#also I know we’re allowed to engage with movies as a viewers but the strike has me kinda sour on new stuff

[cloama]

I want to talk about Barbie (2023) but not really in conversation with anyone so I think it’ll be a trickle of thoughts about my theatre experience.

For instance, while the theatre was packed with mothers and daughters, I was seated next to a tween boy who was not excited for the movie. He damn near passed out laughing during several scenes. He didn’t finish any of his snacks. He didn’t go to the bathroom.

None of the children in the theater went to the bathroom, which you’ll know if the true testament of a a movie’s success. Nobody moved, honey.

The monologue has been critiqued as baby’s first feminism but I don’t know what y’all wanted from a megacorp. I’m still surprised it even got in there. One of the moms in the theater stood the up and clapped bc apparently she needed some of that second wave feminism. Everyone’s politics isn’t where yours is. It always starts somewhere. Again do not know why people are complaining. This is nothing compared to Marvel’s not infamous girl power moment where they all just stood there. Also the speech while very Plan but heartfelt, coming from America Ferrara just carries a couple extra layers for me personally as she was one of the first actresses of my generation who was a chubby teen girl who was allowed to be a real person.

Also it’s not just the monologue. It’s wishing it was as easy as pulling your fellow people into the back of the van and reprogramming them with facts. In a world where facts literally don’t matter anymore, it felt like science fiction. I don’t know y’all, I just got a lot out of that script. Like if your gonna do a giant advertisement movie, this is about as good as it gets. And it didn’t feel icky like a dove ad. Similar to the mist recent Dungeons and Dragons, it felt like playing.

The Ken stuff was fun but we have to discuss the MASTERFUL use of Matchbox 20’s Push, which is about the rare disempowered man who wishes to get a leg up on his female partner who appears to be emotionally hurting him in their relationship. I need time. Bc Greta? Noah? They were crazy for that one. Absolutely mad. Ken comparing his struggle with Barbie’s boundaries to a man whose actually being hurt bc Ken is a doll and that’s about as far as his understanding goes [see: horses]. Reader, I died laughing. I think I was the only one in the theater that this bit really worked for. It was a stroke of genius and seems to be going unnoticed.

The acafans have been surprisingly quiet about this movie, all the merch and the orchestrated resurgence of Barbie. Make no mistake, this is fandom. Star Wars fans were allowed to buy their books, dolls, and bumper stickers in peace but the idea that a movie will make some people want to buy a 20 dollar doll or some pink pants is stressing people out. Would love everyone to step back and breathe. They’re always going to try to sell us something. They’re selling us something most of y’all have been buying.

I think I am less bothered by the capitalistic effects because for once I didn’t totally hate the experience of being sold something. Probably because I’m not buying anything and while I live a pink life, I’m not actually a Barbie girl. What I am is an early educator and dolls, dramatic play are a huge part of development.

What I also am, apparently, is a Barbie movie script defender because above all else, that script was tight as fresh box braids. A hilarious straight forward comedy. It should be a celebration of putting money behind talent but it’s a reminder of why writers need to be fairly compensated. This movie marks the end of summer, representing so many things. It’s complicated. Pink and complicated.

[rantshemlock]

It: Chapter 2

It: Chapter 2 is an almost three hour movie in which just about nothing of value happens

this review contains implied spoilers for the movie! if that bothers you, don’t read ahead.

It (2017) had some incredible setpieces with brilliant monster designs and fantastic practical effects, bolstered by a couple of excellent performances from the show-stealing Finn Wolfhard and Jack Dylan Grazer, along with an outstanding performance by Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise. this, and the simplicity of the plot, make up for the fact that the character writing was often shallow and the dialogue laden with exposition.

It: Chapter 2 has almost all of those qualities, but also one major flaw: it's a bad movie.

there’s a lot to unpack when it comes to why exactly It 2 is such an extreme drop in quality to the first movie; the biggest is the story, which is a mish-mash of new footage of the child actors and the characters as adults, and is probably the biggest pisstake in film history in terms how much of an extreme waste of time it is. for a film to so thoroughly enforce the idea that the characters’ actions are pointless and serve nothing is unbelievable. as a movie that should be a triumphant ending to the saga, we’re given what is explicitly told to us to be pointless.

It 2′s sin is that it doesn’t build up to anything. not storybeats, not relationships, often not even scares. things are laughably obviously telegraphed, even more so than It 2017′s often heavy-handed exposition. the movie wants us to care about the characters because of their past together, but rather than building off the first film’s two hours of story it instead patches in new settings and scenes that no viewer has any attachment to.

