"At the End": alien race offers to selectively evacuate Earth from a coming gamma ray burst from a super-nova

The CG Brothers and director James J. Whitmore present a dystopian short film “At the End” (2015), based on a  short story by Nicole Taylor.

A supernova’s effects will reach Earth and cause extinction. An alien civilization offers to rescue some of the residents it handpicks, but to take them back into slavery in a totalitarian, Nazi-like society on another planet.  The spaceships are pretty interesting to look at.  Needless to say, riots break out as the media warns most people that their personal lives as they knew them are running out of time.  It's like getting drafted. 

  

A young couple waits for the end “On the Beach”, literally.

The only way a supernova would destroy life on Earth would be a gamma ray burst.  As best we know, there is nothing close enough to Earth and unstable enough to create that threat.

   

But the social issue that the film poses is provocative and troubling.

"The Rise of Alt-Tech": a conversation with a cryptocurrency entrepreneur on overcoming corporate Internet censorship, Patreon style

Dave Cullen, of Computing Forever (in Ireland?) interviews Bill Ottman in a half-hour video “Overcoming Censorship: The Rise of Alt-Tech”   So I’ll call this a movie (not a coma).

  

The speakers review the Patreon situation (that exploded Dec. 6 with the banning of Sargon of Akkad) and note that Patreon’s behavior is controlled by Stripes in the payment system (others say MasterCard, who are paired up with Stripes); yet Patreon cannot be transparent in how it is influenced. The idea of "manifest observable behavior" was reneged on. 

They also discussed how these big companies became ideological after becoming big – because liberal globalism and inclusiveness is best for their own growth – hence they have recently been tied to the Democratic Party, not the old Reagan Republicanism.  They’re left with trying to blackball those whose association seem to tie them to populism, which is indeed dangerous.

  

Ottman (from Minds) suggested that users start getting more used to decentralized processing, cryptocurrency, and P2P, which of course has been around for years (but remember Sean Fanning’s Napster).  Ohio, he said, accepts state taxes in cryptocurrency. Yet there have been some issues, as when Coinbase banned  the personal account of Gab’s found

"Will Article 13 Kill the Internet?": attorney looks at how the EU Copyright Directive works even outside the EU

Today’s “Movie” will be a 2-hour-16-minute superchat by attorney Lior Lesig ("YouTuberLaw") , titled “Will Article 13 Kill the Internet?” It offers the hastag “#SaveYourInternet”, under the channel “Legal Dissent”.

This discussion refers to Article 13, which along with Article 11 (the Link Tax) are very controversial and disturbing proposals that are percolating in the European Union, as part of the proposed EU Copyright Directive, and are likely to go into effect in most countries by the end of 2020 at the latest.

Article 13 would hold platforms (like YouTube) responsible as the speaker for any copyright infringement from users.  Various versions of the proposal limit the exposure just to “larger” commercial platforms (social media companies) and claim to recognize Fair Use but give platforms no way to protect themselves from users except to limit the content to larger users whom they know well.

Content originating outside the EU, not going through newer EU protocols, would likely be blocked in the EU, even though that could probably be circumvented by VPN’s.

Blogger, for example, probably would have to suspend EU country specific TLD’s for users who weren’r prescreened by their rules. 

The whole measure seems to be an exercise in protectionism, trying to enable legacy media companies to fend off low-cost competition from newbies. 

  

The first part of the video is a summary of the Article 13 provisions and shows the logical contradictions within the wording.

"Could Ceres Be Home to Alien Life?": SEA video

SEA offers an 11-minute video “Could Ceres Be Home to Alien Life?”

Ceres is the largest asteroid, close to 500 miles in diameter, with one third of the mass of the asteroid belt – so it may be termed a minor planet.

It has one mountain, which may be a cryovolcano, and apparently an underground ocean, and a considerable amount of nitrogen locked in ammonia, which offers the possibility of organic chemistry around the bright spots.

It would have very low gravity.

Wikipedia: attribution: By NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA - https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA22083.gif, Public Domain, Link

Mikel Wisler's workshop: "Screenwriting for Short Films"

Mikel Wisler does a workshop (April 2016) on “Screenwriting for Short Films: How to Structure Your Plot”

Wisler presents a trailer for “Parallel”, a sci-fi, before explaining how the Internet – especially YouTube – have changed our expectations of short film.

He describes the three act structure for storytelling.  This is the proverbial beginning, middle and end, with a drop-off at the climax.

He mentions the idea of setting up the “rules” for your world, like inside an O’Neill Cylinder.  You need a provocative or exciting incident very quickly.

Wisler’s website is “Stories by the River”.

The key point for a short film occurs at about 34:05.

  

I wonder how his remarks apply to Carter Smith’s “Bugcrush” (2006).

"Cat in Automatic Escape Room", normally dangerous fun for people

I’ll give a cat video tonight, to demonstrate cat intelligence.

That is, “Cat in Automatic Escape Room”.  The first 6 minutes shows the cat solving the puzzles; then the creator of the escape room explains it.

  

Mammals that hunt prey for a living have problem-solving abilities that resemble some of human capacities.

Andy Warhol's "Empire", sped up by a factor of 64, only one shot in the 8-hour film

I don’t recall having heard of Andy Warhol’s single-shot eight hour movie “Empire”, comprising only a shot of the Empire State Building in Manhattan, in black and white.

The video above shows the film sped up by a factor of 64.

  

Brenda Cronin, in the Wall Street Journal, describes a screening at the City Hall Cinema where a melee broke out after ten minutes.  Tickets were $2?