Even with the titanic marketing force of Disney and buzz (no pun intended) around featuring a lesbian couple kissing, Lightyear proved to be a flop. Although it was expected to top the charts and bring in $70 million in its first weekend (a modest goal, all things considered), the movie made $51 million, second behind the newest Jurassic Park installment. For context, Top Gun: Maverick made more than $100 million in its opening weekend.

While its fair to see this as yet another instance of the truism, go woke, go broke, its worth asking why Disney keeps doing this. They have a whole slew of perfectly profitable franchises to tap, and they can churn out blockbusters from any of them without breaking a sweat. Why do they feel the need to shoehorn a scene of lesbians kissing that no asked for? Why did they double-down against their own audience?

Probably the first and foremost reason that Disney executives do this is because they can. They believe they have a monopoly over young audiences and can start treating them like a captive audience. Daniel Greenfield makes a convincing case in Frontpage Mag that this is exactly what Disney is thinking: Disney may have started out feeding the imaginations of children, but now its business model is acquiring intellectual properties with active fandoms and milking the adult fans for every cent. Rest assured, Disney will keep issuing more sequels and spinoffs ad nauseam, knowing full well that their cult-like fandoms will continue to watch them.

When entertaining people becomes secondary, its only natural to propagate a message. These days, that message is diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE, as Jordan Peterson puts it), which has become the standard in all popular entertainment. For example, it was clear Frozen II would make a lot of money just because it was Frozen II, so its creators decided to turn the movie into a convoluted propaganda piece that spoke on the environment, the treatment of indigenous people, and female empowerment. No one seemed to mind that the movie was terrible, and theres little doubt that Disney will make another sequel when the time is right.

However, what really seems to lie at the heart of this decision to promote lesbianism in a kids movie is something much more profound and personal than anyone cares to admit. Disney filmmakers and most of the creative class in Hollywood have become boring. They arent all that interesting, and nothing really interests them. Action, drama, romance, and all the magic of moviemaking doesnt excite them anymore.

Rather, like bored teenagers addicted to TikTok, Disney executives are more interested in identity politics and social justice, and they believe that everyone else is interested in this too. Sure, people may watch the new show about Obi-wan Kenobi because they know and love the character, but whats really going to hook them is the black female antagonist because shes (wait for it) black and female. And, if they dont like her, theyre haters and Disney will delight in taking a quixotic stand against these anonymous bigots.

Wokeness has become a vicious cycle for privileged creators: success makes them bored, so they go woke, but this bores them again, so they double-down on their wokeness, which soon becomes boring, etc. This cycle is then reinforced by social media, which affirms these peoples narcissism and casts their dissatisfied fans as ignorant bigots.

Seen from a healthy distance, this phenomenon of bored filmmakers injecting wokeness in Lightyear makes little sense. How can anyone be bored by a story about a space ranger fighting for his friends on a distant planet? Why would they feel the need to spice this up with wokeness? Was depicting acts of valor against space aliens not enough?

And yet, this is how a woke person sees the world. Discussing a theologians bold (and nonsensical) claim that Jesus was actually a transgender person, Catholic writer Michael Warren Davis notes how narrow this view is: The Bible is the most profound and influential book in the whole history of the world. It contains the philosophy of Jesus Christ, the most important philosopher and mystic in world history Now, imagine if all you could find in those pages was a parable for transvestic fetishism. What a boring little place your head must be.

For most people, this is the real problem with the woke agenda: its boring and predictable. Perhaps a few people were outraged when they heard of the lesbian kiss in Lightyear, but the majority people likely rolled their eyes and muttered, Oh okay. Ill pass then.

Not surprisingly, these peoples suspicions were confirmed. The movie was indeed dull: the characters were flat, the story was dumb, and the themes resonate more with adults suffering from a midlife crisis than with actual kids. Clearly, the creators of the movie were more worried about indulging themselves and crafting woke propaganda than in entertaining audiences. Its the work of bored people putting out a boring product for an increasingly bored audience thats burned out on the wokeness.

Hopefully, filmmakers at Disney can learn from this mistake and break the cycle. The world is so much more than peoples skin color and sexual orientation, and the possibilities for storytelling are endless. These people need to get over their boredom, stop obsessing over diversity and representation, and return to making fun movies that transcend all that and really go to infinity and beyond. Itd be a win-win: Fans would be happy, filmmakers would find purpose again, and the modern entertainment in general would be slightly less mediocre.

Excerpt from:

Dull 'Lightyear' Is Another Victim Of Bored, Woke Filmmakers - The Federalist

A Greek butcher shop selling offal. Photo via Getty Images.

There are many curious things about Evie Magazine, which brands itself as a conservative alternative to mainstream womens magazines. There are, of course, its many weird and wrong claims about COVID vaccines and COVID more generally, which seem aimed at laundering a certain brand of disease denialism to a young, female audience. The magazine also trots out a variety of other essays about feminism (bad), classical femininity (good), and so on. But amidst its many odd little wares, nothing is weirder, or more amusing, than Evies obsession with meatmore specifically, with organ meats. And, as it turns out, the organ meat lifestyleconsuming liver, kidneys, intestines, hearts, testicles, and other edible animal organsis a passion thats now uniting the anti-vaccine world, Joe Rogans audience, the so-called alt-right, conservative outlets like Evie, and, overall, a new and presumably somewhat constipated brand of meatfluencer.

Evie has run many articles extolling the virtues of meat and denouncing vegan alternatives. Nearly all of them link back to a 2021 blog about incorporating offal like hearts and liver into ones diet. The insistent meat takes, and promotion of organ meat specifically, also dovetail with Evies larger project: rejecting whatever smacks of liberalismBeyond Burgers, acknowledging the existence of trans peopleand embracing a traditional or classic lifestyle, in this case the classic lifestyle of a gout-addled medieval king.

As with many things Evie does, its also the result of a strange effect in which much larger cultural forces trickle down. The carnivore dietor, more specifically, an organ meat-centric onehas proved to be a meeting place for a variety of extremely online and highly bizarre people, all intent on showing you how to live, and many promoting one regressive worldview or another in the process.

