badbrainstorm

Once a year, everyone I know becomes a farmer. They plan ahead, pack a picnic, grab a hat and head to a farm to pick strawberries. Flats fill up with the sweet fruit you don’t eat in the field, people gain a little appreciation for farm workers after spending the day hunched over, and we all end up making big berry plans and dreaming sweet berry dreams. Mostly though, people go home, gorge on fresh berries and/or make jam.

I don’t know who eats all that jam, and I hate giving away jars, so I have a raft of ideas for what to make instead, starting with my very popular strawberry vinegar. I’m going to offer two ways to make it—beginner and advanced. Vinegar-making tools for your vinegar-making needs:

A vinegar mommy, to make it truly from scratch: Supreme Red Wine Mother of Vinegar
A big ol’ carboy, with an air lock: FastRack 1-gallon Jug with Twin bubble Airlock
Spoilage-preventing tablets: Campden Tablets

Why is strawberry vinegar such a good idea? You use more vinegar than you think. There’s salad dressing, sure, and marinades, but brightness is a thing your cooking could use more of, and flavored vinegars (good ones) are expensive, so they don’t see as much use as they should. Making it yourself means you’ll have an endless supply, and can afford to pop a little into your soy sauce, add a little to your gazpacho for some sweetness, or toss a bit with your grilled veggies for an instant brightness that illuminates the Maillard effect on the vegetables. You can also use it to add a tangy sweetness to all your potato salads or coleslaw. Next time you sauté some vegetables on the stove, give it a splash of vinegar to make the flavor brighter. Point is, when you’re not thinking about how expensive the pretty bottle was, you’ll find a lot more uses for flavored vinegar in your kitchen. Quick strawberry vinegar Ingredients:

1 quart of apple cider vinegar
1 pint of very ripe strawberries
1 teaspoon of sugar

Destem the strawberries, and add everything to a blender. Blend for 30-45 seconds (or more), as needed to get the mixture as blended as your blender will allow. Allow the mixture to sit for 6 hours, then pour it through a sieve or strainer into a bowl. Bottle it, and it should be shelf stable, because of the acid content.

This process produces a vinegar that has a distinct strawberry flavor, but still has the sharpness of the cider vinegar, which is softened a little by the sugar. All we’re doing here is flavoring the apple cider vinegar, instead of making real strawberry vinegar, which I’ll explain how to do below. Strawberry vinegar, the long way Ingredients:

3 pounds of strawberries
2 pounds of honey
1 quart of water
1 package of wine yeast (You can use any yeast you like, sometimes I use champagne yeast, sometimes I use sour beer yeast, but this is not bread yeast, to be clear.)
1 vinegar mother
1/2 campden tablet
1 gallon carboy or jug, with airlock

In this case, you’re making strawberry wine, then letting that wine turn to vinegar. To start, you’re going to take clean, de-stemmed strawberries and put them into a heavy stockpot, with the honey and the water. Let it come to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes. You want to ensure the honey is dissolved. The strawberries will break down, but they don’t have to do so entirely. Let the mixture cool down to room temperature, then crush your ½ campden tablet with the back of a spoon or a mortar and pestle, and add it to the mixture. Give it a good stir, cover it, and walk away for 24 hours.

When you return, you’ll pitch your yeast into the mixture. Simply open the package and sprinkle the yeast on the top. Give it five minutes, then mix it in. Now it’s time to get this into your carboy so it can ferment. Use a funnel to pour it into the clean carboy, then fasten your airlock on top of it. Set it in a dark and cool space. Within a few days, you’ll see it bubbling, causing the airlock to burp. This will continue for a few days or up to a week. You want to wait for it to stop bubbling entirely.

If you have a refractometer or a way to measure ABV, now is a good time to check that yours is under 10%, but if you don’t, that’s ok, too. You’re usually in the right range.

Remove the airlock and add your vinegar mother, then place some cheesecloth on top of the jug, and tie it onto the top. This is so the wine is exposed to air, but bugs can’t get in. Let the wine sit for 3-4 weeks, then give it a taste. You can continue to let it age this way, mellowing out and evaporating along the way. The longer you age it, the better it will taste. I usually let mine sit for about three months.

Now, you can use it as you’d like, decanting it a little at a time. Making it from scratch is riskier, it could go south because fermentation is risky and this has a lot of steps. If you start to see green or blue mold, it’s gone bad. If you see white mold, that’s just Kahm yeast, which isn’t a problem but doesn’t taste great, so you need to strain, boil and restart from where you left off (boiling gets rid of all yeast, so you’d need to add it back in). But its also a mostly hands off process that is so deeply rewarding, and results, if you do it right, in a far more delicious and smooth vinegar in the end.

Also, let’s be honest, you were never really serious about making strawberry ice cream.

You carry your ID with you wherever you go. It’s only right that your primary identity document reflects your gender identity. Well, as best an ID can—it’s not always easy or accurate to sum an individual up in an “F,” “M,” or a gender-neutral “X.” And for many transgender individuals, their gender is not actually whatever box they checked when they received their license as a teenager.

