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NEW – Latest PHE report shows the Covid-19 vaccines are INCREASING the risk of hospitalisation and death due to Covid-19 significantly

<p><strong>The latest Public Health England technical briefing on Covid-19 variants of concern has been published and it reveals that up to the 2nd August 2021, 65% of all alleged Covid-19 deaths since February 2021 have been people who were vaccinated against the disease.</strong></p>
<p>The report, which is the <span><a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1009243/Technical_Briefing_20.pdf">20th update to be released,</a></span> also shows that the risk of hospitalisation and death is astronomically higher if you have been fully vaccinated and catch the SARS-CoV-2 virus.</p>
<p>According to the <span><a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1009243/Technical_Briefing_20.pdf">PHE report,</a></span> 300,010 cases of the delta Covid-19 variant have been confirmed since the 1st February 2021.</p>
<p>Of these roughly 50% were people who had not been vaccinated against Covid-19, with a total of 151,054 cases being recorded in the past 7 months.</p>
<p>Roughly 8% were people who’d had one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine less than 21 days prior to testing positive, with a total of 24,018 cases being recorded.</p>
<p>Roughly 15% were people who’d had one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine more than 21 days prior to testing positive, with a total of 46,089 cases being recorded.</p>
<p>And roughly 15% were people who were fully vaccinated prior to testing positive, with a total of 47,008 cases.</p>
<p>In all people who’d had at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine account for 39% of all confirmed cases of the Delta Covid-19 variant since February 1st 2021 up to 2nd August 2021.</p>
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<p>However, the Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission. This was recently confirmed in a document published (<a href="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/08/03/sage-document-admits-the-c19-vaccines-will-lead-to-a-variant-that-kills-35-of-people-because-the-vaccines-do-not-prevent-infection-or-transmission/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank"><strong>see here</strong></a>) by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), in which they said research should now concentrate on producing a vaccine that prevents transmission and infection due to the current vaccines not preventing infection in most people.</p>
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<p>You’ll have noticed above how SAGE stated they “feel that current vaccines are excellent for reducing the risk of hospital admission”. Unfortunately for them, “feeling” something isn’t enough, as the Public Health England data does not support that “feeling”.</p>
<p>The <span><a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1009243/Technical_Briefing_20.pdf">report</a></span> shows that since the 1st February 2021 out of the 151,054 people infected with Covid-19 who had not been vaccinated, a total of 2,960 of the group ended up being admitted to hospital. This translates to 1.95% of all confirmed cases in the unvaccinated group up to the 2nd August 2021.</p>
<p>Since the 1st February 2021 out of the 24,018 people infected with Covid-19 who’d had one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine less than 21 days prior to their confirmed infection, a total of 234 of the group ended up being admitted to hospital. This translates to 0.97% of all infections in this group up to the 2nd August 2021.</p>
<p>Since the 1st February 2021 out of the 46,089 people infected with Covid-19 who’d had one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine more than 21 days prior to their confirmed infection, a total of 528 people ended up being admitted to hospital.. This translates to 1.14% of all infection in this group up to the 2nd August 2021.</p>
<p>Finally, since the 1st February 2021 out of the 47,008 people infected with Covid-19 who were fully vaccinated, a total of 1,355 of the group ended up being admitted to hospital. This translates to 2.882% of all cases in the fully vaccinated group.</p>
<p>This means a much higher percentage of people are being hospitalised after being infected with Covid-19 once they are fully vaccinated, compared to if they have not had a single dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at all.</p>
<p>The Covid-19 vaccines are meant to reduce the risk of hospitalisation by up to 95%. The Public Health England data is showing us that the Covid-19 vaccines actually <strong>increase</strong> the risk of hospitalisation by 48%.</p>
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<p>But perhaps SAGE’s “feelings” are justified in terms of the Covid-19 vaccine reducing the risk of death?</p>
<p>Well the <span><a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1009243/Technical_Briefing_20.pdf">Public Health England report</a></span> shows us that since the 1st February 2021, out of the 151,054 cases and 2,960 hospitalisations of the unvaccinated group, a total of 253 people have sadly died. This translates to 0.167% of cases and 8.54% of hospitalisations within the unvaccinated group up to the 2nd August 2021.</p>
<p>Since the 1st February 2021 out of the 24,018 people infected with Covid-19 who’d had one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine less than 21 days prior to their confirmed infection, a total of 10 people have sadly died. This translates to 0.04% of all cases and 4.2% of all hospitalisations within this group up to the 2nd August 2021.</p>
<p>Since the 1st February 2021 out of the 46,089 people infected with Covid-19 who’d had one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine more than 21 days prior to their confirmed infection, a total of 69 people have sadly died. This translates to 0.15% of all cases and 13% of all hospitalisations within this group up to the 2nd August 2021.</p>
<p>Finally, since the 1st February 2021 out of the 47,008 people infected with Covid-19 who were fully vaccinated, a total of 402 people sadly died. This translates to 0.85% of all cases and 29.6% of all hospitalisations within the fully vaccinated group.</p>
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<p>This means a much higher percentage of people are dying after being infected with Covid-19 and after being hospitalised with Covid-19 once they are fully vaccinated, compared to if they have not had a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine at all.</p>
<p>The Public Health England data shows that rather than the Covid-19 vaccines reducing the risk of death due to Covid-19 by 95% when exposed to the Covid-19 virus, they in fact increase the risk of death by 431.25% when exposed to the Covid-19 virus.</p>
<p>It also shows that the risk of death once hospitalised with Covid-19 if fully vaccinated increases by 262.5%.</p>
<p>The Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent infection and they do not prevent transmission, this is a fact. Even SAGE have officially stated this in their <span><a href="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/08/03/sage-document-admits-the-c19-vaccines-will-lead-to-a-variant-that-kills-35-of-people-because-the-vaccines-do-not-prevent-infection-or-transmission/">recent published paper</a></span>. They are supposed to reduce the risk of hospitalisation and death when exposed to the Covid-19 virus, but the Public Health England data clearly shows the vaccines are having the opposite effect and are actually increasing the risk of hospitalisation and death significantly.</p>
<p>Yet for some reason authorities in the United Kingdom have decided to implement a <a href="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/07/26/there-is-a-coordinated-effort-worldwide-to-bring-in-a-digital-identity-and-social-credit-system/"><span>vaccine passport system</span></a> from the Autumn, enshrine a <span><a href="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/08/05/no-jab-no-job-breaches-uk-law-its-time-to-save-the-carers-savethecarers-careforcarers/">no jab, no job policy in law for carers</a></span> – despite the jabs not preventing transmission, and have outrageously decided to start giving the <span><a href="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/08/04/theyre-coming-for-the-children-jcvi-recommends-children-are-given-the-covid-19-jab-despite-the-fact-it-is-killing-children-in-the-usa/">Covid-19 vaccines to children</a></span>, despite their risk of hospitalisation and death being so small that the number is negligible.</p>
<p>The evidence shows that the Covid-19 vaccines are either not working, or they are making recipients worse – possibly due to antibody-dependent enhancement which the world was warned about.</p>
<p>We are in the middle of Summer so at the moment the number of deaths are low, yet 65% of deaths since the 1st February are people who had been vaccinated. Therefore, the evidence suggests this winter is going to be an incredibly difficult one for an extraordinary amount of people.</p>
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<p>On 22nd July 2021, The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) …</p>
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<p>A report produced by Oxford University and Imperial College London for the …</p>
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<p>Dr Mike Yeadon warned that the Covid-19 vaccine could render women infertile. …</p>
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<h3 class="jp-relatedposts-headline"><em>Related</em></h3>
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source <a href="https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/08/06/new-latest-phe-report-shows-the-covid-19-vaccines-are-increasing-the-risk-of-hospitalisation-and-death-due-to-covid-19-significantly/">https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/08/06/new-latest-phe-report-shows-the-covid-19-vaccines-are-increasing-the-risk-of-hospitalisation-and-death-due-to-covid-19-significantly/</a>

revolution NEW – Latest PHE report shows the Covid-19 vaccines are INCREASING the risk of hospitalisation and death due to Covid-19 significantly

The latest Public Health England technical briefing on Covid-19 variants of concern has been published and it reveals that up to the 2nd Aug...

