Tag Archives: apocalypse

Notes from an Apocalypse – Mark O’Connell

by Myrna Posted on April 15, 2020

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Notes from an Apocalypse

A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back

Mark O’Connell

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: April 14, 2020

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC

"Harrowing, tender-hearted, and funny as hell" —Jenny Offill “Fascinating…Oddly uplifting”  —The Economist "Smart, funny, irreverent, and philosophically rich" — Wall Street Journal By the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine , an absorbing, deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with the future We're alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. Old postwar alliances are crumbling. A pandemic draws our global community to a halt.  Everywhere you look there's an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What does it mean to have children—nothing if not an act of hope—in such unsettled times? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what on Earth is anybody doing about it? Dublin-based writer Mark O'Connell is consumed by these questions—and, as the father of two young children himself, he finds them increasingly urgent. In Notes from an Apocalypse , he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization's collapse. He engages with would-be Mars colonists, preppers, right-wing conspiracists. And he bears witness to those places, like Chernobyl, that the future has already visited—real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. In doing so, he comes to a resolution, while offering readers a unique window into our contemporary imagination. Both investigative and deeply personal, Notes from an Apocalypse is an affecting, humorous, and surprisingly hopeful meditation on our present moment. With insight, humanity, and wit, O'Connell leaves you to wonder: What if the end of the world isn't the end of the world?

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Notes from an Apocalypse – Mark O’Connell

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Climate change hits businesses where it hurts: their wallets.

by GradyChapdelain Posted on January 19, 2018

Some of these articles are sensationalized very nearly to the point of inaccuracy. Others are cases of “elaborate misinformation.”

A review from Climate Feedback, a group of scientists who survey climate change news to determine whether it’s scientifically sound, looked at the 25 most-shared stories last year that focused on the science of climate change or global warming.

Of those, only 11 were rated as credible, meaning they contained no major inaccuracies. Five were considered borderline inaccurate. The remaining nine, including New York Magazine’s viral “The Uninhabitable Earth,” were found to have low or very low credibility. However, even the top-rated articles were noted as somewhat misleading. (Read the reviews here.)

“We see a lot of inaccurate stories,” Emmanuel Vincent, a research scientist at the University of California and the founder of Climate Feedback, told Grist. Each scientist at Climate Feedback holds a Ph.D. and has recently published articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Vincent says that the New York Times and Washington Post are the two main sources that Climate Feedback has found “consistently publish information that is accurate and influential.” (He notes that Grist’s “Ice Apocalypse” by Eric Holthaus also made the credibility cut.)

“You need to find the line between being catchy and interesting without overstepping what the science can support,” he says.

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Climate change hits businesses where it hurts: their wallets.

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Haze fills the air and ash rains from the sky: Just another day in Siberia.

by OzecUrbanymibny Posted on September 23, 2016

This week, cities mark World Car-Free Day, an annual event to promote biking, walking, mass transit, and other ways to get around sans motor vehicles (Solowheel, anyone?).

Technically, World Car-Free Day was Thursday, September 22, but participating cities are taking the “eh, close enough” approach to get their car-free kicks in on the weekend. Said cities include Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Brussels, Bogotá, Jakarta, Copenhagen, and Paris, where nearly half the city center will be closed to vehicle traffic on Sunday.

But going car-free, municipally speaking, is becoming more of a regular trend than an annual affair: Mexico City closes 35 miles of city streets to cars every Sunday; the Oslo city government proposed a ban on private vehicles in the city center after 2019; and in Paris, the government is allowed to limit vehicles if air pollution rises above health-threatening levels.

But even if your city isn’t officially participating in World Car-Free Day, you can be the change you want to see in your own metropolis. And by that, we mean: Just leave your keys at home. Horrible, no good things happen in cars.

Originally posted here:

Haze fills the air and ash rains from the sky: Just another day in Siberia.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Anker, FF, GE, Hagen, LAI, ONA, Ringer, Uncategorized | Tagged anchor, apocalypse, hagen, jakarta, limit-vehicles, mexico, science, siberia, world-car- | Comments Off

Review: "X-Men: Apocalypse" Is the Best Superhero Film of 2016

by DeclanSullivan Posted on May 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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Depending on your definition, there have been somewhere between 50 and 70 superhero films made in the United States since the first X-Men came out in 2000.