The more accurate someone’s gender marker is to how they identify, the easier it is for individuals to gain access to (and feel safe in) public spaces. A growing number of states are accommodating their nonbinary, transgender, and gender-nonconforming residents—nearly half of the country now allows people to select an “X” gender designation for their driver’s licenses. Still, a majority of states still do not have a non-binary option. On top of that, many states unfortunately make updating the gender marker on your license far more challenging than it should be. If you’re transgender and looking to update your ID, here’s what to know about changing your gender marker on your driver’s license.

State-by-state policies

Every state has different rules and processes for updating gender on a driver’s license. One thing that most states have in common is you must be at least 18 years old to legally changing your gender on legal documents like a driver’s license.

This map from the Movement Advancement Project shows which states allow residents to mark M, F, or X on their driver’s license, color-coded by how clear and easy the state’s policies are for actually making those gender marker changes.

Here are all the states that currently allow residents to select an “X” gender marker on their driver’s licenses:

1. Arkansas

2. California

3. Colorado

4. Connecticut

5. District of Columbia

6. Hawaii

7. Maine

8. Maryland

9. Massachusetts

10. Michigan

11. Minnesota

12. Nevada

13. New Hampshire

14. New Jersey

15. New Mexico

16. New York

17. Oregon

18. Pennsylvania

19. Rhode Island

20. Vermont

21. Virginia

22. Washington

While the following states don’t provide a gender-neutral or nonbinary option, they do allow gender marker changes on driver’s licenses, but only with proof of surgery, court order, or an altered birth certificate:

1. Georgia

2. Guam (U.S. Territory)

3. Iowa

4. Kentucky

5. Louisiana

6. Northern Mariana Islands (U.S. Territory)

7. South Carolina

8. Tennessee

9. Texas

If you live in a state not listed above, it may have an unclear, unknown, or unwritten policy regarding gender marker changes. There may be no court order or proof of surgery required, but still has burdensome process requirements that vary wildly. When you check out this map, be sure to click on your home state to read more about what its specific requirements look like.

How to prepare to change your gender marker

While each state has a different set of requirements, let’s look at New York’s process as an example of what someone should do to prepare for changing their gender marker on their driver’s license.

For making any changes to your driver’s license, you’ll need the DMV basics: Social Security Card (more on that below) and proof of your identity using a current government issued photo ID. There’s also a DMV-specific application for Permit, Driver License or Non-Driver ID Card.

According to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, one of the most important things you might need to change your gender marker is a doctor’s letter affirming or attesting to your gender transition. This letter should have as clear and direct language as possible about what your gender marker should say. What’s more, once you acquire this letter, the law project recommends making physical copies: Some governmental agencies may take and keep your letter for their records.

Finally, if you’re changing your gender marker on your driver’s license, you’ll need to change it across all your legal documents, in order to avoid the pain of mismatch errors down the line. Social Security is one of the first documents you should update, as that will make it easier to then go about confirming your gender for your passport and driver’s license and so on. Here’s the official Social Security guide to updating your gender on record.

For many transgender individuals, legal documents have a resounding impact in ways big and small. Whether it’s how you’re being addressed in your junk mail, to how you’re treated by TSA, to how the bouncer at your favorite bar checks your ID—you deserve to move through the world as safely and true to yourself as possible.

For the entirety of my writing life, Cormac McCarthy has been a mountain. Some of the novelists of my generation found the mountain beautiful; others found it oppressive. But virtually all of us, whatever our position or attitude, existed in its shade.

In spite of the enormity of his shadow, however, I’ve never before written about the author of so many novels I’ve studied and admired. In the two decades since my first book was published, I’ve fielded the boilerplate question about my influences no end of times, name-checking an almost absurdly ragtag crew: Shirley Hazzard, Denis Johnson, William S. Burroughs, Amos Tutuola, Lydia Davis, Toni Morrison, John Berger, Ursula K. Le Guin — even, just a few weeks ago, whoever ghost-wrote David Lee Roth’s memoir, “Crazy From the Heat.” But one name I’ve conspicuously avoided all these years has been that of McCarthy, who died last week at 89. Why on earth is that?

From the first paragraph — from the first sentence — “All the Pretty Horses” reconfigured my understanding of novelistic language so radically that months would pass before I felt able to read anyone else. All these years later, its opening still hits me with the force of incantation: The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. Book cover for "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy, featuring a black-and-white image of a horse's mane.

(Knopf)

That line has lost none of its mystery, its austerity, its elegant foreboding. Part of what makes it so memorable, of course, is its odd, self-consciously archaic cadence — the oft-cited ‘biblical’ loftiness of McCarthy’s prose, which may be one reason few writers of my generation care to cite him as an influence. But although I registered the novel’s considerable stylistic debts both to Hemingway and Faulkner — not to mention “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” — I was so intoxicated by its music that the point seemed academic. It didn’t matter that McCarthy’s literary models were obvious, because he wrote as well as they did and occasionally better. For a would-be novelist struggling under my own debilitating anxiety of influence, no more valuable lesson existed. I received it as a physical sensation. I could breathe.

