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The 47 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now (April 2025)
Sat, 19 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000
Behind the Curtain: Stranger Things the First Shadow, The Imaginary, and Dead Talents Society are just a few of the movies you should watch on Netflix this month.
Match ID: 0 Score: 55.00 source: www.wired.com age: 2 days
qualifiers: 35.00 (best|good|great) (show|movie), 20.00 movie
The 48 Best Shows on Netflix Right Now (April 2025)
Sat, 19 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000
Black Mirror, North of North, and Adolescence are just a few of the shows you need to watch on Netflix this month.
Match ID: 1 Score: 35.00 source: www.wired.com age: 2 days
qualifiers: 35.00 (best|good|great) (show|movie)
Experts talk realism of Conclave movie: ‘Gets a lot of the details right’
Tue, 22 Apr 2025 07:10:01 GMT
After the death of Pope Francis, experts weigh in on how much the real-life papal election will mirror the hit Oscar-winning movie
I confess: my first thought this morning, when I heard the news that Pope Francis died at the age of 88, was of Conclave. As in both the lowercase, technical meaning – the sequestration of cardinals to elect a new pope with a two-thirds majority – and the capital-C film of the same name from last year, which allowed viewers to vicariously participate in a process long shrouded in secrecy and reverence. (And premiering during the US vote, to experience election thrills without grim disappointment.)
The film, directed by Edward Berger, luxuriated in process both sacred and profane – the orderly processions and cafeteria run-ins, the ceremonial burning of paper votes and security screenings, the white smoke and the complimentary toiletries bags. The hallowed halls of the Vatican and the gossip that flits among them, especially as different factions compete to see their vision cemented by the most powerful religious leader in the world. As a deft and highly entertaining thriller on the furtive process of electing a new pope, well, you can expect people to consider Conclave as close to documentary as laypeople can get to the action. But how accurate is it?
Continue reading...Tuvalu is celebrating its first ATM, but here’s a warning from the UK, where human contact has been lost to the self-service age
Life is about to change on the remote island nation of Tuvalu. And not, in my opinion, for the better. To great fanfare, Tuvalu – an entirely cash-based society – has unveiled its first ever ATM, marking its move towards financial modernisation. But while the 10,000 people living in that country may be celebrating no longer having to queue at the bank, I fear their happiness will be short-lived. It’s the start of the slow erosion of human contact that heralds the dehumanisation of yet another society.
The world’s first ATM was introduced in Britain in 1967, but for me the tyranny of machines that promise convenience but erode human contact really began about 20 years ago, in the form of self-checkouts in our local Sainsbury’s. Having watched the Terminator movie franchise during my formative years, I railed prophetically against them, aware that it was just a small slippery slope from “unexpected item in the bagging area” to the extinction of the human race. I wrote about my fear of these machines with their Dalek-like commands and even started a short-lived and extremely unpopular Facebook campaign against them. But like a modern-day Cassandra, I was doomed to be ignored.
Hilary Freeman is a journalist and author
Continue reading...I was there with US soldiers in 2006 and can see why the film-makers zoomed in on them so closely. But it results in glaring flaws
Think back to 2006. Iraq was at the peak of its conflicts. A horrific sectarian war was raging, and al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent groups, both Sunni and Shia, held sway in substantial areas of the country.
Suicide bombers and IEDs were a daily occurrence targeting both Iraqis and foreign forces, and in cities and towns from Fallujah and Ramadi, to Baqubah and Mosul, US troops were engaged in urban warfare. It was as much about ambush and hit-and-run attacks as about formal battles.
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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
This startling debut follows a young woman on a surreal and bluntly graphic quest to be the perfect girlfriend
Set in upstate New York, Sophie Kemp’s surreal satirical debut puts us in the uneasy company of a part-time model who calls herself Reality as she sets out on a crazed quest to become the perfect girlfriend. The chief beneficiary of her self-education is a crack-smoking postgrad and wannabe musician named Ariel, who cheats openly, gives her an infection and – in the reader’s eye – sees her as little more than a sex toy able to fetch snacks. But Reality is besotted, ignoring her own doomsaying conscience – what she refers to with typical idiosyncrasy as “the familiar voice” – as well as her best friend, Soon-jin, who thinks Ariel looks like a “school shooter”: “I think what she was saying was: Ariel is a unique bad boy who often wore a leather jacket.”