“remember the club house? you love the club house!” the film says, showing us to a set we’ve never seen before and have no reason to care about other than it dictates we have to now care about it. the first movie was incredibly well received and is now beloved, it has more than enough emotional moments to build off of, but the film rejects all that in favour of bringing up new ideas, new concepts that hardly get built upon. it demands you care, but doesn’t earn that compassion or attention.

unresolved issues is the name of the game in this movie; characters are constantly shown to have problems, huge, serious problems. Beverly is being abused by her husband, something we’re shown in overly graphic detail. Mike is suffering from untold trauma from standing vigil over Derry for years. Bill is fucking up his movie and his relationship with his wife. Richie is living a lie, deep within the closet. what’s most egregious is not just that these issues don’t get resolved, but that they never get addressed.

we are meant to believe that these characters care about each other, care deeply, have a connection that would drive them to die for each other, but no one notices that Bev is covered with bruises and is desperately avoiding home. no one questions Mike’s erratic, terrified behaviour. Bill forgets his wife exists. as i watched the movie i found myself asking, if Ben loves Beverly so much, why can’t he see her pain?

in the first movie, the characters’ issues were deeply entrenched in their psyche, were part of what Pennywise used to manipulate and attack them. in this movie, they haven’t moved on from their childhood issues and their adult issues are merely tacked on, lip service to the idea that they have grown up but a refusal to actually spend time examining what their issues as adults are. all the characters are suffering in some way, but they never share these things. for all their love and trust, they never developed past their childhood and they never learned how to be adults. their arcs from the first movie are reset completely; their development in that film never happened. for how little that film ties into this one and how much this one wants to retell history with new content, it might as well not have existed at all.

if It: Chapter 2 lacks anything, it’s tact. it’s carelessly violent and shallow, throwing around horrifying concepts and spending no time to flesh them out. while the idea in the book that Pennywise’s presence leads to more violence, abuse and bigotry deserves criticism, this film manages to do an even worse job. what in the book might be questionable and in need of updating becomes uncomfortable and thoughtless in the movie. the gay hate crime at the film is one of the most prominent examples; always a horrifying thing to read in the movie it serves even less purpose, exposes even less about the town, adds nothing, means nothing. goes nowhere.

let’s talk about being gay. let’s talk about Richie.

here’s a fun fact; discounting Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (as painful as it is for me to say this, as someone who fucking adores that movie) It: Chapter 2 is the first horror movie in a big franchise to have a gay hero, unless there’s some information i really badly need to be updated on. making Richie gay was a good move, and i think Richie was the perfect character to pick for it. he’s by far one of the two most likeable characters in the film, the most memorable, gets the best moments and the best lines.

but the conclusion the film gives him, combined with the hate crime earlier in the movie, after he spends the entire film in the closet letting no one know he is suffering, is that he will never be happy. he can’t open up to anyone about what he’s feeling; he never tells any of the others, even Eddie, the character strongly implied to be the love of his life. while Ben and Beverly are given one of the best and most visually striking setpieces of the film to reunite in, there is no such moment for Eddie and Richie. there is no catharsis for either of them.

while making Richie gay was an excellent idea, to try and throw a bone to us starving gays to have someone to cling to, but the ending of the movie left me feeling completely hollow. i did not want my takeaway from his character to be that he is traumatised beyond the point of any healing.

the politics of gay representation in this movie are bad, and so is race.

Stephen King is a writer with a dirty reputation for his habit of using “native americans” as shorthand for something magic and not understandable, and this film manages to not only dig up the few traces of this from the book but also make it worse, turning the ritual of chud (something that the book implied only worked because the characters believed in it and had no tie to native americans) into the act of ignorant, misinformed indigenous people who get not a single line to explain or defend themselves but are only allowed to be set dressing to later be ridiculed and demonised.

Mike, the sole black character of the movie, is served horribly in this film. while in  the novel he was one of the most important characters, a thoughtful librarian and historian carefully gathering the history of Derry to research the truth of It’s influence, he was given no screen time in the first movie and in this one is the detested outsider of the group. he is pushed into the position of mentor and guide, rather than friend, and comes across almost like the old stereotype of the magical black character, someone who is only there to provide guidance to the white leads through insight he mysteriously and magically possesses. the film stripped away his position as historian and researcher from the first movie and now scrambles to make up for that, leaving him without the history and characterisation to allow us to understand who and why he is.

on top of this, despite the enormity of his sacrifice to stay in Derry and the clear mental strain it’s put him through -- Isaiah Mustafa gives Mike more depth and thought than anyone else did and brings in his performance layers of subtlety this film doesn’t deserve -- the other characters are mocking and derisive of his attempts, don’t trust him and accuse him repeatedly of lying to and betraying them. these moments go nowhere, also. he is always immediately ‘forgiven’ without any thought as to his own suffering or the continual selflessness of his actions. he’s the thoughtless punchbag to a film in which the character continually martyrs himself for the comfort of others.