The SEC greenlights a plan to make company boards more diverse

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/S0LjyxREjZa3c66D7oMIRXHA45Y=/0x764:5616x3704/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22329266/GettyImages_637920192.jpg" /></div>
<p>The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/statement-from-nasdaq-on-secs-approval-of-board-diversity-disclosure-listing-rule">approved</a> a Nasdaq <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/nasdaq-to-advance-diversity-through-new-proposed-listing-requirements-2020-12-01">proposal</a> that could make company boards — and, by extension, the companies themselves — more diverse. The rule requires companies listed on its exchange to report their board diversity and have on their board — or at least explain why they don’t have — at least one person who identifies as a woman and one person who identifies as an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ person.</p>
<p>After a national reckoning in the summer of 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests around the country, public and private companies alike <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-board-challenge-launches-pledge-for-us-boards-of-directors-to-add-a-black-director-within-one-year-301126074.html">vowed to add Black directors</a> to their corporate boards. The Nasdaq rule is one of several promising developments that suggest greater board diversity could actually happen. There are also other ways companies could hurry along the process of diversifying their boards.</p>
<p>Investment companies <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-10/blackrock-plans-to-push-companies-on-racial-diversity-in-2021">BlackRock</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/2e512c76-4733-4821-8425-136ab9b98426">State Street</a> are asking companies they invest in to report their board diversity and improve it. Most notably, California <a href="https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/10/10/new-law-requires-diversity-on-boards-of-california-based-companies/">passed a law</a> requiring businesses headquartered there to have at least one board member from an underrepresented community by the end of 2021.</p>
<p>The diversity of a company’s board is important for a number of reasons.</p>
<p>A company’s board of directors is in charge of representing shareholder interests and making sure the company’s financials are accurate as well as picking the company’s CEO and holding that person to task. The board sets the tone for the whole company, and its members serve as an example of what the company stands for.</p>
<p>“Employees, customers, and investors are diverse,” Nell Minow, vice chair of Value Edge Advisors, a consulting firm specializing in corporate governance issues, said. “If the people playing this essential role are not diverse, how are they going to know what they need to know to do their job? They aren’t.”</p>
<p>Indeed, a board affects how a company functions and how well it performs. A number of studies, including ones by <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/delivering-through-diversity#">McKinsey & Company</a>, <a href="https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/how-diverse-leadership-teams-boost-innovation">BCG</a>, and <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/us/articles/4209_Diversity-and-inclusion-revolution/DI_Diversity-and-inclusion-revolution.pdf">Deloitte</a>, have shown a correlation between diverse leadership and a company’s financial performance. Stocks for socially responsible companies that abide by certain criteria for environmental, social, and corporate governance, or ESG, are <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-28/esg-investing-thrives-amid-coronavirus-pandemic">outperforming their peers</a>.</p>
<p>“Now that we know diverse boards perform better financially, they have a fiduciary responsibility to diversify,” Stephanie Lampkin, founder and CEO of diversity analytics and hiring software company <a href="https://blendoor.com/">Blendoor</a>, told Recode.</p>
<p>Despite all this, boards are too often woefully white and male. Nasdaq found that last year <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/business/dealbook/nasdaq-diversity-boards.html">75 percent of companies listed on the exchange</a> wouldn’t have met its proposal’s arguably easy diversity requirements.</p>
<p>Women hold only about a quarter of board seats at the biggest 1,000 companies in the US, according to data from the beginning of 2021 from corporate governance data firm <a href="https://www.equilar.com/">Equilar</a>. While there’s slight variation by industry, it’s uniformly low.</p>
<p>The same goes for ethnic diversity. Board representation of Black, Latinx, and Asian people is typically way lower than their representation in the population at large.</p>
<p>And while diversity has ticked up, change has been very slow-going.</p>
<p>Many companies have made excuses for why their boards aren’t diverse, and their reasoning generally boils down to a couple of things: 1) It takes time. 2) There aren’t enough diverse people in the pool. Fortunately, both those problems are solvable.</p>
<p>Companies often point to the fact that they can add diverse candidates only when board seats open up. However, there’s nothing obligating board members to keep nominating themselves at the end of their typically one- to three-year terms. Of course, having a seat on a board comes with a lot of perks, such as pay and stock options, so board members are loath to give that up.</p>
<p>So instead of waiting for members to leave, companies could potentially add more board seats and fill those with diverse candidates. Companies could also install tenure limits to accomplish the same goal. The average director tenure is currently around eight years, down from nine and a half years in 2015, according to Equilar. Limits could ensure more turnover.</p>
<p>Then there’s the pipeline problem: Companies often look for CEOs and former CEOs to fill board seats. The chief executive role is a rarified position that also suffers from a lack of diversity, so using a feeder pool known for that is a bad place to start. Instead, companies should continue to look further afield for new board members.</p>
<p>Broadening their base of board candidates to include general counsels, law school professors, heads of charities, cybersecurity experts, and business school professors, among others, will lead to greater diversity of thought as well as of gender and race.</p>
<p>Otherwise, what’s the point? In Minow’s words: “Why not just have one person on the board if they’re all coming from the same place?”</p>
<p>There’s huge moral and financial pressure on companies right now to diversify their boards. Some are making progress, but it might take more systematic change before we get to more diverse, inclusive corporate boards from the companies that promised it last summer.</p>
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<br />
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22248351/corporate-board-diversity-nasdaq-black-lives-matter">https://www.vox.com/recode/22248351/corporate-board-diversity-nasdaq-black-lives-matter</a>

vox The SEC greenlights a plan to make company boards more diverse

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday approved a Nasdaq proposal that could make company boards — and, by extension, the compa...

“People do not trust that Facebook is a healthy ecosystem”

