Emperor

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24599379

The Tormented, which was shot in Royal Victoria Country Park in Netley, has now been released on Prime Video.

The 84-minute feature film follows a widow and her friends that travel to a sacred land, before horrific visions and living nightmares begin to torment the group with their pasts.

Written and directed by Isaac Lawrence, 25, a filmmaker from Southampton, the movie premiered at Harbour Lights Picturehouse in August 2024.

The turn of the year saw the film reach a worldwide audience after it was released on Amazon Prime, which has more than 13 million subscribers in the UK alone.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Isaac, who was inspired by the Silent Hill game series – which sees the main character lose their daughter in an eerie fictional town – when making the film.

!broligarchywatch@lemm.ee

An influential Silicon Valley publication runs a cover story lamenting the “pussification” of tech. A major tech CEO lambasts a Black civil rights leader’s calls for diversifying the tech workforce. Technologists rage against the “PC police”.

No, this isn’t Silicon Valley in the age of Maga. It’s the tech industry of the 1990s, when observers first raised concerns about the rightwing bend of Silicon Valley and the potential for “technofascism”. Despite the industry’s (often undeserved) reputation for liberalism, its reactionary foundations were baked in almost from the beginning. As Silicon Valley enters a second Trump administration, the gendered roots of its original reactionary movement offer insight into today’s rightward turn.

At the height of the dotcom mania in the 1990s, many critics warned of a creeping reactionary fervor. “Forget digital utopia,” wrote the longtime technology journalist Michael Malone, “we could be headed for techno-fascism.” Elsewhere, the writer Paulina Borsook called the valley’s worship of male power “a little reminiscent of the early celebrants of Eurofascism from the 1930s”.

Their voices were largely drowned out by the techno-enthusiasts of the time, but Malone and Borsook were pointing to a vision of Silicon Valley built around a reverence for unlimited male power – and a major pushback when that power was challenged. At the root of this reactionary thinking was a writer and public intellectual named George Gilder. Gilder was one of Silicon Valley’s most vocal evangelists, as well as a popular “futurist” who forecasted coming technological trends. In 1996, he started an investment newsletter that became so popular that it generated rushes on stocks from his readers, in a process that became known as the “Gilder effect”.

Gilder was also a longtime social conservative who brought his politics to Silicon Valley. He had first made his name in the 1970s as an anti-feminist provocateur and a mentee of the conservative stalwart William F Buckley. At a time when women were entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers, he wrote books that argued that traditional gender roles needed to be restored, and he blamed social issues such as poverty on the breakdown of the nuclear family. (He also blamed federal welfare programs, especially those that funded single mothers, claiming they turned men into “cuckolds of the state”). In 1974, the National Organization for Women named him “Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year”; Gilder wore it as a badge of pride.

...

As Gilder became swept up in his own ideas about entrepreneurship, he turned his attention to Silicon Valley. The bourgeoning hi-tech industry, he began claiming, was the purest expression of entrepreneurship in the world. It’s not surprising that Gilder would be drawn to the tech industry in Santa Clara county, California. The state had its own powerful mythologies of masculinity and power. It was the end of the vast frontier, the end of manifest destiny. And it was the place of the former gold rush, where (white) men had struck it rich in the 19th century. It was also, counterintuitively, the birthplace of much of the modern conservative movement, including Reagan’s political career.

...

This rising “technofascism”, as critics of the time had called it, was temporarily staved off by the dotcom stock market crash of 2000. George Gilder’s reputation was badly damaged after he failed to predict the crash. And much of the hype around digital tech was temporarily tempered after hundreds of startups went bust. But a younger generation of aspiring tech hopefuls had already come to the valley, seeking fame, riches, and power. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and others had absorbed the lessons of the 90s. At the start of the new millennium, they were ready to put their stamp on the future, guided by reactionary dreams of the past.

The Silicon Valley titans of 2025 are following the same blueprint. In January, Meta said it was ending its DEI programs and changing its platform policies to allow more discriminatory and harassing posts. On Joe Rogan’s podcast, Zuckerberg made his motivations clear: he claimed that corporate culture had moved away from “masculine energy” and needed to reinstate it after getting “neutered”. Elon Musk has reshaped Twitter into X, a platform in large part operating as a response to claims of a “woke mind virus”– the newest iteration of “political correctness”. And Marc Andreessen himself, the “boy genius” of the 1990s, has increasingly drawn inspiration from the Italian futurists, a movement of fascist artists in the early 20th century who glorified technology while seeking to “demolish” feminism.