What ensues is akin to a TikTok Stepford Wives for the Pornhub era. Taking tips from a magazine, Girlfriend Weekly, which magically appears every so often bathed in light and accompanied by a cor anglais, Reality leans with alarmingly good cheer into the notion that the perfect girlfriend must be permanently ready to service every last whim. “I loved the feeling of being sliced open in the butt by a nice, girthy, yet not too large cock,” she tells us, wiping her belly with a sock Ariel gives her after one of many bluntly described couplings. Reality presses him on whether she’s actually his girlfriend now. “What? Oh yeah. OK, sure.” “My life had become beautiful,” she tells us.
The style is George Saunders meets Ottessa Moshfegh, filtered through – at a rough guess – 4chan, mumblecore and 18th-century marriage manuals. There are arch intertitles (“In which the quest begins with three pieces of evidence”), faux-naif chattiness, narcotised dialogue and any number of left turns making a wild premise wilder still: when Reality participates in a clinical trial of a mysterious pill, ZZZZvx ULTRA (XR), designed to aid would-be perfect girlfriends, she ends up on the run from a machine-gun-wielding medic.
It’s safe to say your mileage may vary, not least because the piss-taking can feel ultra-specific (Ariel attends a seminar known to Reality as his “James Joyce Opinions Class”) and the lingering sense that it’s all a kind of alt-lit prank a la Tao Lin (a suspicion heightened by the cover of the US edition, which displays an anime Eve in the garden of Eden, with Kemp’s name in Comic Sans). Yet Paradise Logic rarely feels slack in the way that kind of fiction can; Kemp knows exactly what she’s doing, and tonally the novel is a feat, expertly switching between laughter, shock and heartache, sometimes in a heartbeat. In one of many startling moments, Ariel forces himself on Reality when she’s drunk with a head wound. The narrative splits in two to show us what she’s thinking – the phrase “I love you” 100 times – before cutting to inside Ariel’s mind: “The band is called Computer. We will perform in midsize venues all over the country and Europe, too.”
Gary Shteyngart is quoted on the cover calling it the funniest book of the year. And it is funny – right from the Emily Dickinson epigraph, which finds new resonance in the poet’s use of “hoe” – but ultimately it’s a comedy about misogyny in the way that Percival Everett’s The Trees is a comedy about lynching. Witness the moment when Soon-jin says Ariel looks like a school shooter: “It was so clear that she was jealous,” Reality thinks, “but I felt sad. Me and Soon-jin had been through a lot together. Each time I got raped in college she was always so nice to me after.” Every few pages, a sucker-punch line like that bares the teeth behind the book’s smile, and to even call it a comedy ends up feeling a kind of weird category error that doesn’t get near Kemp’s full-spectrum effect. How she follows this is anyone’s guess.
Statement signed by Harvard, Princeton and Brown leaders denounces White House’s ‘undue government intrusion’
More than 100 presidents of US colleges and universities have signed a statement denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with higher education – the strongest sign yet that US educational institutions are forming a unified front against the government’s extraordinary attack on their independence.
The statement, published early on Tuesday by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, comes weeks into the administration’s mounting campaign against higher education, and hours after Harvard University became the first school to sue the government over threats to its funding. Harvard is one of several institutions hit in recent weeks with huge funding cuts and demands they relinquish significant institutional autonomy.
Continue reading...Marco Rubio revoked his green card for antisemitism. His Jewish Israeli friend calls bullshit.
The post “How Can I Take Anyone Seriously Talking About Mohsen Being Antisemitic?” appeared first on The Intercept.
Stiglitz, perhaps the most renowned Columbia professor, gave an exclusive interview to The Intercept on academic freedom, deportations of students, and more.
The post Nobel Winner Joseph Stiglitz Denounces Columbia’s Apparent Capitulation to Trump appeared first on The Intercept.
A green card holder, Columbia University protest leader Mohsen Mahdawi faced attacks from pro-Israel activists.
The post Palestinian Student Leader Was Called In for Citizenship Interview — Then Arrested by ICE appeared first on The Intercept.
The “Tesla Takedown” protests reveal a major vulnerability of the Trump regime.
The post The Tesla Takedown Shows How We Can Make Oligarchs Feel the Pain appeared first on The Intercept.
Imagine that all of us—all of society—have landed on some alien planet and need to form a government: clean slate. We do not have any legacy systems from the United States or any other country. We do not have any special or unique interests to perturb our thinking. How would we govern ourselves? It is unlikely that we would use the systems we have today. Modern representative democracy was the best form of government that eighteenth-century technology could invent. The twenty-first century is very different: scientifically, technically, and philosophically. For example, eighteenth-century democracy was designed under the assumption that travel and communications were both hard...
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