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7JRT5tW0eq4aUNv4W1kudctUo_I=/0x0:4500x2356/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21852141/1227832477.jpg.jpg" /></div>
<p>New York University researcher Laura Edelson is at the center of the latest major Facebook controversy over the misinformation that’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/22/18177076/social-media-facebook-far-right-authoritarian-populism">eroding our democracy</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/7/15/22578924/surgeon-general-vivek-murthy-misinformation-covid-vaccine-social-media-public-health-threat">encouraging Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy</a>.</p>
<p>Earlier this week, Facebook abruptly <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-cuts-off-access-for-nyu-research-into-political-ad-targeting-11628052204">shut down the personal Facebook accounts and research tools</a> of Edelson and two of her colleagues at the NYU Ad Observatory, which studies political advertisements and misinformation on the platform.</p>
<p>Facebook says the Ad Observatory was violating people’s privacy by tracking some users’ data without their permission through its Ad Observer browser extension tool. Edelson denies this and said that her team only collected data from people who volunteered to share their information. Facebook’s move drew condemnation from <a href="https://knightcolumbia.org/content/researchers-nyu-knight-institute-condemn-facebooks-effort-to-squelch-independent-research-about-misinformation">free speech advocates</a> and <a href="https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/blog?ID=525BE314-789C-424F-A16E-CDE78D21CB1E">lawmakers</a>, who accused Facebook of squelching independent research. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/05/facebook-nyu-ftc-dispute/">FTC</a> criticized Facebook’s decision, saying the company’s initial rationale was “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/05/facebook-nyu-ftc-dispute/">inaccurate</a>.”</p>
<p>And Edelson says Facebook is trying to stifle her work, which has shown that Facebook has <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-biden-election-ads">failed to disclose who pays for some political ads</a> and that Facebook <a href="https://medium.com/cybersecurity-for-democracy/far-right-news-sources-on-facebook-more-engaging-e04a01efae90">users engage with misinformation</a> more than other kinds of information on the platform. “It doesn’t like what we’re finding, and I think it is taking measures to silence us,” Edelson told Recode in her first in-depth interview since the accounts were suspended.</p>
<p>In response to Edelson’s claims that Facebook is silencing her research, Joe Osborne, a spokesperson for Facebook, sent the following statement, in part:</p>
<p>“This doesn’t comport with the facts. We work with researchers around the world, and value work led by NYU’s team. That’s why we went above and beyond to explain these violations to them and offered them an additional privacy-safe dataset containing targeting information for 1.65 million political ads.”</p>
<p>But Facebook’s effective shutdown of the Ad Observatory raises larger questions about whether the company is trying to limit outside interrogation of the company’s business practices in the name of protecting its users’ privacy. At the same time, the social media network has good reason to be worried about privacy as it faces intense regulatory scrutiny for past missteps that led to it having to pay the <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-imposes-5-billion-penalty-sweeping-new-privacy-restrictions">largest penalty</a> ever imposed by the Federal Trade Commission.</p>
<p>Edelson is one of several researchers who has complained that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/technology/facebook-misinformation-blind-spot.html">Facebook doesn’t share enough data</a> with outside researchers to effectively study the scale and impact of misinformation.</p>
<p>Recode’s interview with Edelson, below, has been edited for clarity and length.</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>I want to ask about Facebook’s rationale for banning you. [Facebook] said the project was tracking users’ information without their consent. Can you explain what your understanding is? Is it true that you were tracking any users’ information without their consent?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>We collect ads, and we collect ad tracking-associated information. What Facebook is saying is that those advertiser names — which we do collect, to be really clear — are private user information. And I think, honestly, this is just a point where Facebook and we disagree. We do not think that advertiser names and ads are private information.</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>So Facebook disagrees with you on the matter that they consider advertisers to be users. But putting that aside, Facebook says Ad Observer was also collecting some user data, not just advertiser data — like comments. What do you say to that?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>That’s not true. We do not collect anything other than ads. We do not collect any private information. We do not collect user comments. We actually take great pains to be very careful about ad targeting information [so] that we only collect targeting fields that we know do not contain private information.</p>
<p>If there’s a field we don’t recognize, we don’t collect it. And we take all of those steps because we take user privacy extremely seriously. User privacy is our North Star. And that’s actually why, in addition to everything I’ve just said, <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/news/why-facebooks-claims-about-the-ad-observer-are-wrong/">Mozilla has done a security and privacy review</a> of Ad Observer. And they agree with us that Ad Observer is safe, and it protects user privacy.</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>It really gets down to this issue of trust, right? Who do we trust to study Facebook? Do we trust groups like yours? Or do we trust Facebook on how to do this the right way while preserving people’s privacy?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>I think this is where I try not to ask people to just trust me. I don’t think that’s a fair thing to ask. I show my work. I make my data public; I make my code public. I try to have other people review my work. Facebook is the one saying, “Trust us.” Facebook is the one saying, “Don’t look behind this curtain.”</p>
<p>Facebook has disputed my research on engagement and other folks’ research on engagement with this information by saying that we don’t have all the data. … But they don’t actually make that data available publicly. So I don’t think that it’s fair for either me or Facebook to just say, “Oh, you should trust us.” But I feel like I have laid my cards on the table. I have been as transparent as I know how to be with the public. And Facebook hasn’t.</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>Facebook has public data it releases to everyone about its ads through <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/technology/facebook-ad-library.html">the ad library program</a>. And they have other special programs for researchers as well. Why is that not sufficient for you? Why did you start this project to have users opt in and let you in under the hood to see more information about the ads they’re seeing?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>So there are two big questions that we think Ad Observer is the best way to answer. First, I really do want to give Facebook some credit here. Facebook honestly makes a ton of information about political ads available. And we applaud them for that. But what they don’t do is make information about non-political ads available to researchers.</p>
<p>The other big thing that we get from Ad Observer is [ad] targeting data. I think one thing that we realized early on is that ad targeting is really important for understanding how advertisers are trying to get to particularly vulnerable populations. And so in terms of identifying <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/21574293/social-media-latino-voters-2020-election">misinformation that is aimed at those vulnerable populations,</a> ad targeting is a really important part of that overall picture. And Facebook does not make ad targeting data available through the ad library API.</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>Would it be easier for you if Facebook just published [ad targeting data] on its own and you didn’t have to build this browser extension?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>Absolutely. You know, I’ve said this before, and I mean it: If Facebook made information about all ads available through their API, and if they made targeting information available for all political ads, we wouldn’t need to do this project. I would love to close up shop and go home, to be honest.</p>