As VICE wrote in 2017, the paleo dietmeat-heavy, but with nuts and some vegetableshad begun to emerge then as the preferred diet of right- and libertarian-leaning public figures like billionaire vampire Peter Thiel. Soon after, Mikhaila Peterson, the daughter of clinical psychologist and extremely odd manosphere personality Jordan Peterson, began promoting the so-called Lion Diet, which is far more extreme, consisting solely of ruminant meat, salt, and water. (Eating a gazelle would be fine, but an apple would not.) Both Peterson and Fuller have claimed that this diet cured them of many autoimmune issues; objective assessments of the diet tend to point out that its both nutritionally unbalanced and profoundly unsustainable. (The family has made other extreme medical claims: In 2020, Jordan Peterson also spent eight days in a medically-induced coma, an unorthodox detox treatment for what Peterson and his daughter said was an addiction to benzodiazepines. Experts that VICE interviewed at the time questioned some of the details of Mikhailas claims about the care hed received in Canada prior to going to Russia and said such an extreme method of weaning off an addictive medication is rarely used, to reduce the likelihood of relapse.)

The carnivore diet, which is now in vogue online, goes a step further than paleo and is more complicated than the lion diet, often cutting out most food groups besides meat, fruit, and honey. It is, as Dazed Digital recently pointed out, still awash in far-right associations, equating meat with both traditional masculinity and red-pilling, although there are any number of female carnivore diet influencers.

The Carnivore Diet is the red pill that wakes you up to reality, wrote one meatfluencer on Twitter, who goes by Carnivore Aurelius. It's hard at first. Your eyes have been closed for so long, so the light is blinding. But it exposes you to the fact that society is structured around lies. It all starts with diet. This movement is unstoppable. More recently, he celebrated, Everybody is waking up to seed oils, birth control and tap water poisoning them. Grand global awakening happening right now. Beautiful to watch. (Seed oilswhich include nearly all vegetable oilsare another recent target of the extremely online.)

There are a variety of carnivore diet influencers on Instagram and TikTok, all insistently energetic, very red, and constantly in the gym or doing something strenuous in the great outdoors; their feeds are a wash of red plates, bulging muscles, and proclamations about the distant time they last ate a vegetable. One is the Liver King, aka Brian Johnson, an intensely muscled man from Texas who dines on a variety of raw liver, testicles, and an incredibly specific brand of hype, declaring himself CEO OF THE ANCESTRAL LIFESTYLE. (As he told Buzzfeed, speaking in the exuberant third person, You know what Liver King says? Start with liver, get some really good sleep, move like Liver King, eat like Liver King, shield like Liver King. Live like the ancestral man, and youll have the hormone profile thats double or triple of the manicured modern man.)

Perhaps no one in the meat space is more influential than Paul Saladino, the self-proclaimed Carnivore MD. (Saladinos credentials are that he is, his Facebook bio says, Trained in medicine at the University of Arizona and the University of Washington. Board-certified as a Physician Nutrition Specialist and in psychiatry. Licensure records in California, where Saladino lives, though, show that his license to practice is currently listed as delinquent for a failure to pay fees, and that no practice is permitted, according to the California state medical board.)

On his extremely active TikTok and Instagram pages both banned once, accordin to Saladino he makes a variety of claimsfor instance, that spinach and beans are essentially toxic, that hygiene products like soap and toothpaste and shampoo are unnecessary, and above all, that organ meats are crucial. They include everything your body needs to thrive: vitamins, minerals, peptides, proteins, and growth factors, proclaims the website for Saladinos supplement company, Heart and Soil. Thats why our ancestors were strong, virile, and vital! Thats how they thrived generation after generation in the worlds harshest environments. Should you not be able to access beef heart, for instance, on a daily basis, the company sells bottles of encapsulated organ meat-based supplement products, ranging from $28 to $52 a bottle.

Two notable things happened in Saladinos world in the past few years: First, he went on Joe Rogan, back in 2020, rocketing him to a new level of audience and fame. (Rogan himself went on a carnivore diet soon after, prompting a round of explosive diarrhea, as he detailed on a subsequent episode of the show, elaborating, with regular diarrhea I would compare it to a fire you see coming a block or two away and you have the time to make an escape, whereas this carnivore diet is like out of nowhere the fire is coming through the cracks, your doorknob is red hot, and all hope is lost. Just like our ancestors, presumably, shortly before many of them died of dysentery.)

As the pandemic has progressed, Saladino has also used his new, Rogan-inspired reach to become increasingly dismissive of the efficacy of vaccines. Hes not explicitly anti-vaccine, tweeting in August 2021 that they may help avoid some severe Covid complications, for instance. But hes repeatedly suggested, too, that metabolic health is more important in preventing severe COVID outcomes, and claimed that natural immunity is better than the kind created by vaccines. (The claim that natural immunity is superior to vaccination is a common anti-vaccine talking point.) In other words, of course, that a hunk of liver, or a supplement in a bottle, will do more to fight Covid, a claim many health cranks have made throughout the pandemic, in one form or another.

Unsurprisingly, the carnivore diet has also become the purview of the body-hacking crowd, seeking to optimize themselves by engaging in extreme diets. One of the best known is Dave Asprey, the inventor of Bulletproof Coffee, who was ushered into the diet by Saladino. Asprey has become more overtly anti-vaccine, declaring on Facebook, Show me an mRNA vaccine that will stop cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or cancer, with a clean safety record, and I am all in. Willing to wait until then! Hes also approvingly shared posts from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s anti-vax organization Childrens Health Defense, in particular a post praising fringe medical group Americas Frontline Doctorin all a sort of pseudoscience turducken.

Above all, the insistently carnivorous and very online crowd exists both to eat meat and to create buzz and attention for themselves by posting about it (which explains why former Hills star and mid-2000s tabloid staple Heidi Montag, another Saladino devotee, was recently seen out and about munching on a raw bison heart in a sandwich bag for the paparazzi, which she claimed to be eating for fertility).