When X-Men: Apocalypse, the ninth entry in the franchise and the fourth helmed by Bryan Singer, is released on May 27, it will be the fourth major superhero film to debut just this year. It will also be the best. Better than Captain America: Civil War, which was itself better than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. (Deadpool was sort of a different bird, and if you really were taken by its shtick then you might prefer it.)

That’s not to say Apocalypse is perfect. Like all these films, the plot doesn’t make a lot of sense. It is also a profoundly long 144 minutes. And like the bloated Batman v Superman and Captain America: Civil War, it is overstuffed with superheroes who less serve the story so much as are contractually obligated to appear within it. X-Men: First Class became a hit in 2011 just as Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence were becoming A-listers, and though their talent, along with that of James McAvoy, shines in the new film, the plot struggles with the obligation to share screen time between so many stars.

Do you want to know about the plot?

In Ancient Egypt, Oscar Isaac is a powerful mutant who is betrayed by some followers and ends up buried inside the ruins of a pyramid. Cut to 1983 and, following the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the younger versions of the X-Men are scattered across the globe doing things that are not really worth getting into. Oscar Isaac is woken up by some cult that knows about him based on hieroglyphics or something. (Don’t worry about them. They are never mentioned ever again. I’m pretty sure they die? It really doesn’t matter.) Isaac quickly begins assembling a small band of mutants to help him destroy the world. You see, Oscar Isaac was the very first mutant, and his power is basically that he can take over the body of another mutant and, voila, he’s got that mutant’s power. So for millions of years he has been jumping from mutant to mutant collecting powers (except for the last 6,000 years when he was asleep under that pyramid). He has many powers, but his favorite seems to be turning people into sand.

Oscar Isaac finds Storm (Alexandra Shipp), a mutant with a lightsaber whip (Olivia Munn), and some alcoholic with angel wings (Ben Hardy) and convinces them to help him kill everyone in the world so that he can…mutters incoherently.

Meanwhile, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is the most-wanted fugitive in the world and is hiding in Poland with his wife and daughter, like you do. But then some bad shit happens to this tranquil trio involving…wood, and one thing leads to another.

You see where this is going? Oscar Isaac and his “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” are going to fight Jennifer Lawrence and James McAvoy and the X-Men. However, it takes a very long time for this fight to actually happen. For a superhero movie, this is not the most action-packed film! If you want straight wall-to-wall, mutant-on-mutant action, then it will disappoint. It’s not A Room With a View With a Staircase and a Pond but it’s not A Room With a View of Hell: Staircase of Satan: Pond of Death.

Watching it, however, does not disappoint. The people who made this movie seem to genuinely care about entertaining the audience in every scene. You may rightfully wonder why the scenes happen in the order that they do or why they focus on what they focus on, but they are enjoyable. The cast deserves credit for this. The screenwriters deserve credit, too. The producers deserve credit. Most of all, though, director Bryan Singer deserves credit.

My overriding thought walking out of the screening was: Bryan Singer is just a better director than the other people directing the current crop of superhero films. The Russo brothers of Captain America: Civil War and other various Marvel installments are great! Even Zack Snyder is a talented director whose main flaws come out mostly when he is allowed to have control over other aspects of a project. But Singer’s direction is more confident, more inventive, and more fun.

The X-Men movies don’t get the ink of other superhero movies, but they are the most valuable players of the genre. Aside from X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine—the former now the butt of a joke in Apocalypse; the latter the world has agreed to pretend never happened—the franchise has been remarkably consistent.

And while it isn’t entirely clear what’s next for the flagship series in the franchise, there are roughly 1,000 other films in the X-Men universe being developed, from standalone Wolverine, Deadpool, and Gambit films to Josh Boone’s New Mutants spin-off and a rumored Deadpool-esque R-rated X-Force.

Go see X-Men: Apocalypse because it is good and fun and, in a world with an unavoidable number of superhero films that are a total slog, that is fun and good.

Review: "X-Men: Apocalypse" Is the Best Superhero Film of 2016

Posted in alo, alternative energy, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged alo, apocalypse, batman, captain, civil, death, isaac, media, world | Comments Off

You play a fungus in this video game, because the apocalypse happened and almost everything is dead

by RheaPawsey1248 Posted on October 16, 2015

You play a fungus in this video game, because the apocalypse happened and almost everything is dead

By Suzanne Jacobson 16 Oct 2015comments Share

Finally, a realistic video game about the coming apocalypse.