<p>(API stands for Application Programming Interface. An API is an interface that allows two applications to communicate with each other to access data. Some researchers have been calling on Facebook to share the APIs they share with advertisers so these researchers can collect more information about how companies target and display ads to certain people.)</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>Do you think that Facebook is penalizing you more harshly than other groups for allegedly violating its Terms of Service or privacy parameters?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>I don’t want to get into reading Facebook’s mind here. But I will say that we are not the only browser extension that allows users to crowdsource ad observations. There are several others, most notably probably Who Targets Me, which is based out of the UK. The one thing I know of that we do differently is [that] we do publish our data as well.</p>
<p>(Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne sent the following statement in response to concerns that it is enforcing its rules on some data collection tools but not others:</p>
<p>“We enforce neutrally across the board, regardless of the publicly-expressed intentions of those in violation. The enforcement actions we took against these researchers were consistent with our normal enforcement practices in these kinds of circumstances.”)</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>On Tuesday night, after news broke that Facebook had revoked your and your colleagues’ access, you wrote that Facebook was silencing your research because it calls attention to problems on its platform and that Facebook “should not have veto power over who is allowed to study them.” What do you mean by that? And can you explain this idea that the company should not have veto power?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>Facebook is saying that their hands are tied, that they have to do this in the name of user privacy. It just seems to me that if they actually believed that, they would have taken some action against Ad Observer, our browser extension. But they didn’t do that. They didn’t sue us. They didn’t try to block our extension technologically. They didn’t petition the browser extension stores to have our extension removed. Instead, they took our ability away to research their platform in other ways. So to me, their words just don’t match their actions.</p>
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<aside><q>“[W]e are racing against the clock to better understand ... why this is going wrong so badly”</q></aside>
</div>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>You’re not the first person who has questioned if Facebook is trying to silence research that it disagrees with. Do you think this is a bigger issue? Have you seen other examples of this?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>Frankly, yes. I think that the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data.html">public hand-wringing over CrowdTangle</a> a few weeks ago was just another instance of this. [For] researchers who have been looking into how [Facebook] magnifies certain forms of content, it doesn’t like what we’re finding, and I think it is taking measures to silence us.</p>
<p>(CrowdTangle is a data analytics tool owned by Facebook that has been used to show how right-wing media pages gain high levels of shares and “Likes” on Facebook. Some Facebook executives were reportedly considering limiting outside access to CrowdTangle due to concerns that its data was not portraying the company in a good light, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data.html">according to recent reporting in the New York Times</a>. Facebook disputes this.)</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>Why is it important for this type of research to continue?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>I think we have reached a point where most people do not trust that Facebook is a healthy ecosystem. I think there’s pretty <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/poll-americans-give-social-media-clear-thumbs-down-n991086">substantial poll data</a> to show that. And I think we’ve reached a point where disinformation online is having really serious impacts in the world at large. Look at the problems with <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-dozen-test-facebooks-twitters-ability-to-curb-vaccine-hoaxes">vaccine disinformation</a>, look at the fact that there are still millions of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/politics/poll-qanon-election-conspiracies/index.html">Americans who think that the election was stolen</a>. We just are not operating with a healthy information ecosystem right now.</p>
<p>And [while] Facebook is not the only reason that this is the case, they’re certainly a part of it. Right now, I really believe that we are racing against the clock to better <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/6/26/22550981/carl-bergstrom-joe-bak-coleman-biologists-ecologists-social-media-risk-humanity-research-academics">understand how this is happening</a>, to understand why this is going wrong so badly, to figure out what we can do to combat it. This is a <em>right now</em> problem. And when Facebook stops researchers like me from doing our jobs, they’re taking people out of a fight that we just can’t afford to lose.</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>There are projects that Facebook does with outside researchers, and many of them do have critical findings of the impact of some of the information on the platform. So how do we make sense of those two realities? Can Facebook both be enabling critical research and stifling it at the same time?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>Absolutely. To be really clear about something else: Facebook is a big company with a lot of people. There are many people working inside Facebook; there are many researchers who work collaboratively with Facebook who are doing excellent work. And I think it’s important that those folks continue to do their work. I think that what we are seeing is, you know, almost a little bit of corporate schizophrenia. You have to understand, my project is aimed squarely at ads, and ads are Facebook’s business — advertisers are its customers.</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside><q>“My project is aimed squarely at ads, and ads are Facebook’s business — advertisers are its customers”</q></aside>
</div>
<p>And they are somewhat understandably very sensitive about protecting what they see as the interests of their customers. So I certainly understand why Facebook might have a rational economic interest in making sure that information about ads that they do not control isn’t public. I just happen to think that the public has a right to know. And that trumps any economic interest that Facebook might have.</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/tech-facebook-lawmaker-idCNL1N2PB1TT">Sen. Mark Warner made a statement</a> criticizing Facebook for what it did to your research group calling it an attempt to cut off an outside group’s transparency efforts. He called for legislation on this. What do you think about that?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>I’m really sad that maybe it has come to this. Maybe it is time for legislative change. I think that means that this voluntary transparency regime is just not working.</p>
<h4>Shirin Ghaffary</h4>
<p>I know that you’re not a policymaker, but you’re in the middle of this debate. What do you think that potential policy could look like, that would help researchers have more access to Facebook?</p>
<h4>Laura Edelson</h4>
<p>One thing that I’ve put forward in partnership with many other researchers, is that frankly, I think it is time for universal ad transparency.</p>
<p>I think that Facebook and other large platforms that use algorithmic targeting for ads or use self-service ad platforms should make all ad data available to researchers in the public. That includes non-political ads, that includes targeting information. I think that’s the next step we need for the public to have more trust in how they’re being exposed to ads on these platforms. I think probably, in addition to that, other forms of transparency of public content on social media platforms will likely also be necessary.</p>
<p>I think we’ve all just seen too many instances where things as serious as terrorist attacks are being planned in public on social media. I think we have probably reached a point where if platforms want to be the public square, they have to be a lot more open to journalists and researchers.</p>
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<br />
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22612151/laura-edelson-facebook-nyu-ad-observatory-social-media-researcher">https://www.vox.com/recode/22612151/laura-edelson-facebook-nyu-ad-observatory-social-media-researcher</a>