But the history of the valley suggests this isn’t a blip or an anomaly. It’s a crescendo of forces central to the tech industry, and the current wave of rightwing tech titans are building on Silicon Valley’s foundations.

While the corrupting influence of big money over our government is not new, the specifics of this danger are different today than perhaps at any other time in our nation’s history. Tech billionaires, who already had enormous power, helped underwrite a winning presidential campaign in ways that would have been illegal just a few elections ago. And there are now fewer restraints than ever before on their ability, or the president they helped elect, to break through the checks and balances of our political system. This system, President Joseph Biden recently warned, can best be described as an “oligarchy.” Or, as others have dubbed, a “broligarchy.”

None of this means the situation is hopeless. Musk’s depredations are already encountering legal and political resistance, and it’s likely that the political pendulum will eventually swing back. When it does, those who care about the security of American democracy will need to be ready with fresh, bold solutions that meet the political moment, to ensure that our political system can actually respond to the needs of regular Americans.

Still, the question remains: How did we get to the point of having a tech billionaire campaign donor openly running huge parts of the federal government? And where do we go from here?

Meet Curtis Yarvin: whose seemingly crazed ideas have found fertile ground among technocrats and oligarchs who have never quite shaken entitled Ayn Rand’s “greed is good” sensibility.

Essentially, the guy wants the world to be run by smart CEOs commanding Corporate States. It is a form of National Socialism without the pollution of the socialism.

...

His blog, “Gray Mirror,” offers dense insights into his philosophy. Not easy to digest but if you have the time and focus, it does reduce itself to a critique of modern governance and social structures through a lens of historical and philosophical analysis. Yarvin, or Mencius Moldbug if you prefer, argues that contemporary democracy and political systems are fundamentally flawed. His advocacy of more authoritarian forms of governance falls lockstep into the activities of historical examples from Caesar to Hitler and, currently, to Hungary’s Orbán.

According to Mencius: strong leader = stability and order. Well, as history has demonstrated in the first two examples, this can be finite. For Orbán? That remains to be seen.

But what would an activist sort of philosophy be if you cannot find those who will put it into practice?

Well, for Mencius, along came the dynamic duo of tech billionaire Peter Thiel and the current Vice President, J.D. Vance, both of whom became fans.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25720841

This isn’t mine, but it seems relevant for this community.

The richest men in the country are in the final stages of a 40-year plan to kill America and crown themselves kings. It’s not a conspiracy anymore: they’re bragging about it. And they’re convinced they’ve got you too distracted to care.

A husband is said to have murdered his wife with a “big a*** knife” when she was less than enthusiastic over his Valentine’s Day plans.

Taylor Meyer, 34, had put together a Paris-themed night for his partner Deborah, buying her a new dress and having their children draw pictures of the Eiffel Tower. His attempts are said to have been borne out of suspicions she was having an affair with a co-worker.

However when he unveiled the plans she “didn’t give a s***”, according to court documents . The evening allegedly ended with her being beaten with a wine bottle and then stabbed her 40 times, as their children - all aged under five - slept upstairs in their home in Jefferson, Louisville in the US.

Law and Crime reported he told investigators: “It was the hardest I’ve ever tried. She just didn’t give a s***.” An affidavit says: “For the last two months I’ve been staying home with the kids every Saturday night while she goes and f****s whoever and lies to my face about it.

...

When she was dead he is said to have taken a picture of her body and texted it to the person she was allegedly sleeping with, adding: “Your fault.”

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24555803

we need to look only to Amazon’s most recent attempt at an international espionage franchise for a depressing sneak preview of what might lie ahead. We refer to Prime Video’s $300 million (and counting) 2023 folly Citadel – a towering inferno of iffy action courtesy of Marvel’s Russo Brothers, which is far worse than even Bond’s sorriest moments (okay, maybe not as bad as Pierce Brosnan’s invisible Jag in Die Another Day but definitely in the same time zone).

...

Watching Citadel, it’s tempting to conclude that it is an artefact from an alternate universe where James Bond is a bit rubbish. With Bodyguard’s Richard Madden playing the lead spy and Lesley Manville as the Blofeld-esque mega-villain (undercover as a UK Ambassador), it has a thick veneer of Britishness. It’s chock-full of globe-trotting, with the fun pinging between US, London, Paris and Italy (though the bulk of the filming was in Slovenia and Birmingham).

Plus, there are oodles of gadgets, including futuristic memory-wiping devices that would have Q puce with envy. And just like James “Make Mine a Land Rover” Bond, it’s stuffed with product placement: you can even press “pause” to purchase products flogged by the series (if you want to buy the suit worn by Madden, just go ahead and call up your Amazon account).

...