The meat world is broad and full of self-styled iconoclasts, and their commitment to intense and common sense-bending diets is as strong as their commitment to broadcasting every move they make, every morsel they eat, and every resulting bowel movement online.

Today, then, the anti-vaxxers, the Instagram doctors, the podcasters, and the anti-feminists find themselves at a long table, urging each other to swallow the toughest morsels, the weirdest cuts. Their commitment to not wasting edible food is admirable, and, as a metaphor, well, the whole thing couldnt be more fitting.

Read more here:

Why Are the Weirdest People Online Obsessed With Organ Meats? - VICE

A photo of Roddy Ricch in the desert.

Social media has been a mixed bag since it came on the scene; it has been a force for immense good and a home for some of the most harmful interactions.

Process exposure refers to social media activities where influencers and users consistently reveal the creative process behind their successes and outcomes to their audience.

Social media has frequently been used by millions of influencers and celebrities as a way to show off the good life and flaunt their successes. While celebrities flaunted their Grammys and Oscars, their followers were usually left with an insatiable hunger for the same results without understanding the process behind it.

This gross lack of process exposure has tainted the legacy of the biggest social media platforms and made them a purveyor of insecurities rather than a powerful tool for education and inspiration. However, a lot of positive change has gone unnoticed.

Since 2011, when YouTube introduced its live streaming function, Live video has exploded on the scene and become the favorite content consumed by most social media users. Statistics show that people spend three times longer watching a live social video than a prerecorded one.

The unintentional effect of this shift towards live video has been a drastic increase in process exposure. Going live as opposed to creating videos has dramatically increased the ability of content creators, influencers, and celebrities to bring their viewers along through every step of the journey. It has become the reality TV of social media.

Grammy Award-winning, and Forbes 30 Under 30, artist, Roddy Ricch, has not just observed this shift towards live video; he has also observed the craving among the average social media user for more process-inclined content in general.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 26: Roddy Ricch (R) and guest attend the 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards ... [+] at Staples Center on January 26, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

After making his mark in the music industry with his multiple awards ranging from the Grammys, BET, and the American Music Awards, amongst others, Ricch decided to venture into the tech space and build his brand portfolio. Ricchs search for the next big tech disruptor has led him to the team at Roll, a new digital platform that promises a new and unique connection experience between celebrities and their followers.

Ricch explained why he instantly saw the potential in the Roll project; "Being invited to be part of the creative process of developing the Roll app, was a big eureka moment for me, because it put in action, what I have been feeling for so long; people are tired of watching the outcome of all our hard work on social media, they want to see all the steps that led us there. This is the only way people can leave educated and inspired.

There have been far too many aspiring artist who thought they could just jump, pick up a mic, and start rapping because they were inspired by one of my songs, they didn't know the process behind the outcome. That's what Roll is showing".

The digital platform is designed to allow artists, creators and celebrities to share an inside look at their personal lives as well as the process of creating content and music with their fans and followers. With Roll, users can access the insights of making an album, from the late nights to the early mornings, building beats, laying verses, and the music video shoot. Roll's vision speaks to the larger benefits of process exposure.

Ricch is adamant that process-oriented content is the future of social media content. According to Ricch, process exposure will turn followers into leaders by providing direction, education, and inspiration.

Direction

Today's youth are heavily inspired by social media creators, celebrities, and influencers, sometimes more than other influences. However, loving a person or art does not automatically translate to possessing the ability to replicate the person's art or results. As process exposure becomes mainstream, young people will likely make more informed decisions after being exposed to the processes behind what they admire.

Education

From academics like Jordan Peterson to athletes like LeBron James, today's social media users are exposed to a wide gamut of solid influences.As process-inclined videos and content continue to explode, users can gain more step-by-step education in many areas of interest.

CAMBRIDGE, CAMBRIDGESHIRE - NOVEMBER 02: Jordan Peterson addresses students at The Cambridge Union ... [+] on November 02, 2018 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. (Photo by Chris Williamson/Getty Images)

The number of Americans choosing to go to college is steadily declining; perhaps process-inclined content can become a source of quality informal education.

Inspiration

Ricch stated, the most significant impact of the Roll app is its inspirational value. In his words, "It is one thing to know if you should do it, it is another thing to know how to do it, but inspiration is the most powerful part of what we are doing. Exposing an audience to both the highs and the lows of process inspires them to know that the best of men are just men at best and that if anyone can do it, certainly they can too."

It may be impossible to lower the internet's amount of unprofitable content being released, but the gradual push for more process exposure does hold some promise. Perhaps, social media might finally fulfill its true potential.

Read the original:

How Roddy Ricch Is Impacting The Tech Landscape - Forbes

Mom, why did you and Dad get divorced? I asked for the hundredth time. I was accustomed to hearing her respond, We just couldnt live together anymore. But this time she did not say that. We were on the way to the laundromat, and I can remember exactly where we were when she answered.

Because your dad is gay.

Oh, I know that, I lied, trying to cover my shock. I didnt know that. I was 9.

I didnt know that.

Although my parents had raised me with a Christian worldview and I knew the Bible well, my world began to shift radically after my father explained why he was sleeping with men. Before long, both my dads apartment and our visits began to change. A calendar of mostly nude men appeared in the bathroom, along with some revealing art. It was very uncomfortable to visit, but I tried not to let it bother me.

On the weekends when I visited, Dad and I would head to Castro Street in San Francisco. It was a colorful place, and I quickly found that I had to be careful where I looked, lest I would see more than I bargained for. I learned my way around the neighborhood, knowing which were the gay bars and which were the lesbian bars. I even attended the gay Olympics to cheer on a family member.

I was hip. I was open-minded. I was enlightened.

But I was also torn. When someone in authority, especially someone who is trusted, tells a child something is true, that child will believe them. In fact, that child may build his or her worldview on that foundation. I did. This is why Pride parades, drag queen story hour, and teaching gender as a social construct are so insidious.