But something even more powerful was at work as I read, something harder to make sense of, let alone characterize: At the time I thought of it — always in italics — as the sound. Intuitively, on the margins of my consciousness, I came to understand: The sound was the thing. It set the mood, it lit the world, it kept everything in motion. This second lesson was, if possible, even more pivotal than the first: Never mind your plot outline, your carefully thought-out themes, your take on human nature. Forget your own name if you have to. It may take years, it may be agony — but find the sound. That’s all you need. The rest of it will follow.

The news of McCarthy’s death — somehow surprising, even startling, in spite of his age — is the reason, of course, for this belated mea culpa. I can’t help but think, looking back, that certain younger writers, myself included, resisted acknowledging McCarthy’s influence not because of what he was, necessarily, but because of what he represented — and whatever our conception of him now, he has also, with his passing, come to represent the past.

But this was true, curiously enough, even during the long years of McCarthy’s prime. Vital as his best work always was to me as a point of reference, the man himself, and how he (purportedly) lived — his Olympian detachment, his monkish day-to-day existence, his refusal to give interviews or readings or to besmirch himself in any of the myriad ways demanded of working writers nowadays — always seemed an impossible act to follow. A man with a beard wearing black clothes in front of a brick wall with graffiti.

John Wray was in a rough place when he picked up Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses.” It set fire to his writing and changed his life.

(Julio Arellano)

Until the runaway success of “Horses,” when McCarthy was 59, none of his novels had sold more than a few thousand copies, and he gave every impression of finding obscurity pleasant. At times his very existence, out there somewhere, banging contentedly away on his Olivetti Lettera, could feel ... daunting, I suppose. He regularly refused lucrative speaking engagements, teaching positions, and — needless to say — any social media presence whatsoever. What young writer could get away with that today? Perhaps more to the point, would any of them want to?

For this reason and others, McCarthy’s passing feels to me — as I’m sure it does to many — like the closing of a long and momentous chapter in American letters. He was, de facto, the last of the great Harold Bloom-anointed White Cisgender Male Authors, and no small number of critics and academics, I suspect, are now quietly wishing that era Godspeed.

White cisgender male though I am, far be it from me to disagree: I’ve never felt the awe and adoration for Bellow and Mailer and Irving that seemed mandatory among well-read middle-class readers of my parents’ generation, and I’ve always been slightly nauseated by Updike’s randiness and verbal exhibitionism. McCarthy, however, though he was born in the same year as Philip Roth, was never a member of that particular gentlemen’s club. I imagine he must have struck a writer like Updike as a walking anachronism, a coelacanth-like living fossil from the high modernist age. And in fact — occasionally for the worse, but very, very often for the better — that’s exactly what he was.

None of which is to say that McCarthy’s body of work, or even his worldview, has subsided into irrelevance with his death — just the opposite. I was recently asked by a music magazine to write a list of “novels for metalheads,” and my thoughts went instantly to “Blood Meridian,” his end-of-days magnum opus of the American West. The conjunction of metal and McCarthy isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem; in its pitch-black reckoning with humanity’s most self-annihilating urges, the novel could easily be read as an allegory for the Anthropocene. The apocalyptic orange skies that recently darkened the East Coast might have been conjured directly from its dread-filled pages.

I had a dog-eared copy of “Blood Meridian” beside me when I wrote the following passage in my most recent novel, in which a teenage boy hears heavy music for the first time: “He was being offered the same purifying fear, the same catharsis, the same revelation midnight slasher movies gave: that everything wasn’t going to be all right. Not now and not ever. And that made perfect sense to him.”

International Gemini Observatory traces gamma-ray burst to nucleus of ancient galaxy, suggesting stars can undergo demolition-derby-like collisions.

Astronomers studying a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) with the Gemini South telescope, operated by NSF's NOIRLab, may have detected a never-before-seen way to destroy a star. Unlike most GRBs, which are caused by exploding massive stars or the chance mergers of neutron stars, astronomers have concluded that this GRB came instead from the collision of stars or stellar remnants in the jam-packed environment surrounding a supermassive black hole at the core of an ancient galaxy.

Most stars in the Universe die in predictable ways, depending on their mass. Relatively low-mass stars like our Sun slough off their outer layers in old age and eventually fade to become white dwarf stars. More massive stars burn brighter and die sooner in cataclysmic supernova explosions, creating ultradense objects like neutron stars and black holes. If two such stellar remnants form a binary system, they also can eventually collide. New research, however, points to a long-hypothesized, but never-before-seen, fourth option.

While searching for the origins of a long-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB), astronomers using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, part of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF's NOIRLab, and other telescopes [1], have uncovered evidence of a demolition-derby-like collision of stars or stellar remnants in the chaotic and densely packed region near an ancient galaxy's supermassive black hole.

