than 25 years later means that fans will miss out on the most interesting aspect of Truman's story which is seeing how he deals with starting his life from scratch. By the time the sequel starts, he would have built a new life on the outside.

Carrey had an idea for The Truman Show 2 which would have been a surprisingly bleak way to continue the story. Carrey suggests that the way people consume media would have made for a lonely new reality for Truman, suggesting "he was alone out there, too, because everybody went back inside. They all wanted to be in the dome." He also pointed to the modern era of YouTube channels and TikTok accounts meaning so many people have their own small Truman Shows making a follow-up an interesting area to explore.

Niccol's idea for a television series about the star-crossed lovers on competing shows is another solid idea for the follow-up. The premise fits into the timeline of the original movie while also having the benefit of not needing to include Carrey if he is not interested in returning. With these ideas discussed before, there is still hope for The Truman Show 2 happening. source

Wes Anderson gives direction to Jason Schwartzman and Tom Hanks in "Asteroid City."

Wes Anderson gives direction to Jason Schwartzman and Tom Hanks in "Asteroid City." Credit: Roger Do Minh/Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features

The words "Thanks, I Love It: in pink font topped by two hearts.

Welcome to Thanks, I Love It, our series highlighting something onscreen we're obsessed with this week.

On its surface, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City is a movie about a recent widower, Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), and his four children coming to terms with their intimate and personal grief here on Earth after the death of his wife and their mother. They will have some adventures, and they will meet a lot of folks along the way, up to and including a real-life space alien, animated with stop-motion precision. But what it comes down to is just five small, sad stargazers set under a strange and indifferent interstellar cosmos in the middle of the desert, finding each other again.

Despite long-standing claims that Anderson is a superficial stylist, nothing about Asteroid City is just surface level. Its structure, intricate and often bewildering, is matryoshka-like in its construction. It feverishly makes meaning from itself, laying the railroad tracks before us for every foot we travel forward. Asteroid City is Wes Anderson's Synecdoche, New York, where layer upon layer upon layer of unreality are piled up until we're kissing the stars themselves. The creation of Asteroid City is the creation of Asteroid City.

Bryan Cranston in "Asteroid City."

Credit: Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features

Within the film, Asteroid City is a play that was written by a playwright named Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). A play that was named, after some back and forth, for the town where it’s set.

However, in the film's opening moments, set in a black-and-white television studio, Bryan Cranston simply declares that "Asteroid City does not exist." Does he mean the play the movie is named for? Or the city the play is named for? It's one of the first mysteries the film sets up.

It's true that no fiction literally exists except through the willful imagination on the part of the creator and those consuming the creation. We make a pact together called "suspension of disbelief" when we sit down to watch any kind of entertainment. But in the world of the film Asteroid City, we quickly find out this introductory statement is true literally as well as more metaphorically, perhaps.

Earp created the town of Asteroid City as well as a play called Asteroid City, which is about the town. It's a real chicken-versus-egg conundrum of which came first, the setting or the story. And that's one that Wes Anderson will willfully unravel, strand by strand, as we go along. (The fact that the film is also called Asteroid City aids extensively in this purposeful confusion.)

One step even further removed, the making of the play is being filmed for television. And this is where Bryan Cranston comes in as our host. Rocking a crisp suit and a killer mustache, he stands center stage and welcomes us to watch this broadcast about the making of the play Asteroid City. We move in alongside Cranston onto a set, its edges visible like a theatrical stage, as Norton's Conrad Earp sits at his typewriter and types. We watch Earp meet with actors that will be cast in scenes, all of which play out like miniature stage vignettes.

And Anderson will cut back to Cranston and this black-and-white TV world intermittently throughout the film to learn tidbits about the play as it's being readied for production – a sort of mid-century VH1 Pop-Up Video. One that sometimes, as Anderson continues to diabolically unravel this unreality of his own making, begins to disrupt the play itself. Characters begin stepping in and out of the play into the TV world, and vice versa.

Confusing things further, Asteroid City the play – which is Augie Steenbeck’s story of grief and alien encounters in the desert – is filmed in vivid Kodachrome color. It comes across as far more realistic than anything we see in the black-and-white "real world" where Bryan Cranston's character resides. A real tip of the hat to The Wizard of Oz here, as the audience connects more to the fantasy than we do to the reality; Asteroid City, the fictional town in a play that's being filmed for television, feels realer than does anything else in Asteroid City the film. The characters of Augie and his kids and his father-in-law Stanley (Tom Hanks) and the movie star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) that he gingerly romances – these are the relationships in which the film urges us to invest.

Compare the sad and touching conversations between Augie and Midge with the one in the "real world" of the play's making, where we see a marital drama unfold between a stage director (Adrien Brody) and his estranged wife (Hong Chao). The latter all takes place in the theater's backstage and is shot explicitly as a stagey filmed play. The walls are bare wood walls, and Brody mimes punching a punching bag even when there is an actual punching bag five feet to his right. It's all flat and absurd.

But Augie and Stanley and Midge all exist in a world that, as Wes Anderson-fancified up as it might be, feels far more authentic in the experience of it. There is dirt on their shoes and sweat on their brows and color in their cheeks. It's a magnificent sleight of hand that comes straight at the critical accusations that the hyper-stylization of Wes Anderson films distance us from his characters. "You wanna see distance? I will show you distance," Anderson seems to be saying. Wes Anderson wants us to give ourselves over to the magic.

Wes Anderson on the set of ASTEROID CITY, a Focus Features release.

Credit: Roger Do Minh/Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features

And yet a gigantic question lurks on Asteroid City's outskirts – what the heck exactly are we seeing?

The colorful world of the play can't possibly be what’s being broadcast on Bryan Cranston's black-and-white television program. Playwright Conrad Earp stands on the play's stage and points at the flat, painted backdrops of the desert canyons and scenery that will, once we move inside the play itself, spring to vivid, three-dimensional life.

That tension, Wes Anderson seems to be saying, is the magic itself. The trickery, where fiction overwhelms our senses and becomes our everything. It’s that pact we make with the storyteller. We're the people of Bedford Falls clapping for an angel to get its wings every time we sit down to watch a movie; we want to believe a man can fly, that the impossible is made possible if we just close our eyes and wish hard enough on that star.

We are the Junior Stargazers putting cardboard boxes on our heads and peeping through pinholes in order to see three impossible points of light that have traveled billions of years to find us. We want to believe in something, anything, angels or aliens – just so long as there's something outside of ourselves. Even if only a backstage, a Truman Show toppling-down of the walls around us.