Out of loyalty to my father, I would never have shared my instinctive doubts about his lifestyle, but I distinctly remember being unsettled by it. And yet I shrugged off my feelings and ignored my discomfort so that I could be a supportive daughter. As I got older, I became a good social justice warrior at my school. I learned to put condoms on bananas and the importance of safe sex, regardless of whom your partner happened to be. I certainly wouldnt judge.

My dad died of AIDS when I was 17, on the morning of my senior prom. I watched him suffer his last months without a partner, and I listened to him voice his regrets.

Shortly before my mom remarried, she and I became Catholic. But at our ultra-liberal California parish, there was very little accurate catechesis on what the Catholic Church taught on these issues. However, I certainly embraced what I heard the Church taught on sexuality: open-mindedness, tolerance, acceptance. I was desperate for a way to explain away what the Bible said so clearly, and the progressive wing of the Catholic Church was eager to help me.

My Jesuit university did a fantastic job of not just excusing but celebrating the behavior of my by-then deceased father by wholeheartedly embracing and validating the homosexual lifestyle. In my Theology of Marriage class, rather than have a heterosexual couple speak, the instructor had a gay couple come to talk about the sacredness of their marriage. At the time, I said I was so glad that the Church was changing their backward views on homosexuality; however, deep inside, such an idea left me unsettled.

This illusion of the changing Church continues today. In his recent essay at Outreach, Fr. James Martin, S.J., explains why Pride and the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus are not just compatible but complementary. He argues that Our Lord loves everyone, which is certainly true. But his slippery case that Pride Month is something Catholics should celebrate is filled with implied approval for homosexual relationships. First, he says, Imagine a young LGBTQ person who is not in any sort of sexual relationship but simply wants to be accepted.Where is the sin?Second, it ignores the fact that all of us are sinful. Who among us has not sinned?

Of course, a chaste person who struggles with same-sex attraction is not sinning. But then Fr. Martin pivots to the argument that we are all sinners. Well, yes. But we are also supposed to try to stop sinning. This sort of you-hate-chaste-LGBTQ-individuals gives way to we-are-all-sinners, and then the reader is able to fill in the blank as he is inclined: but God loves me anyway; or, so the Church is wrong; or maybe, so we should never judge the actions of anyone else.

This type of article is exactly the type of evidence I clung to in my progressive, liberal days when I was trying to justify not just the homosexuality around me but my own sinful choices. While Fr. Martin is correct that we are called to love everyone, sometimes the most loving thing we can do is call others out of mortal sin.

After I had my own children, I was befriended by several traditionally-minded Catholic women who took the time to educate me on the Churchs teaching on homosexuality. What made them so effective was that they shared the truth in the context of our larger relationship. Even though our family did not homeschool, these homeschooling moms welcomed me. We had monthly dinners out and occasional stump the priest nights when we could ask questions and discuss the Faith freely. It was through these encounters that we were able to discuss and debate, but only after we shared our favorite recipes and lamented the sleepless nights up with our babies, and before we arranged the next park day for our kids to play together.

These sometimes-heated discussions on homosexuality did not define our friendship. They were just one facet of our relationship, and these women cared about me even when I was a relativist. That we could move on to other topics on which we shared common viewpoints gave me the space to reflect on their words and let down my guard. What I said as we argued was often no longer what I thought to be true. Sometimes, even as I believed what they were telling me, I felt I had to make every argument to the contrary.

Through the influence of my friends and by the grace of God, our family began to conform ourselves to the teaching of the Church. But without their courageous truth-telling, I wonder if I would have changed.

On Rod Drehers blog, he recently described the experience of a progressive artist he called Jane. One night, in the throes of depression, and in the clutches of transgenderism, she happened to click on a Jordan Peterson video that was in her social media feed. She was shocked to find that she agreed with everything Peterson said. His lone voice amidst the sea of insanity into which she had been swept, just like the courageous voices of my friends, gave her permission to pull herself out. She gave up her art career because she realized that the wokeness it required was not worth it.

Hearing the truth mattered to Jane, and it mattered to me. For those who are in the position of teaching others the truth on homosexuality, marriage, or transgender ideology, please do speak up. Share the beauty of the truth fearlessly because yours may be the only sane voice that your friends and family hear. Know that people may be angry. They might feel attacked. They could be defensive. But in a world where the schools, media, corporations, and even many within the Church (such as Fr. Martin), are teaching half-truths or outright lies, how will anyone find the truth if we do not show them? The fruits of wisdom and counsel are often unseen, but that does not mean that the seed of truth you sow will not grow.

Eventually, I was able to accept that the people who told me the truth and who defended the actual teachings of the Church were the people who cared about me. They were the ones who loved me and who wanted me to know of the plan God has for human sexuality. I did not always react with grace to their correction, and there were many arguments and disagreements, but my friendsmy real friendsalways patiently met my arguments with the truth, delivered compassionately. They neither backed down nor did they ostracize me when I was in the throes of my ignorance. They spoke the truth in charity and, over time, softened my hardened heart.

[Photo Credit: Shutterstock]

Continued here:

How Having a Gay Father Showed Me the Lies of Progressive Catholicism - Crisis Magazine

Comic artist Cline Keller explains complex climate problems - such as the Energy Charter Treaty - ... [+] in graphic form.

Climate experts are worried: the urgency of climate change isnt getting through to the general public. Increasingly dire warnings and the growing ferocity of extreme weather events seem to elicit little more than a shrug of the shoulders.

Perhaps this isnt surprising: the scale of the climate crisis can seem too huge, and far beyond our control. In many ways, simply switching off is a rational response.

In the face of news fatigue and its byproduct of indifference, visual artists are turning to alternative methods to spread climate awareness where news stories have failed.

I try to show that while this stuff is complicated and super important, its much easier to understand if you get the context, says German comic book artist Cline Keller. Explaining a topic is much easier if we tell stories. And the stories are there, if you look.

As it turns out, graphic novels and comics are becoming an important tool in the climate communicators arsenal. From the sci-fi of Dark Horse comics Shifting Earth to Philippe Squarzonis Climate Changed, an all-in-one crash-course on the subject, theres something for everyone.