he isn’t even given the dignity of being called the leader of the group, despite doing everything for them and coming up with every idea. for some reason, the leader is nominated as Bill, despite James McAvoy’s performance being lackluster to the point of fading into the background entirely and the character of Bill doing next to nothing in the film at all.

but again -- the characters in It are not allowed to care about each other’s pain and suffering outside of a few moments. they come with their mental turmoil and they are either completely cured of it or allowed to remain in it, unmentioned again.

there’s not a bad actor in this -- James Ransone is astonishingly good, pitch-perfectly recreating Jack Dylan Grazer’s every mannerism, Bill Hader is both funny and heart-rendering when needed, Isaiah Mustafa moves mountains to make the script give him some depth, and Bill Skarsgard is again incredible as Pennywise -- but there’s also not an actor who isn’t horribly, horribly maligned by the script. Jessica Chastain, an actress of tremendous power and presence, is given next to nothing to do or say. more thought and care is given to Stephen King’s cameo as a shop owner than the role of Henry Bowers.

the film has its moments. Richie and Eddie are a delight, and the monster design and practical effects are again top of the line. it’s just a painful shame that so much talent and craft, the skills of the incredible artists and designers, the hard work of the enthusiastic and engaged cast and the intricacy of the sets are wasted on a movie that has no direction, no idea where it’s going and no point to make about anything.

also, it’s pretty fucking galling for a movie to continually make jokes about how despised a writer’s endings are only for it to take the far better ending of the book and discard it for something so ridiculous it was a strain not to laugh in the theatre.

It: Chapter 2 has no reason to be as bad as it is, but all the goodwill in the world can’t save a story this fragile, this pointless, and that refuses to engage with any of the subject it brings up to this degree. It wants us to take it very seriously indeed, but there’s nothing here to latch onto; this movie is someone screaming ‘oh the horror’ in a beautiful room filled with set dressings that crumble to ash.

[theconservativebrief]

Since Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws first ushered in the era of the summer blockbuster 41 years ago, sharks have been among summer cinema’s favorite perennial villains. They rank right up there with the alien from Alien and Sadako from The Ring in terms of habitually recurring evil forces with a single-minded purpose: to destroy everything in their path.

There’s something so elemental and irresistible about the shark movie that over the course of the past few decades, it has become one of Hollywood’s most well-trodden paths to terror. The genre now spans a wide range of films, from classics like Jaws and Deep Blue Sea (yes, Deep Blue Sea is a classic) to serious indie projects like The Reef to sillier D-movie affairs like the Sharknado, Mega Shark, and Shark Attack franchises. And if you’re among its many fans, you know that the only thing that can cure shark movie fever is more shark movies.

A friendly shark chomp from The Last Shark (1981).

Lucky for you, there’s always another shark movie on the way. The genre’s newest man-eating — or in this case, Jason Statham-eating — entry swims into movie theaters this weekend, with the opening of the tongue-in-cheek mega-shark movie The Meg — just days before the sixth and final installment in the Sharknado franchise arrives with Sharknado 6: It’s About Time.

The poster for Shark Exorcist (2015), in which a Satan-worshiping nun summons a demon to inhabit the body of a great white.

But why sharks? Ordinarily, the prospect of watching Statham try to survive an oceanic disaster scenario would be only a so-so draw for moviegoers. But if you throw in a battle to the death against a giant megalodon — the huge prehistoric shark which has, in recent years, outsized the great white shark in terms of appeal — then obviously, we’re hooked.

In real life, sharks are mainly non-aggressive creatures who barely resemble the evil killing machines they morph into onscreen. They’re anything but an unstoppable force — humans kill a staggering 100 million sharks each year, or 11,000 sharks every single hour, a jaw-dropping statistic that mainly results from the high demand for shark fin soup in some parts of the world. You’re statistically more likely to die from a lightning strike or a toppling vending machine than from a shark attack.

So why are we so fascinated by shark movies, even though they barely represent reality and their plots tend to be incredibly repetitive?

Oh, there are so many reasons.

This scene from Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002) has become an internet-meme mainstay.

You may believe sharks are limited to the sea, but you are wrong.

Thanks to the magic of cinema and the relative ease with which a shark fin can be CGI’d to pop out of something and move ominously toward the viewer, we don’t just have sea sharks. We also have sand sharks. Avalanche sharks. Sharks in a sharknado! Sharks in a sharkcano. (That one really happened.) Sharks in a blizzardnado! Sharks on land! Sharks in shark lake. Sharks in swamps. Sharks in the bayou. Sharks in apartments! Sharks at Sea World! Sharks on the Jersey Shore. Sharks at the Golden Gate Bridge! Sharks at the supermarket! Sharks in Japan. Sharks in bathtubs and puddles. Even sharks in the sky.

