'We need to be good stewards of those dollars'

'A safer place to live'

Featured Essays The Electric State What The Electric State Reveals About Marvel’s Creative Problem It’s not a Marvel movie, but its failure highlights some harsh truths… By Joe George | Published on March 25, 2025 Image: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Netflix At this point, The Electric State has established itself as one of the worst movies of 2025. The movie is a failure with critics and viewers alike, even by Netflix’s famously obscure standards. What’s less clear is what, exactly, went wrong. Some might point to the incredible $320 million that Netflix spent to make The Electric State. Not only is that price point unheard of for Netflix, which tends to churn out cheapies for people to put on while folding their socks, but the streaming service only gave it a brief and limited theatrical run, meaning there was little chance to recoup expenses. However, the bigger question is about the creative team that Netflix hired. The Electric State is directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the quartet behind some of the biggest, most profitable movies of all time. That includes 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, which grossed $2.799 billion. The Russos even filled out the cast with MCU vets, including Chris Pratt, Anthony Mackie, Stanley Tucci, Giancarlo Esposito, and Ke Huy Quan. And yet, despite this slate of people who’ve made culture-defining mega-hits, The Electric State is a big nothing. The failure suggests that the MCU’s success had less to do with the Russos, Markus and McFeely, or even big names like Pratt. Instead, it had everything to do with Marvel’s characters or, more accurately, the writers and artists who made those characters compelling in the first place—the very people who Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios have rarely treated with respect. A History of Exploitation In a remarkable bit of bad timing, The Electric State hit theaters just three days after venerable comic book artist Dustin Nguyen took to Instagram to rant about Marvel’s mistreatment of its creators. “Everyone I’m not working with at Marvel can fuck themselves,” he declared. “I’ve asked nicely for the past 15 years on behalf of every artist. Stop fucking creators over.” In the comments to his post, Nguyen expounds upon his complaints. “Between them and DC, they are the ONLY one that DOESN’T pay a royalty for overseas sales,” he asserted. “Also, merch? Lunch boxes and tees? Good luck.” Nguyen is hardly the first person to complain about Marvel’s poor treatment of creators. In fact, the company’s exploitation of Jack Kirby is the stuff of industry legend. Kirby not only had a dynamic style and an incredible work ethic that allowed him to establish the look and style of the first Marvel books published throughout the 1960s, he co-created some of the company’s signature characters, including the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, and Captain America. And yet, Kirby has had his contributions forever downplayed, not least of all by Marvel editor and pitchman Stan Lee, whose work on the characters for which he claimed creator credit didn’t go beyond dialogue. Kirby wasn’t the first either. In 1938, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were paid $130 by National Publications (later DC Comics) for their story about Superman, who then went on to launch the entire superhero genre. Siegel and Shuster were paid for the comics they wrote and drew, but only saw a sliver of the revenue generated from the other comics, radio shows, movies, and merchandise their character generated, leading to rights conflicts that continue to this day. A year later, writer Jerry Robinson transformed artist Bob Kane’s idea of a blond guy in red pajamas with Leonardo Da Vinci-inspired wings into the Batman we know and love today, and went on to create some of the most important villains in comics history. And yet, Robinson died a pauper, while Kane, DC Comics, and Warner Brothers have made billions off of his ideas. Lest anyone think that this type of behavior is a product of the comics industry’s past, when it existed to quickly produce cheap and disposable children’s entertainment, these practices continue in the era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In 2005, writer Ed Brubaker and artist Steve Epting created the Winter Soldier, transforming long-dead sidekick Bucky Barnes into not just a popular mainstay, but one of the core members of the MCU. Yet, in 2021, Brubaker called the “thank you” money that Marvel offered “insulting,” especially compared to the revenue generated by the Winter Soldier’s movie and merchandise appearances. In fact, Brubaker stated that he makes much more from his brief cameo as a scientist in Captain America: The Winter Soldier than he does for writing the story that inspired that entire film. At this very moment, writer Peter David—whose legendary run on The Incredible Hulk inspired the MCU’s version, including the Smart Hulk that Mark Ruffalo portrayed in Avengers: Endgame and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law—has to use GoFundMe to pay for his medical bills. Nguyen recently followed up on Instagram to say that someone from Marvel reached out to him about his concerns. Although he’s certainly measured in his comments, Nguyen is hopeful that “the conversation has started.” Obviously, that’s great news for creatives working at Marvel and other comic book companies, but it’s also great news for those of us who love superhero stories in other media. Unelectric and Uninspired Even beyond its phoned-in performances and unsuccessful humor, the biggest problem with The Electric State is that it’s completely rote in both plot and character. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Millie Bobby Brown plays a rebellious teen who’s actually smarter and morally superior to all of the adults. Chris Pratt is a sarcastic guy who hides his inner hurt behind snark and pop culture references. He pals around with robot buddy Herman, performed by Martin Klebba and voiced by Anthony Mackie; the two express their affection for one another by trading verbal barbs. Giancarlo Esposito plays a cool and calculating villain while Ke Huy Quan plays a sweetheart oddball. Brown’s Michelle, Pratt’s Keats, and Herman team up to make their way across a wasteland torn by a civil war. Along the way, they discover that we all actually have a lot in common, building to an emotional speech delivered by Michelle urging everyone to get out of their comfort zone and get to know one another. Familiar as it is, The Electric State does have some occasionally striking visuals. There’s something unnerving about Cosmo, the robot with the smiling yellow face that carries the memories of a brilliant young boy. The wasteland of rusting robots feels vaguely sad, as do images of a gigantic animal robot peering down at the humans as they enter an abandoned mall. These moments work not because of anything that the Russos or Markus and McFeeley have done, but because they come directly from the movie’s source material, the illustrated novel by Simon Stålenhag. But because the novel wasn’t nearly enough to fill out the running length of a feature film, the Russos, Markus, and McFeeley have stretched it out by plugging those images into the best plot they could come up with—which turns out to be something empty and completely derivative. This unsuccessful act of adaptation reveals exactly what went wrong when the Russos, Markus, and McFeeley went from making crowd-pleasing blockbusters for Marvel to dull nothings for Netflix. Their success hasn’t simply been a question of making good movies. They’ve been translating good stories to the screen. Think about the best moments from the quartet’s Marvel oeuvre: Steve Rogers reacting in horror to the revelation that Bucky is the Winter Soldier; Cap and Iron Man duking it out; Hulk smashing into Doctor Strange’s sanctum to warn of the impending threat posed by Thanos; an all-but-defeated Captain America stubbornly holding his own against Thanos. None of those are original. All of those come from Marvel Comics first, stories written by folks like Ed Brubaker and Jim Starlin and drawn by George Perez and Steve McNiven. All of those moments build on characters that countless creators have developed on the comic page. All of those moments come from creators like Kirby and Finger and Nguyen, writers and artists whose work is continually devalued and exploited. Fair Compensation for Blockbuster Fare Whenever the stories of Kirby, Robinson, and Brubaker come up, there’s always someone who points out that these guys were never actually cheated—they signed a contract and Marvel/DC has adhered to the rules of the contract. Even Kirby himself would often demure when asked about his credits and compensation, pointing out that he did work for hire and that Marvel and DC ultimately owned the work he did for them. Exciting as that truth might be for accountants and corporate lawyers, its bad news for anyone who wants good superhero movies. Even though comics are a medium unto themselves, which have value outside of Hollywood, there’s also a unique pleasure to watching superhero stories play out on a big screen and in front of a crowd. And if Marvel’s going to continue hiring folks like the Russo Brothers, who are currently in pre-production of Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, they need good source material, stories created by talented writers and artists. And that means that Marvel needs to finally start paying these writers and artists fairly, giving them fair compensation for the wealth their work generates. Otherwise, we’ll be left with the shambling empty robots of The Electric State.[end-mark] The post What <i>The Electric State</i> Reveals About Marvel’s Creative Problem appeared first on Reactor.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday denied Elon Musk’s claim that white people are being persecuted in that country, calling it a “completely false narrative.” Musk, a native of South Africa, drew attention to a political rally last Friday at which black leaders of a far-left opposition party sang a song that includes the lyrics “Kill the Boer, the farmer.” “Boer” refers to an Afrikaner, a descendent of Dutch, French, and German immigrants in northern South Africa. Very few people know that there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide. The video below was just yesterday. A whole arena chanting about killing white people. A month ago, the South African government passed a law legalizing… https://t.co/GHYp6DvGkr— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2025 “Very few people know that there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide,” Musk wrote on his social media platform, X. “The video below was just yesterday. A whole arena chanting about killing white people.” A month ago, South Africa passed an Expropriation Act, giving government scope to seize land from private parties under some conditions. The government aimed to address that white people make up around 7% of South Africa’s population, but own about 70% of the private farming land. “Where is the outrage?” Musk asked on X. “Why is there no coverage by the legacy media? Starlink can’t get a license to operate in South Africa simply because I’m not black. How is that right?” Starlink, one of Musk’s multibillion-dollar companies, provides internet to people who live in rural areas. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X on Monday evening that the song “is a chant that incites violence.” The South African government denounced Musk’s claims. Ramaphosa, 72 and president since February 2018, said in his weekly message to the nation that South Africans “should not allow events beyond our shores to divide us or turn us against each other.” “In particular, we should challenge the completely false narrative that our country is a place in which people of a certain race or culture are being targeted for persecution,” the African president said. The post South Africa Denies Elon Musk’s Accusations of Racial Genocide appeared first on The Daily Signal.