In Mushroom 11, the world is in ruins, humans are gone, and you — a fungus — are trying to piece together what the hell happened. Now, I’m no gamer but, fungal sentience aside, this seems like a pretty believable portrayal of what would really happen if civilization takes a turn for the worse.

After all, microbes were roaming the Earth millions — and in some cases, billions — of years before we were, and they’ll be roaming it long after we’re gone. So whether it’s nuclear war, climate change, or rampant swine flu, you can bet your ass that fungi — and all their bacterial and viral friends — will be much more likely to survive whatever’s coming for us than, say, Denzel Washington, or Viggo Mortensen and that clueless kid.

Here’s more on Mushroom 11 from Motherboard:

The game revolves around playing as a blobby hunk of shroom that explores the empty Earth. You use the mouse to eliminate parts of your mass to create more, branching new bits of you in another direction. A kind of rapidly hardening Play-Doh that navigates the landscape, solving puzzles, taking on bosses, soaking up small insects and other mushrooms for points.

… Your just-sentient protagonist’s lack of self-consciousness and speech doesn’t stop the story. The narrative develops around you, the world leaving clues for you to stitch together.

The creative lead on the game is Julia Keren-Detar. She told Motherboard that she wants her next game to be about the Great Famine of 1315, which spurred a bunch of wars and caused a devastating plague that wiped out 70 percent of Europe:

“I’m only going to focus on the famine part. Keep it simple,” said Keren-Detar. “Apocalypses are these strange, fun things.”

Fun is one word for it. Personally, I wouldn’t mind turning into some “rapidly hardening Play-Doh” myself every time I think about the precarious state of the West Antarctic ice sheet.

Source:

You Play a Post-Apocalyptic Fungus in ‘Mushroom 11’

, Motherboard.

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You play a fungus in this video game, because the apocalypse happened and almost everything is dead

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged apocalypse, apocalyptic, article, citizen, detar, microbes, organic, story, video games, washington, west, world | Comments Off

Exclusive Video: Kithkin’s Soundtrack for the Apocalypse:

by AudreyRaqendlu Posted on April 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Civilization as we know it is going to collapse—someday at least. Judging by what climate scientists are saying—or what some are gleaning from the buffalo running around Yellowstone—it could be a lot sooner than we’d like.

The band Kithkin, hailing from the frigid (and fictitious), tree-worshiping Northwestern nation of Cascadia (consisting of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia), plans to make the most of it by offering audiences the chance to go down dancing.

With their aptly named debut album, Rituals, Trances & Ecstasies for Humans in the Face of Collapse coming May 20, the (actually) Seattle band is hoping to highlight the role of humans in our own demise—and help us think about how we can prevent it.

Kithkin was inspired by Ishmael, a philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn that reframes civilization and its end by means of a Socratic dialogue between the narrator and a telepathic gorilla. “It talks about climate change, sustainability, resource distribution, food, and all these big, kind of hard-to-digest topics in a really engaging and streamlined way,” explains Kelton Sears, one of the band’s lead singers.

by Hayley Young

Though Kithkin was founded on a mutual affinity for drums and rhythmic music shared by Sears (who also plays bass) and his fellow frontman Ian McCutcheon, Quinn’s ideas shaped the band’s identity and moved its members to make positive music about negative things. “It is a very apocalyptic book that’s kind about how the way that humans live isn’t working anymore, and that things are going to crumble,” Sears says. “You don’t pay attention to because it is sort of hard to comprehend and think about.”

At Seattle University, the two met up with Alex Barr (guitar) and Bob Martin (keys and theremin), and Kithkin was born. Every member plays the drums as well as their other instruments, which explains the complex layers of rhythms that give their charged lyrics an upbeat quality.

But the bandmates aren’t all serious and earnest. They are self-proclaimed “fantasy nerds,” and Sears says a lot of the tree-centric Cascadia imagery is just for fun. Still, Kithkin hopes to get listeners thinking. “Singing about that stuff just makes us as honest with ourselves as possible,” Sears says. “You are naturally more passionate about it if it has that deeper meaning to you.”

The exclusive video at the top of this post, titled “W (Upturned Moon),” is set to Kithkin’s single “Altered Beast” and depicts a coven of women in a forest attacking a pile of trashed consumer goods—one metric ton of it, if you want to get specific.