To be fair, on paper at least Citadel didn’t sound terrible (not that it sounded particularly compelling either). Amazon certainly felt it had a sure-fire smash on its hands. It didn’t even take the time to establish that there was an audience for yet another spy series to go alongside Bond, Jason Bourne, Mission: Impossible, Archer, Slow Horses, The Night Manager, etc. Instead, it greenlit Citadel and multiple spin-offs for “local markets”– including India, Italy and Mexico.

...

Unfortunately the Russos were too busy to take a hands-on role in Citadel (among other undertakings, they were making ditchwater dull $200 million action movie The Gray Man for Netflix). So they passed it to writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec (who had worked with Hollywood’s own mystery box man, JJ Abrams, on Alias), with Game of Thrones veteran Brian Kirk directing five of the seven episodes of the first season.

Which is where the trouble started. Amazon is said to have had “reservations” about early footage presented by Appelbaum and Nemec. One source of contention was an ambitious – and expensive – “ski and hand-gliding sequence” with which the pilot was to open.

With Applebaum and Nemec in a stand-off with Amazon, the Russos returned and agreed to kill the set-piece (which was to have been followed by a five-year time jump). They were just getting started: Appelbaum departed, and Kirk and producer Sarah Bradshaw followed soon afterwards. Roll on multiple reshoots, which pushed the budget to a mind-boggling $300 million (twice what it costs the Broccolis to make Die Another Day).

Having taken over, the Russos decided to rebuild Citadel from the ground up. They brought in cinematographer Thomas Sigel for additional footage and David Weil – writer of the Al Pacino Nazi drama Hunters – to rework the scripts. Meanwhile, costs continued to balloon.

But where that money went was unclear when Citadel – clocking in at a mere six episodes – finally reached the screen (season two is due in 2025). It looked shoddy, and after an admittedly memorable opening shoot-out featuring Madden and Chopra on a train, there wasn’t enough action. The plot in which Madden’s Mason Kane loses his memory was meanwhile stonkingly derivative – to the point where his on-screen wife jokingly refers to him as “Jason Bourne”.

...

Cheap-looking, unoriginal and bland, Citadel impressed no one. “A pricey Bond audition tape,” said the Telegraph – focusing on Madden’s performance. “A choppy, generic blockbuster-by-numbers with a nine-figure budget you’d never detect from the chintzy CGI.” agreed Variety.

The public was even less forgiving. “A very mediocre show that feels written by AI… Predictable, messy, you do not care about the characters in the slightest,” wrote one viewer. “Flat, uninspired and just plain boring.”

Undeterred, Amazon ploughed on with its global spin-offs – though without the Russos, who have gone back to Marvel, where they are working on the inevitable new Avengers movies. The first, Citadel: Diana, was set in the Italian Alps and produced for Prime by Rome-headquartered ITV subsidiary Cattleya. It debuted last April to deafening indifference.

That was also the response to Citadel: Honey Bunny – an Indian prequel which followed the early romance of the parents of Chopra’s character. It topped the Amazon viewing charts in India but, much like George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, otherwise came and went without a trace.

Vanishing without a trace is not a fate a 21st-century James Bond is likely to suffer. But the failure of Citadel is nonetheless a depressing sneak preview of what may lie ahead for Ian Fleming’s super-spook. Cheesy and hamstrung by too much executive meddling, Citadel took a sure-fire formula – spies hop around the globe shooting people – and missed the target by a mile.

Apply the same treatment to Bond, and cinema’s favourite spy might well suffer a fate worse than the one Goldfinger had in mind when he strapped Sean Connery to that table and whipped out his laser. A cack-handed Prime Video might well leave Bond morally wounded, and anyone who suffered through Citadel will fear the worst.

Archive

we need to look only to Amazon’s most recent attempt at an international espionage franchise for a depressing sneak preview of what might lie ahead. We refer to Prime Video’s $300 million (and counting) 2023 folly Citadel – a towering inferno of iffy action courtesy of Marvel’s Russo Brothers, which is far worse than even Bond’s sorriest moments (okay, maybe not as bad as Pierce Brosnan’s invisible Jag in Die Another Day but definitely in the same time zone).

...

Watching Citadel, it’s tempting to conclude that it is an artefact from an alternate universe where James Bond is a bit rubbish. With Bodyguard’s Richard Madden playing the lead spy and Lesley Manville as the Blofeld-esque mega-villain (undercover as a UK Ambassador), it has a thick veneer of Britishness. It’s chock-full of globe-trotting, with the fun pinging between US, London, Paris and Italy (though the bulk of the filming was in Slovenia and Birmingham).

