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Trump lawyer casts doubt on Cohen’s testimony about October 2016 call to Trump – live
Thu, 16 May 2024 17:42:55 GMT
Entire hush-money trial likely to succeed or fail on whether jurors believe Michael Cohen’s testimony
Judge Juan Merchan is on the bench and the court is in session.
Donald Trump has arrived in the courtroom for day 18 of his criminal trial.
Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican representative
Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican congresswoman
Eric Trump
Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump aide
Continue reading...The bill requires any civil society organisation that receives more than 20% of its funds from abroad to register as being under foreign influence. Daniel Boffey reports
On the face of it the bill could sound innocuous: any civil society organisation that receives more than 20% of its funds from abroad must register as an organisation under foreign influence. Yet the new law Georgia’s parliament passed yesterday has sparked outrage and demonstrations in the capital, Tbilisi.
Critics claim the bill is “Kremlin-inspired” as Putin passed a similar law in 2012, which they say has had a chilling effect on civil society. Demonstrators think it is a way to redirect Georgia towards Russia. The Guardian’s chief reporter, Daniel Boffey, has been speaking to young protesters – often schoolchildren – about why they are so incensed.
Continue reading...Some allege harassment, one claims she was sexually assaulted. His lawyers deny the allegations
It was September 1991 in New York and the grand finale of Look of the Year, a prestigious modeling contest that had helped launch the careers of supermodels Cindy Crawford and Helena Christensen.
The celebrity magician David Copperfield, one of the judges, watched from the front row as 58 contestants paraded across the runway in their branded hot pink and sorbet yellow swimsuits. Nearly all the contestants were teenagers; some were as young as 14.
Continue reading...Since Dobbs, state-level Republicans have sought to strip power from DAs elected in Democratic cities who won't prosecute abortion care.
The post Republicans Can’t Decide: Do They Hate Prosecutors Because of Bail Reform or Abortion? appeared first on The Intercept.
Court order compels Google subsidiary to block local access to 32 videos of Glory to Hong Kong, judged to be prohibited content
Alphabet’s YouTube on Tuesday said it would comply with a court decision and block access inside Hong Kong to 32 video links deemed prohibited content, in what critics say is a blow to freedoms in the financial hub amid a security clampdown.
The action follows a government application granted by Hong Kong’s court of appeal requesting the ban of a protest anthem called Glory to Hong Kong. The judges warned that dissidents seeking to incite secession could weaponize the song for use against the state.
Continue reading...After inquiries from The Intercept, Duane Kees stepped down from his ethics panel position.
The post This U.S. Attorney Resigned Amid an Ethics Investigation. Yet He Wound Up Overseeing Judges’ Ethics. appeared first on The Intercept.
A new anti-terrorism bill would allow the government to take away vital tax exemptions from nonprofit news outlets.
The post Criticizing Israel? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process appeared first on The Intercept.
Jordan accuses White House of altering transcripts after Biden asserts executive privilege to block Republicans from accessing
Once again, a group of House Republicans is making a pilgrimage to the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s business fraud trial is taking place in a show of support for their party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
Among the group is Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who on X shared a photo of himself outside the courtroom while echoing Trump’s instruction to the Proud Boys militia group in 2020 to “stand back and stand by”:
Continue reading...House Republicans seek recordings of classified documents case interviews, in what Democrats call a ‘purely political’ move
Joe Biden asserted executive privilege to stop House Republicans obtaining recordings of his interviews with Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s retention of classified information after his time as a senator and as vice-president to Barack Obama.
In a letter reported by the New York Times and other outlets on Thursday, the White House counsel, Edward Siskel, told the Republican chairs of the House judiciary and oversight committees: “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal – to chop them up, distort them and use them for partisan political purposes.
Continue reading...In the wake of campus protests, some say proposals are part of of a broader effort to silence criticism of Israel
Against the backdrop of demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza on college campuses, the White House and Congress have announced a string of policies and commitments aimed at addressing what Joe Biden warned was a “ferocious surge of antisemitism” in the United States.