Augie Steenbeck, war photographer, holding his dead wife's ashes in a blue Tupperware container, keeps bringing up his disbelief in an afterlife. But we watch him develop his pictures several times: flat rectangles of blank, white nothing that suddenly spring to gorgeous life, revealing atom bombs and half-naked actresses reaching for a smoke. Moments from the past, captured. Living on forever. Is that not an afterlife right at our fingertips?

Midge tells Augie that they are "two catastrophically wounded people who don't express the depths of our pain because we don't want to." And yet she paints her face with stage make-up to resemble a bruise, all the better to express the inner turmoil of the character she's playing. Meaning the character she is playing in a movie within the play within the TV show within the movie, of course. Welcome to the Grand Wes Anderson Multiverse Theory.

Jason Schwartzman and Scarlett Johansson exchange a look in "Asteroid City."

Credit: Roger Do Minh/Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features

The list goes on and on. Echoes from earlier Wes Anderson movies abound. Augie's whole arc of matrimonial grief feels like a new riff on Ben Stiller's in The Royal Tenenbaums, with Augie's three identical-ish daughters an expansion of Stiller's two identical-ish sons. The romance between Augie's son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and Midge's daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards) seems to be a mirror of Moonrise Kingdom – not to mention Augie and Midge’s own romance that’s happening five feet away from them. And there is Tilda Swinton over there in another one of her eccentric wigs, as she has been four other times before under Anderson's direction alone (she cannot resist a wig).

It's as if the characters of Wes Anderson's world just keep piling up. His casts get more and more crowded, the worlds become more and more fabricated, and the themes and characterizations more and more abbreviated. The interlinked stories of The French Dispatch are all ruminating on the same themes. The Grand Budapest Hotel is overrun with wild characters. There are entire islands of dogs and fantastic foxes, for goodness sake.

And meaning grows ever more elusive. More confused and distant. The remnants of the stars we gaze up at are just ugly little rocks once we're able to hold them in our hands. The alien comes down and marks the asteroid in indecipherable symbols – to what end? How do we all end up ashes in a Tupperware container buried beside the communal showers of a roadside motel?

Midway through the third act, Augie walks off stage through a door in the wall of the asteroid crater because he can't comprehend why the character of Augie behaves the way he does. Here Schwartzman shifts into another character, an actor named Jones Hall who's playing Augie — and he demands answers. But the playwright is now dead and the director can't satisfy him. It takes Jones Hall bumping into the actress (Margot Robbie) that was going to play his wife, who was cut from the play, reciting a dream sequence, which was cut from the play, to fill in some holes. Meaning was quite literally left laying on the cutting room floor. Existence is an out-take. So, what does all of this meta sound and fury signify?

Hong Chau and Adrian Brody in "Asteroid City."

Credit: Roger Do Minh/Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features

When it's revealed in act three that the playwright Conrad Earp has died, the film flashes back to a scene from earlier, where a group of actors (including most of the ones who will end up cast in his play) are acting out what it means to sleep. Conrad wanted to capture what it means to dream, and the entire cast begins to chant "You can't dream if you don't fall asleep" over and over again. The alien (who is now portrayed by Jeff Goldblum in an alien costume, because of course) holds the asteroid toward the camera as the cast dances around him, chanting and chanting, and the camera pulls in all the way upon the rock. "You can't dream if you don't fall asleep."

In a film full of sharp turns, this scene remains the sharpest. It feels like the final, frenetic moments of All That Jazz in its embrace of cacophonous ecstasy. Is this Conrad Earp's death dream? Or are we watching him as the play's themes finally come together for him while he writes? Is there a difference? We are watching actors playing actors play-acting sleep inside a flashback of a televised play telling us to let go of ourselves – yes, to sleep perchance to dream.

And aye, there's the rub. Any logic you might try to apply to this moment telescopes itself not just into outer space, but down into the deepest depths of the human heart and mind at the same moment. Death is creation. From the ashes. Holding the stars in our hands might rob them of their glitter, so why not throw them back up into the sky every chance you get? Take life and make something enormous and beautiful out of it. Project your loved one's initials onto the Moon. Make a movie, take a photograph, dance, wear a seersucker suit and fancy yourself a fop. Why not leave every moment behind you a bit more magical than you found it?

Asteroid City is now in theaters.(opens in a new tab)

Mashable Image

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It's easy to feel like we won't win the fight against climate change, especially when faced with the realities of a warming planet and the ongoing issue of climate science misinformation.

Climate change is happening, though. Look no further than the Earth's increasingly devastating natural disasters, looming water crisis, and disappearing ice sheets.

To combat warming temperatures we have to dramatically lower carbon emissions, according to the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and address the rising levels of carbon dioxide. That won't be easy(opens in a new tab).

At the 2022 Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), world leaders chose not to move away decisively from a widespread reliance on fossil fuels(opens in a new tab) and posed continued concerns about failures to lower emissions. The 2022 Emissions Gap Report(opens in a new tab), released by the UN Environment Programme just before COP27, still found that there was "no credible pathway to a 1.5 C future" without "rapid societal transformation."

"Limiting warming to 1.5 C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, but doing so would require unprecedented changes," Jim Skea, a leading UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientist, said in 2018.

But there is cause for hope, Charlie Jiang, a former climate campaigner at Greenpeace, told Mashable in 2019. Greenpeace climate campaigners work with climate change advocacy organizations such as Zero Hour(opens in a new tab) to confront fossil fuel companies and politicians standing in the way of transformative climate change action. One of Greenpeace's strategies has been to pressure political candidates to publish comprehensive (opens in a new tab)plans(opens in a new tab) that invest in clean energy and phase out fossil fuels, without hurting workers.

President Joe Biden has since made several climate action pledges(opens in a new tab), including co-leading the Forest and Climate Leaders' Partnership (FCLP) deforestation initiative, scaling up production and use of zero emission vehicles (ZEVs), and a $1-billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund(opens in a new tab). The administration also set a new goal of achieving a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.

"Amidst all the scary news that we're getting, it's a hopeful moment for bold transformation... We deserve a better future than the one that our complacent politicians and the fossil-fuel billionaires are handing to us," Jiang said.

Here's how you can join the tide against the climate crisis.

1. Get involved in climate change strikes

Uniting together across demographics can be one of the most impactful strategies in the fight to stop the effects of climate change, Jiang said.

And climate protests have long been used to call attention to growing climate issues, bad actors, and environmental threats.

Global Climate Strike(opens in a new tab) is an annual, international strike to call attention to the need for international leaders to take the climate crisis seriously. It's part of the weekly protest initiative Fridays for the Future(opens in a new tab), founded by youth climate activist Greta Thunberg, and its annual Global Day Of Climate Action.

You can find a protest near you by visiting the websites for Fridays for the Future, the U.S. Youth Climate Strike Coalition(opens in a new tab), or the Global Climate Strike(opens in a new tab).