Keller has just released Dawn of the ECT, a self-published comic that deals with the fiendishly complex Energy Charter Treaty. In the West it might seem unconventional to see such weighty topics dealt with in a comic format. But in Kellers view, the more complex the problem, the more valuable the graphic artform becomes; narrative images, she thinks, have a way of cutting through that news headlines and social media no longer can.

In these times, with one scandal chasing the next, its important to arrange stuff in relation to its history. I think comics are great for that, she tells me. Getting activists and communities up to speed on a topic with a comic instead of a pile of articles can help.

In Dawn of the ECT, Keller narrates the story of an international agreement so obscure that most mass media outlets have avoided discussing it. Yet the ECT is important: it enables companies such as oil firms to sue countries for billions of dollars in compensation in secret tribunals, often in response to government attempts to pass climate legislationlike, for example, when Italy tried to ban offshore drilling near its coastline.

Legal advocacy groups such as ClientEarth have called for the EU to abandon the ECT, saying it jeopardises Europes climate goals. Whistleblower and climate researcher Yamina Saheb, who initially worked at the body overseeing the ECT, has described it as an ecocide treaty.

In Kellers version of the story of the ECT, the heroine, a personification of the European Green Deal, exclaims either we kill this treaty, or the treaty will kill us, as a zombified monstrosity representing the energy firms looms overhead. Corporate lawyers in the guise of Mafia-esque hoodlums explain how, by using a mechanism called an investor state dispute settlement, they intend to exert a chilling effect on climate action by challenging any decision that affects an investment by the energy sector.

The complexity of the subject-matter didnt discourage Keller from illustrating it. In fact, it rather appealed to her.

Keller's Discourses of Climate Delay, released in 2021.

It was super stressful but exciting, she says. I love deep-diving into something and trying to figure out how to make it work as a story. Dawn of the ECT, Keller says, is a collage of research and bits of articles I put together in a way that hopefully make up a story that draws you in.

Its not the first time Keller has dealt with a complex climate topic: in 2021 she released Discourses of Climate Delay, a comic based on an influential academic paper of the same name. That research looked at a shifting of the fossil fuel industrys climate strategy, from simply denying the existence of climate change, to introducing delaying tactics intended to justify climate inaction. The comic version offers a visually striking breakdown of the key takeaways from the report, telling the story of how the oil industry and complicit politicians do everything in their power to prevent meaningful change.

Though largely ignored by the mass media, Discourses of Climate Delay made waves among numerous academics and activists, with university and high school climate educators employing the comic to help explain why climate inaction persists.

A freelance artist and animator, Keller, 45, is self-taught. I did apply to art school, but none wanted me, she says. She dabbled in theology for a time, but realized thats not where a queer person should be. She found associating pictures with information to be a useful memory aid, and a way to organize her ideas. Then, a story about sea level rise threatening Miami threw a switch, and she got involved with climate activist group Extinction Rebellion.

A couple years ago I still thought tech billionaires and their fearmongering about the Singularity were the biggest threat. I didn't know much about climate change, she recalls. She reveals she has a comic still in the works (already over 60 pages long) about Elon Musk, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and social Darwinism ... it turns out, even if the topic changes, its still the same billionaires getting on my nerves.

As for her influences, Keller namechecks Jessica Abel, author of Out on the Wire, a graphic novel about radio and podcasting, and Swedish illustrator Liv Strmquist. Shes also greatly influenced by U.S. author Mary Annase Heglar and the investigative journalist Amy Westervelt, who has pioneered the narrative podcast in the climate space, taking the format of non-fiction true crime and applying it to the fossil fuel industry.

Much like podcasts, Keller believes, comics can help non-specialist audiences access otherwise challenging topics in a way that seems less like hard work. But shes also found that academics have responded positively to having their work reflected back at them in a visual medium.

I don't write for a special audience, she says. But apart from activists and curious people, I think comics might be a good way for academics to give an overview of their field, or communicate it with other academics, who might be inclined to read something other than a paper in their free time. It could make interdisciplinary research fun.

Nevertheless, Keller understands her core mission as something more practical.

I hope to inspire action, she says, and understanding the problem is the first and most important step for action. I wish more creative people would start thinking about how to use accessible ways to spread the info people need in this fight for climate justice and human rights.

We have to hang in there, because none of the fights will be short or easy.

Read the original:

Why Comic Books Could Be A Powerful Weapon In The Climate Fight - Forbes

In the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, school shootings, Fathers Day feels different this year. As the national conversation has again turned to the intersection of gun access and troubled young men, we are wondering what is driving this streak of nihilism. Are boys and men in crisis? Is there something uniquely worrisome about American masculinity?

These were some of the questions bouncing around my mind when I spoke with scholar and author Warren Farrell about masculinity. Before his foray into boys and mens issues, Farrell, 78, was the only man elected to the board of the National Organization for Women three times. His commitment to feminist issues earlier in his career informed his passion to understand the experiences of men later in life.

Farrells 2018 book The Boy Crisis, which he co-wrote with John Gray, looks at why boys are falling behind girls, with an eye on the impact that absent fathers and male role models have. His work has been featured on the Dr. Phil show and Andrew Yangs podcast, and he has been a repeat guest on Jordan Petersons podcast, most recently on June 13.

We originally met months ago in his neighborhood in Mill Valley, California, just north of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge. On a balmy February afternoon, we walked alongside a meandering stream which cuts through the residential hillside bordering Muir Woods National Monument and the Pacific Ocean. Farrell took me to his church, the forest where he does some of his best thinking, and we walked under the canopy of 100-foot-tall redwoods. Here we discussed what issues are plaguing boys today and what can be done to help them.

This Q&A is a synthesis of that conversation and a recent phone interview. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Ari Blaff: Im curious to get your reaction to the recent mass shootings committed by young men. Are they connected to what you have called the boy crisis?