Antisemitism was on the rise in the US before Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. But the ensuing war has exacerbated the problem, with the law enforcement officials recording a spike in threats against Jewish Americans.
Continue reading...As brutal police repression sweeps campus encampments, schools have been cutting ties with pro-Palestine faculty members without tenure.
The post University Professors Are Losing Their Jobs Over “New McCarthyism” on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
The 71-year-old veteran peace activist discusses the war on Gaza, the Biden administration, and shaking up Congress.
The post Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin on Disrupting the U.S. War Machine appeared first on The Intercept.
The 22-year-old woman and her child were civilian casualties of a U.S. drone strike, but the Pentagon won't return the family's messages.
The post Pentagon Compensated Zero Civilian Victims in 2022 — Despite Evidence That the U.S. Killed a Mom and Child in Somalia appeared first on The Intercept.
Supreme court judges order Arvind Kejriwal’s release until 1 June and question timing of his arrest on corruption charges
One of India’s best-known opposition leaders, Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, has been granted bail by the country’s supreme court to allow him to take part in general election campaigningafter being kept behind bars for almost two months.
Kejriwal, who heads the Aam Aadmi party (AAP), has been held in jail since March when he was arrested on money-laundering charges. He has maintained that his arrest and detention was politically motivated to prevent him taking part in the election, which began in April and will continue until June.
Continue reading...The powerful lobbying group is going against a Capitol Police officer who fended off January 6 insurrectionists.
The post Neither Candidate Has Much to Say About Israel. So Why Is AIPAC Pouring Money Into This Race? appeared first on The Intercept.
Antony Blinken’s report identifies “incidents that raise concerns,” but says Israel is not blocking humanitarian aid.
The post Israel “Likely” Used U.S.-Supplied Weapons in Violation of International Law. That’s OK, Though, State Department Says. appeared first on The Intercept.
Four lawsuits alleging Hamas ties against Students for Justice in Palestine, the AP, UNRWA, and a cryptocurrency exchange share many of the same plaintiffs.
The post October 7 Survivors Sue Campus Protesters, Say Students Are “Hamas’s Propaganda Division” appeared first on The Intercept.
A donor to Dexter in the Portland congressional race tells The Intercept: “I give all my contributions through AIPAC.”
The post AIPAC and Republican Donors Raising Big Money for Maxine Dexter Against Susheela Jayapal in Oregon appeared first on The Intercept.
An open letter from government attorneys questions the legal cover for arms transfers to Israel.
The post Even Biden’s Lawyers Are Urging the White House to Change Course on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
In talking points reviewed by The Intercept, the pro-Israel lobby argues that Israel has “no other option” but to invade Rafah.
The post As Biden Warns Against Rafah Invasion, AIPAC Pushes Congress to Support Israel’s Operation appeared first on The Intercept.
Lots of complicated details here: too many for me to summarize well. It involves an obscure Section 230 provision—and an even more obscure typo. Read this.
A former facility psychologist is suing the Bureau of Prisons over an Instagram account that joked about suicide at FCC Lompoc.
The post Who Ran This Derogatory Prison Meme Page? A Prison Guard. appeared first on The Intercept.
On campus, inside the Capitol, and in court, there’s an all-out assault on American democracy in the name of Israel.
The post They Used to Say Arabs Can’t Have Democracy Because It’d Be Bad for Israel. Now the U.S. Can’t Have It Either. appeared first on The Intercept.
Hundreds of climate experts expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels by 2100. Damian Carrington reports
When the Guardian’s environment editor, Damian Carrington, decided to survey the world’s top climate scientists, he had no idea how many of them would want to participate.
“I was astonished by the flood of responses that came back,” he tells Hannah Moore.
Continue reading...In this week’s Down to Earth newsletter: what the Guardian’s Sirin Kale saw when reporting on environmental disasters in Germany, Belgium and the UK
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This is an extract of this week’s Down to Earth newsletter, to get more exclusive environmental journalism in your inbox every Thursday sign up here
It’s common to think about the climate crisis as something that will happen in the future, in the global south.
Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look like
What are the most powerful climate actions you can take? The expert view
Fast fashion is wasteful, and thrifting is flawed. The solution: swap!
Herd of 170 bison could help store CO2 equivalent of almost 2m cars, researchers say
‘The stakes could not be higher’: world is on edge of climate abyss, UN warns
Four kids left: The Thai school swallowed by the sea
‘It just didn’t work’: how businesses are struggling with reuseable packaging
Continue reading...Government, including far-right leader Geert Wilders, announces it will abandon key green policies in strategy
The Netherlands’ new right-wing coalition government aims to reintroduce daytime speeds of 80mph on motorways as part of a number of proposed changes to the country’s environmental policies which have sparked concern.
The move echoes the anti-green stance of other right-wing parties across the continent, as environmental issues become popular bogeymen for populist politicians. In Germany, for example, heat pumps have been politicised, as members of the far-right party AfD have called the Green party “our enemies’.
Continue reading...Russian constitutional court is considering claim, which activists hope will raise awareness about emissions
A group of activists are fighting for the right to scrutinise Russia’s climate policies, and in particular its enormous methane emissions, in court.
Russia’s constitutional court is considering a claim brought by 18 individuals and the NGO Ecodefense that insufficient action by the Russian state to cut national greenhouse gas emissions is violating their rights to life, health and a healthy environment.
Continue reading... submitted by /u/chrisdh79 [link] [comments] |
Sir John Armitt urges ministers to act swiftly or risk impeding growth and jeopardising climate targets
Rishi Sunak’s U-turns over net zero have delayed progress on vital infrastructure that is needed for economic growth, the government’s advisers have said.
Sir John Armitt, the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), said good progress had been made on renewable energy in the past five years, but changes to key policies, including postponing a scheme to boost heat pump takeup, had created uncertainty and delay.
The government will fail to meet its targets on heat pump rollout.
The promised lifting of a ban on new onshore windfarms has not gone far enough.
Massive investment is needed in the electricity grid.
There is no proper plan for rail in the north and Midlands now that the northern leg of HS2 has been cancelled, severely inhibiting economic growth in those regions.
Water bills will need to go up to fix the sewage crisis, and more reservoirs are needed to avoid drought, while water companies have done too little to staunch leaks.
The UK lacks a coherent strategy on flooding, with more than 900,000 properties at risk of river or sea flooding and 910,000 at risk of surface water flooding.
Good progress has been made on the rollout of gigabit broadband around the country.
Continue reading...Some locals say they have been too scared to leave their homes as protests over changes to the voting law grew into deadly riots
Lizzie Carboni knew that life in New Caledonia had changed forever when the school she had attended as a child went up in flames on Wednesday night.
“I could hear people yelling, screaming and grenades being fired,” she says, adding that it was “the worst night of my life” and likening the scenes unfolding in the capital, Nouméa, to “civil war”.
Continue reading...The powerful lobbying group is going against a Capitol Police officer who fended off January 6 insurrectionists.
The post Neither Candidate Has Much to Say About Israel. So Why Is AIPAC Pouring Money Into This Race? appeared first on The Intercept.
A donor to Dexter in the Portland congressional race tells The Intercept: “I give all my contributions through AIPAC.”
The post AIPAC and Republican Donors Raising Big Money for Maxine Dexter Against Susheela Jayapal in Oregon appeared first on The Intercept.
SEMrush and Ahrefs are among
the most popular tools in the SEO industry. Both companies have been in
business for years and have thousands of customers per month.
If you're a professional SEO or trying to do digital
marketing on your own, at some point you'll likely consider using a tool to
help with your efforts. Ahrefs and SEMrush are two names that will likely
appear on your shortlist.
In this guide, I'm going to help you learn more about these SEO tools and how to choose the one that's best for your purposes.
What is SEMrush?
SEMrush is a popular SEO tool with a wide range of
features—it's the leading competitor research service for online marketers.
SEMrush's SEO Keyword Magic tool offers over 20 billion Google-approved
keywords, which are constantly updated and it's the largest keyword database.