If you want to take further action, the Global Climate Strike website offers a wealth of resources(opens in a new tab) including tips to promote the strike on social media and graphics for posters, flyers, and buttons. It even has toolkits that specific groups like employees or faith-based groups can use to encourage others to join.

If you want to take part but can't find a strike or protest where you live, the U.S. Youth Climate Strike Coalition has a comprehensive document(opens in a new tab) that anyone looking to organize their own climate change protest on Fridays can use. The Global Climate Strike offers similar resources(opens in a new tab). You can also use these teachings to plan future strikes throughout the year. For additional inspiration, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Climate Protest Tracker(opens in a new tab) also tracks international climate actions and their participants, objectives, and outcomes.
2. Advocate for inclusive climate solutions

Climate activists can expand their approach by considering how environmental preservation — and climate philanthropy — operate alongside the Indigenous communities that have fought to retain stewardship of the land over centuries of colonization.

Some are now turning towards Indigenous-led solutions to environmental degradation, climate change, and the impact of extractive industries like logging and fossil fuels, and government leaders are creating more pathways(opens in a new tab) for these communities to be on the frontlines of the climate movement.

In the nonprofit space, organizations like the Decolonizing Wealth Project(opens in a new tab), a grassroots community of funders offering untethered money to Indigenous-led organizations, and Indigenous Climate Action(opens in a new tab) are fostering a more inclusive environmental movement.

To learn more about these Indigenous climate initiatives and get involved with their work, visit the Decolonizing Wealth Project's Indigenous Earth Fund(opens in a new tab). 3. Research politicians' voting history

Knowing elected officials' track records helps you make an informed vote during elections. And avoid voting a climate denier into office.

The nonpartisan research organization Vote Smart(opens in a new tab) provides information on the voting records, policy positions, and funding behind candidates and elected officials.

During state and local races, check out Vote411(opens in a new tab)'s voter and ballot guides(opens in a new tab), which contain information about ballot measures, as well as current candidates' positions on a variety of issues. You can also see candidates answer questions about topics important to them and your community, so you can note if they prioritize climate change in their answers.

The League of Conservation Voters(opens in a new tab), an organization that advocates for environmental laws and works to elect pro-environmental candidates(opens in a new tab), scores(opens in a new tab) Congress members on their environmental records and assigns both the House and the Senate an average rating.

Apps like ReleVote(opens in a new tab) can also help you keep track of your representatives' congressional decisions, as well as monitor relevant climate and environmental legislation.
4. Speak to elected officials

Beyond voting, you also can talk to elected officials about the specific climate change issues you care about and how you'd like to see them addressed, as a constituent.

For example, carbon-pricing bills(opens in a new tab) place a fee on carbon and, in some cases, other fossil fuels, to encourage sustainable energy alternatives and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Cities or states can also mandate that a certain percentage of their energy comes from carbon-free sources, like New York's ambitious OneNYC climate plan(opens in a new tab).

Look to see if your state or local government is considering bills like these and contact the appropriate politician to let them know why you support it. Nonprofit research institute Resources for the Future(opens in a new tab) also hosts a carbon pricing bill tracker(opens in a new tab) that monitors current legislation.

Calling representatives can be impactful as well, and it's easy to find politicians' contact information with a quick Google search.

"If they [a state lawmaker] receive five calls in a day about a single issue, that is an avalanche of calls," says Jamie DeMarco, former member of the environmental grassroots organization Citizens' Climate Lobby(opens in a new tab) (CCL) and Maryland Director at Chesapeake Climate Action Network. " "We need everyone taking action to demand our leaders commit to stand up to the fossil fuel industry." "

The key is to band together with others to more easily deluge a politician's office with calls, he said.

If you prefer speaking with congressional members in person, CCL trains people to lobby their senators and representatives on climate change, both in D.C. and in volunteers' home states. Volunteers speak with congressional members face-to-face about bills they want the representatives to support. This might seem radical but can be very effective, said Steve Valk, CCL's communications director.

If you're interested in joining this effort, you can find a CCL chapter in your area(opens in a new tab).

Check if your state has an office, commission, or committee that focuses on climate change and if the public can attend. You can also go to congressional members' town hall meetings. Usually there's time for the audience to express their concerns and ask questions, Valk said.

Ultimately, the world needs us to get involved, activists emphasize.

"We need everyone taking action to demand our leaders commit to stand up to the fossil fuel industry," Jiang said.

Originally published in September 2019, this story was updated with new information in July 2023. Additional reporting by Chase DiBenedetto.

Source

Links: [mashable](https://mashable.com/article/wildfire-smoke-nyc-canada-video mashable2 Mashable3) Report zerohour.org/ Vox Whitehouse.gov Green climate fund strikewithus.org https://globalclimatestrike.net/ Google doc climate-protest-tracker native-solutions-climate-change decolonizingwealth indigenousclimateaction https://decolonizingwealth.com/liberated-capital/ief/ votesmart.org vote411.org vote411.org/ballot https://www.lcv.org/ relevote.com/ citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-pricing-congress Resources for the Future carbon-pricing-bill-tracker

Hollywood remains in suspense over whether actors will make a deal with the major studios and streamers or go on strike. The contract for their union, SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, was supposed to end at midnight on June 30. But negotiations will continue, with a new deadline set for July 12. Media blackout and dissension

Both sides agreed to a media blackout, so there are only a few new details about where negotiations stand. They've been in talks for the past few weeks, and 98% of the union's members have already voted to authorize a strike if necessary.

A few days before the original deadline, more than a thousand actors, including Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Pedro Pascal, signed a letter urging negotiators not to cave. That letter was also signed by the president of SAG- AFTRA, Fran Drescher, former star of the 1990's TV sitcom The Nanny.

On Good Morning America, shortly before the original deadline, Drescher was asked if negotiations were making progress in the contract talks. "You know, in some areas, we are; in some areas, we're not. So we just have to see," she said. "I mean, in earnest, it would be great if we can walk away with a deal that we want." About the contract extension

After announcing the contract extension, Drescher told members that no one should mistake it for weakness.

If the actors do go on strike, they'll join the Hollywood writers who walked off the job on May 2.

The Writers Guild of America says they've been ready to continue talking with the studios and streamers. But they probably will be waiting until the actor's contract gets resolved. Actors on the WGA picket line

Meanwhile, many actors in Los Angeles, New York and other cities have already been picketing outside studios in solidarity with the writers.

The last time the Hollywood actors and writers were on strike at the same time was in 1960. Back then, there were just three broadcast networks. SAG had yet to merge with AFTRA. The Screen Actors Guild was led by a studio contract player named Ronald Reagan decades before he would become the country's president. What actors want

Those strikes were fights over getting residuals when movies got aired on television.