vox “People do not trust that Facebook is a healthy ecosystem”

New York University researcher Laura Edelson is at the center of the latest major Facebook controversy over the misinformation that’s erodi...

Trading cards are big business now. Blame the adults.

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<p>Andrew Caroselli, an 18-year-old in Philadelphia, has built an empire by tearing open sports card packs on TikTok. He carefully pleats back the foil at the corners and surgically extracts the cardboard, hoping to find a rarity — Aaron Rodgers, LeBron James, Mike Trout — hiding inside. “Steady, steady,” he repeats, <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewcaroselli/video/6960065589700283653?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1">as he unsheathes a Panini Prizm Justin Herbert autographed rookie</a>, with an estimated value around $2,000, from its plastic sleeve before carefully encasing it in a thick cardholder.</p>
<p>Caroselli is not a longtime card-shop hermit. Instead, he tells me, he first became interested in the card business by listening to the advice of serial entrepreneur, YouTuber, and hustle-guy extraordinaire Gary Vaynerchuk, a.k.a. Gary Vee. Over the past year, Vaynerchuk has published dozens of videos to his YouTube channel preaching about the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk6qdH78Rg4">lucrativeness of the sports card sector</a>. The goal, as always, is to identify certain athletes whose associated memorabilia will escalate in value as their legacy grows — if you think Luka Doncic is an MVP, now is a great time to start purchasing Doncic rookie cards.</p>
<p>Once those social media power brokers started storming the market, says Caroselli, people like him were soon to follow.</p>
<p>“If you told me four or five years ago that you were collecting cards, I’d be like, ‘Okay, that’s kinda weird.’ I collected cards as a kid, but then I grew out of it,” he says. “But I think when guys like Gary Vee talked up cards, they became culturally relevant. [That endorsement] is gonna cause a boom.”</p>
<p>When I called Caroselli in late June, he was moving into a brand new office in north Philly. This recent high school graduate is the proud owner of his very own startup — called Vortex Sportscards — which specializes in a somewhat esoteric money-making operation. Basically, Caroselli purchases expensive sealed boxes of cards off the internet, and opens them live on either Instagram or TikTok. Customers of Vortex Sportscards can reserve certain packs inside the case for a flat fee. (Like, say, $150.) You tune in, watch Caroselli leaf through the cards, and hope that your assigned slot will contain enough shimmering paperboard to exceed the price of admission. (Caroselli mails the cards to each of the buyers after the stream.) Or you strike out, and hope for better luck next time. This is called a “box break,” and it’s one of the many different ways card collecting has infected the internet.</p>
<p>Caroselli is far from the only young person working this corner. The card mania is white hot, and thousands of impresarios are leveraging this confusing, chaotic era of social media to breathe new life into a prehistoric hobby.</p>
<p>“Everyone thinks cards are cool now. Everyone wants to get into it. All my friends want to get into it and are asking to work with me,” says Caroselli. “It’s crazy what’s happened in six months.”</p>
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<aside><q>“Everyone thinks cards are cool now. Everyone wants to get into it.”</q></aside>
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<p>There’s no apt way to articulate the warp speed momentum that made cards relevant again, so instead, let me tell you about some numbers. In late April, a LeBron James rookie card sold for $5.2 million in a record-breaking private exchange. That sort of news used to be novel — sports card prices, on the high end, have been steady for decades — but <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2021/04/26/lebron-james-rookie-card-sets-record-most-expensive-basketball">Sports Illustrated notes</a> that 23 of the 24 most expensive transactions in the sports card industry have occurred since February of 2020. This is, in that sense, a brand new trend; in the ’80s and ’90s, card printers like Topps and Upper Deck <a href="https://www.cardboardconnection.com/why-sports-cards-early-90s-worthless">flooded the market with mass-produced paperboard</a>, which lopsided the supply-and-demand duality and caused the industry’s investment value to take a nosedive. That all appears to be a distant memory today, when nobody is quite sure how high the numbers could go.</p>
<p>The same zeitgeist has carried over into all avenues of the card-collecting hobby. In May, <a href="https://www.dexerto.com/pokemon/target-reverses-drastic-decision-on-selling-pokemon-cards-amid-scalper-crisis-1587446/#:~:text=The%20Pokemon%20community%20was%20stunned,by%20resellers%20flooding%20their%20stores.">Target announced</a> (and then reversed) a policy banning the sale of Pokémon cards due to the huge number of scalpers who would camp out overnight to cop a hot new set. It’s easy to see why: A shrink-wrapped booster box of Pokémon sleeves went for $360,000 at auction last November. Two months earlier, a similar set changed hands for $198,000.</p>
<p>There have been a lot of theories that attempt to diagnose the ongoing card market volatility. Many have pointed to the coronavirus pandemic, which has kept a lot of people isolated at home with plenty of time to pick up a new hobby. Team Whistle, a sports broadcasting company, <a href="https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/study-explores-why-under-40-crowd-has-jumped-into-sports-cards/">conducted a study</a> in the middle of our long quarantine winter which found that 77 percent of millennials and Gen Zers felt a desire to engage with “comfortable content that will give them a break from the news,” with 73 percent reporting that they’ve spent money on a hobby “within the last month.” (A majority of the same sample reported card collecting to be more “comfortable” than, say, reading comic books or playing video games.)</p>
<p>That appetite combines neatly with the unsteady economy, which was in total freefall at the beginning of the pandemic and has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-beige/u-s-economy-got-off-to-modest-start-in-2021-fed-says-idUSKBN2AV2J3">shown signs of a faltering recovery in 2021</a>. With an eroding trust in American financial systems, many people are turning to alternative means — like crypto or collectibles — to stow away their savings.</p>
<p>“The pandemic caused a lot of people to reevaluate what their interests were,” says Justin Goodman, a devotee of antique baseball cards who hosts the collector-centric podcast <a href="https://themonsterpodcast.com/"><em>The Monster</em></a>. “Collecting cards brought people happiness and comfort in a time of a lot of uncertainty and fear. The internet gave people a forum to jump right back into the scene, when the rest of the world was shut down. That was the way to live vicariously.”</p>
<p>The other impetus is more ethereal. There is simply a frenetic, anxious excitement in the air for card collecting, in the same way that every insurgent fad drives people to their extremes. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jun/07/logan-paul-vs-floyd-mayweather-boxing-fight-result-earnings">At his ridiculous showdown with Floyd Mayweather</a>, the YouTuber Logan Paul walked to the boxing ring with a PSA Grade 10 Charizard wrapped around his neck like a Jesus piece. (Those go for around $200,000 on the open market.) Post Malone made TMZ headlines earlier this year when he dropped thousands of dollars on Magic: The Gathering cards <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2021/04/29/post-malone-frenzy-drops-thousands-magic-the-gathering-cards/">at a Los Angeles trade show</a>. (He also appeared on <em>Late Night With Seth Meyers</em> donning a Magic-themed button-up.) Rob Kardashian <a href="https://brobible.com/sports/article/rob-kardashian-rare-tom-brady-card/">is picking up six-figure-value Tom Brady holographics</a> and guesting on <a href="https://www.dexerto.com/pokemon/steve-aoki-announces-celebrity-pokemon-card-opening-twitch-stream-1451379/">celebrity box openings for charity with Steve Aoki</a>. Card collecting has been popular in the past, but this is the first time the hobby is accompanied by legitimate A-list cosigners — draining all of its latent nerdiness away.</p>
<p>The wire-pullers at the top of the industry haven’t slowed down either. Card publishers continue to drive up the prices of their product with limited print runs and a wide network of quality tiers. Today, it’s possible to spend $22,000 — at retail — <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidseideman/2016/12/15/is-the-worlds-most-expensive-box-of-baseball-cards-22k-a-good-investment/?sh=7bacaef52932">on a single case of baseball cards</a>. It is that artificial stringency that powers the virality that someone like Caroselli chases; it’s fun to watch someone pan for gold, even as this business grows unseemly and excessive.</p>
<p>That attitude is reflected in the rest of the YouTubers and podcasters creating fresh content about cards. Their thumbnails are splashed in all caps, showing off the astronomical figures they either found inside their latest suite of boosters. “ONE OF MY BEST BOXES EVER,” reads one, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUr9YuLOJ4">punctuated by a flame emoji</a>. “$2,000.”</p>
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<p>Goodman returned to baseball card collecting as an adult, and he has no recollection of the sheer envy that the modern card scene can inspire. When everyone is opening packs online, when the realities of endemic scarcity are bearing down on you from all angles, you can start to feel a blind capital panic that’s far more intense than a weekly trip to the local memorabilia store.</p>
<p>“It creates a sense of urgency that you didn’t know existed before. In the past, you might’ve been looking around for a card that you wanted, but you didn’t know that there were 10 other people doing the same thing,” he says. “If you have a compulsion for things, it can certainly create a climate where you can get obsessed way more easily, because there’s more outlets for that energy.”</p>
<p>That gets at the lingering question I had for all the movers and shakers in the midst of the card boom. When the profit expectations associated with paperboard double and triple in value overnight — when Logan Paul is turning Charizards into jewelry — what impact does that have on all the young people watching from the sidelines? Every zeitgeist eventually recedes; if you’re of a certain age, you remember the reign of the Beanie Babies, or the vintage comic books, or hell, the baseball card surge in the ’80s and ’90s.</p>
<p>So as collectibles metastasize through YouTube and TikTok — carrying the stamp of approval from verified Money Guys like Gary Vaynerchuk — I do worry if an impressionable population is getting in over their head. Caroselli tells me he’s already received a few angry emails from moms and dads, whose children pilfered their credit cards in order to become Vortex Sportscards’ latest customers. “When they email me [asking about the charges] I’m like, ‘Do you have any kids? Maybe talk to them,’” he says. “There’s no way I can tell who is buying.”</p>
<p>That might be the biggest tragedy of the increased financialization of the hobby. Card collecting is supposed to be for kids. The 1986 Fleer basketball card set — which remains one of the most beloved catalogues in industry history — was originally packed with a stick of gum. Card companies have left that market behind as they focus nigh-exclusively on the hustlers. (The Sporting News notes <a href="https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/whos-to-blame-for-targets-decision-to-halt-trading-card-sales-everyone/ys8wzdn16rdg1tpttn3gt03nq">that Topps priced its flagship card box at $170 this year</a>. Good luck affording that with your allowance.) The investment kickbacks are great, but haven’t we forgotten why people love this hobby in the first place?</p>
<p>I put that question to Nate Rico, a veteran Pokémon fan who’s been uploading pack openings on YouTube since 2014, long before the scene became supercharged. Like Caroselli, Rico spends his time online tearing open foil and calling out any high-value targets he finds along the way. Those questions of responsibility have become more pertinent to him over the last year, as this scene gravitates away from the hobbyists and toward the profiteers. It’s easy to understand why Rico is still adjusting to that new normal.</p>
<p>“If I pull an ultra rare or something like that, I’ll put the value in the corner of my video. And I did that long before this boom happened. But I’m very, very careful,” says Rico. “My content is something that I would want to watch, and I want to make it fun. It’s stuff that takes me back to when I was a kid. I built my Pokémon card binder as a kid, and I do the exact same thing on the channel.”</p>
<p>That’s the refrain that Rico reiterates over and over again throughout our interview. He’s just a guy who loves Pokémon, and he misses the salad days. He tells me about the 2000s and early 2010s, when he could comfortably go to his local department store, buy up a few packs, and peacefully open them at home. No zeitgeist, no lunacy, no mind-boggling inflated price points, just his private zen. The rest of the people who’ve bought into his community have not loved the hobby for nearly as long as Rico, and he hopes that Pokémon will survive their destabilizing influence.</p>
<p>“If your main goal is to sell things and you aren’t collecting, you probably see this as a total positive,” he says. “But as someone who’s been collecting cards since the ’90s, this is a huge negative.”</p>
<p>That’s the paradox of the card renaissance: Despite the many people who want to see the numbers keep going up, there are a few holding out for the day they start to go down.</p>
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<br />
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22607818/trading-cards-pokemon-magic-baseball">https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22607818/trading-cards-pokemon-magic-baseball</a>

vox Trading cards are big business now. Blame the adults.

Andrew Caroselli, an 18-year-old in Philadelphia, has built an empire by tearing open sports card packs on TikTok. He carefully pleats back...