Just your routine apartment shark, as seen in My Super-Ex Girlfriend (2006).

Megalodon takes out the Golden Gate Bridge in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009). A shark takes to the skies in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

Much like the 2006 Samuel L. Jackson film Snakes on a Plane relied on the surprise factor of slithering reptiles wreaking havoc at 30,000 feet, a crucial component of shark movies is sharks’ seemingly inherent knack for appearing where and when you least expect them: Just where are the sharks going to be lurking today?

Spoiler alert: They are everywhere.

If you don’t think your average shark is a super genius hell-bent on avenging the atrocities perpetuated against its species by the human race, you’ve never watched Jaws 3-D (mama shark seeks revenge against SeaWorld for killing her baby), Jaws 4: The Revenge (shark seeks revenge against Lorraine Gary’s character Ellen Brody, ostensibly for killing its shark family but more broadly for the sad and rapid demise of the entire Jaws franchise), Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus (shark seeks revenge on Jaleel White for Jaleel White’s entire acting career), or Deep Blue Sea (shark seeks revenge against scientists for experimenting on it).

To wit: Please enjoy the following GIF from Deep Blue Sea, in which a shark holds a stretcher-bound Stellan Skarsgård captive underwater so that it can throw him against an underwater window in order to spite his grieving girlfriend:

Deep Blue Sea (1999). Yep. That happened.

I mean, come on, who among us hasn’t wanted to throw Stellan Skarsgård against a window? Bring on the shark uprising!

The shark can do what no other villainous horror movie creature really can: In addition to engaging in epic bite-offs against other creatures, it can combine with those other creatures to create animalia supervillains. Sure, Hollywood will invent a demonic vampire here and there, but you can’t really give a demonic vampire tentacles. That’s simply not the case with a shark. In the world of shark movies, if you create an undead demon sharktopus, that’s just the first act.

Would you like your shark with one head or two? How about three? Would you like an actual prehistoric mega shark? How about a giant robot shark?

Spidey-shark concept illustration by Calene Luczo

Few, if any, animals have enjoyed such creative big-screen depictions as the noble shark. There are demonic sharks! Sharks with tentacles! Zombie sharks! This shark-horse! Ghost sharks! A shark that walks on land! And coming later in 2017, there will be flying sharks controlled by Nazi zombies!

In other words, if part of the fun of any shark movie is rooted in the nervous anticipation of where and when a dangerous shark might appear, a significant number of shark movies up the ante by combining their shark threats with other things. Not only does this approach allow the sharks to travel farther and kill harder, it ensures an endless supply of shark movies, because Hollywood will never run out of shark-based combination hazards. Killer koala shark from Down Under? Done.

Shark movies can be as minimalist or as full-scale as you want or need them to be.

As Blake Lively illustrated in 2016’s The Shallows, shark movies can be a one-woman-versus-one-shark show where the shark is a threatening but largely implied presence. They can involve just two people facing off against a small but deadly herd of sharks (47 Meters Down, Open Water), a tiny ensemble of stranded swimmers trying to avoid getting picked off one by one (The Reef), or a full-scale cast with big-budget shark action like Shark Night 3-D or Dark Tide.

The giant shark from last year’s The Shallows wasn’t even huge by shark movie comparisons. Javier Zarracina

And one of the best things about shark films, regardless of their scope, is that shark size has no correlation to shark excellence — as anyone who actually saw Shark Night 3-D or Dark Tide can attest. The bigger shark doesn’t always have the better bite. In fact, films like Open Water and The Reef can succeed without showing any sharks at all. Believing they’re there is all that matters.

On the other end of the spectrum, the first appearance of a shark — it’s always bigger than you were expecting, no matter the film — never gets old:

Jaws (1975).

This is a pretty obvious reason, but it remains the most compelling of all. Stories pitting man against the terrors of the deep have always been a mainstay of human folklore, from the biblical fable of Jonah and the whale to nautical tales of the great kraken, from Moby Dick to The Old Man and the Sea to Lovecraft’s tentacle monster Cthulhu to Disney’s Pinocchio.

Super Shark (2011).

Each of these narratives involves great sea creatures that provide opportunities for heroes to face their fears, come to terms with their humanity, and, you know, be manly men who fish and hunt and conquer the wilderness.