The program was developed in 2007 as SeoQuake is a
small Firefox extension
Features
Ahrefs is a leading SEO platform that offers a set of
tools to grow your search traffic, research your competitors, and monitor your
niche. The company was founded in 2010, and it has become a popular choice
among SEO tools. Ahrefs has a keyword index of over 10.3 billion keywords and
offers accurate and extensive backlink data updated every 15-30 minutes and it
is the world's most extensive backlink index database.
Features
Direct Comparisons: Ahrefs vs SEMrush
Now that you know a little more about each tool, let's
take a look at how they compare. I'll analyze each tool to see how they differ
in interfaces, keyword research resources, rank tracking, and competitor
analysis.
User Interface
Ahrefs and SEMrush both offer comprehensive information
and quick metrics regarding your website's SEO performance. However, Ahrefs
takes a bit more of a hands-on approach to getting your account fully set up,
whereas SEMrush's simpler dashboard can give you access to the data you need
quickly.
In this section, we provide a brief overview of the elements
found on each dashboard and highlight the ease with which you can complete
tasks.
AHREFS
The Ahrefs dashboard is less cluttered than that of
SEMrush, and its primary menu is at the very top of the page, with a search bar
designed only for entering URLs.
Additional features of the Ahrefs platform include:
SEMRUSH
When you log into the SEMrush Tool, you will find four
main modules. These include information about your domains, organic keyword
analysis, ad keyword, and site traffic.
You'll also find some other options like
Both Ahrefs and SEMrush have user-friendly dashboards,
but Ahrefs is less cluttered and easier to navigate. On the other hand, SEMrush
offers dozens of extra tools, including access to customer support resources.
When deciding on which dashboard to use, consider what
you value in the user interface, and test out both.
If you're looking to track your website's search engine
ranking, rank tracking features can help. You can also use them to monitor your
competitors.
Let's take a look at Ahrefs vs. SEMrush to see which
tool does a better job.
The Ahrefs Rank Tracker is simpler to use. Just type in
the domain name and keywords you want to analyze, and it spits out a report
showing you the search engine results page (SERP) ranking for each keyword you
enter.
Rank Tracker looks at the ranking performance of
keywords and compares them with the top rankings for those keywords. Ahrefs
also offers:
You'll see metrics that help you understand your
visibility, traffic, average position, and keyword difficulty.
It gives you an idea of whether a keyword would be
profitable to target or not.
SEMRush offers a tool called Position Tracking. This
tool is a project tool—you must set it up as a new project. Below are a few of
the most popular features of the SEMrush Position Tracking tool:
All subscribers are given regular data updates and
mobile search rankings upon subscribing
The platform provides opportunities to track several
SERP features, including Local tracking.
Intuitive reports allow you to track statistics for the
pages on your website, as well as the keywords used in those pages.
Identify pages that may be competing with each other
using the Cannibalization report.
Ahrefs is a more user-friendly option. It takes seconds
to enter a domain name and keywords. From there, you can quickly decide whether
to proceed with that keyword or figure out how to rank better for other
keywords.
SEMrush allows you to check your mobile rankings and
ranking updates daily, which is something Ahrefs does not offer. SEMrush also
offers social media rankings, a tool you won't find within the Ahrefs platform.
Both are good which one do you like let me know in the comment.
Keyword research is closely related to rank tracking,
but it's used for deciding which keywords you plan on using for future content
rather than those you use now.
When it comes to SEO, keyword research is the most
important thing to consider when comparing the two platforms.
The Ahrefs Keyword Explorer provides you with thousands
of keyword ideas and filters search results based on the chosen search engine.
Ahrefs supports several features, including:
SEMrush's Keyword Magic Tool has over 20 billion
keywords for Google. You can type in any keyword you want, and a list of
suggested keywords will appear.
The Keyword Magic Tool also lets you to:
Both of these tools offer keyword research features and
allow users to break down complicated tasks into something that can be
understood by beginners and advanced users alike.