In the new streaming era, writers and actors are demanding more residuals when the streaming platforms re-play their TV shows and movies.

They also want regulations and protections from the use of artificial intelligence. Actors are concerned that their likeness will be used by AI, replacing their work. Elizabeth Mihalek and Vincent Amaya are background actors and members of SAG-AFTRA. They picketed in solidarity with striking writers outside Netflix this week.

Elizabeth Mihalek and Vincent Amaya are background actors and members of SAG-AFTRA. They picketed in solidarity with striking writers outside Netflix this week.

(Mandalit del Barco

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NPR News )

Vincent Amaya and Elizabeth Mihalek are unionized background actors who worry that studios and streamers are replicating their work with AI.

"What they started doing is putting us into a physical machine, scanning us, and then using that image into crowd scenes," says Amaya. "[Before], if a movie wanted to do crowd scenes, they would hire us for a good two, three weeks, maybe a month. However, if they're scanning us, that's one day."

Mihalek says actors are told, "You have to get scanned and we're going to use this forever and ever. You know, it's a perpetual use contract."

Losing work days means less pay and they may not qualify for the union's healthcare and pension benefits.

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Prosecutors in New Mexico have alleged that armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed passed cocaine to someone else to avoid scrutiny of her handling of weapons on the “Rust” film set where cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed.

In a new filing in New Mexico’s 1st Judicial District Court, prosecutors said a witness could testify that Gutierrez Reed transferred a “small bag of cocaine” to them following the fatal shooting of Hutchins in October 2021.

The prosecutors allege the armorer did so to avoid prosecution and prevent law enforcement from obtaining evidence that could determine her handling of firearms and the circumstances of the accidental shooting.

Prosecutors did not identify the witness, saying they will be “blacklisted from the film industry” for coming forward.

The allegation is the latest development in the newly appointed prosecutors’ attempts to bring charges in the “Rust” case. Gutierrez Reed is the sole remaining defendant after charges against Alec Baldwin were dropped.

“A secret witness appears 20 months later? With no actual corroboration or evidence? And the state won’t identify the person? This is a throwback to the secret, star chamber prosecutions in England in the 15th century that were abolished,” said Gutierrez Reed’s attorney Jason Bowles in an emailed statement. “Like everything else with the state’s case and investigation, it’s full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.”

Gutierrez Reed is facing charges of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors have been scrutinizing her behavior on set of the film on the day of the fatal shooting.

Earlier this month, prosecutors alleged Gutierrez Reed was likely hungover when she loaded a live bullet into Baldwin’s revolver before the fatal shooting. The accusation was leveled after an attempt by her attorneys to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter charges against her, saying they were without merit.

In April, prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Baldwin in the “Rust” shooting after receiving new information about the gun in the case. source

Editor’s note, June 30, 10:57 pm ET: On June 30, the day the SAG-AFTRA contract was set to expire, the guild announced that the negotiation had been extended to July 12. On June 23, the DGA voted to approve its contract with AMPTP; 41 percent of the guild’s membership voted, and 87 percent of voters ratified. WGA remains on strike.

Editor’s note, June 6, 10:30 am ET: On June 3, DGA leadership announced it had reached a tentative contract agreement, which has not yet been ratified by the guild’s membership. On June 5, two days ahead of the start of bargaining, SAG-AFTRA membership voted by an overwhelming 97.91 percent margin to authorize a strike, a move designed to give them leverage at the bargaining table. WGA remains on strike.

Our original story, published on June 2, follows.

The Hollywood writers strike marked its one-month anniversary on Friday, with no signs of slowing down. While other guilds in the industry are still on the job — except when they’re blocked by picket lines — the writers may soon get company on those picket lines.

Two other major entertainment guilds, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA), also entered the summer with looming contract expiration dates. Both groups’ agreements with AMPTP, the trade association that represents the industry’s film and TV production companies, end on June 30. A lot could happen between now and then, but the situation is looking dicey.

All of that means that come July 1, the studios may be facing a double or even triple strike, in effect shutting Hollywood down completely.

The DGA rarely strikes — the last time was in 1987 — and its leadership has not called for a strike authorization vote. But its relations with the AMPTP have been trickier than usual. Negotiations began on May 10, with demands that in part mirror the WGA’s concerns. The main sticking point is wage and residual increases that keep in step with rising costs of living. In particular, lower residuals for shows on streaming services, where the lion’s share of entertainment now lives, have wreaked havoc for many people in the industry, drastically reducing compensation and making it increasingly difficult to just pay the bills. A protester holds a sign with a cartoon of people speaking on one side and Mickey Mouse caught in a spring trap on the other. The caption reads, “I warned him not to cross the picket line.” A rally at 30 Rock in New York.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

In the past, the DGA has sometimes managed to make an agreement with AMPTP ahead of the start of bargaining, effectively setting a pattern for the WGA and SAG-AFTRA to follow in their own demands. Last November, the DGA sent a “pre-negotiation” offer to the AMPTP, seeking resolution ahead of bargaining. The AMPTP reportedly rejected the DGA’s proposal, meaning both parties came to the bargaining table without an arrangement.

The situation seemed to intensify due to an unforced error. On May 23, Warner Bros. Discovery launched Max, its newly rebranded streaming platform, which had previously been named HBO Max. Eagle-eyed observers noticed that in listed credits, the platform lumped writers, directors, producers, and so on into one category labeled “creators.” Aside from the queasy implications that the greatest works of cinema and television were just “content,” the choice on the company’s part ran afoul of hard-fought contract regulations regarding credits for artists.

It was a weird choice, and one that set blood boiling in Hollywood. The presidents of the WGA and the DGA issued a rare joint statement, with DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter noting, “The devaluation of the individual contributions of artists is a disturbing trend and the DGA will not stand for it. We intend on taking the strongest possible actions, in solidarity with the WGA, to ensure every artist receives the individual credit they deserve.”

By the end of the day, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it would modify how credits were listed on the platform in compliance with its preexisting contract agreement with the unions. Yet the strong language indicated that the DGA was ready to play hardball.

Meanwhile, members of SAG-AFTRA have been vocally supportive of the WGA. This is no shock, since on top of the same issue of residuals and wages, the union — which includes, in addition to film and TV actors, people who work in radio, singers, voice actors, influencers, models, and other media professionals — is concerned about the existential threat posed by AI and other technologies. Even before the WGA’s strike began, SAG-AFTRA issued statements regarding how the use of AI could eliminate or greatly reduce work for its members.