“Thinking about the video, we were also interested in this idea of the witch,” Sears explains. “This archetype is interesting to us, and this idea of women as agents of change, breaking all this stuff that is symbolic of all the stuff humans are doing that is contributing to the demise of civilization. And in a way, making it a celebratory thing instead of a scary thing.”

Check out the video and catch the band on its first official tour this spring. Who knows when civilization will collapse? In the meantime Kithkin has created an album of great songs, laced with ideas all need to ponder. If the Apocalypse is coming, at least it won’t sound that bad.

Exclusive Video: Kithkin’s Soundtrack for the Apocalypse:

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Buy this book for your kids

by Myrna Posted on July 15, 2013

Credit: Buy this book for your kids ; ;Related ArticlesLiking isn’t helpingGoogle Hosts Fundraiser for Climate Change Denying US SenatorNo beach access for you ;

Original article –

Buy this book for your kids

Posted in ALPHA, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Monterey, ONA, Pines, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged alaska, apocalypse, development, digital, economics, maine, massachusetts, music, nature, sport, washington | Comments Off

City in Russia Unable to Kick Asbestos Habit

by siteforme Posted on July 13, 2013

green4us

Kids Puzzle Fun #1 – Lovatts Crosswords & Puzzles

Junior puzzlers will enjoy hours of quality entertainment with the first issue of Kids Puzzle Fun! This interactive book features ‘Magic Touch’ drawing tools, allowing kids to solve the puzzles by using their finger as a pen. Magic Touch unites the tactile feel of a printed book with a superior digital format, resulting in a more natural, intuitive experienc […]

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Apocalypse (Digital Collection) – Games Workshop

The greatest heroes of the age lead battalions of troops and tanks against the foe. Super-heavy war machines dominate the conflict like gods of battle as bombardments rain from the skies. This is war on a whole new level. Apocalypse is a new way of playing games of Warhammer 40,000. Allowing you to field as many miniatures as you like, in any combinati […]

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Apocalypse – Games Workshop

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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Farsight Enclaves – A Codex: Tau Empire Supplement – Games Workshop

Commander Farsight was once hailed by every Tau caste as a genius warrior-leader without compare. As his career blazed a bloody path across the Damocles Gulf and back again, O’Shovah split away from the Tau Empire, doggedly pursuing the Orks that had killed so many of his Fire caste comrades. It was the first overt sign of a rebellion that was to change the […]

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Apocalypse: Strategic Asset Cards – Games Workshop

Apocalypse: Strategic Asset Cards A cunning commander always has a trick or two up his sleeve, and now you can too with this collection of Strategic Asset Cards for games of Apocalypse. Incorporating all of the Strategic Asset Cards from the Warhammer 40,000: Apocalypse rulebook into digital form these can be referenced easily and quickly on your digital dev […]

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Following Atticus – Tom Ryan

After a close friend died of cancer, middle-aged, overweight, acrophobic newspaperman Tom Ryan decided to pay tribute to her in a most unorthodox manner. Ryan and his friend, miniature schnauzer Atticus M. Finch, would attempt to climb all forty-eight of New Hampshire’s four thousand- foot peaks twice in one winter while raising money for charity. It wa […]

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Warlords of the Dark Millennium: Ezekiel – Games Workshop

Ezekiel is the chief Librarian of the Dark Angels Space Marines; keeper of their most closely guarded secrets and ancient lore. As bearer of the Book of Salvation Ezekiel is an inspiration to his battle-brothers in combat, the powerful Librarian and sacred relic steadying them before the foe. About this Series: The galaxy burns with the fires of countless wa […]

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Warhammer 40,000: The Rules – Games Workshop

There is no time for peace. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only WAR. In the nightmare future of the 41st Millennium, Mankind teeters upon the brink of destruction. The galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man is beset on all sides by ravening aliens and threatened from within by Warp-spawned entities and heretical plots. Only the strength of the immortal […]

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Index Astartes: Librarians – Games Workshop

Librarians are the lore keepers and psykers of the Adeptus Astartes, recording the Chapters long and glorious histories. Each Librarian is a formidable foe, able to call upon the power of Warp to smite the enemies of the Imperium with righteous fire and furious anger. About this Series: The Adeptus Astartes are genetically engineered warriors, created by the […]

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City in Russia Unable to Kick Asbestos Habit