Warren Farrell: Weve been blaming access to guns, violence in the media, violence and video games, family values, replacement theory-style hatred (for mass shootings). And yet our daughters are exposed in the same homes with the same family values, the same access to the same guns, the same violence and the same media, the same violence and the same video games. They have similar mental illnesses, and our daughters have not been doing the killings.

Whats happening with boys is that there is a global boy crisis: boys committing suicide far more often than girls five times more often in their 20s dropping out of high school, dropping out of college more, dying from opioid overdose. All these are more than the 70 different ways that boys without fathers mostly do worse.

The difficulty is not just with boys. When boys dont do well, girls cant find good fathers (for their children) and that leads to children being raised by single mothers or divorcees.

The boy crisis resides where dads do not reside. There are about 10 causes of the boy crisis but fatherlessness, or dad deprivation, is the single biggest cause of it.

AB: You wrote an op-ed a couple of weeks back reflecting on the mass shooting in Uvalde. Is there something happening with American boys in particular? Obviously, there are instances of mass violence in Europe and even in Canada, but it doesnt seem to be the same rate or at the same frequency. Is there something about American masculinity, or a broader social crisis in American society, which is impacting boys?

WF: Well, I think theres two big things. One is the fatherlessness issue is the biggest here and in the United Kingdom. But the mass shootings are not as much in the U.K. as they are here. So it has to be more than just a fatherlessness issue. I believe that in the United States we have an addiction, and that addiction is to guns.

We also have very lax laws that a boy on his 18th birthday, without having any type of background check, was able to pick up a gun, despite having put threats on social media and showing many worrying signs of having significant problems, and none of that was detected or checked for.We have more guns in the United States than we have people. We dont have mass stabbings. We have mass shootings. The more powerful the gun, the more the boy has an ability to express his anger, and behind almost all anger is vulnerability. What we need to understand is that boys who hurt us are almost always boys who hurt.

When youre talking guns, you alienate the conservative community. However, when youre talking dads and fathers, the liberals are not very responsive. Were caught between a liberal and a conservative rock and a hard place. Very few peoples minds are opened to both issues.

Girls are not doing the mass shootings. And not all boys are the problem. It is more frequently the fatherless boys more than any other group of boys.

We need to pay attention to to three things. One is the boy crisis. No. 2 is the fatherlessness issue. And No. 3 is guns as the magnifying issue.

AB: How do you find your message is being received?

WF: Well, the people that interview me, if they are conservative, they want me to either minimize or leave out the gun issue. They are OK with my saying that guns are the third thing down the list and serve as a the magnifier for underlying issues. But if I start to talk about it in a more in-depth way, then they begin to get nervous. They get me back to families and fathers.

With liberals, I went out to interview the Democratic presidential candidates (in 2019) and there were a few people, like Andrew Yang and John Hickenlooper, who really understood. The campaign managers were not interested in having the candidates make boys and mens issues a feature of the campaign because they were afraid of alienating their feminist bases. They were also afraid that saying the father is important would alienate and offend single mothers.

AB: With Fathers Day upon us, what message do you have for parents?

WF: We really need to understand what I discussed in The Boy Crisis about the nine differences between dad-style parenting and mom-style parenting. Children do best when they have what I call checks-and-balance parenting which recognizes both mother and father communicating in a loving and respectful way.

Both mother and father bring unique parenting styles. Mom-style parenting focuses on protecting the child and being sensitive to the childs needs. The importance of the dad-style parenting is enforcing boundaries. From that, children learn to postpone gratification, to fulfill their dreams.

AB: I find it fascinating that your background complements the journey of gender equality. You began as an advocate for feminist issues in the 50s and 60s when it wasnt popular by any means and then expanded to mens rights and the importance of fathers. But for that, you get a lot of flak. Unlike feminist activism, mens rights activism appears to be a thankless pursuit. Does that surprise you?

WF: When I started speaking at colleges and universities, Id hand out these yellow pads throughout the audience. This was before computers and people would sign up to see whether they would want to join either a mens group or a womens group. I would get together with all the people that were interested, often until 1 in the morning. Id teach them how to run mens groups and womens groups and then keep in contact with them afterwards.

As I started paying attention to both of the mens group in New York, and then also to the feedback from the other mens groups and womens groups, I began to incorporate some of their insights into my presentations. It was at that point that my standing ovations became mixed standing and sitting. Then they became not mixed at all. Just sitting.

At the beginning, when I was just speaking from a feminist perspective, I got about four or five speaking engagements in referrals per event. Whereas after I started incorporating the male point of view, I would get one or zero referrals. I started to see that if I spoke about the male experience, or what was happening with boys, that I would soon be more and more unpopular.

AB: Fatherlessness is a big issue but does flow downstream from our cultural values. How would you reverse that trend?

WF: First, it involves getting women to understand that were all in the same family boat; when you focus on only one sex winning, both sexes lose. As parents, we want our daughters to have a man who is worthy of her love and respect. Someone who is able to have his act together enough to be able to take care of her and do his part in taking care of the children.

Historically speaking, every generation has had its wars, and during those wars, if Uncle Sam said, We need you. You are necessary to kill off Nazis, men signed up and came forward when they were told they were needed.

We have had to tell males now that they are no longer needed so much to kill and be killed, but to love and be loved. Women need their support, their skills, their checks, their balances to help with protecting and raising children. We need them to be father warriors now. The real warriors in the future are the ones who share the responsibilities and joys of raising children.

Original post:

What does fatherlessness, boy crisis have to do with mass shootings? - Deseret News

University of Ottawa law and epidemiology professor Amir Attaran is facing international backlash for shaming a maskless United Airlines flight attendant on social media.

On Saturday, Attaran posted a picture of a flight attendant on a United flight from Ottawa to Chicago and accused the airline of breaking the law because masks are required on all flights out of Canada.

Transport Canada says masks are mandatory on all flights to and from Canada, a policy that has created confusion given that masking is not required on planes in America.

Canada is not the USA, you f***ers, said Attaran, who added that United should be banned from operating flights to Canada for not following the Trudeau governments mask mandates.