Members of SAG-AFTRA have shown up on picket lines to support the writers, and the star power posed by some of its most prominent members helps bring attention to the WGA’s strike. It’s also an effort to remind the studios that when their own negotiations begin, they’re ready for a fight. Underlining that implicit statement, the leadership of SAG-AFTRA unanimously agreed to ask its membership for a strike authorization vote, which concludes this coming Monday, June 5. That’s a move designed to signal solidarity to the AMPTP ahead of negotiations. Someone in a crowd holds a sign that says, “I suggest a new strategy: Let the unions win!”

Demonstrators at the WGA strike on May 26 in LA. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

It’s clear that all of Hollywood’s unions — not just the three with expiring contracts — are working together to show solidarity. Both IATSE, which represents Hollywood’s “below-the-line” workers (everyone from grips to craft services to first aid to electricians), and the Teamsters (who drive trucks, wrangle animals, manage locations, and a lot more) are authorized by their leadership to refuse to cross picket lines, and have made that choice throughout the writers strike. DGA and SAG members have frequently refused as well.

The DGA’s negotiations are set to end on June 7, the same day SAG-AFTRA’s negotiations begin. Knowing this, on May 31, the leaders of the Teamsters, IATSE, WGA, and SAG-AFTRA issued a joint statement supporting the DGA in their negotiations, declaring that “as eyes around the world again turn towards the negotiation table, we send a clear message to the AMPTP: Our solidarity is not to be underestimated.”

When writers go on strike, some of the industry can still operate, provided their workers are willing to cross picket lines. (Due to available personnel, the WGA also can’t picket every production, and thus chooses strategically.) But if the DGA or SAG-AFTRA walks off the job — or both — then productions will shut down across the board. Hollywood would grind to a halt.

Here’s what’s most significant about all of this: All three unions have never gone on strike at the same time, in the history of Hollywood. The fact that this scenario is possible, even likely, emphasizes how extraordinary this moment is in the entertainment business. Technology has always been a major driver in labor negotiations. But the major companies’ use of streaming services, and their demonstrated interest in cutting out humans through the use of tech, poses an existential threat to everyone who makes the TV, movies, and other scripted entertainment that brings in billions of dollars every year. The question, at this juncture, is whether there’s a future for Hollywood at all — or whether entertainment will be swallowed whole by the tech industry. For Hollywood’s artists and craftspeople, that’s a fate worth fighting against.

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The new Indiana Jones movie hits different in the IP age.

In 1981’s Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, the mercenary archaeologist René Belloq looks his friend-turned-foe Indiana Jones square in the eye and tells him the absolute truth. “Indiana,” he says, “we are simply passing through history.” They’re discussing the treasure they seek: the Ark of the Covenant, which might be just a valuable old artifact or might be the home of the Hebrew God, who knows. “This — this is history.”

Humans die. Civilizations pass away. Artifacts, however, remain. They tell us who we were, and who we still are.

History — the pursuit of it, the commodification of it, our universal fate to live inside of it — is Indiana Jones’s obsession, and that theme bleeds right off the screen and onto us. After all, Raiders was released 42 years ago, before I was born, and the fifth and final film (or so we’re told anyhow), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, due to arrive in theaters this summer. Watch it at this moment in time, and you’re reminded that you, too, are passing through history. Those movie stars are looking a lot older.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Disney

This is a series preoccupied with time and its cousin, mortality, from the characters’ relentless pursuit of the ancient world’s secrets to the poignancy of Jones’s relationships. His adventures are frequently preceded by the revelation that someone or something in his life has died — a friend, a family member, a relationship. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, released in 1989, makes the fact of death especially moving, with its plot point turning on immortality and the Holy Grail. More humorously, cobweb-draped skeletons are strewn liberally throughout the series, reminding us that other explorers and other civilizations have attempted what Indiana is trying to do. He’s just another in a string of adventurers, one who happens to be really good at throwing a punch.

Dial of Destiny feels like an emphatic period at the end of a very long sentence, a sequel making its own case against some future further resurrection — not unlike last year’s Cannes blockbuster premiere, Top Gun: Maverick, or 2021’s fourth installment of The Matrix. That’s not just because Harrison Ford is turning 81 this summer. It’s in the text; Dial of Destiny argues, explicitly, that you have to leave the past in the past, that the only way to ensure the world continues is to put one foot down and then another, moving into the future.

Ironic, yes, for a movie built on giant piles of nostalgia and made by a company that proudly spends most of its money nibbling its own tail. In fact, the entire Indiana Jones concept was nostalgia-driven even before the fedora made its big-screen debut. Harrison Ford’s whip-cracking adventurer descends from swashbuckling heroes of pulp stories and matinee serials that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg loved as kids; like that other franchise Ford launched, the Indy series is both original and pastiche, both contemporary-feeling and set in another time, another place, a world that’s far, far away.

Dial of Destiny is loaded with related ironies, though they’re mostly extratextual. On the screen, it’s fairly straightforward: a sentimental vehicle, one that hits familiar beats and tells familiar jokes, comfort food to make you feel like a kid again for a little while. The Indiana Jones movies, even the bad ones, have always been pretty fun to watch in a cartoon-movie kind of way, while also being aggressively just fine as films — I mean that with fond enthusiasm — and Dial of Destiny fits the bill perfectly.

This installment turns on pieces of a dial created by the Greek mathematician Archimedes, which, like most of the relics that pop up in Indy’s universe, may or may not bestow godlike powers on its wielder. Naturally, the Nazis want it, especially Hitler. So the film opens in 1939, with Indy (a de-aged Ford, though unfortunately nobody thought to sufficiently de-age his voice) fighting Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) to nab it while getting out of one of his signature high-octane scrapes via a familiar combo of costume changes, well-aimed punches, acrobatics, and dumb luck. Then we jump forward to 1969, to discover a very much not de-aged Indy collapsed into his armchair in front of the TV, shirtless and in boxers, snoozing and clutching the dregs of a beer. This is a movie about getting old, after all. Harrison Ford looks fierce, wielding a bullwhip in one hand, fedora on his head. Indy still has his fedora and his whip, of course.

You can deduce the rest — old friends and new, tricks and turns, mysteries, maybe some time travel, the question of whether the magic is real. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is in this movie as Helena Shaw, Jones’s archaeologist goddaughter, and injects it with some much-needed joie de vivre. There are some fun chase scenes, though director James Mangold’s visual sense (richly demonstrated in previous films like Logan and Ford v Ferrari) falls a little flat next to the memory of Steven Spielberg’s direction. But for the most part, it’s all here again. I don’t want to spoil your fun.