"These new results show that stars can meet their demise in some of the densest regions of the Universe where they can be driven to collide," said Andrew Levan, an astronomer with Radboud University in The Netherlands and lead author of a paper appearing in the journal Nature Astronomy. "This is exciting for understanding how stars die and for answering other questions, such as what unexpected sources might create gravitational waves that we could detect on Earth."

Ancient galaxies are long past their star-forming prime and would have few, if any, remaining giant stars, the principal source of long GRBs. Their cores, however, are teeming with stars and a menagerie of ultra-dense stellar remnants, such as white dwarf stars, neutron stars, and black holes. Astronomers have long suspected that in the turbulent beehive of activity surrounding a supermassive black hole, it would only be a matter of time until two stellar objects collide to produce a GRB. Evidence for that type of merger, however, has been elusive.

The first hints that such an event had occurred were seen on 19 October 2019 when NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected a bright flash of gamma rays that lasted for a little more than one minute. Any GRB lasting more than two seconds is considered "long." Such bursts typically come from the supernova death of stars at least 10 times the mass of our Sun -- but not always.

The researchers then used Gemini South to make long-term observations of the GRB's fading afterglow to learn more about its origins. The observations allowed the astronomers to pinpoint the location of the GRB to a region less than 100 light-years from the nucleus of an ancient galaxy, which placed it very near the galaxy's supermassive black hole. The researchers also found no evidence of a corresponding supernova, which would leave its imprint on the light studied by Gemini South.

"Our follow-up observation told us that rather than being a massive star collapsing, the burst was most likely caused by the merger of two compact objects," said Levan. "By pinpointing its location to the center of a previously identified ancient galaxy, we had the first tantalizing evidence of a new pathway for stars to meet their demise."

In normal galactic environments, the production of long GRBs from colliding stellar remnants such as neutron stars and black holes is thought to be vanishingly rare. The cores of ancient galaxies, however, are anything but normal and there may be a million or more stars crammed into a region just a few light-years across. Such extreme population density may be great enough that occasional stellar collisions can occur, especially under the titanic gravitational influence of a supermassive black hole, which would perturb the motions of stars and send them careening in random directions. Eventually, these wayward stars would intersect and merge, triggering a titanic explosion that could be observed from vast cosmic distances.

It is possible that such events occur routinely in similarly crowded regions across the Universe but have gone unnoticed until this point. A possible reason for their obscurity is that galactic centers are brimming with dust and gas, which could obscure both the initial flash of the GRB and the resulting afterglow. This particular GRB, identified as GRB 191019A, may be a rare exception, allowing astronomers to detect the burst and study its after effects.

The researchers would like to discover more of these events. Their hope is to match a GRB detection with a corresponding gravitational-wave detection, which would reveal more about their true nature and confirm their origins, even in the murkiest of environments. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, when it comes online in 2025, will be invaluable in this kind of research.

"Studying gamma-ray bursts like these is a great example of how the field is really advanced by many facilities working together, from the detection of the GRB, to the discoveries of afterglows and distances with telescopes like Gemini, through to detailed dissection of events with observations across the electromagnetic spectrum," said Levan.

"These observations add to Gemini's rich heritage developing our understanding of stellar evolution," says Martin Still, NSF's program director for the International Gemini Observatory. "The time sensitive observations are a testament to Gemini's nimble operations and sensitivity to distant, dynamic events across the Universe."

A new IIASA-led study explored fairness and feasibility in deep mitigation pathways with novel carbon dioxide removal, taking into account institutional capacity to implement mitigation measures.

Meeting the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement will require ambitious climate action this decade. Difficult questions remain as to how warming can be limited within technical realities while respecting the common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities of nations on the way to a sustainable future. Meeting this challenge requires substantial emissions reductions to reach net-zero emissions globally.

Among the new options being studied in scientific literature, engineered Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) like Direct Air Capture of CO2 with Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS), is a potentially promising technology to help bridge this gap. DACCS captures carbon by passing ambient air over chemical solvents, which can be considered a form of CDR if the captured carbon is stored permanently underground. But whether these novel technologies can help make ambitious goals more attainable, or whether they can help reach them more equitably remains an open question.

In their study published in Environmental Research Letters, an interdisciplinary research group led by IIASA scientists developed new scenarios exploring fairness and feasibility in deep mitigation pathways, including novel CDR technologies. For the first time, the team implemented DACCS in a well-established integrated assessment model called MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM, and studied how this technology could impact global mitigation pathways under different scenarios of environmental policy effectiveness based on country-level governance indicators.

"In current policy debates, concerns about the political feasibility and fairness of the current generation of climate mitigation scenarios are raised, and DACCS is often proposed as a possible solution. In our study we quantified under what conditions and how DACCS might address those concerns," explains Elina Brutschin, a study coauthor and researcher in the Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program.