But as formidable opponents, many of these sea creatures lack a significant, shall we say, bite. Giant squid generally stay too far below the surface to really pose a viable threat to humans. Even a big swordfish is no match for a skilled modern fisherman — and the swordfish wouldn’t want to eat you anyway. As for whales, the bigger they are, the more peaceful and harmless they seem to be. Even the ones with teeth are passive and don’t really want to hurt you (unless they’ve been subjected to lifelong animal cruelty).

Sharks, by contrast, are big. They have teeth — sometimes really big, really sharp teeth! They come into the shallow parts of the ocean where humans like to swim and play. Because they are drawn to loud noises and activity in the water, it’s possible, if not probable, that they could be lurking in the water where your loved ones are splashing around. They’re durable and intimidating, and even though in real life sharks are almost never aggressive toward humans, the biggest ones have the power and the potential to chomp you in two.

The Last Shark.

In sum: Like all man-versus-nature tropes, man-versus-shark movies — and man-versus-sharks-versus-other-creatures movies — can reveal important truths about human nature and serve as fascinating, in-depth character studies. Unlike most other man-versus-nature tropes, they do it with a side of terrifying, razor-sharp teeth.

Sharks combine mankind’s desire to conquer nature with its fear of and fascination with the mysteries of the ocean. Even in this modern age, when we’ve been able to plumb the depths of the seas, we still know surprisingly little about sharks. Jaws’ famous description of a shark’s “cold, dead eyes, like a doll’s eyes” in the film’s USS Indianapolis monologue (which was based on the real sinking of a US World War II Navy ship and subsequent shark attacks on its sailors) is still a testament to how unknowable they are.

In essence, in fiction if not in real life, sharks are the perfect scary force of nature: an ever-present threat waiting to happen, in a deep blue setting that humans are still learning to navigate.

But when all is said and done? As with all great horror movie villains, ultimately we’re always rooting for the shark.

Original Source -> Why we love shark movies

via The Conservative Brief

[cryptoga-blog]

7 Tokens Investors Are Talking About

http://www.cryptoga.com/news/7-tokens-investors-are-talking-about/

7 Tokens Investors Are Talking About

Disclaimer: This post need to not be taken as, and is not meant to present, financial commitment tips.

What separates a true-offer token from a rip-off?

A new wave of tech lovers is asking that query as tokens rack up massive gains and consider in excess of current market discussions. And it’s undoubtedly not just one with an simple reply – even for extended-time current market observers.

That mentioned, massive-title traders are trying to make feeling of the current market, wanting to separate the wheat from the chaff to discover assignments they can fund that can supply true-world worth.

Amidst this sea adjust in the crypto place, CoinDesk spoke to Raise VC, Compound VC and Pantera Capital to get a sense for what tokens they’re investing in, or at least, organizing to.

To get started, for several traders in the place, like Compound’s Joshua Nussbaum, decentralizing traditionally centralized devices has big charm.

Nussbaum told CoinDesk:

“Offered the nascency of blockchain technology right now, I am most enthusiastic about assignments resolving open complications impeding self-sovereign decentralized purposes.”

In truth, just one detail that separates “serious” assignments is their aim of performing as fundamental infrastructure that other apps will be built on (what Union Sq. Ventures has referred to as “unwanted fat protocols”).

But though all of the assignments below have piqued the curiosity of large-profile traders, it’s vital to take note the fruits of their labor and the cash raised in ICOs could nonetheless be a extended way off.

Brayton Williams of Raise VC mentioned:

“Decentralizing the web will deliver a significant increase in decentralized apps, but we are yrs and yrs away from the fundamental infrastructure remaining completely ready.”

The subsequent assignments ended up each individual introduced up various times in conversations (outlined in rough order of ICO launch):

Quantstamp – “The protocol for securing smart contracts”

For all cryptocurrency’s guarantee, traders have observed thousands and thousands of pounds shed and jeopardized by coding problems.

As these, the business has named for reform, and it would seem some of that may arrive in the sort of an additional cryptocurrency token, Quantstamp, using on a protocol for enabling the automation of protection audits on smart contracts.

In shorter, the crew is making a established of code that can verify smart contracts (the number of smart contracts on ethereum went into the thousands and thousands this year), and that makes it possible for builders to farm out auditing to a crew of hackers and verifiers on the network who will be rewarded for getting bugs.

Quantstamp CEO Richard Mar told CoinDesk:

“I was a really early trader in ethereum, since I am a programmer, and the thought of a programmable forex really appealed to me, and I actually invested all my ether into the DAO in 2016. For a interval, I actually shed all my ether though they ended up debating what to do about it, so that was really the beginning of Quantstamp.”

Mar ongoing, indicating with the venture “we are really supporting other assignments.”

Quantstamp’s token sale launched Nov. 17 and will operate by way of Dec. 16, until it hits its $30 million cap on investments faster.