August’s most exciting movies

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<p>hNow that it’s August, it’s safe to say 2021’s summer box office has been worse than Hollywood hoped it would be, with pandemic upheavals and worries still very much in the mix. Still, there are plenty of new movies coming out in theaters or on streaming platforms.</p>
<p>Some of the highlights come in fresh, original stories, from Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard in <em>Annette</em> to Ryan Reynolds in <em>Free Guy</em>. There’s horror to scare your pants off, thoughtful documentaries to poke your brain, drama to stir your soul, and some superheroes too.</p>
<p>Here are 12 of the most interesting films to look for in August.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 6 in theaters; August 20 on Amazon Prime</p>
<p>Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard star in the operatic musical <em>Annette</em>, which is as wild and weird as they come. Driver is a stand-up comic whose act is a calculated takedown of the audience; Cotillard is an opera singer. The two fall in love and have a child named Annette, but there’s no happily ever after in the cards. Director Leos Carax enlisted pop-rock duo Sparks to write the music for this epic, which gleefully employs artifice to tell a tale that’s at times off-putting but always surprising. This kind of singular invention is rarer than ever at the movies these days, and thankfully <em>Annette</em>’s emotional core is raw and rock solid.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>Annette</em> will open in limited theaters and begin streaming for subscribers on Amazon Prime two weeks later.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 6</p>
<p><em>Guardians of the Galaxy</em> director James Gunn made the jump to the DC Extended Universe for <em>The Suicide Squad</em>, a “standalone sequel” to the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/8/4/12366370/suicide-squad-review-harley-quinn-will-smith-margot-robbie">critically panned 2016 film</a>. The new movie — which earned high marks from critics for its visual style and Gunn’s signature humor — tells a separate story from the first film, with some of the same characters and cast returning. This time, the Squad must destroy a Nazi-era prison and laboratory where political prisoners are subject to torturous experiments, and they run into a giant alien named Starro. Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, and Peter Capaldi star.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>The Suicide Squad</em> will open in theaters.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 6</p>
<p>In <em>The Viewing Booth</em>, Israeli director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz focuses his camera on the act of viewing itself. To make the film, Alexandrowicz set up a lab-like room into which he invited American students interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, asking them to watch videos uploaded by activists while verbalizing their thoughts. He ended up centering <em>The Viewing Booth</em> on the reactions of one young woman, Maia Levy, an American of Israeli descent whose views of videos originating in the West Bank city of Hebron stand in opposition to Alexandrowicz’s own. Through their conversations, the ways our preconceived ideas shape and dictate how we view the same images are explored and exposed. It’s an outstanding probe into not only how people think about a conflict in the Middle East, but also the limits of nonfiction films in their ability to persuade and document reality as it is — and what kinds of defense mechanisms we all bring with us to the screen.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>The Viewing Booth</em> will open in limited theaters and be available to digitally rent for a limited time through <a href="http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2021/08/06/detail/the-viewing-booth">the Museum of the Moving Image’s virtual cinema platform</a>.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 6</p>
<p>John (Charlie Shotwell) is an ordinary 13-year-old boy who lives with his parents (Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Ehle) and older sister (Taissa Farmiga). He’s feeling a little ignored until one day, while flying his new drone, he discovers an abandoned bunker in the woods and the wheels in his head start turning. Directed by visual artist Pascual Sisto and featuring great performances from its leads, <em>John and the Hole</em> is a strange and darkly fun thriller. It’s the extrapolation of a tween fantasy: If you could just get your family out of the way for one day to do whatever you want, what would you do?</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>John and the Hole</em> will open in limited theaters.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 12</p>
<p>We’re informed at the beginning of <em>Homeroom</em> that the film covers the senior year of Oakland High School’s class of 2020, which means we already know what these kids don’t: The disruption of a lifetime is coming. But they were an extraordinary bunch even before they were forced to live through a pandemic. <em>Homeroom</em>, the third in Peter Nicks’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/8/14842580/true-false-2017-documentaries-fiction">trilogy</a> of films about Oakland, California, focuses largely on a group of OHS students who are passionately focused on getting rid of their school’s police presence. The movie makes the case that members of Gen Z have always been primed and ready to take their place as activists; it’s the rest of the country that’s finally started to move in their direction. Weaving in the pandemic, <em>Homeroom</em> offers a compassionate, powerful, and often very funny look at a generation that will never be the same.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>Homeroom</em> will stream on Hulu.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 13</p>
<p><em>CODA</em> (which stands for Children of Deaf Adults) was a huge hit at Sundance, hauling in a record $25 million acquisition deal from Apple TV+ and winning all four of the festival’s top prizes: the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize, the US Dramatic Audience Award, the US Dramatic Directing Award for Siân Heder, and a US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast. No wonder — it’s a truly heartfelt, music-laced story about a teenager who is the only hearing member of her family. She wants to go to college for music, but her family is struggling to keep its fishing business afloat. Sweet, thoughtful, and unusual in its extensive use of sign language and casting of deaf actors (including Oscar winner Marlee Matlin), it’s the kind of film you can’t help but love.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>CODA</em> will open in theaters and stream on Apple TV+.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 13</p>
<p>Charming and surprisingly philosophically dense, <em>Free Guy</em> is a comedy about choosing to live your life, with an endearing level of corniness that’s entirely on purpose. Ryan Reynolds stars as Guy, an NPC (non-playing character) in a game called <em>Free City</em>, sort of a cross between <em>Grand Theft Auto</em> and <em>The Sims</em>. Every day Guy wakes up, greets his goldfish, gets some coffee, and goes to his bank teller job, just like his programming tells him to do. But a bit of errant code buried in the game and a chance encounter shock him out of his routine, changing his existence drastically. With a delightful cast (including <em>Stranger Things</em>’s Joe Keery and <em>Killing Eve</em>’s Jodie Comer) and an inventive world, <em>Free Guy</em> is the rare truly enjoyable studio action-comedy.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>Free Guy</em> will open in theaters.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 13</p>
<p>Jennifer Hudson stars as Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, in this biographical drama. Directed by Liesl Tommy and written by Tracey Scott Wilson, <em>Respect</em> explores Franklin’s struggle to break the stronghold that childhood trauma (Franklin had her first child at age 12) and abusive men exerted on her life, and truly come into her own freedom. Though it rounds off some of the rougher edges of Franklin’s life — particularly with respect to her first husband, Ted White, and her father — it’s still a worthwhile look at the lives of one of the greats, and Hudson is outstanding. The film also stars Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Audra McDonald, Marc Maron, Tituss Burgess, Saycon Sengbloh, Hailey Kilgore, Skye Dakota Turner, Tate Donovan, and Mary J. Blige.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>Respect</em> will open in theaters.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 18 on HBO and HBOMax; August 12 in limited theaters</p>
<p>It’s hard to imagine any pandemic documentary being better than <em>In the Same Breath</em>. The film from director Nanfu Wang — who grew up in China but now lives and works in the US — takes a fearless approach to the often willful misinformation spread by multiple governments as the Covid-19 pandemic began to take hold in early 2020. It’s a daring exploration of how the Chinese government repressed information about what was really happening. Yet it also exposes how other governments — most notably the US’s — contributed to the ongoing misinformation crisis and made the situation much worse than it needed to be. The result is a chilling, truly absorbing film with big implications for the future.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>In the Same Breath</em> will debut on HBO and HBOMax on August 18. It will also open in limited theaters in Los Angeles on August 12 and in New York City on August 19.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 20</p>
<p><em>Cryptozoo</em> is a strange, fanciful, eye-popping tale for adults from comic book writer and animator Dash Shaw. We enter the tale through the eyes of a woman who stumbles onto an island community of cryptids, mythical creatures whose existence is usually questioned or denied, all living together in a sanctuary, shielded from the outside world. But trouble brews. With a voice cast that includes Lake Bell, Michael Cera, Zoe Kazan, Peter Stormare, Angeliki Papoulia, Grace Zabriskie, and Alex Karpovsky — and artwork that’s truly astounding — <em>Cryptozoo</em> is an animated wonder that explores the pain and possibility of being an outsider.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>Cryptozoo</em> will open in theaters.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 20</p>
<p>Rebecca Hall stars in <em>The Night House</em>, a creepy and sinister tale of a young woman who slowly comes to realize that her deceased husband may not have been who she thought he was. The film filters grief and trauma through jump-scare horror, borrowing effectively from genres that explore the supernatural and surreal. Stylish and often original, it has an ending that may divide audiences but is undoubtedly scary.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>The Night House</em> will open in theaters.</p>
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<p><strong>Release date:</strong> August 27</p>
<p>Nia DaCosta directs the slasher-horror film <em>Candyman</em>, based on a screenplay she co-wrote with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld. A sequel to the 1992 film, it tells the tale of artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and his gallerist girlfriend Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris), who move into a loft built on the grounds of former housing projects in Chicago. There they learn the true story behind the Candyman myth, which McCoy begins incorporating into his work — and things start getting very scary. This highly anticipated movie has been delayed three times since its original June 2020 opening date, and it promises to serve up some serious fright alongside its social commentary.</p>
<p><strong>How to watch it:</strong> <em>Candyman</em> will open in theaters.</p>
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source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22605713/august-2021-movies-streaming-theaters">https://www.vox.com/22605713/august-2021-movies-streaming-theaters</a>

vox August’s most exciting movies

hNow that it’s August, it’s safe to say 2021’s summer box office has been worse than Hollywood hoped it would be, with pandemic upheavals a...