If you're interested in keyword suggestions, SEMrush
appears to have more keyword suggestions than Ahrefs does. It also continues to
add new features, like the Keyword Gap tool and SERP Questions recommendations.
Both platforms offer competitor analysis tools,
eliminating the need to come up with keywords off the top of your head. Each
tool is useful for finding keywords that will be useful for your competition so
you know they will be valuable to you.
Ahrefs' domain comparison tool lets you compare up to five websites (your website and four competitors) side-by-side.it also shows you how your site is ranked against others with metrics such as backlinks, domain ratings, and more.
Use the Competing Domains section to see a list of your
most direct competitors, and explore how many keywords matches your competitors
have.
To find more information about your competitor, you can
look at the Site Explorer and Content Explorer tools and type in their URL
instead of yours.
SEMrush provides a variety of insights into your
competitors' marketing tactics. The platform enables you to research your
competitors effectively. It also offers several resources for competitor
analysis including:
Traffic Analytics helps you identify where your
audience comes from, how they engage with your site, what devices visitors use
to view your site, and how your audiences overlap with other websites.
SEMrush's Organic Research examines your website's
major competitors and shows their organic search rankings, keywords they are
ranking for, and even if they are ranking for any (SERP) features and more.
The Market Explorer search field allows you to type in
a domain and lists websites or articles similar to what you entered. Market
Explorer also allows users to perform in-depth data analytics on These
companies and markets.
SEMrush wins here because it has more tools dedicated to
competitor analysis than Ahrefs. However, Ahrefs offers a lot of functionality
in this area, too. It takes a combination of both tools to gain an advantage
over your competition.
When it comes to keyword data research, you will become
confused about which one to choose.
Consider choosing Ahrefs if you
Consider SEMrush if you:
Both tools are great. Choose the one which meets your
requirements and if you have any experience using either Ahrefs or SEMrush let
me know in the comment section which works well for you.
Leaky Old Trafford roof was almost a too perfect sign of neglect by owners who love the money but don’t seem to like the club
In February, the NFL players’ union carried out its second annual survey of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and let’s just say it wasn’t pleasant reading. Tampa Bay players reported that the changing room was “not clean, constantly smelly and has a persistent bug issue”. The sauna was described as “dirty and/or mouldy”. This barely a decade after an MRSA outbreak infected three Buccaneers players, two of whom never competed again.
In addition, players complained about being forced to pay $90 (£72) for childcare on match days (most teams offer this for free), being charged $1,750 a season for the privilege of having their own hotel room on away trips and being made to sit at the back of the plane while club staff travelled first class. Most of the blame for this state of affairs was laid squarely at the team’s ownership, whom the survey ranked 29th out of the 32 NFL franchise owners, and who go by the name of the Glazer family.
Continue reading...If you can get past the QR code and the long wait for something close to food, you’ve still got to work out where the hell to put it
Modern life presents many challenges: filing electronic tax returns, getting hold of Virgin Media customer services, not drenching the passive-aggressive pedant on the neighbourhood WhatsApp group with digital expletives. But none of that comes even close to the trauma of trying to have a quiet dinner in a modern city-centre hotel room. Every element has been engineered by a disciple of the Marquis de Sade, only one with more spite, and a misunderstanding of ergonomics. Let’s start with the room service menu, which of course now means a QR code. But only if you have a phone signal, which you don’t because the building is a Faraday cage designed to keep out even the slightest waft of 2G. Use the hotel wifi instead, although that means being scraped for every last byte of intimate data you possess and the sweet promise of marketing emails for decades to come. In return for which, it probably won’t work.
But let’s say you get on to the wifi and the QR code does its thing, and the site doesn’t freeze, which it will because it always does. Who knows if the food will arrive? Certainly not the hotel operator. Because the kitchen only takes orders online and no, they can’t put you through and please don’t talk to me like that. Still, after 45 minutes dinner turns up and there’s a green sulphurous ring around the yolk of the over-boiled egg in your Caesar salad, and the over-emulsified dressing looks like it needs a course of antibiotics. But it’s food. Kind of. I wasn’t expecting Le Gavroche.