Bloom – “Say hi there to inclusive credit score” 

The past couple yrs of knowledge breaches have illustrated how dangerous centralizing people’s personal knowledge can be, culminating substantially with the Equifax breach.

The crew at Bloom made a decision the ideal way to hold very similar losses from happening once again was to build a decentralized credit score rating method, which incorporates identity, threat evaluation and credit score scoring.

“What we’re in a position to set up is this option to make improvements to the way this knowledge is aggregated,” Daniel Maren, from Bloom’s crew, told CoinDesk.

According to Bloom’s white paper, decentralization and the company’s privateness model will place personal loan recipients at the center of all transactions, in an effort to reduce the threat of publicity. This need to not only deliver some substantially-essential opposition to the monopolistic credit score company business, but also aid additional consumer lending across borders and into communities that have a complicated time setting up credit score.

Bloom’s token – which will provide as a staking mechanism, a payment method and as a governance resource – is previously accessible to traders as a element of the presale. The public sale opened on Nov. 30 and will previous for a month, until its $50 million challenging cap is strike previously.

Fold – “A privateness layer for ethereum” 

Fold’s ICO arrived out of the company’s curiosity in getting a way to store personal facts (specially, gift card knowledge) on a public blockchain.

But then, “we realized that the privateness remedy we ended up making was additional important than the trade we ended up making,” Matt Luongo, founder of Fold, told CoinDesk.

That privateness remedy, named Preserve, is a privateness layer for ethereum that uses secure multiparty computation to keep knowledge in several locations in these a way that smart contracts can nonetheless use it. None of the locations know exactly where the other pieces are, and nonetheless they nonetheless have the skill to operate the necessary computations with the parts they have.

Luongo stated:

“What zero-understanding proofs do for customers, secure multiparty computation does that for contracts.”

Whilst the people who operate nodes will want to stake them with the Preserve tokens, payments to use the network and to the nodes themselves will all be accomplished in ether.

“I am sort of philosophically opposed to payments in utility tokens,” Luongo mentioned.

Across its presale and public sale, Fold has a $20 million challenging cap. At the stop of the public sale, which will get started in January and will probable operate for only two months, the enterprise will debut its staking customer, with the initial merchandise remaining an auditable random number generator.

NuCypher – “KMS is HTTP for dapps”

A different protection-centered token to open its public sale shortly (probable in early 2018) is NuCypher.

The company has previously commercialized proxy re-encryption whereby a user can encrypt their keys but then delegate access to people keys to other people in additional common verticals. Now, it desires to adapt that merchandise to smart contracts.

For illustration, a user on a support would proceed to be granted access to a pool of knowledge so extended as particular conditions ended up satisfied, and the smart contract could rescind access if a user failed to satisfy particular conditions.

“The vital piece is you can do that delegate re-encryption with no owning to decrypt in the middle,” said MacLane Wilkison, co-founder and CEO of NuCypher.

It is a way of controlling big swimming pools of knowledge as it moves on and off-web site.

Whilst broader specifics of NuCypher’s blockchain rollout have not been announced, in order to operate its decentralized providers, it will want to set up a network of nodes to operate encryptions. The token will allow for people nodes to stake themselves as element of NuCypher’s network.

“By staking our token, we have a mechanism exactly where if you’re misbehaving as a node you can be challenged and forfeit your stake,” Wilkison concluded.

Stream – “An economic spine for decentralizing streaming”

Morningstar estimates that YouTube earned $12 billion in 2016, nonetheless stress between the web site and the content creators who created it a multi-billion greenback enterprise have gotten heated currently.

Ben Yo, CEO of Stream, mentioned:

“Material creators and platforms are at fundamental economic war with each individual other, since each individual of them are functioning to consider as substantially cash as probable.”

And in flip, Stream desires to basically change the incentive structure for user-created online video, decentralizing the course of action from get started to stop by way of the use of blockchain.

For now, Stream sits beneath YouTube and Facebook, enabling videomakers to receive resources both from advertisements or direct viewer assistance, the latter a new earnings resource for most videomakers. Later, the enterprise will offer a Chrome extension that sits beneath movies and permits direct donations to videomakers who’ve joined the Stream network.

But for all this to function, Stream wants a cryptocurrency token to monetize its platform. And it will be controlling the deflation of that token in an effort to much better push engagement on the platform.

For instance, as Stream’s current market capitalization rises, it will emit new tokens and split them up between present token holders and creators.

“We are in a position to capture the worth that is accrued as the current market worth grows in excess of time, and distribute that in the emission of a new token,” Yu mentioned.

Stream’s presale is working now, but it has not disclosed its public sale dates, whilst Yu mentioned it was probable to kick off in January. The token sale is capped at $33 million.