Yet a thread that’s run through the whole four-decade series, with heightened irony every time it comes up, is the battle between Indy — who firmly believes that history’s relics ought to be in a museum for everyone to enjoy — and fortune-seeking mercenaries or power-seeking Nazis, who want to privately acquire those artifacts for their own reasons. (Leaving the artifact where it is, perhaps even among its people, still doesn’t really seem to be an option.) It’s a mirror for the very real theft of artifacts throughout history by invading or colonizing forces, the taking of someone else’s culture for your own use or to assert your own dominance. That battle crops up again in this installment, with both mercenaries and Nazis on offer. Shaw, voicing a darker archaeological aim, wryly insists that thieving is just capitalism, and that cash is the only thing worth believing in; Voller’s aims are much darker.

It’s all very fitting in a movie about an archaeologist set in the midcentury. But you have to notice the weird Hollywood resonance. When Raiders first hit the big screen, it was always intended to be the first in a series, much like Lucas and Spielberg’s beloved childhood serials. (The pair in fact made their initial Indiana Jones deal with Paramount for five movies.) But while some bits (and chunks) of the 1980s films have aged pretty badly, they endure in part because they’re remixes that are alive with imagination and even whimsy, the product so clearly of some guys who wanted to play around with the kinds of stories they loved as children.

Now, in the IP era, remixing is a fraught endeavor. The gatekeepers, owners and fans alike, are often very cranky. The producers bank on more of the same, not the risk of a new idea. The artifacts belong to them, and they call the shots, and tell you when you can have access or not. (The evening Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opened at Cannes, Disney — already infamously known for locking its animation away in a vault and burying the work of companies it acquires — announced it would start removing dozens of its own series from its streamers.) Rather than move into the future and support some new sandboxes, the Hollywood of today mostly maniacally rehashes what it’s already done. It envisions a future where what’s on offer is mostly what we’ve already had before.

In this I hear echoes of thinkers like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer — two men who fled the Nazis, incidentally — who proposed the culture industry was giving people the illusion of choice, but only the freedom to choose what they said was on offer. You can have infinite variations on the same thing.

It’s a sentiment strangely echoed in Dial of Destiny. One night, Shaw is doing a card trick for some sailors, who are astounded that when they call out the seven of clubs, that’s what they pull out of the deck. But she shows Indy how she does it — by forcing the card on them, without them realizing. “I offer the feeling of choice, but I ultimately make you pick the one I want,” she explains, with a wry grin.

After 40 years and change, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny releases into a world where there’s more stuff than ever to watch, but somehow it feels like we have less choice, less chance of discovery. It is our moment in history — an artifact of what it was to be alive right now. When the historians of the future look back, I have to wonder what they’ll see, and thus who, in the end, they’ll think we really were.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is playing in theaters worldwide.

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On the list of tourist destinations that locals tell you to avoid, here in L.A., the Hollywood Walk of Fame has to be pretty high up there. But what’s extra nice when steering someone away from a potential tourist trap, is when you can also suggest somewhere they go instead that’s more off-the-beaten-path and can sort of scratch the same itch. That’s where a fascinating display of hand-written index cards (stick with us here!) at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures comes in. Nine white index cards are displayed in a museum display case — 3 across and 3 down. They each have hand-written notes on them, written in cursive, in pencil or pen, by casting director Marion Dougherty. The top line of each includes the actor’s name (last name, then first name), height, and sometimes age range that they could play. They include notes for Scarlett Johansson, Ellen DeGeneres, Matthew McConaughey, Diane Keaton, Rita Moreno, Bai Ling, Al Pacino, Marlon Wayans, and Alexis Arquette.

A selection of index cards from casting director Marion Dougherty’s collection.

Until the documentary “Casting By” came out in 2012, casting director Marion Dougherty (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Midnight Cowboy, Lethal Weapon) was relatively unknown among the general public.

But in more recent years Dougherty — and the equally legendary casting director Lynn Stalmaster (West Side Story, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night) — have begun to get their due credit for defining the profession of casting director and “putting together some of the most iconic casts of film history,” as casting director Lora Kennedy puts it in the new season of The Academy Museum Podcast.

The rotating display of Dougherty’s 3x5 index cards in the museum’s “Performance Gallery” (one for every actor, thousands in total) lists her overall impressions of actors she met — from the 1960s all the way to the early 2000s.

For Ice-T: Dougherty makes note of his “kind, almost poetic” quality.
For actor Charlize Theron: She describes her as “blond very pretty — not a bimbo at all” and says she “has a lot of poise.”
For actor Salma Hayek: She describes her as “very beautiful — lots of chutzpah” and notes she “is from Mexico — here 6 mo. to study English.”

A white 3 by 5 index card in a museum gallery case, in a row with several other cards on a black background, with casting director Marion Dougherty's hand-written notes about her impressions of rapper/actor Ice T. It reads “Very good as lead in ‘New Jack City.” A kind, almost poetic quality.”

Casting director Marion Dougherty's index card for rapper/actor Ice T. She makes note of his “kind, almost poetic quality.”

(Owen Kolasinski

/

Academy Museum Foundation)

Lora Kennedy, who eventually stepped into Dougherty’s former role as head of casting at Warner Brothers, remembers looking through the cards when she was working as a casting assistant, years earlier, at the studio.

“When Marion would leave to go to lunch, the other assistant and I would go in and we would get those index cards out and we would read them and we would go through them and just howl at the things that she had written. Like ‘Robert Redford: cute kid, has potential,’” Kennedy told The Academy Museum Podcast. “We would literally do that every lunch when she would leave, we’re like, ‘Let's go get the cards.’”

“It's really interesting to see her insight, to see her reactions,” Academy Museum associate curator Dara Jaffe says. Jaffe co-curated the gallery on casting in the museum and is responsible for the selection of index cards on display, which rotates periodically. “For someone like Matthew McConaughey, she wrote, ‘I'm saying it now, this kid's gonna be a star.’ You know, that kind of stereotypical casting-director-speak. And of course she was 100% right.”

After poring over so many of the cards, Jaffe has found some common themes: “You see a lot of notes where she might say something like, ‘beautiful but not plastic,’ ‘not a bimbo,’ you see ‘not plastic’ a lot. She was very much looking for real people.” A white 3 by 5 index card in a museum gallery case, in a row with several other cards on a black background, with casting director Marion Dougherty's hand-written notes about her impressions of Charlize Theron. She describes her as “blond very pretty — not a bimbo at all” and says she “has a lot of poise.”

Casting director Marion Dougherty's index card for actor Charlize Theron. She describes her as “blond very pretty — not a bimbo at all” and says she “has a lot of poise.”

(Owen Kolasinski /Academy Museum Foundation)

And looking for “real people” was something revolutionary about how Doughtery, and her contemporary Lynn Stalmaster, went about their work after the fall of the studio system in Hollywood.

“There was now more of a priority of looking for the interior truth of a character and matching that to the actor who could best meet that,” Jaffe says. “Rather than looking at more surface-level attributes.” Want to see for yourself?