The researchers emphasize that the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C does not change when considering novel forms of CDR. For a broader perspective on pathways to limit warming, the research team investigated how novel CDR interacts under different assumptions of technoeconomic progress and the evolution of regional institutional capacity. The researchers highlight the risks of dependency on unproven carbon removal while also discussing the role novel CDR and similar technologies could play in the future for developing countries.

The results indicate that novel CDR can keep pre-Paris climate targets within reach when accounting for such risks, but that increasing institutional capacity beyond historical trends is necessary for limiting warming to the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C goal, even with novel CDR processes. The study also suggests that substantially improving institutional capacity to implement environmental policies, regulations, and legislation is critical to keep warming below 2°C if new forms of CDR fail to emerge in the near future.

The authors further point out that, when accounting for the possible future evolution of novel CDR technologies combined with inherent risks, the 'fairness' of overall outcomes did not meaningfully improve. DACCS did not impact near-term required global mitigation ambition, and additional carbon removal in developed economies accounted for only a small component of the mitigation necessary to achieve stringent climate targets. This is because the removal of carbon dioxide in these areas does not compensate sufficiently for their historical emissions by mid-century.

The inability of DACCS to enhance the fairness of outcomes, like cumulative carbon emissions, in 1.5°C scenarios, emphasizes the notion that meeting global climate targets is a global effort requiring an 'all-of-the-above' mitigation strategy. There is no room for flexibility when it comes to reaching climate goals.

The results, however, show that engineered removals can play a role in making the post-peak temperature stabilization (or decline) phase more equitable. This means that the full timeframe under which accounting takes place is critical for exploring fair outcomes that are agreeable by most Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"Our results show that new technologies for removing carbon from the atmosphere can play a role in ambitious climate policy, but they won't be a silver bullet for solving the climate crisis. Developed countries especially need to cut emissions by more than half this decade, primarily by reducing existing sources of emissions while scaling up CDR technologies to be in line with the Paris Agreement," says study lead author Matthew Gidden, a researcher in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program.

The researchers emphasize that there is a clear need for the modeling community to assess the role of novel CDR in a structured way to better understand robust outcomes and insights versus observations related to a given model framework or approach. Looking forward, these issues can be explicitly included in scenario design to arrive at more equitable outcomes while incorporating political realities of the capabilities of governments and institutions to enact strong climate policy.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1442655

Sequels are practically the lifeblood of Hollywood. Still, greenlighting a sequel to a four-decade-old movie is extraordinary. So when the legendary Mel Brooks reached out to Nick Kroll about fashioning a long-awaited “Part II” to the cult 1981 comedy “History of the World, Part I,” the “Big Mouth” creator was admittedly taken aback.

“It’s probably one of the most surreal things that’s ever happened not only in my career but in my life because he’s truly my hero and my biggest comedy influence,” Kroll says. “So if it had just been the call, it would’ve been a career highlight. But then, actually getting to work with him and make this show alongside him was just beyond anything I could have imagined.”

The original 20th Century Fox release featured story lines set during the Stone Age, the Roman Empire and the French Revolution, among other eras, with additional comedic bits (and musical numbers) thrown in for good measure. Fast-forward to 2020 and it’s clear the film’s narrative format was perfectly suited for the style of a contemporary sketch comedy television show — something right up Kroll’s alley after the success of 2013-15’s “The Kroll Show.”

But Kroll knew he’d need collaborators to cover a much wider canvas than what his Comedy Central series entailed. He first approached Wanda Sykes, who, as a lifelong Brooks fan, was a very fast yes. Screenwriters and comedians Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen came on board soon after for not only their on-screen talents but, notably, having a ton of experience with writers rooms.

“It was definitely the hardest thing we’d ever embarked on,” Barinholtz notes. “It had been a hot minute since I had been writing sketches. It had been pretty much since ‘Mad TV.’ And then you fall in love with the sketch world all over again.” A group of dancers in red, white and blue, 1970s disco era coordinated costumes.

Wanda Sykes as Shirley Chisholm in “History of the World Part 2” on Hulu.

( Tyler Golden / Hulu)

The writing process was spread out over three or four months of Zoom calls with a huge staff trying to figure out what worked, what didn’t and what could fit their production budget.

“We each had pet projects or pet story lines that we knew we wanted,” Kroll says. “I was interested in something around the Russian Revolution, Ike and Dave were interested in the Civil War, and Wanda was interested in Shirley Chisholm. And then, we thought the story of Jesus and Mary would be a great other big, tent-pole story, and then we would build out the rest from there.”

Once he signed off on the structure, Brooks started pitching jokes he had been sitting on for “literally decades.” For instance, Barinholtz knew he wanted to do a segment in which he’d play Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. He recalls, “We kind of said [to Brooks], ‘Yeah, well we have this Grant Civil War piece.’ And he goes, ‘Perfect. When Lee signs the treaty, he’ll turn over and his saber will hit all of his men in the nuts.’ And it’s just like, boom, there you go. That is in the show. He’s 96, but he’s still spry. You could pitch him something and he can think about it for a second and give you a really smart insight on that pitch.”