Origin – “The sharing economic system with no intermediaries”

The “sharing economic system” is a lot less about sharing and additional about lease-seeking by market middlemen having a significant lower, or at least which is how the crew at origin sees it.

Origin desires to adjust that, hoping to decentralize the sharing economic system with ethereum by developing a peer-to-peer network for transacting directly for just about just about anything.

In order to show it is effective, the crew anticipates it will probably have to develop just one of people verticals by itself, but it hopes in performing so it will entice other business owners to develop additional.

In reality, co-founder Matthew Liu acknowledges ethereum is probably not completely ready to deal with a large-transaction current market, like sharing properties or bikes. The crew is at present contemplating about making a merchandise all-around providing qualified function, these as style and design or coding.

“I assume the additional intricate situations like an Uber are not going to be the kinds that arise at the beginning,” Liu mentioned. “We’ll probably be stunned.”

In fact, he anticipates substantially scaled-down scale sharing assignments (these as neighborhood tool sharing) will shake out, kinds that would be too expensive to develop with no the money return need to business owners have to develop people marketplaces from scratch.

The enterprise has not finalized its token giving designs, but it’s token, which serves as a staking and incentive mechanism, will probable be accessible in 2018, just after it has finished a fundamental, useful merchandise.

In certain, Liu is optimistic about employing tokens to reward early adopters, perhaps in the sort of a money-again plan, exactly where early customers would get some tokens again just after productively completing a transaction.

He told CoinDesk:

“We believe that in the much better-than-free of charge business enterprise model.”

Orchid – “Welcome to a world exactly where customers very own the online” 

And previous, but not least, specially for crypto lovers who care deeply about decreasing surveillance and censorship, Orchid claims to be an enabler of surveillance-free of charge online.

It’s merchandise, the crew thinks, will allow web customers to route all-around spying and censorship with a additional strong network of nodes than The Tor Undertaking network, since it will pay people for sharing unused bandwidth. By giving people a explanation to place their computer systems on the network when they aren’t in use, the theory is it can get so several nodes on its network that surveillance would develop into all but extremely hard.

“I assume just one of the most important issues that other people who have tried using to decentralize the online is they’ve failed to have incentives to do it,” Brian Fox, just one of the venture co-founders, told CoinDesk.

Orchid has previously raised $4.7 million in enterprise funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Blockchain Funds, Compound VC, Crunchfund and Danhua, along with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, MetaStable, Polychain Funds, Sequoia and Struck Funds.

And though ICO tokens have been principally employed as a fundraising mechanism, Fox mentioned Orchid’s token is a “utility token,” that means that it will present owners of the token with a use on the platform.

“When our protocol is 100 per cent completely ready for intake, so will our token. And we anticipate to see that happening someday in the subsequent six months,” Fox mentioned.

Lightbulbs graphic by way of Shutterstock.

The leader in blockchain information, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the best journalistic requirements and abides by a demanding established of editorial insurance policies. Fascinated in giving your experience or insights to our reporting? Contact us at information@coindesk.com.

Disclaimer: This post need to not be taken as, and is not meant to present, financial commitment tips. Please conduct your very own extensive analysis ahead of investing in any cryptocurrency.

[abasicglitch-blog]

Stranger Things

Media Type: TV Show (Netflix Original)

Genre: Sci-Fi, Suspense, Horror(ish)

If you haven’t heard of this one, I’m not sure what planet you live on. This show took the world by storm when it came out, in the summer of 2016. Combining a modern societal love of horror with a classic 80s setting gives this show the perfect medium for reaching all types of people. I had heard about this show from both my fellow high school students and adults alike, who all revered it as one of the best shows of the year. So, of course, I spent one long afternoon watching all 8 episodes, and was not disappointed (Season 2 has not been released yet, so this post only covers Season 1).

A word of caution, before I continue. Something I had failed to notice the first time I watched this show (I had been so invested in the plot that I hadn’t paid much attention) is that it gets very, very close to being labeled as “horror.” Personally, I have no problem with horror so this didn’t bother me, but when I attempted to show this to my family, my younger sister was not happy. It did ruin the show for her, and she stopped watching after about 2 episodes. If you tend to avoid horror at all costs, I would be cautious when starting this show. It’s an awesome experience with a great plot, not at all like some of the horror movies we see in theaters today, so if you’re willing to be a little brave then I think you’ll really enjoy it. It’s all up to you.