M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, HBO’s The White Lotus, and the existential terror of right now

<p>Around halfway through director <a href="https://www.vox.com/22588761/old-shyamalan-review">M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie <em>Old</em></a>, Maddox, played by Thomasin McKenzie, has just begun to realize the weight of what has happened to her.</p>
<p>While on vacation with her parents and younger brother, Maddox went to the beach as an 11-year-old (at which point, she was played by a different actor). But this beach ages people at the rate of roughly one year per half-hour. Pretty soon, she’s a teenager. As the day passes, she progresses through her 20s and 30s. (McKenzie takes over the role about 30 minutes into the film, when Maddox is 16, then plays her for most of the rest of the movie.)</p>
<p>Maddox is a problem solver, as so many eldest children are. She begins to pace on the sand, insisting to herself that she must keep it together. But she can’t stop thinking about all she’s lost, an 11-year-old in a young adult’s body. Prom, graduation, college — they’re all slipping away in a matter of hours. Her world is collapsing beneath her.</p>
<p><em>Old</em> is full of kids like Maddox, kids who’ve assumed their lives will always be safe and predictable, only to suddenly learn they’re anything but on the beach that makes you old. One kid tells his friend they’ll be best friends forever, until they both live next door to each other and have mortgages. Another kid, now a teenager thanks to the beach, gets pregnant; neither she nor the boy who impregnated her have any idea how it happened. Even Shyamalan’s camera gets in on the action, doing long pans across the beach from one position to another. Each time it returns to its starting point, something has changed or new information has appeared in the frame, often unpredictably. The message is always the same: Something safe has failed us. The world is falling apart.</p>
<p><em>Old</em> is a movie about how parents are rendered inadequate and helpless when faced with the task of preparing their children for a world that stops making sense. It is also one of the first wide-release movies to have been filmed entirely in the middle of <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/m-night-shyamalan-old-ending-covid-bubble-hurricane-hints-tribeca-2021-1234970741/">a pandemic-imposed bubble</a>, and the existential terror of a year in quarantine informs almost every moment of the movie.</p>
<p>The film is not the only recent release to embrace this thematic sensibility. Another, similar project, <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/the-white-lotus-hbo-series-review.html">HBO’s limited TV series <em>The White Lotus</em></a>, currently airing on Sundays, also takes place in a tropical setting drenched with omens of something dark and terrible just over the horizon. <em>Old</em> is a horror movie; <em>The White Lotus</em> is a social satire. They’re still weirdly in conversation.</p>
<p>Both <em>Old</em> and <em>The White Lotus</em> were produced under similar Covid-19 safety protocols (an isolated location, a small cast of actors, lots of filming outdoors). Both are informed by their respective filming bubbles, and both are also interested in the ways the world feels a little less “normal” with every day. Both are soaked through with pre-apocalyptic dread, and both prominently feature an ocean that looms in the background, occasionally sweeping a smartphone away or washing a dead body onto the shore. It’s not that far a stretch to suggest those moments are provoked by anxiety over rising sea levels.</p>
<p><em>Old</em> and <em>The White Lotus</em> are convinced we live in a world that is falling apart, both broadly (nothing makes sense anymore!) and more granularly (the planet is heating up!). They both serve to underline how there’s very little we can do about any of it.</p>
<figure class="e-image"><span class="e-image__inner"><span class="e-image__image" data-original="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1628291720_4058_316593" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22734077,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UPOctrT0uYtSlImNqGH23hr5QbU=/0x0:2048x1152/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9SST4zCX6SWbnK6oDZ5kraYtJOY=/0x0:2048x1152/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/O814dGx0sKKYK54akEINDiKoik8=/0x0:2048x1152/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zko1GKh7wl1gL-fx2_yL3msazVg=/0x0:2048x1152/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gC_ROV2nU4X0MfOPaRWLnVI0Ja0=/0x0:2048x1152/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gkliH4TxFOoT_tFOJql-SAV_7N0=/0x0:2048x1152/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tEoRtGn2cv-yS9swXAwrTFWtRns=/0x0:2048x1152/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kHTg3kxqOR3mhhar7iwGKOv_nBM=/0x0:2048x1152/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UbiB9XTeXjLWQAaHexeNF3PJQ-o=/0x0:2048x1152/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="Gael García Bernal&nbsp;and Vicky Krieps on the beach, with a yellow umbrella behind them." data-upload-width="2048" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DjtYllBo_E7cpoQXIVolhZ1ozBo=/0x0:2048x1152/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JnvhVs18IeYZE-zkOLZKCM0sbbo=/0x0:2048x1152/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/siakvV1II9pKq0jz81ueQ6D5wJ0=/0x0:2048x1152/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LRbtpr3pVB63nTvw6GPzLW_2QWE=/0x0:2048x1152/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Nb0CovCve5n4oMy0uYNeQAtsjY8=/0x0:2048x1152/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rj_SirBe-V18BILKQc0zhCNc4qk=/0x0:2048x1152/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7BYVX93a1RsVsn5-UzzfngvExmY=/0x0:2048x1152/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DxqShViDAxkLkL2lCaGwgTlsxDk=/0x0:2048x1152/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pSQGxgXN6MVBuOEMEu3b_UolO1I=/0x0:2048x1152/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BA632yagUvJcqy-slD0ZMkOu-3o=/0x0:2048x1152/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2048x1152):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22734077/old4.jpeg 1920w" /></picture></span></span>
<figcaption><span class="e-image__meta">Gael Garcia Bernal and Vicky Krieps play two parents who watch in horror as they and their children’s lives spiral out of control.</span></figcaption>
<span class="e-image__meta"><cite>Universal Pictures</cite></span></figure>
<p><em>Old</em> and <em>The White Lotus</em> might seem to have very little in common, beyond a tropical setting and the fact that they both feature dead bodies.</p>
<p>The former is a horror movie from a love-or-hate director whose career has become emblematic of big twist endings and overwrought dialogue. The latter is an acidic social satire set at a Hawaiian resort whose many guests have gathered for a variety of reasons — a family getaway, a honeymoon, a mourning ritual. It’s written and directed by Mike White, of <em>Enlightened</em> fame, who is one of television’s best observers of rich white people’s blind spots and idiosyncrasies. The former is an overblown B-movie. The latter is akin to an American <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rules_of_the_Game">Renoir film</a>, complete with all the class warfare you could hope for.</p>
<p>That’s where their production commonalities factor in. <em>Old</em> and <em>The White Lotus</em> were both filmed in the midst of the pandemic, in complete production lockdowns. By replicating the rhythms of a vacation and traveling to a singular destination, then quarantining and establishing a Covid-19 bubble, each could limit who was on and off the set, simply thanks to geography. Shyamalan went so far as to rent an entire resort in the Dominican Republic so that his cast and crew could remain isolated from the world at large. <em>The White Lotus</em> filmed at the Four Seasons resort in Maui, with the hotel completely closed to the public for much of production.</p>
<p><em>Old</em> had been greenlit in 2019, but it didn’t begin shooting until September of 2020; production wrapped in November. HBO actually <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/07/mike-white-interview-white-lotus">approached White</a> in mid-2020 to ask if he could construct a story that could be filmed in a single location very quickly, to facilitate production during lockdown. He began shooting <em>The White Lotus</em> in October of 2020 and was done by the end of the year. At the time, Hawaii had seen very limited Covid-19 cases; Maui County has had <a href="https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/state/hawaii/county/maui-county">just under 5,500</a> Covid-19 cases ever.</p>
<p>If you poke at the seams of <em>Old</em> and <em>The White Lotus</em>, you can see how they were each designed to accommodate pandemic safety concerns. Both have extremely limited casts of characters, neither of which expands that much throughout their respective stories. Both feature a lot of scenes filmed outdoors or on large, open-air patios. Both are set at resorts, which are reasonably easy to lock down, provided you’re willing to buy out the whole place — a much easier prospect during a global event that has enormously diminished world travel.</p>
<p>Both stories are also informed by pandemic-era sensitivities and share a deep-seated claustrophobia common to works predominantly set in a single location. The people on the beach in <em>Old</em> cannot escape said beach, and the people at the resort in <em>The White Lotus</em> don’t seem to <em>want</em> to leave the resort. Everybody’s trapped, usually with their families and a random assortment of strangers, like in your average quarantine-era apartment building. Children, left unsupervised, get into trouble on their own, and their parents are too exhausted or apathetic to do anything about it. Everybody gets into arguments about just how fucked they are.</p>