Continue reading...The 71-year-old veteran peace activist discusses the war on Gaza, the Biden administration, and shaking up Congress.
The post Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin on Disrupting the U.S. War Machine appeared first on The Intercept.
Whether it’s in segregated America or the glory days of postwar France, Omar Victor Diop appears in photographs of worlds he was previously shut out from
Continue reading...The 22-year-old woman and her child were civilian casualties of a U.S. drone strike, but the Pentagon won't return the family's messages.
The post Pentagon Compensated Zero Civilian Victims in 2022 — Despite Evidence That the U.S. Killed a Mom and Child in Somalia appeared first on The Intercept.
“We’re continuing to work around the clock with the government of Israel and with the government of Egypt to work on this issue,” the State Department said.
The post American Medical Missions Trapped in Gaza, Facing Death by Dehydration as Population Clings to Life appeared first on The Intercept.
A new anti-terrorism bill would allow the government to take away vital tax exemptions from nonprofit news outlets.
The post Criticizing Israel? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process appeared first on The Intercept.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors. You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors.
You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
Continue reading...Cannes film festival
Toads who sweat hallucinogens, lonely pre-teens and a sudden German in a kilt: Arnold’s pick’n’mix latest dives as much as it soars
Andrea Arnold’s flawed, garrulous new movie is a chaotic social-realist adventure with big, chancy performances, grimly violent episodes, tragedy butting heads with comedy and physical existence facing off with fantasy and imagination.
It meditates on identity and belonging, the poignancy of not being valued, not being seen, the transition from childhood to adulthood, girlhood to womanhood, sexism and cruelty. The energy and heartfelt good humour offset the moments of cliche and implausibility.
Barry Keoghan plays Bug, a lairy bloke who is over the moon at his imminent wedding and his foolproof idea for easy money: he has imported from Colorado a certain kind of toad whose slime is a powerful (and expensive) hallucinogen. It’s just that the toad needs the right kind of soothing and yet upbeat music played to it, before it starts sweating out the good stuff. And what track does Bug like? Andrea Arnold couldn’t resist it: Murder on the Dancefloor. Perhaps every Keoghan film from now on is going to have a Saltburn gag.
Studio Voltaire, London
From Tom’s pert-bottomed hunks to Cook’s curvacious ladies, both artists wanted to give pleasure
‘Hate the politics, love the uniform,” would pretty much sum up Touko Valio Laaksonen’s attitude towards the Wehrmacht soldiers he encountered as a young, conscripted anti-aircraft officer in the Finnish army, fighting alongside the Germans in the second world war. After the war, Laaksonen began signing his commercial drawings for physique magazines with the moniker Tom of Finland, and the very different uniform of the sexual outlaw, inspired by American biker culture (and in particular by Marlon Brando in the 1953 movie The Wild One), replaced field grey with leather and denim, a hyper-masculine look that developed in gay culture from the 1950s onward.
Pert-bottomed and conspicuously well hung, six-packed and nipples erected, poured into their jeans and their leather trousers, Tom of Finland’s groups of hunks and Muscle Marys indulge in all sorts of horseplay. They suck, they rim, they fist, they fuck. They pose and they cruise, they watch and, given half a chance, they join in. There’s a bit of lighthearted BDSM, but not much else to vary the routine. What a tiring round their days must be. Away from the magazine page or beyond the edge of the drawing they might complain, if they had the time, about their onerous moisturising regimes, the daily workouts and depilation routines. Never mind the same old outfits every day, or that as soon as one scene has ended another’s begun. Even when they’re tied to a tree and being thrashed with a belt they seem happy enough, and no one ever screams their safe word.
Continue reading...The grimly effective 2008 home invasion shocker gets a strange semi-remake that sucks out all of the suspense
In a genre in which innovation is increasingly resigned to the furthest outskirts, there’s something almost admirable about just how staggeringly redundant The Strangers: Chapter 1 is, early contender for 2024’s most pointless horror movie. It’s the third in a series that should have stopped after one, a reboot that’s more of a remake but sold as a prequel while also acting as the start of a new trilogy, an over-complicated attempt to squeeze new life out of old IP. The 2008 original, which starred Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman as a couple menaced by three masked invaders, was a short, sharp shock to the system, a bare-bones exercise in drip-drip suspense made scarier by its cold, motivation-less villains (“Because you were home”).