Attarans online conduct was quickly criticized by Canadian and international figures from all sides of the political spectrum.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw called the University of Ottawa professors actions creepy, and suggested he should not fly if he cant handle seeing someones face.

Pushaw also called out Uniteds response to Attaran and accused the airline of throwing its employees under the bus. United had thanked Attaran for bringing the issue to their attention.

Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld and BlazeTv podcast host Elijah Schaffer also reacted to Attarans tweets.

Progressive personalities including Huffington Post contributor Yashar Ali and former The Young Turks correspondent Emma Vigeland also criticized Attarans actions.

Meanwhile, former University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson reacted to Attarans tweets by calling him a pathetic ranfink and a horrible piece of work.

Attaran responded to Petersons criticism by claiming he was a baby. He also challenged him to a public debate in Ottawa.

This is not the first time that the University of Ottawa professor has caused controversy for his conduct on social media.

Attaran, whose Twitter bio states that he wrecks grifters, anti-vaxxers & scientific illiterates, has also come under fire for comments he made about unvaccinated people.

Attaran previously called those who do not believe in Covid vaccinations racist, low life trash, losers, stupid, villiage idiots, homophobic and anti-Semetic.

Were asking readers, like you, to make a contribution in support of True Norths fact-based, independent journalism.

Unlike the mainstream media, True North isnt getting a government bailout. Instead, we depend on the generosity of Canadians like you.

How can a media outlet be trusted to remain neutral and fair if theyre beneficiaries of a government handout? We dont think they can.

This is why independent media in Canada is more important than ever. If youre able, please make a tax-deductible donation to True North today. Thank you so much.

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University of Ottawa professor faces international backlash for shaming maskless flight attendant | The - The Paradise News

Deciding what to wear is hard enough. But try doing it while fighting breast cancer at the same time.

Yet thats the reality for so many women and its hardly easy. Thankfully, one organization has stepped up to provide a little bit of help.

The Evening Star Quilters, a Mineola-based not-for-profit quilting organization, donated 50 seatbelt covers to Dress for Recovery a clothing bank at the Chabad Center for Jewish Life, which serves an area that includes Merrick, Bellmore and Wantagh.

Dress for Recovery was founded by Loraine Alderman of East Meadow back in late 2020. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer the year before, and found that when patients faced cancer treatments like mastectomies, they often must wear surgical drains to aid recovery.

Dress for Recovery provides large shirts with ample space for the drains, as well as various zippers for doctors and nurses to access chest ports for chemotherapy.

Theres not one store in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut where you can walk in and buy this type of clothing, Alderman said. Theyre only available online, and theyre expensive. We are the only place where people can come and get everything free of charge.

You need the shirts that open up in the front and have the pocket for the drains. When you go into treatment, if you have a port, its helpful to have shirts that have a zipper for the port opening to allow access to treatments.

But its not just clothes cancer patients have to worry about. Its wearing just about anything including seatbelts.

While theyre great for keeping drivers and passengers safe in a car, seatbelts tend to rub against a patients torso, Alderman explained, which can cause pain and discomfort on surgery wounds, radiation burns, and raw chemotherapy ports. Seatbelt covers usually a small, fabric wrap that goes around a seatbelt offer protection.

Chemotherapy ports are normally found on someones chest, and are the approximate size of a nickel. Because they are attached to the main artery, Alderman says these ports require a lot of protection.

Most of them are under the skin theyre inside of you, added Aldermans husband, Bill. So, if (a seatbelt) pushes on it, it really, really hurts.

Catherine Peterson, a member of Evening Star, developed the quilting pattern for the seatbelt covers that could be completed by any of its members. From that, 50 of these covers were made.

They really picked out beautiful material, Alderman said. The craftsmanship was just amazing, I was blown away by what they did. It just shows the person thats receiving it that care went into it.

Petersons quilters kept in mind personal preferences when making the covers, using a number of colors and patterned fabrics.

I was thinking, when we were making these, you want to have something that appeals to a wide variety of people, she said.

When someone seeks out Dress for Recovery for help, Alderman stops to take the time to meet with them.

We let people choose what they feel most comfortable with, she said. Theres so many things that are out of your control when youre going through this whole process. Its all these little things that can chip away a little bit of the stress.

Since founding of Dress For Recovery, Alderman has seen the impact the clothing bank has had on those making the long journey through cancer.

When youre going through treatment, you sit there for many hours and you have a lot of time on your hands, Alderman said. We believe that you have to pay things forward, and we couldnt believe that there wasnt one store where you can walk in and buy this clothing. We tried to figure out how to make something good out of what was going on.

Dress for Recovery is part of the Chabads Circle of Hope initiative, which helps individuals and families coping with breast cancer and other illnesses. Services are offered to everyone, regardless of religious beliefs.

Both groups also provide counseling, wigs, food and financial assistance for those facing breast cancer treatment.

With the donation of the seatbelt covers, Dress For Recovery can allocate resources to getting more shirts and other items. Working toward raising $20,000 for its own, designated workspace at the Chabad Center, every donation helps.

I wish this was around when I was going through treatment, Alderman said of her program Dress for Recovery. We want to let people know that were here and everything is free of charge its really about paying things forward and just trying to help other people.

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Dress for Recovery, which helps women with breast cancer, gets useful donation - liherald.com

The Native Economic and Financial Education Empowerment (NEFEE) program is a Federal Reserve System effort led by the St. Louis Fed to reach a historically underserved population with economic and financial education. We support the prosperity of Native nations by providing economic and financial education in partnership with Native partners and other Federal Reserve banks who offer economic and financial education programming.

The Native Economic and Financial Education Empowerment program combines the public service mission of the Federal Reserve, its commitment to serving underserved populations, and its expertise in economic education. Since 2018, we have provided economic and personal finance education for tribal nations and Native communities and organizations throughout the country.

We believe economic and personal finance knowledge helps foster resilient and healthy individuals, families and communities. We respect the unique challenges that tribal nations face as sovereign governments to enhance the financial well-being of their people.