<p>The existential dread present in <em>Old</em> is more obvious, and more immediate. “We are going to die here!” has a bit more urgency to it when you’re on a beach that ages you rapidly than when you’re simply muddling through life on a planet that is killing you and everyone you know very, very slowly. Yet it’s not hard to look at both projects and compare them to the sandcastle that two characters build near the end of <em>Old</em>, or the smartphone one character loses to the ocean in <em>The White Lotus</em>. Everything we do and everything we have is impermanent. The earth is finding new ways to remind us of that every day.</p>
<figure class="e-image"><span class="e-image__inner"><span class="e-image__image" data-original="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1628291720_8092_316594" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22764704,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cinlDLd6bWyldQkRLe-1g9_joPs=/0x0:1800x1350/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jEGQzG9DXyVFa6yfAAPcSPtwB_8=/0x0:1800x1350/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iZ9L4nM3Qze1P_brNKXTW05_ziA=/0x0:1800x1350/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_JatKF4fFuLKo5w4u4OlrCaZrzk=/0x0:1800x1350/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0tFMzqXEoDg0Fn0KU8XZ0zY5cb4=/0x0:1800x1350/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vs75OF4EUHEziBqOxRqlOEpxBvU=/0x0:1800x1350/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Vgq9BOx2UPniDh0JVvdWHVM-ZoI=/0x0:1800x1350/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/B5RK0vxBq0g9kUIn1HuZa8UHbW0=/0x0:1800x1350/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9uIFjTSSG7UGY7LKPCsWQOOdAJc=/0x0:1800x1350/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="Sydney Sweeney (in glasses) and Brittany O’Grady (clutching a bag) await someone." data-upload-width="1800" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gWHAEkbeM57Hl_5M-UurvaHs-Jw=/0x0:1800x1350/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-XSWaGddAcm-BbDL-Q-IlJFT7H0=/0x0:1800x1350/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uJKkobiUh409vdP5UUQRD193nCk=/0x0:1800x1350/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nRflaM8nxf6aY4ZUZx8-vhgm6us=/0x0:1800x1350/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GrQD0AYjoAGRQW3Xy6uQKYmoOLY=/0x0:1800x1350/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R3WUzStYGqizEdoYjj1M7_yEZc0=/0x0:1800x1350/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/QaHYdGzf831CaUt2_UI6j8o4Yzs=/0x0:1800x1350/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pqMSHQ0pcsG7Vtj_VeVJqjNiPoM=/0x0:1800x1350/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wZSd7A8RhmAVqMlIWoHRFJyUzmI=/0x0:1800x1350/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4-XVk00noTfK5rC4zErCXcpy5xs=/0x0:1800x1350/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1350):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22764704/sydney_sweeney_brittany_o_grady.jpg 1920w" /></picture></span></span>
<figcaption><span class="e-image__meta">Sydney Sweeney (left) and Brittany O’Grady play two of the young people trying to deal with an endless vacation in <em>The White Lotus</em>.</span></figcaption>
<span class="e-image__meta"><cite>HBO</cite></span></figure>
<p>The global uncertainty that defined 2020 underscored and highlighted a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/4/21/21224065/coronavirus-pregnancy-kids-children-fertility-abortion-covid">question plenty of prospective parents</a> are asking right now: Is it unethical to bring a child into a world that is crumbling? Or is having children an essential act of hope for the future? People have continued to have babies in far more dire situations than the one we’re currently in. Why would we stop now?</p>
<p>Still — if things keep getting worse, have you just brought a child into a world that will increasingly become uninhabitable? What happens when you bring your kids to a place where the rules you grew up with no longer hold sway? How do you cope with the idea that the world might fall apart to such a degree that they won’t have a prom, a graduation, a college education? What if it comes to that?</p>
<p>There are, of course, billions of people on the planet for whom horrible instability has always been a given, but the awful, democratizing effect of both Covid-19 and climate change is that their horrors are somewhat more evenly spread across the species. While the horrors that Covid-19 inflicted on privileged people around the globe have been <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-12-16/high-poverty-neighborhoods-in-california-bear-the-brunt-of-covid-19">far less cataclysmic than those inflicted on everybody else</a>, everyone is affected by it at least a little bit, and climate change seems likely to follow a similar template.</p>
<p>Science-fiction writer Charlie Jane Anders <a href="https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/you-dont-always-slay-or-flee-your-demons-often/">recently wrote in her newsletter</a> about just how much her fear of climate change’s effects on humanity has bled into her writing. She also observed, however, that there can be something healing in acknowledging that fear.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m honestly terrified of what’s coming, and the fact that we’re already starting to live through heat waves and superstorms and (maybe) zoonotic diseases doesn’t do anything to make the future climate disruption less scary. At all. We are going to suffer, all of us, in ways we’ve barely wrapped our heads around so far. And yet, I don’t think fiction about climate change needs to be disaster porn, or pure misery, or something engineered to “scare us straight.” At all. A lot of my work on climate change is about surviving and adapting.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The trick of being alive right now is pretending that everything we’re doing still matters. There is abundant evidence that <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm">nothing might be as important</a> as humans banding together in a last-ditch effort to slow the effects of climate change, such that the planet might continue to support life as we know it. Whatever anxiety Covid-19 has provoked, including in so many artists, feels like an appetizer for the main course.</p>
<p>“We’re still parasites on the Earth!” one character exclaims in <em>The White Lotus</em>, hoping to underline the hypocrisy of his family members, who are squabbling about the right way to organize society. They all know he’s right; they also are powerless to stop being parasites. They are the super-rich, and they are loath to change their ways because it’s easier to be comfortable than to do something difficult but right. <em>Old</em> touches on this idea as well, in a moment I dare not spoil here. Both works are very interested in the ways in which unchecked capitalism has contributed to the state of the world, past, present, and future, but <em>The White Lotus</em>, in particular, is excoriating about the upper classes.</p>
<p>The 2020s might very well become a decade of art forged in paranoia and anxiety at the thought of a warming climate that is outpacing our ability or willingness to act before it’s too late. But art that is terrified about a slowly building apocalypse isn’t a new phenomenon. The 1920s were filled with art set in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby">beautiful baubles of decadence</a> that felt uneasily gleeful (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land">or deeply traumatized</a>) in the wake of World War I and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. The 1950s and ’60s were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_(1959_TV_series)">rife with art terrified</a> by the seeming <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove">inevitability of nuclear war</a>. We imagine our apocalypses in great detail, perhaps in hopes that we can avert them in reality.</p>
<p>That sense of looming apocalypse is what most unites <em>Old</em> and <em>The White Lotus</em> in the end. <em>Old</em> suggests that at least some of us might find a way out of our current series of existential threats; <em>The White Lotus</em> isn’t so sure. But for as attuned as both works are to this particular moment in time, they also have one eye on what has always been true: We’re always heading toward an ending of some sort. Every beach you visit makes you older by virtue of the time you spend there, just not as quickly as the beach in <em>Old</em>. The planet is going to get you eventually.</p>
<p>Everything we do is impermanent, regardless of whether we halt climate change. Centuries from now, if humanity exists, no one will be talking about <em>Old</em> or <em>The White Lotus</em> or this article discussing the two. People will have new concerns and new thoughts to ponder through their art. The things that are permanent — or at least as close to permanent as our conceptions of time will allow — are the ocean and the sand and the endless chain of life that stretches behind and beyond us. Having a child right now is a tremendous act of faith that things might turn out okay in the end, but having a child is always a tremendous act of faith. The world is always ending, and it’s always beginning, too. You have to make your peace with that somehow.</p>
<p>Or, to put it more bluntly, as one character says after watching a whale surface in the ocean in <em>The White Lotus</em>: “What the fuck?”</p>
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source <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22608476/old-shyamalan-white-lotus-hbo-mike-white-beach-hawaii-covid-climate">https://www.vox.com/culture/22608476/old-shyamalan-white-lotus-hbo-mike-white-beach-hawaii-covid-climate</a>

vox M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, HBO’s The White Lotus, and the existential terror of right now

Around halfway through director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie Old , Maddox, played by Thomasin McKenzie, has just begun to realize the w...