There was a stark, naturalistic nastiness to it, closer to Michael Haneke’s Funny Games than most of the silly genre dreck being churned out at the time and so while the film was a commercial win for Universal, it didn’t lend itself to easy extension. A troubled decade of false starts finally led to 2018’s sleekly made yet maddeningly scare-free sequel Prey at Night and now six years later, with rights moving over to Lionsgate, we have a new trilogy, ambitious in concept if nothing else. The three films are all set to be released within a year, an expansion of a world that worked best on the simplest of terms, a perfect example of unnecessary bloat at a time when we’re surrounded by it. It’s the era of 10-hour TV seasons that could be 100-minute movies and prequels to stories answering questions we never cared to ask and with yet more to come from the worlds of Harry Potter, Twilight and Lord of the Rings, why not stretch a tight 85-minute shocker into a multi-film franchise?
Continue reading...Cannes film festival
Lou Ye’s docu-realist film starts as sophisticated comedy, morphs from looking like a zombie apocalypse to intimate drama, and evolves into a tribute to how a nation handled trauma
Out of agony and chaos, Chinese film-maker Lou Ye has created something mysterious, moving and even profound – a kind of multilayered docu-realist film, evidently inspired by a real-life situation in film production. As well as everything else, the film meditates on what it means to be “unfinished”. Very few of us will leave this life with a satisfied sense of everything achieved, complete, squared away. To be mortal is to feel that things have ended without being finished. It is possibly his best film since the courageous Tiananmen Square drama Summer Palace from 2006 – and set near Wuhan, the city in which his 2012 film Mystery was set in the days when that place was internationally known – if at all – simply for being almost scarily vast and impersonal.
It is 2019 and a film director and his crew gather in a production studio and excitedly unbox a big 00s-era computer, containing the digitised video and audio files for a film he had had to abandon 10 years before – without even having a title – because he had refused to bow to his producers’ demands to soften the content. It is a story of a gay man’s passion for another man who is involved with someone else. Getting the unfinished film now is clearly the end result of legal wrangling. (Lou has evidently had access to genuine footage from a real production.)
Continue reading...On the 125th anniversary of his birth – and with a Tom Holland biopic in the works – we run down the finest performances in the Hollywood legend’s eight-decade career
A semi-straight turn from Fred Astaire in this witty comedy drama. He is an American diplomat in London whose employee (Jack Lemmon) is renting a flat from a mysterious, organ-playing landlady (Kim Novak) who is widely suspected of having offed her husband. Astaire brings a touch of old-school sophistication, while he and Lemmon make for an appealing double act, trading gags rather than toe-taps.
Continue reading...OpenAI’s updated chatbot GPT-4o is weirdly flirtatious, coquettish and sounds like Scarlett Johansson in Her. Why?
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Arthur C Clarke famously said. And this could certainly be said of the impressive OpenAI update to ChatGPT, called GPT-4o, which was released on Monday. With the slight caveat that it felt a lot like the magician was a horny 12-year-old boy who had just watched the Spike Jonze movie Her.
If you aren’t up to speed on GPT-4o (the o stands for “omni”) it’s basically an all-singing, all-dancing, all-seeing version of the original chatbot. You can now interact with it the same way you’d interact with a human, rather than via text-based questions. It can give you advice, it can rate your jokes, it can describe your surroundings, it can banter with you. It sounds human. “It feels like AI from the movies,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a blog post on Monday. “Getting to human-level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change.”
Continue reading...
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the most popular digital assets today, capturing the attention of cryptocurrency investors, whales and people from around the world. People find it amazing that some users spend thousands or millions of dollars on a single NFT-based image of a monkey or other token, but you can simply take a screenshot for free. So here we share some freuently asked question about NFTs.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, which is a cryptographic token on a blockchain with unique identification codes that distinguish it from other tokens. NFTs are unique and not interchangeable, which means no two NFTs are the same. NFTs can be a unique artwork, GIF, Images, videos, Audio album. in-game items, collectibles etc.
A blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that allows for the secure storage of data. By recording any kind of information—such as bank account transactions, the ownership of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), or Decentralized Finance (DeFi) smart contracts—in one place, and distributing it to many different computers, blockchains ensure that data can’t be manipulated without everyone in the system being aware.
The value of an NFT comes from its ability to be traded freely and securely on the blockchain, which is not possible with other current digital ownership solutionsThe NFT points to its location on the blockchain, but doesn’t necessarily contain the digital property. For example, if you replace one bitcoin with another, you will still have the same thing. If you buy a non-fungible item, such as a movie ticket, it is impossible to replace it with any other movie ticket because each ticket is unique to a specific time and place.
One of the unique characteristics of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is that they can be tokenised to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought, sold and traded on the blockchain.
As with crypto-currency, records of who owns what are stored on a ledger that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. These records can’t be forged because the whole system operates on an open-source network.
NFTs also contain smart contracts—small computer programs that run on the blockchain—that give the artist, for example, a cut of any future sale of the token.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren't cryptocurrencies, but they do use blockchain technology. Many NFTs are based on Ethereum, where the blockchain serves as a ledger for all the transactions related to said NFT and the properties it represents.5) How to make an NFT?
Anyone can create an NFT. All you need is a digital wallet, some ethereum tokens and a connection to an NFT marketplace where you’ll be able to upload and sell your creations
When you purchase a stock in NFT, that purchase is recorded on the blockchain—the bitcoin ledger of transactions—and that entry acts as your proof of ownership.
The value of an NFT varies a lot based on the digital asset up for grabs. People use NFTs to trade and sell digital art, so when creating an NFT, you should consider the popularity of your digital artwork along with historical statistics.
In the year 2021, a digital artist called Pak created an artwork called The Merge. It was sold on the Nifty Gateway NFT market for $91.8 million.
Non-fungible tokens can be used in investment opportunities. One can purchase an NFT and resell it at a profit. Certain NFT marketplaces let sellers of NFTs keep a percentage of the profits from sales of the assets they create.
Many people want to buy NFTs because it lets them support the arts and own something cool from their favorite musicians, brands, and celebrities. NFTs also give artists an opportunity to program in continual royalties if someone buys their work. Galleries see this as a way to reach new buyers interested in art.
There are many places to buy digital assets, like opensea and their policies vary. On top shot, for instance, you sign up for a waitlist that can be thousands of people long. When a digital asset goes on sale, you are occasionally chosen to purchase it.
To mint an NFT token, you must pay some amount of gas fee to process the transaction on the Etherum blockchain, but you can mint your NFT on a different blockchain called Polygon to avoid paying gas fees. This option is available on OpenSea and this simply denotes that your NFT will only be able to trade using Polygon's blockchain and not Etherum's blockchain. Mintable allows you to mint NFTs for free without paying any gas fees.
The answer is no. Non-Fungible Tokens are minted on the blockchain using cryptocurrencies such as Etherum, Solana, Polygon, and so on. Once a Non-Fungible Token is minted, the transaction is recorded on the blockchain and the contract or license is awarded to whoever has that Non-Fungible Token in their wallet.
You can sell your work and creations by attaching a license to it on the blockchain, where its ownership can be transferred. This lets you get exposure without losing full ownership of your work. Some of the most successful projects include Cryptopunks, Bored Ape Yatch Club NFTs, SandBox, World of Women and so on. These NFT projects have gained popularity globally and are owned by celebrities and other successful entrepreneurs. Owning one of these NFTs gives you an automatic ticket to exclusive business meetings and life-changing connections.
That’s a wrap. Hope you guys found this article enlightening. I just answer some question with my limited knowledge about NFTs. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below. Also I have a question for you, Is bitcoin an NFTs? let me know in The comment section below
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