Sykes concurs, saying that keeping the show in Brooks’ comedic spirit was paramount. She notes, “We had to have his blessing and his approval, or we would’ve been idiots, really, and very arrogant and full of ourselves to think that, ‘Oh, we got this.’ No, no, no. I would always ask, ‘What did Mel say?’ This is his baby, and we would just all feel so honored to be that next generation to keep it going. I hope he’s still around and we can do some more.”

This was also a major opportunity for Sykes to play Chisholm, the first woman to run for a major party’s nomination for president of the United States, a moment the show captures by having Chisholm’s life play out as though it’s in the context of a Norman Lear ’70s sitcom. It was something the comedian had been trying to get off the ground for years.

“I’ve always wanted to do something about Shirley Chisholm, and my producing partner, Page Hurwitz, and I, we’ve always laughed about that,” Sykes says. “Because whatever we were talking about, I would say, ‘Yeah, and then I can play Shirley Chisholm.’ And she was like, ‘Wanda, really? Come on. It’s a cooking show.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, then I’ll do Shirley Chisholm’s favorite dishes.’ We got a kick out of that.”

Still, Sykes says the hardest nut to crack for any of their ideas was: “How do you make it Mel? How do you Mel it up?” One thing Kroll realized is that Brooks’ movies are funny first and foremost. While he’s engaged in social satire, he’s not terribly political and he was invariably silly. Kroll notes, “That became the guiding light for us as we figured out tonally what we wanted to do, and it really became always going back to that.”

Not only was Brooks involved creatively, but he also narrates the show. For Kroll, directing Brooks led to a number of “nerve-racking and titillating” sessions. Kroll recalls, “Him either being like, ‘Oh, that’s funny’ or, ‘No, no, that’s stupid’; either way you’re living on a razor’s edge. Or pitching him a joke. Truly the idea that I would ever pitch a joke to Mel Brooks and watch his head go back with a laugh is crazy to me.” As if posed at a conference, men in military and formal civilian costumes salute.

Even world leaders are not safe from satire in “History of the World, Part II.”

(Aaron Epstein /Hulu)

When it came to casting the approximately 300 roles for the series, the producers soon discovered they would have no problem recruiting familiar faces to take part. A who’s who of comedic talents including Quinta Brunson, Jack Black, Pamela Adlon, Josh Gad, Emily Ratajkowski, Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani, to name just a few, stepped up for the chance to work in a Mel Brooks production.

“There were definitely people like Johnny Knoxville who called Nick the day it was announced and was, ‘Literally anything, whatever you are doing.’ Then there were so many people who we called, and it was just such an easy yes,” Barinholtz says. “Anyone who was available and in town said yes.”

After all the blood, sweat and laughs, critical approval was one thing, but viewers tuning in to such an old-school property was something else. In a pleasant surprise, “History of the World, Part II” was a hit for Hulu cracking the top 10 of Nielsen’s original programs streaming chart for the week of March 6. Barinholtz, in particular, did not expect a decidedly new fan base to materialize.

“I knew that guys my age were going to watch it, but the other night at this party, my friend’s daughter’s friend came up,” Barinholtz recalls. “She’s, like, a 19-year-old woman, and she was like, ‘I’m a huge fan.’ I thought she was going to say of ‘The Mindy Project’ and she says ‘History of the World, Part II.’ And I was like, ‘Wow.’ I think it’s one of those things where it’s been so long since the first one came out, people just can’t wait to tell me what they think.”

Adults who live in walkable neighborhoods are more likely to interact with their neighbors and have a stronger sense of community than people who live in car-dependent communities, report researchers at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California San Diego.

The findings of the study, published online in the journal Health & Place, support one of six foundational pillars suggested by United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy as part of a national strategy to address a public health crisis caused by loneliness, isolation and lack of connection in this country.

In May 2023, the Surgeon General Advisory stated that loneliness and isolation can lead to a 29% increased risk of heart disease, a 32% increased risk of stroke, a 50% increased risk of developing dementia among older adults, and increases risk of premature death by more than 60%.

To address this public health crisis, the Surgeon General recommends strengthening social infrastructure by designing environments that promote connection.

"Our built environments create or deny long-lasting opportunities for socialization, physical activity, contact with nature, and other experiences that affect public health," said James F. Sallis, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and senior author of the UC San Diego study.

"Transportation and land use policies across the U.S. have strongly prioritized car travel and suburban development, so millions of Americans live in neighborhoods where they must drive everywhere, usually alone, and have little or no chance to interact with their neighbors."

Walkable neighborhoods promote active behaviors like walking for leisure or transportation to school, work, shopping or home.