Visit The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and head upstairs to the “Performance Gallery” which is right next to “The Art of Moviemaking: The Godfather” exhibition (open through January 2025).

Source

Image for article titled Four Ways Criminals Could Use AI to Target More Victims

Warnings about artificial intelligence (AI) are ubiquitous right now. They have included fearful messages about AI’s potential to cause the extinction of humans, invoking images of the Terminator movies. The UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has even set up a summit to discuss AI safety.

However, we have been using AI tools for a long time – from the algorithms used to recommend relevant products on shopping websites, to cars with technology that recognises traffic signs and provides lane positioning. AI is a tool to increase efficiency, process and sort large volumes of data, and offload decision making.

Nevertheless, these tools are open to everyone, including criminals. And we’re already seeing the early stage adoption of AI by criminals. Deepfake technology has been used to generate revenge pornography, for example.

Technology enhances the efficiency of criminal activity. It allows lawbreakers to target a greater number of people and helps them be more plausible. Observing how criminals have adapted to, and adopted, technological advances in the past, can provide some clues as to how they might use AI.

1. A better phishing hook

AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard provide writing support, allowing inexperienced writers to craft effective marketing messages, for example. However, this technology could also help criminals sound more believable when contacting potential victims.

Think about all those spam phishing emails and texts that are badly written and easily detected. Being plausible is key to being able to elicit information from a victim.

Phishing is a numbers game: an estimated 3.4 billion spam emails are sent every day. My own calculations show that if criminals were able to improve their messages so that as little as 0.000005% of them now convinced someone to reveal information, it would result in 6.2 million more phishing victims each year. 2. Automated interactions

One of the early uses for AI tools was to automate interactions between customers and services over text, chat messages and the phone. This enabled a faster response to customers and optimised business efficiency. Your first contact with an organisation is likely to be with an AI system, before you get to speak to a human.

Criminals can use the same tools to create automated interactions with large numbers of potential victims, at a scale not possible if it were just carried out by humans. They can impersonate legitimate services like banks over the phone and on email, in an attempt to elicit information that would allow them to steal your money. 3. Deepfakes

AI is really good at generating mathematical models that can be “trained” on large amounts of real-world data, making those models better at a given task. Deepfake technology in video and audio is an example of this. A deepfake act called Metaphysic, recently demonstrated the technology’s potential when they unveiled a video of Simon Cowell singing opera on the television show America’s Got Talent.

This technology is beyond the reach of most criminals, but the ability to use AI to mimic the way a person would respond to texts, write emails, leave voice notes or make phone calls is freely available using AI. So is the data to train it, which can be gathered from videos on social media, for example.

The deepfake act Metaphysic perform on America’s Got Talent.

Social media has always been a rich seam for criminals mining information on potential targets. There is now the potential for AI to be used to create a deepfake version of you. This deepfake can be exploited to interact with friends and family, convincing them to hand criminals information on you. Gaining a better insight into your life makes it easier to guess passwords or pins. 4. Brute forcing

Another technique used by criminals called “brute forcing” could also benefit from AI. This is where many combinations of characters and symbols are tried in turn to see if they match your passwords.

That’s why long, complex passwords are safer; they are harder to

guess by this method. Brute forcing is resource intensive, but it’s easier if you know something about the person. For example, this allows lists of potential passwords to be ordered according to priority – increasing the efficiency of the process. For instance, they could start off with combinations that relate to the names of family members or pets.

Algorithms trained on your data could be used to help build these prioritised lists more accurately and target many people at once – so fewer resources are needed. Specific AI tools could be developed that harvest your online data, then analyse it all to build a profile of you.

If, for example, you frequently posted on social media about Taylor Swift, manually going through your posts for password clues would be hard work. Automated tools do this quickly and efficiently. All of this information would go into making the profile, making it easier to guess passwords and pins. Healthy scepticism

We should not be frightened of AI, as it could bring real benefits to society. But as with any new technology, society needs to adapt to and understand it. Although we take smart phones for granted now, society had to adjust to having them in our lives. They have largely been beneficial, but uncertainties remain, such as a good amount of screen time for children.

As individuals, we should be proactive in our attempts to understand AI, not complacent. We should develop our own approaches to it, maintaining a healthy sense of scepticism. We will need to consider how we verify the validity of what we are reading, hearing or seeing.

These simple acts will help society reap the benefits of AI while ensuring we can protect ourselves from potential harms.

Want to know more about AI, chatbots, and the future of machine learning? Check out our full coverage of artificial intelligence, or browse our guides to The Best Free AI Art Generators and Everything We Know About OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Daniel Prince, Professor of Cyber Security, Lancaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. source

Too long to post in body

Héctor Tobar talks 'Our Migrant Souls,' his book on Latino identity

It’s everywhere from Netflix to the nightly news, from the Instagram feeds of the red-pilled to the bookshelves of the “woke.” Conservative propagandists aren’t alone in reducing Latinos to killers and cartel bosses. Liberal scribes traffic in such tropes too. But in their stories, Latinos aren’t always sinners. They can also be “spicy,” suffering or saintly characters.

No wonder so many people are silent or even celebratory in the face of the mass expulsion and exploitation of the most marginalized among us. Why should they care about the one-dimensional figures they imagine us to be?

The book’s subtitle, “A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of ‘Latino,’” reflects Tobar’s commitment to gray areas and contradictions. He writes: “An African heritage. Your indigeneity. Your Europeanness. You are everything — and you are the very specific places your parents came from.”

By reading the essays of those young Americans, who re-create their parents’ love stories and their own messy secrets, Tobar learned a lot about what “Latino” can mean. He observes: “Our humanity and our complexity exist outside broadcast and printed culture, rarely as alive and full as I see in your writing.”

“Our Migrant Souls” also illuminates deeper truths about the United States, an empire that has displaced millions of people and then trapped them here. Tobar spoke with The Times over the phone, in a conversation edited for clarity and length, about how Latinos are not only America’s future but also the essence of “a country conflicted over its own mestizo identity.” OUR MIGRANT SOULS by Hector Tobar

(MCD)

You started this book in 2020. What inspired you to create this at that time?

I was teaching students and hearing their stories, and it was during the George Floyd uprisings. We were having this national conversation about race, and it seemed to me that Latino identity and the space Latino people occupy in the race ideas of this country wasn’t a subject of national discussion … To me, it’s the defining race question of the 21st century.

Why did you frame the book as a conversation with young Latinos?

I was inspired, like Ta-Nehisi Coates was, by James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” [rhetorically structured as a letter to his nephew]. In many ways the book is a tribute to Baldwin. The fact that we as Latinos can stand up for ourselves, that we can begin to understand the race scheme of this country, is due in large measure to the work of African American activists, thinkers and writers.