Plus, there are oodles of gadgets, including futuristic memory-wiping devices that would have Q puce with envy. And just like James “Make Mine a Land Rover” Bond, it’s stuffed with product placement: you can even press “pause” to purchase products flogged by the series (if you want to buy the suit worn by Madden, just go ahead and call up your Amazon account).

...

To be fair, on paper at least Citadel didn’t sound terrible (not that it sounded particularly compelling either). Amazon certainly felt it had a sure-fire smash on its hands. It didn’t even take the time to establish that there was an audience for yet another spy series to go alongside Bond, Jason Bourne, Mission: Impossible, Archer, Slow Horses, The Night Manager, etc. Instead, it greenlit Citadel and multiple spin-offs for “local markets”– including India, Italy and Mexico.

...

Unfortunately the Russos were too busy to take a hands-on role in Citadel (among other undertakings, they were making ditchwater dull $200 million action movie The Gray Man for Netflix). So they passed it to writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec (who had worked with Hollywood’s own mystery box man, JJ Abrams, on Alias), with Game of Thrones veteran Brian Kirk directing five of the seven episodes of the first season.

Which is where the trouble started. Amazon is said to have had “reservations” about early footage presented by Appelbaum and Nemec. One source of contention was an ambitious – and expensive – “ski and hand-gliding sequence” with which the pilot was to open.

With Applebaum and Nemec in a stand-off with Amazon, the Russos returned and agreed to kill the set-piece (which was to have been followed by a five-year time jump). They were just getting started: Appelbaum departed, and Kirk and producer Sarah Bradshaw followed soon afterwards. Roll on multiple reshoots, which pushed the budget to a mind-boggling $300 million (twice what it costs the Broccolis to make Die Another Day).

Having taken over, the Russos decided to rebuild Citadel from the ground up. They brought in cinematographer Thomas Sigel for additional footage and David Weil – writer of the Al Pacino Nazi drama Hunters – to rework the scripts. Meanwhile, costs continued to balloon.

But where that money went was unclear when Citadel – clocking in at a mere six episodes – finally reached the screen (season two is due in 2025). It looked shoddy, and after an admittedly memorable opening shoot-out featuring Madden and Chopra on a train, there wasn’t enough action. The plot in which Madden’s Mason Kane loses his memory was meanwhile stonkingly derivative – to the point where his on-screen wife jokingly refers to him as “Jason Bourne”.

...

Cheap-looking, unoriginal and bland, Citadel impressed no one. “A pricey Bond audition tape,” said the Telegraph – focusing on Madden’s performance. “A choppy, generic blockbuster-by-numbers with a nine-figure budget you’d never detect from the chintzy CGI.” agreed Variety.

The public was even less forgiving. “A very mediocre show that feels written by AI… Predictable, messy, you do not care about the characters in the slightest,” wrote one viewer. “Flat, uninspired and just plain boring.”

Undeterred, Amazon ploughed on with its global spin-offs – though without the Russos, who have gone back to Marvel, where they are working on the inevitable new Avengers movies. The first, Citadel: Diana, was set in the Italian Alps and produced for Prime by Rome-headquartered ITV subsidiary Cattleya. It debuted last April to deafening indifference.

That was also the response to Citadel: Honey Bunny – an Indian prequel which followed the early romance of the parents of Chopra’s character. It topped the Amazon viewing charts in India but, much like George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, otherwise came and went without a trace.

Vanishing without a trace is not a fate a 21st-century James Bond is likely to suffer. But the failure of Citadel is nonetheless a depressing sneak preview of what may lie ahead for Ian Fleming’s super-spook. Cheesy and hamstrung by too much executive meddling, Citadel took a sure-fire formula – spies hop around the globe shooting people – and missed the target by a mile.

Apply the same treatment to Bond, and cinema’s favourite spy might well suffer a fate worse than the one Goldfinger had in mind when he strapped Sean Connery to that table and whipped out his laser. A cack-handed Prime Video might well leave Bond morally wounded, and anyone who suffered through Citadel will fear the worst.

Archive

Community Fibre, the London-based internet provider, has been hit by its second outage in a week.

Customers complained they were unable to get online amid a major outage on Friday afternoon.

“Some customers may be experiencing disruption to their service. Our engineers are aware of this issue and working on a solution as their top priority. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience,” the company said on an update to its status page.

“Please ensure that all equipment is left on with all cables plugged in enable us to restore service as soon as possible.”

It follows another outage on Monday, during which users similarly said their internet connections had stopped working all of a sudden. Then, some found that they were able to get around the issues by changing their DNS settings.