The study analyzed data from the Neighborhood Quality of Life Study, which included 1,745 adults ages 20 to 66 living in 32 neighborhoods located in and around Seattle, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Neighborhood walkability may promote social interactions with neighbors -- like waving hello, asking for help or socializing in their homes, said the first author, Jacob R. Carson, M.P.H., a student in the UC San Diego -- San Diego State University Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health. Carson began the research while a Master of Public Health student at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health.

Neighborhoods where people must drive in and out, and where there is an absence of gathering places, may have the opposite effect, preventing neighbors from socializing.

"Promoting social interaction is an important public health goal. Understanding the role of neighborhood design bolsters our ability to advocate for the health of our communities and the individuals who reside in them," said Carson.

"Fewer traffic incidents, increases in physical activity, and better neighborhood social health outcomes are just a few of the results of designing walkable neighborhoods that can enrich our lives."

Co-authors include: Terry L. Conway and Kelli L. Cain, UC San Diego; Lilian G. Perez, RAND Corporation; Lawrence D. Frank, UC San Diego Department of Urban Studies and Planning and Urban Design 4 Health, Inc.; and Brian E. Saelens, Seattle Children's Research Institute and University of Washington.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1430902

More than half a year before the release of the upcoming movie “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One,” Paramount Pictures made sure audiences got to see Tom Cruise once again risking his life.

Cruise’s mind-blowing stunts have become a signature of “Mission: Impossible” films, each one seemingly topping the next. The key stunt in the franchise’s seventh installment involves Cruise driving a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff, dismounting and parachuting into a Norwegian valley. With the drop of its behind-the-scenes footage in December, the studio billed it as “the biggest stunt in cinema history.”

Though the moment has already been watched on YouTube more than 13 million times, and 30 million more times in the film’s trailers, it’s among the film’s most anticipated scenes. After all, we still don’t know how the stunt fits within the plot — What could be so dire that agent Ethan Hunt must jump off a cliff?

In a recent interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” Cruise said they started with the scene, in part, to allow the cast and crew to see whether he would be able to star in the $290-million film. After all, he could either get injured or die — or both.

“Well, we know we’re either going to continue with the film or not,” Cruise said, letting out a laugh. “Let’s know Day 1, what is gonna happen: Do we all continue, or is it a major re-run?”

Cruise added that he wanted to make sure his mind was clear enough to focus solely on the stunt.

“You have to be razor sharp for something like that; I don’t want to drop that and shoot other things and have my mind somewhere else,” Cruise said. “You don’t want to be waking up in the middle of the night, ‘It’s still, I still, I still,’ and it has that effect.”

Cruise is no stranger to aerial stunts with a high probability of death. The “Top Gun” actor said preparing for the recent stunt “was years of planning,” a culmination of all the training he’s done with motorcycles, cars and aerobatics.

In the franchise’s last film, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” (2018), Cruise jumped into a helicopter in midflight, taking the controls to chase another helicopter. In the same movie, he parachuted from a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III from 25,000 feet, close to five miles up, becoming “the first actor” to do so in a major motion picture, according to Paramount (most skydiving attempts occur at 10,000 feet).

In 2011 for “Ghost Protocol,” the “Jerry McGuire” actor climbed along the exposed walls of the world’s largest building, the Burj Khalifa of Dubai. And in 2015 for “Rogue Nation,” Cruise hung off the side of an Airbus A400M Atlas as it was taking off, a stunt that veteran stunt coordinator and frequent Cruise collaborator Wade Eastwood called “a stressful experience.”

The recent motorcycle stunt, which Cruise had apparently repeated six times, was no exception. Though the film’s computer-generated images make Cruise appear to be jumping off the rocky surface of the cliff, the scene required a large ramp to be built.

While Cruise is seen atop the motorcycle in the behind-the-scenes video, accelerating off the ramp, a helicopter and drone fly overhead to gather footage. The film’s crew, including director Christopher McQuarrie, are huddled in a nearby tent, faces glued to a set of monitors. After he abandons the bike and hangs in the open air, Cruise releases his parachute and the crew erupts in cheers.

“The only thing you have to avoid when doing a stunt like this are serious injury or death,” Eastwood, who has managed stunts for the last three “Mission Impossible” films, said in the BTS video. “You’re falling. If you don’t get a clean exit from the bike and you get tangled up with it, if you don’t open your parachute, you’re not gonna make it.”

The scene wasn’t the only stressful one to shoot: Cruise said he also worried about a car chase that involved him handcuffed to a small car, steering with one hand while drifting along the cobblestone streets of Rome, with his co-star Hayley Atwell in the passenger seat.

“It’s plenty of challenges,” Cruise said with a wide grin, laughing once again.

“Dead Reckoning” had its world premiere Sunday at the Auditorium Conciliazione in Rome with Cruise and other cast members, including Atwell and Vanessa Kirby, in attendance. “Part Two” is expected to be released in June 2024. Filming wrapped in September for what has been rumored to be Cruise’s final appearance in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.

As books tackling racial and LGBTQ+ themes have been banned across the country, California’s Department of Education and Democratic lawmakers are doubling down on offering diverse and inclusive lessons in schools.

Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and legislators, meeting for the first time Wednesday as part of a new task force, called on textbook publishers to commit to producing materials that are “free from discrimination and inclusive of the diverse narratives that reflect the student body of California.”

Members of the task force, all of whom are Democrats, said that includes instruction about the LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities, as well as Black, Native American, Latino and Asian American and Pacific Islander histories.

Nearly 77% of public school students in California are people of color, according to state data.

While California is considered a leader in inclusive education, and already has extensive curriculum standards in place requiring diversity in school lessons, the first-of-its-kind hearing was a symbolic show of force by Democrats who control the state Capitol as GOP-controlled states including Florida and Texas have approved legislation to curtail some teachings.

California pays textbook publishers nearly $500 million a year, Thurmond said. Representatives from companies that produce school materials including the College Board and the Benchmark Education Co. testified in the state Capitol on Wednesday that they are committed to diversity and inclusion.

Thurmond warned that California will not work with publishers that have kowtowed to Republican concerns in other parts of the country.

“If you’re going to strip out the history of people in another state, you shouldn’t expect to do business in the state of California,” he said.

The hearing comes after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential hopeful, signed legislation to limit teachings about sexual orientation, known by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Florida districts are now facing lawsuits from students and publishers, including a case over the removal of a children’s book about a penguin with two fathers.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has railed against such policies, posing in pictures reading banned books such as “Beloved” by Toni Morrison and demanding records from textbook companies in an attempt to determine if publishers supplying books to California are modifying texts they supply to red states.

“You don’t get to rewrite history in a back room. You don’t get to erase basic facts around segregation, the Holocaust, or Rosa Parks’ story,” he said in a tweet directed at DeSantis — a consistent political foe — in May.

California approved “social content” standards a decade ago that require schools to portray “accurately and equitably” cultural and racial diversity and to avoid gender stereotypes. The state also has laws in place mandating comprehensive sex education and LGBTQ+ history lessons.

In 2021, California became the first state to require ethnic studies as a graduation requirement for high school students.

“This kind of hearing probably belongs in other states more than it does in California,” Kevin Gordon, an education lobbyist who represents superintendents, said of Wednesday’s event. “I think they’re just trying to put more sunshine on what the state is already doing rather than actually expand some sort of reach into school districts.”

But local school boards have broad power, and education officials at Wednesday’s hearing acknowledged that it is difficult to enforce policies for the 10,000-plus schools that span California.

As Republican organizations work to get like-minded conservatives elected to school boards across the state, national political debates over issues such as critical race theory and gender are playing out at the hyper-local level.

A school board in Temecula opposed using a textbook that mentioned San Francisco politician and gay rights leader Harvey Milk, who was killed in 1978. The move drew the ire of Newsom, who said in a tweet, “This isn’t Texas or Florida. In the Golden State, our kids have the freedom to learn.”

In Murietta, school board members blocked the use of “Give Me Liberty! An American History” by renowned historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Foner, in part because they said it negatively portrayed former President Trump.

A Glendale Unified school board meeting led to protests and arrests over lessons on gender identity and sexuality.

Newsom, Thurmond and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta wrote a letter to superintendents and principals this month, putting them on notice about 1st Amendment protections and state laws regarding “representative and unbiased” curriculum. The letter warned that districts that ban books could be asked to comply with the attorney general’s office to “allow it to analyze your agency’s actions and procedures.”

Thurmond accused some school boards of using the state’s deference to local control as a way to hide “racism and hate.”

“Local control doesn’t give you the right to inflict pain on someone or even to threaten someone,” he said.

Jackie Gardner, a middle school science teacher in San Jacinto, has a rainbow LGBTQ+ pride flag hanging in her classroom but has friends in other districts who would not be able to do the same, she said. The state’s policy is “a gray area” and often dependent on individual communities, she said.

“We have a lot of community members who are still equating LGBTQ issues and a lot of other inclusion with something that is inappropriate, which is absolutely not what it is. We are keeping children alive by including this in our textbooks,” said Gardner, noting high suicide rates among queer youths. “There are educators who are sticking their necks out for this inclusivity and not always being supported by their school.”

Republican Lance Christensen, a vice president for the conservative California Policy Center who unsuccessfully ran for state superintendent last year, recently criticized Placer County schools for assigning bestselling novel “The Hate U Give” by author Angie Thomas. The book is about teen who witnessed an unarmed Black teenager being shot by a white police officer.

Christensen accused state Democrats of feigning outrage and blowing the issue out of proportion.

“Just because a school decides not to curate a certain book doesn’t mean they’re banning books, it just means they don’t have to accept what the activist class feels they need to thrust upon these kids,” he said. “Parents can still grab those books for their kids at any local bookstore. There’s no burning of books happening.”

Members of the task force touted potential legislation that would work to hold school boards more accountable on the issue, but attempts so far have hit roadblocks in the Legislature, facing concerns from education advocates who want to maintain local control.