Our core work includes partnering with tribal nations to provide economic and financial education programming to their members and citizens. We offer in-person and virtual programming for Native educators; develop economics and personal finance curricula for use in classrooms and youth programs; and conduct research to measure the efficacy of our programs.

We are dedicated to increasing opportunities for members of Native communities to develop financial skills, especially for Native youth. Investing in education for youth can have significant returns. Not only can it benefit individual young people and their families, it can also help develop youth to be future leaders and contributors to their communities by preparing them to make important financial decisions.

We believe greater access to economic and financial education helps advance a more inclusive economy for all.

We have extensive experience in teaching economics, personal finance, curricula development and conducting outreach to underserved communities. We provide high-quality resources and professional development to improve instruction. Our resources and professional development programming are all free.

In its work with tribal nations and Native communities and organizations, NEFEE incorporates personal finance and economic education into a broad array of programs across generations, including programs for:

We acknowledge the importance of language and culture in education and value opportunities to highlight them to better engage Native students and foster a more inclusive learning environment. We partner with tribal nations to incorporate their Native language and culture within curricula in a variety of formats.

Megan Cruz leads the NEFEE outreach effort.

megan.cruz@stls.frb.org

Megan Cruz

The Federal Reserve Board announced on Oct. 13, 2021, that it joined the Central Bank Network for Indigenous Inclusion, which fosters ongoing dialogue, research and education to raise awareness of economic and financial issues and opportunities for Indigenous economies.

The Boards participation is supported by the Native Economic and Financial Education Empowerment (NEFEE) program at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve of Minneapolis. Along with Indigenous partners, the network is a collaboration with Te Ptea Matua (the Reserve Bank of New Zealand), the Bank of Canada and the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Continued here:
Native Economic and Financial Education Empowerment (NEFEE) - Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

SAN DIEGO, June 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Out-of-state applicants for rental properties increased 42% from 2020 to 2021, according to a new analysis of TransUnion (NYSE: TRU) data. In that same period, rental applications in rural areas increased 28%, while urban rental application volume rose just 10%. The primary driver of these trends appears to be rising housing costs and the widespread availability of remote work, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic.

TransUnion is presenting its findings at the National Apartment Associations Annual Apartmentalize conference. They are also available in the Quick Guide, How COVID-19 and Remote Work is Reshaping U.S. Rental Demand.

With remote work firmly in the norm, weve seen renters actively seeking new locations that better suit their budgets and lifestyles, said Maitri Johnson, vice president of tenant and employment screening at TransUnion. While many are going out-of-state to sunnier environments, were also seeing a preference for rural areas and exurbs that have more space and a lower cost of living, but also a relative proximity to cities and airports.

Texas saw the largest increase between 2020 and 2021, with more than 310,000 new residents. Meanwhile, New York had the highest decrease, losing more than 319,000 residents. Generally, the cross-state migration patterns show more people leaving the Rust Belt and Northeast in favor of the Southern Atlantic and Mountain states, as well as Arizona and Texas1.

Affordability an issue

Overall occupancy of U.S. rentals reached a record 98% in January 20222. This may have been driven in part by an influx of homeowners who capitalized on their home equity by selling while housing prices were at an all-time high, and renting until valuations come back down. When looking at rental applications from 2020-2021, there was a 37% increase in applicants who had sold their home within the past year and a 16% increase among applicants with an outstanding mortgage.

The higher costs for home purchases simultaneously kept many younger adults from becoming first-time homebuyers. However, the same inflationary trends have impacted affordability in the rental market as well. Rent prices increased 14% between 2020 and 2021 while the median income of applicants has only increased 6% over that same time. Predictably, delinquencies on rent payments have increased. Whereas on-time rent payments were at 96% in January 2020, they had dropped to 92% at the end of 20213.

Demand is clearly very strong right now, which is all the more reason for a thorough rental application screening process with an emphasis on income and debt ratios and their effect on affordability, said Johnson.

Incoming immigration boom

There are signs that the housing market is cooling down as the Fed has bumped up interest rates several times already this year, which means renters can expect to continue renting until economic stability is regained. That said, TransUnion analysis suggests immigrants may well buoy the rental markets high demand over the long term.

Citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Joint Centers for Housing Studies of Harvard University, the report provides highlights about this populations participation in the rental market.

In 2022, immigrants represent more than 14% of the total U.S. population. That percentage is expected to grow through 2060, when the U.S. Census Bureau projects immigrants to represent 17% of the nations population4.

Because people who immigrate to the U.S. tend to remain renters for long periods, there is likely a compounding effect to this sustained increase, said Johnson. The current demand resulting from the housing market may subside as home prices come down, but this population will likely keep rental demand elevated over the coming decades.

As immigrants navigate the housing market, they may have questions about how credit works in the United States. This TransUnion blog answers common questions about building credit as an immigrant, including tips on how to establish a credit history.

Tips for renters

As with owning a home, renting can have an impact on consumers credit. For starters, a rental application may include a credit check. Depending on the service your landlord uses, this may result in a hard inquiry on your credit report, which can cause a temporary dip in your score, said Margaret Poe, head of consumer credit education at TransUnion.

However, consumers should know that monthly rent payments could be a boon to their credit health, as well. Payment history is one of the major credit score factors, so if your landlord reports your monthly rent to the credit reporting agencies and youre consistently making on-time payments, the history of that account will reflect positively on your report, said Poe.

For more information about the research, read the Quick Guide, How COVID-19 and Remote Work is Reshaping U.S. Rental Demand.

About TransUnion (NYSE:TRU)

TransUnion is a global information and insights company that makes trust possible in the modern economy. We do this by providing an actionable picture of each person so they can be reliably represented in the marketplace. As a result, businesses and consumers can transact with confidence and achieve great things. We call this Information for Good.A leading presence in more than 30 countries across five continents, TransUnion provides solutions that help create economic opportunity, great experiences and personal empowerment for hundreds of millions of people.

http://www.transunion.com/business

Originally posted here:
Renter Migration Patterns Drive 42% Increase in Out-of-State Applicants as Renters Seek ... - The Bakersfield Californian