Day: May 31, 2016

  • Summer blockbuster: Cascadia Rising drill prepped for June 7

    Summer blockbuster: Cascadia Rising drill prepped for June 7

    Starting on June 7th, FEMA will be conducting a large scale drill that has been named “Cascadia Rising” that will simulate the effects of a magnitude 9.0 earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone and an accompanying west coast tsunami dozens of feet tall. According to the official flyer for the event, more than “50 counties, plus major cities, tribal nations, state and federal agencies, private sector businesses, and non-governmental organizations across three states – Washington, Oregon, and Idaho – will be participating”

    And it’s not just the June 7th exercise..  but this too: U.S. Northern Command will be holding five other exercises simultaneously..

    There have been a number of scares lately in the corner of the United States where this subduction zone rests.

    Radio host Clyde Lewis has commented on it as of late on Ground Zero–his program broadcasts nightly from Portland Oregon, an area that could be affected in a large way if this zone ever does activate. Certainly if a 9.0 hits!

    This drill comes a little under a year after a story circulated online last summer — a report so scary that Shepard Smith on FOX NEWS starkly warned people to ‘move’ out! Later in September, more stories online stated that ‘time is ticking’ for a big earth bomb.

    At the time, The New Yorker reported that FEMA calculations show these types of earthquakes happen at regular intervals in this specific part of the world, roughly every 240 years.

    Fear in ’16 is en vogue.

    June 7th it begins.
    The summer blockbuster season in gear.

  • CONJURING MORE

    CONJURING MORE

    WARNER BROS has released an online teaser for the June 10 ’16 release of James Wan’s CONJURING 2 — the film which delves deeper into the lives of the much debated, much scorned, much loved, and much talked about Ed and Lorraine Warren..

    From WARNER:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT-Z7eNnwNw]

    Some critics have called CONJURING 2 a little too much–not original, not inventive. Jump scares, we’re told, along with scary scenes that are just hackneyed and stale.

    June 10 will tell..
    Jump scare or not. Summer sometimes likes horror. The kids are out and ready for jump scares. Even if it’s a one weekend wonder, Wan scored big in CONJURING 1 and hopefully will not fail in 2.

     

  • TECH WANTS TO DEFEAT HATE ONLINE

    TECH WANTS TO DEFEAT HATE ONLINE

    …ON THE NET!?

    Tech giants are swearing that their new war on hate will be won. In 24 hours–real time for online standards.

    The promise comes after Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft began working with the European Union to fight terrorism.

    This from BLOOMBERG:

    U.S. Internet giants Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., Google and Microsoft Corp. pledged to tackle online hate speech in less than 24 hours as part of a joint commitment with the European Union to combat the use of social media by terrorists.

    Beyond national laws that criminalize hate speech, there is a need to ensure such activity by Internet users is “expeditiously reviewed by online intermediaries and social media platforms, upon receipt of a valid notification, in an appropriate time-frame,” the companies and the European Commission said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

    The code of conduct arrives as Europe comes to terms with the bloody attacks in Paris and Brussels by Islamic State, which has used the Web and social media to spread its message of hate against its enemies. The companies said it remains a “challenge” to strike the right balance between freedom of expression and hate speech in the self-generated content on online platforms.

    This plan may prove difficult in the United States, where hate speech is lambasted by permitted by free speech laws. For now.

  • ‘Alice,’ ‘X-Men’ Messes: Studio Execs Prepare to Sweat a Stressful Summer

    ‘Alice,’ ‘X-Men’ Messes: Studio Execs Prepare to Sweat a Stressful Summer

    ‘Alice,’ ‘X-Men’ Messes: Studio Execs Prepare to Sweat a Stressful Summer :

    Galloway dishes at the Hollywood Reporter.. My favorite highlight:

    Few insiders view The Legend of Tarzan (July 1) as a surefire hit, though New Line’s The Conjuring 2 (June 10) and the DC villain team-up Suicide Squad (Aug. 5) seem hopeful, despite extensive reshoots performed on the latter. “Suicide Squad looks like it’s going to do very, very well,” argues media analyst Eric Handler of MKM Partners. “The problem is, Warners has to deal with Tarzan first. I don’t know anybody who’s excited about [that].” As for the talked-about Dwayne Johnson-Kevin Hart comedy Central Intelligence (June 17), “New Line’s Toby Emmerich gets credit for that,” says one source. The WB triumverate of Silverman, Emmerich and marketing and distribution chief Sue Kroll seem like they have been under the microscope since assuming their current roles in 2013, with the most pressing matter being the future of Warners’ DC Comics movies. Producer Charles Roven — having worked on each DC movie since 2005’s Batman Begins — is being transitioned into a different role after the relative disappointment of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice; Ben Affleck is taking on more responsibility for the Batman movies; and Jon Berg and Geoff Johns have been promoted to run a new unit called DC Films

    There may be a tendency to over simplify why certain movies crank it up and others fail. Quite frankly I saw Angry Birds twice now and me and my son both liked it just as much.. It was fun. Movies need to be fun. And to me X MEN and ALICE just didn’t look fun.

    And by the way, both movies made lots more money than I’ll ever see in life.
    Regardless, the big budget box office films just ain’t what they used to be.

    Megan Fox will score with her Turtles.
    The Suicide Squad should too.
    But those Ghostbusters gals? That’s a whole other story.

  • Megan Fox dishes: Turning 30 to ancient aliens

    Megan Fox dishes: Turning 30 to ancient aliens

    Megan Fox dishes: Turning 30 to ancient aliens :

    There’s more to Megan Fox than a few thumbs and sex symbol status.. Judging from the latest information in this interview she may as well be reading my site.

    She just turned 30.

    She speaks in tongues like her family did when she was younger–not often, just occasionally.

    And she is researching ancient aliens.
    Maybe she’ll stop by here and say hi.

  • Mystery of Forest Grove, Oregon, Noise May Never Be Solved – NBC News

    Mystery of Forest Grove, Oregon, Noise May Never Be Solved – NBC News

    Mystery of Forest Grove, Oregon, Noise May Never Be Solved – NBC News:

    This from Nbc News:

    A piercing noise that plagued an Oregon city earlier this year, drawing comparisons to “Satan’s teakettle” and hypothesized to be everything from a defective water valve to aliens or a signal for the end of times, stopped as suddenly as it started. In the silence left behind, it appears the mystery may live on forever.

    The town of 22,000 or so was put on the map this year because of the now famous noise. A noise gay suddenly has vanished from the ears..

    Originally there were allegations that teenagers were playing pranks. Other world explanations soon became linked to the sounds.

    With all the explanations rendered, no one could ever explain fully what was being heard.

    And now maybe no one will.
    The noise suddenly ceases…

    I smell a future in Hollywood for the Forest Grove mystery..

  • Facebook’s director of product design on why websites may be a dying business

    Facebook’s director of product design on why websites may be a dying business

    Facebook’s director of product design on why websites may be a dying business:

    That’s different than the work we were doing in the mid-2000s. We were trying everything — this is the Myspace era — we were just going crazy. I think we had to go through that phase and I think we’re going to go through that phase with [virtual reality]. There’s going to be a bunch of things we’re going to try that will turn out not be the thing we end up with.

    When it comes to web and mobile, we’ve passed through that and we’re in a phase where it’s about standardisation. It’s about creating consistent experience.

    Standardized experiences.. Isn’t that a little scary though? Or at least vacant individuality and expression?

    There’s a vast number of younger people on Tumblr and WordPress who may say otherwise. Some of their sites look as horrid as Geocities sites from the 90s–but they express who they are without worry to the reader’s eyes. I appreciate that.

    I know the trend is Facebook. Zuckerberg’s empire watches your every movie and predicts the next. And we seem fine with that. Fully accepting of the limitless amount of surveillance that comes with the Information Age.
    Facebook forced us to ditch anonymity in favor of reckless online endeavors where our names and faces are forever associated with asinine comments or unfunny joke memes brewed up on 4Chan.

    And standardized.
    Every site looks so similar that the similarity is killing websites. Destruction at the hands of cookie cutter designs.
    Standardized and bastardized for The future to download.

    Modern modern readers, but give me MySpace any day.