So I’d read Baldwin, but I didn’t really feel that I wanted to address my own children because they’ve heard enough from me already. And my children are privileged in relation to most young Latino people in this country. I wanted to speak to those strivers that I met at UC Irvine. Those young people who have so much going on intellectually, who are very curious, and also hurt and angry. I wanted to share what they’ve taught me.

Many Latinos have a love-hate relationship with the terms that define us. What’s your biggest problem with the word “Latino”?

The biggest problem is that it centralizes Europeanness. Latin America was a phrase championed by, among others, the French intellectuals attempting to justify the French intervention in Mexico. It’s this attempt to tell people south of the Rio Grande that they have common cause with the French and Spanish elite over the Anglo American elite.

At the same time, it’s a term that’s used by marketers but also activists. The origin of “Latino,” the way we use it and the way it began to be used in the L.A. Times, one of the first media organizations to use the term, was as an expression of an alliance between people of many nationalities. It’s a name for a group of people who do have a shared experience — of mixing, of journeys, of surviving empire.

You write: “‘Latino’ and ‘Latinx’ are synonyms for ‘mixed.’” Is there a risk that this conception of Latino identity as mestizo replicates mainstream Latino erasure of Black or Indigenous people who don’t identify as mixed?

Absolutely. I think any generalization about a large group of people is going to create lies. And erasures … We need to find new ways of being in solidarity.

In your chapter “Ashes,” the book’s most powerful and haunting section, you write persuasively about the militarized border as a state killing machine that targets Latinos, drawing an implicit parallel to the machinery of the Holocaust. Your framing didn’t feel exaggerated to me as someone who has had repeated encounters with human remains at the border, which has become a mass grave where bodies are incinerated by nature. You describe the rerouting of migrants into the hostile desert as a “perfect American slaughter for the media age.” Why did you decide to focus an entire chapter on this comparison? Is there a reason you didn’t state it explicitly?

I didn’t want to be accused of saying that there was a moral equivalency because that’s not what I’m saying. … I’m saying that both of those crimes exist on the same continuum of human history. That they’re both expressions of the idea of race cleansing and race purity and race defense as instruments of nation building. The Nazis employed industrial methods to murder millions of people in the name of defending the German race against the Jewish race. [Border militarization] is this horrific crime and serves the same purpose as any violent act. It intimidates an entire people. The stories of what happens at the border reach into the hearts and minds of Latino families and shape the way they make decisions. They’re related incidents in the history of mankind.

You devote another chapter to the lies told about Latinos, whether in liberal Hollywood or on conservative Fox News. Are they linked?

Both our infantilization in the liberal media and our depiction as monsters in the right-wing media are symptoms of our voicelessness in American media. The root of that is a stereotype about Latino people, which is that we’re not intellectuals. We’re not and can never be. Not that there’s a great intelligentsia in this country.

Did you write this book to rebel against that idea?

It’s born from frustration as an artist. I just love the complexity and the textures of the storytelling of my students. Once you give them the idea that a complex father is more interesting to read about than a saintly father or a saintly mom, then you get a lot of interesting insights into the human condition. The thing that really bothers me is the didactic quality of so much of our [well-known] art … it’s what Roberto Lovato calls the folklórico-industrial complex. We’re selling this colorful — the equivalent of the abuelita on the label of the Abuelita chocolate. But there’s so much exciting work, some of which I mention in my book — great artists and photographers. I do believe we’re at the beginning of a Latino Renaissance like the Harlem Renaissance. I’ve been saying that for about 10 or 15 years, but now more than ever, I really feel it happening. source

Mike Krol and Mac McCaughan Join Forces as Mac Krol, Share New Song “For Some Other Reason” By Kat Ramkumar

Mike Krol and Mac McCaughan Join Forces as Mac Krol, Share New Song “For Some Other Reason” Seven-Inch Record “For Some Other Reason” b/w “Fair Warning” and “What Would You Say?” Due Out July 28 via Merge

Jun 29, 2023 Photography by Kelly Kettering Bookmark and Share

Mike Krol and Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan have joined forces as Mac Krol and shared a new song, “For Some Other Reason.” It is the A-side to new seven-inch single due out July 28 via Merge. The 7-inch will also feature the songs “Fair Warning” and “What Would You Say?”

The collaboration began in 2015 when Krol and his bandmates had a recording session at San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone after recording Turkey. Their end product was “a handful of riffs and ideas.”

Krol says in a press release: “The plan was to take the rough mixes home and write lyrics to record them later. However, once I got home and listened to the songs, I quickly realized that most of them were in the wrong key for my voice. So I filed them away to deal with later, and eventually lost interest.” After unearthing the recordings during the pandemic, Krol emailed them over to McCaughan. “To my surprise,” he says, “they sounded better than I remembered, but still didn’t work with my voice. I emailed Mac the tracks and said if he was bored in quarantine, maybe he could write some words to sing on top of my instrumentals and possibly give them a second life. He said he hated writing lyrics and politely declined. A few days later, three songs showed up with completed lyrics and iconic Mac McCaughan singing and shredding all over them. I was blown away!”

“Without Mac,” Krol says, “these songs would still be discarded instrumentals, so I’m very thankful that he brought them across the finish line so they can finally be heard!”

Krol’s last album was 2019’s Power Chords. Check out our review of it on our website.

McCaughan is about to embark on a tour with Superchunk. Check out the dates below.

Superchunk Tour Dates:

Jul 08 Chicago, IL – Square Roots Festival Jul 09 Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall Sep 08 Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall* Sep 09 Baltimore, MD – Ottobar* Sep 10 Ardmore, PA – Ardmore Music Hall* Sep 12 South Burlington, VT – Higher Ground* Sep 13 Portland, ME – SPACE Gallery* Sep 14 Hamden, CT – Space Ballroom* Sep 15 Woodstock, NY – Colony* Sep 16 New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom* Oct 11 Asheville, NC – The Grey Eagle Oct 12 Charlotte, NC – Neighborhood Theatre Oct 14 Durham, NC – That Music Fest Nov 02 Berlin, DE – Lido Nov 03 Bielefeld, DE – Forum Nov 04 Schorndorf, DE – Manufaktur Nov 05 Bologna, IT – Improved Sequence Fest Nov 06 Zurich, CH – El Lokal Nov 09 London, UK – Bush Hall Nov 10 Bristol, UK – Strange Brew Nov 11 Leeds, UK – The Brudenell Social Club Nov 12 Manchester, UK – Night & Day Nov 13 Brighton, UK – Concorde 2 Nov 15 Haarlem, NL – Patronaat

*w/ Cable Ties

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