That aside, this show brings some of the best suspense and mystery that I have ever experienced in a TV show. From the very beginning, it gives off a vibe of danger and terror. The first episode, titled “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”, hold nothing back as it throws you into a world full of “stranger things.” There’s not much unnecessary setting and exposition (backstories are revealed sporadically throughout the show), so if you’re ready for a trial by fire, this is definitely the show for you. It immediately engages you by giving you just enough information to grab your attention, but not enough to give you all the answers. You ask questions, you make theories, and you wonder what the heck is going on almost all the time. I’m being very cautious here, because I’m trying my best to avoid any spoilers (they will entirely ruin the show), so if it sounds as if I’m being overly vague, it’s because I want you to enjoy the full experience, without having me compromise it.

Something that I noticed almost immediately about this show is that it functions a lot less like a TV show than is the norm. I have nothing against long-running television shows, but they tend to get corny and low-budget. There’s just not as much effort being put into each individual episode, unlike a movie, where all the effort and money is placed onto one singular project. Stranger Things, however, feels like a movie. The videography, the acting, the music, and the overall tone just gives off a more “professional”, or more quality, vibe than typical TV shows do. It’s set up similar to Sherlock, where each episode is around 50 minutes long, so, technically, they are like short movies. For those that tend to not enjoy typical TV shows, Stranger Things is a perfect fit.

It also utilizes one of my favorite film/literature techniques ever: following multiple characters and plots at the same time. Very similar to Lord of the Rings, Stranger Things flips back-and-forth between certain characters and sub-plots, that all end up connecting at the end, in the climax. You get to see the experiences of three middle school boys, a teenage girl (and the drama that revolves around her), a grieving mother (and her son), a melancholy police chief, and a young girl in an unusual situation. They all are involved and connected to the main plot, but experience it in very different ways, and because of this they are able to help viewers piece together the mysteries that surround the small town of Hawkins.

To sum up my review, Stranger Things is a much-needed Sci-Fi thriller that keeps viewers insanely interested and invested throughout the season. Following multiple characters with multiple experiences gives viewers a unique and almost addictive way to watch. The random pieces of information and backstory that are given throughout the show allow fans to piece together the truth on their own, rather than have the show explain everything in the first few minutes. It’s exciting, it’s suspenseful, and it’s super well-made. I recommend this show to everyone I know, because it’s well worth a watch.

MY NERD MOMENT (WARNING: SPOILERS)

Ok, so here’s where I want to just rant and theorize and talk about the show, without having to be professional or vague, because THIS SHOW IS FREAKING AMAZING AND I NEED TO TALK TO SOMEONE!

Now, I hope that this show doesn’t just copy the film “Alien”, with the whole “an alien worm-thing gets inside you and lays an egg” deal goin’ on. All the bodies being plastered on the wall with the sticky goo, and the gross pipe that comes out of Will’s mouth, is totally like alien. However, there’s a moment when Hopper/Joyce see this kind-of egg shell thing on the floor, that’s been opened, but they never explain it. That makes me think that maybe the thing doesn’t need to have babies through people’s stomachs (come to think of it, how does that even work in the “Alien” universe?). Also, we see that multiple people have died, including Barbra, with no “babies” in sight. When Eleven finds her, in her mind, a slug-thing crawls out of her mouth (that part is disgusting), the same thing that happens to Will at the very end of the last episode!

This got me thinking. We’re never told what the Demigorgon is, only that it can go back and forth between “The Upside Down” and the real world. What if, somehow, the Demigorgon altered Will? Maybe it did something to him, because for a split second, Will was actually back in the Upside Down! What even is The Upside Down/The Veil of Shadows, and how does it affect humans, like Will and Barbara?

I also have another theory. We see at the very end, when Hopper leaves the Christmas party and puts some food in the random, weird box in the middle of the forest, that he also puts Eggo Waffles in there. Now, I don’t know about you, but THAT SEEMS LIKE AN ELEVEN THING TO ME! Somehow, someway, she’s alive (maybe). But how? Then, I remembered. We never actually saw her die. She used her powers, screamed, and went “Poof”, but does that mean she’s dead? Does that mean the Demigorgon’s dead? WHAT IF she was able to utilize her powers to a point where she could travel to and from The Upside Down? Maybe she’s a “flea”! She’s done it before; she freaking made the portal that caused all these problems in the first place. Maybe she’s able to travel back and forth (how much control does she have, though?), and somehow Hopper is involved in helping/providing for her.

Last thing. WHAT THE HECK DEAL DID HOPPER MAKE WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY PEOPLE? We’re never shown exactly what he agreed to when he was arrested (before they found Will); we’re meant to assume that he gave Eleven’s position away, but we never actually see them strike a deal. When Hopper leaves the hospital, at the end, he gets in a car with some shady-lookin’ dudes, but the next time we see him is a month later. Does his deal have something to do with Eleven’s possible survival? Is he now working for the Department of Energy? Ugh, Season 2 can’t come fast enough!!!