For decades, K-12 schools have wandered away from a time-tested, research-based method of teaching reading: Phonics. Student scores have plunged to historic lows, but some states are turning back to the practice of teaching letter sounds—if teacher unions do not spoil the efforts first. Phonics instructs children to identify letters and their pronunciation to construct words, supplying the tools needed to tackle combinations of letters. “Cueing” and its related methods, such as “look-say” and “whole word,” show children a picture with a word beneath it (such as a picture of a dog with the letters “d-o-g” beneath). Students are supposed to connect the visual with the word below. American Public Media reporter and podcaster Emily Hanford has documented the widespread failure of cueing that has haunted schools and students nationwide for generations. In addition to Hanford’s crucial work, research finds that part of cueing’s problem is that the teacher guides given to instructors to help teach cueing do not train teachers to regularly correct students when they misidentify a word. In fact, cueing allows for students to be “close enough” sometimes—say, using “wolf” for a picture of a dog, even if the letters do not spell wolf. This imprecision is not the only problem, but researchers have identified this tendency for years, which means the technique helps explain the low scores today. One of the authors of this piece, Emma, is the daughter of an elementary school teacher who knew the value of phonics and the importance of accuracy in recognizing letters. Emma learned to read in grade school using Junie B. Jones, a children’s book series that follows Junie, an “almost six-year-old.” Each book began with a daily journal entry, riddled with crossed-out words with the correct spelling written above. For example, Junie might spell “vacation” as “vakatiun” which, when sounded out, would make sense to an early reader. But as the book series progresses to more advanced levels and Junie grows up in the books, these mistakes appear less often, helping readers to distinguish between correct and incorrect spellings. These phonics-style methods have decades of research to support them. Repeatedly, research has found that phonics helps students to identify words faster and more accurately than look-say methods. As recently as 2020, research on cueing found that the method “is in direct opposition to an enormous body of settled research … that support the teaching of phonics.” Despite the nation’s reading crisis, a 2019 Education Week Study found that only 25% of grade school teachers use phonics to teach reading. Most teachers still use cueing or “whole word,” a combination of cueing and phonics that relies heavily on the former. Teachers’ unions are among the most influential opponents of phonics and have advocated against the reintroduction of phonics in some states. Last year, the California Teachers Union opposed a legislative proposal that would have added phonics back to teacher training materials. State lawmakers reintroduced the proposal earlier this month, and the union remains opposed. Unions claim the California proposal “may impede [teachers’] effectiveness in the classroom.” But given the evidence in favor of phonics and California’s long history using whole word—to the detriment of students—unions are adhering to a key plank in the progressive education lexicon.  Officials in other states are already reforming their methods, with positive effects in some places. Louisiana’s Department of Education has made available teacher training materials based on what is termed the “science of reading,” a combination of strategies that includes phonics. The state has also adopted a policy that does not advance third graders if they cannot demonstrate reading proficiency. Remarkably, Louisiana’s average reading score for fourthyou graders jumped 12 points from 1998, and the state moved 11 spots in the overall rankings between 2022 and 2024. These are some of the biggest gains in the entire country. Mississippi has adopted similar reforms over the last 15 years, and students there have also seen some of the biggest improvements in the nation.   The tides are changing. Despite teachers’ unions’ opposition, states are acknowledging the science behind reading and its effects on children’s success. For policymakers in states behind the curve, Louisiana and Mississippi provide examples to follow. On the homefront, a parent’s most powerful tool is still reading to their children. The post Teachers Unions Challenge Reintroduction of Tried-and-True Phonics Method appeared first on The Daily Signal.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic of “sensationalist spin” in his now-viral report about a national security Signal chat where top Trump officials discussed airstrikes in Yemen. On Monday, Jeffrey Goldberg, a long-time Trump critic, published a story saying National Security Adviser Mike Waltz added him to a group chat on March 15 that included Vice President JD Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles, and other officials. The national security team discussed the forthcoming airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen during the chat on Signal, an open-source encrypted messaging service. But the group chat, titled “Houthi PC small group,” discussed no “war plans,” as Goldberg claimed, according to Leavitt. Leavitt took to X on Tuesday morning to clear up the White House’s stance on Goldberg’s story. Jeffrey Goldberg is well-known for his sensationalist spin. Here are the facts about his latest story:1. No “war plans” were discussed.2. No classified material was sent to the thread. 3. The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different…— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) March 25, 2025 She said “no classified material was sent to the thread” and “The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible.” Leavitt echoed the National Security Council’s statement that the White House is looking into how Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the chat. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, told Goldberg. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.” Leavitt reiterated the success of the strike on the Houthis, which Goldberg says he was aware of two hours before the rest of the world due to the discussion in the Signal chat. “Thanks to the strong and decisive leadership of President Trump, and everyone in the group, the Houthi strikes were successful and effective,” Leavitt said. “Terrorists were killed and that’s what matters most to President Trump. Goldberg accused Waltz of potentially violating the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information. But the president’s confidence in his national security team has not faltered, according to Leavitt. “Stories claiming otherwise are driven by anonymous sources who clearly do not speak to the President, and written by reporters who are thirsty for a ‘scoop,'” Leavitt wrote on X. As I said yesterday, the President continues to have confidence in his national security team, including Mike Waltz. Stories claiming otherwise are driven by anonymous sources who clearly do not speak to the President, and written by reporters who are thirsty for a "scoop." https://t.co/xS8xGXpfJc— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) March 25, 2025 The president told NBC News’ Garrett Haake that he believes Goldberg’s story is essentially a non-issue, and that Goldberg’s presence on the chat had “no impact at all.” “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said.  The post Leavitt Slams ‘Sensationalist’ Journalist Added to Signal Chat About Bombing Houthis appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Italy’s controversial Piracy Shield scheme is “back in action” and once again, the intent is to protect the rightsholder industry’s highly lucrative business of streaming football matches – with little if any regard toward the innocent victims. Instead, Italy’s AGCOM communications regulator is using Piracy Shield as a blunt weapon. The latest target is Google and its Public DNS (domain name system). A court order has been issued ordering Google to start “poisoning” or “spoofing” its DNS servers, in order to block a large number of sites, including those that enable illegal streaming of the top-tier football league, Serie A. The effect is that of blocking an entire domain and catching any number of sites unrelated to a dragnet-style policing of the internet for “piracy.” The technique – although used by the authorities in this case – is available “by the grace of malicious actors”: they devised it to “spoof” or reroute, via tampering with DNS records, a correct to a fake IP address – i.e., sending users to the wrong site. Google promotes its public DNS service as speeding up browser experience, while improving security – and, getting “the results you expect with absolutely no redirection.” At least that last benefit of using the giant’s 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 IP addresses as DNS servers is obviously out the window – should, that is, the giant comply with the Italian court ruling. Google is not alone – local Italian ISPs have also “heard” from the courts, as has Cloudflare – but Google is clearly a major target, given its wide use. No surprise to anyone with any knowledge of Italy, football there, or let’s say, big money in general – others can read up on the Calciopoli scandal. The overall takeaway is that it’s never about football, or what’s just and right – it’s simply about money. Right or wrong. And so, accidentally or not, the latest order came from a court in the north of the country – in Milan, Lombardy. Google had tried to fight back the original complaint that said it didn’t do enough to shut down whatever AGCOM decided were “pirates.” Apparently, even 30+ years after the internet became a thing, courts in Italy still have no clear understanding of what it is – what effect blocking an entire DNS service can have. And so we have AGCOM, its orders to have any and all, “pirate” sites blocked in half an hour – and, compliant courts. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post When Blocking Piracy Means Breaking the Internet appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

New German Chancellor Dumping Campaign Promises Isn't Sitting Well With Voters

“I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” lead author Dr Yoshi Kobayashi told IFLScience.

Did you see this? What causes the weird, spiral pattern?