An artificially intelligent PC and his human owner find themselves in a romantic rivalry over a woman. Cast: 1984 memories A rental based solely on the artwork. I was a big computer nerd and a CONTINUE READING... The post 84 From ’84: Electric Dreams appeared first on The Retro Network.

A US Postal Service worker in Tennessee gets violently attacked by a dog at a Lincoln County home while delivering a package on Saturday, June 15.

Hamas May Move Headquarters to Baghdad

In June 1944, the German V-2 rocket became the first object to ever reach space. Over the last eight decades, humans have experimented with several different designs to get stuff into orbit and launch ever further into deep space. With revolutionary rockets having been tested recently or imminently taking flight, it is important to understand how they work.The principles of rocketry are actually cardinal ideas in physics, but it is their application that requires more thought. First of all, objects with mass tend to resist being put in motion, but once in motion, they will continue moving as long as there’s no friction or drag. We are talking about inertia here. And then there is Newton’s third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Together, they form the theoretical base for any rocket launch.How do rockets get to space?Let’s start looking at the practicalities. To get up and into space you need to be moving fast. If it is a matter of crossing the Kármán line at 100 kilometers (61 miles) and coming back down, like Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, then you should be aiming for around 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) per hour. That is almost 1 kilometer per second. But if your goal is to get into orbit and stay there, you need to get faster or you'll fall back down. The way one stays in orbit is to be constantly falling back down toward Earth. You just keep missing the planet. The speed required to stay in low-Earth orbit is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per second.To leave the Earth’s gravitational pull for good, you need to go even faster. At least 11.2 kilometers (7 miles) per second. That’s equivalent to 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) per hour. How do rockets lift-off?No matter what speed you want to reach, you need an object that can generate thrust. And lots of it. Thrust depends on the speed of the exhaust gas and the mass of gas being expelled per second. So we move from the principles of physics to the chemistry of explosions.A schematic view of the components of a rocket.Image Credit: James Rodriguez © IFLScienceCalling it the chemistry of fire or of controlled explosions is splitting hairs. In basic terms, it is an exothermic reaction, one that releases heat and energy. It’s what powers your cells. It’s what powers a fire. It’s what powers regular combustion engines. You have a fuel, you have an oxidizer, and an ignition source.Rockets travel very high into the atmosphere, where the amount of oxygen (the oxidizer for all the other namechecked system use) is low. So rockets tend to bring their own oxidizers with them. Liquid oxygen tends to be the oxidizer of choice. But fuel varies. SpaceX’s Falcon rocket used rocket-grade Kerosene as fuel. SpaceX’s Starship instead uses methane. NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and the upcoming European Space Agency’s Ariane 6 both use liquid hydrogen as fuel.A recent explainer video from the European Space Agency (ESA,) parallels the rocket behavior to that of an unknotted balloon. Pointing out the main difference, a balloon doesn’t just go up but it moves all over the place. The video makes another important analogy: balancing the rocket – thin and tall with the thrust coming out of the bottom – is like balancing a pencil on a finger. You need to be flexible.         IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.How do you control a rocket?The flexibility comes from having engine nozzles that can be moved, as well as other design elements such as fins. When a rocket begins to tumble uncontrollably, it usually means that those systems are not working and the rocket is either about to explode by itself or will be made to go boom by ground control. Another common feature in rockets is boosters. Not every rocket design needs them, because not every rocket has to generate the same amount of thrust. Boosters such as those on SLS and Ariane 6 use solid fuel – the fuel and the oxidizer are combined in a solid block that burns and burns. There’s no way to regulate thrust when it comes to the boosters, beyond shaping the surface area where the reaction occurs.The final salient characteristic of rockets is that they are usually built in stages. Going back to the principle of inertia, the more mass you have the more thrust you need to move it to the speed you want. But the more thrust you need, the more fuel you need to pack. So it is useful to get rid of a portion of the rocket once it has outlived its purpose. Some first stages are reusable, like in the case of SpaceX rockets.  In other cases, it is only the capsule that carries cargo or crew that is used over and over again.To make sure everything goes right, rockets are tested time and time again. There’s often a lot running on them – literally, when the mission they are launching is carrying astronauts. They do not call it rocket science for nothing.

There have been questions over how cannabis use might affect someone’s risk of severe disease if they catch COVID-19, but a new study claims to be able to address some of the confusion. It seems clear that cannabis use is as risky as smoking when it comes to COVID, with people who used the drug at least once in the year prior to contracting the virus being significantly more likely to require hospital treatment.The study, from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at the health records of 72,501 people who were treated for COVID-19 at clinics within a large Midwest healthcare system in a two-year period between 2020 and 2022.The data showed that people who said they’d used any form of cannabis during the preceding year before catching COVID were 80 percent more likely to require hospitalization and 27 percent more likely to need intensive care treatment than those who had not used cannabis. This was after adjusting for factors like vaccination status and other health conditions.As a risk factor for severe disease, this put cannabis use on a par with smoking tobacco.“There’s this sense among the public that cannabis is safe to use, that it’s not as bad for your health as smoking or drinking, that it may even be good for you. I think that’s because there hasn’t been as much research on the health effects of cannabis as compared to tobacco or alcohol,” said senior author Professor Li-Shiun Chen in a statement.“What we found is that cannabis use is not harmless in the context of COVID-19. People who reported yes to current cannabis use, at any frequency, were more likely to require hospitalization and intensive care than those who did not use cannabis.”While cannabis was associated with more severe COVID-19 symptoms, it did differ from smoking in one important way. There’s not yet enough evidence to show that cannabis use is associated with increased risk of death, whereas for smoking the link is clear: smokers are significantly more likely to die from COVID than nonsmokers.Some previous research had suggested that cannabis may provide some sort of protective effect against viruses like SARS-CoV-2, but these data from real-world patients do not support that hypothesis.“Most of the evidence suggesting that cannabis is good for you comes from studies in cells or animals,” Chen explained. “The advantage of our study is that it is in people and uses real-world health-care data collected across multiple sites over an extended time period. All the outcomes were verified: hospitalization, ICU stay, death.”“Using this data set, we were able to confirm the well-established effects of smoking, which suggests that the data are reliable.”While it looks as though cannabis use worsens outcomes from COVID-19, we’re still not clear on why that may be. The authors suggested a few theories, such as damage to lung tissue from smoking cannabis or a dampening effect on the immune system. It’s also not clear whether the way in which someone consumes cannabis makes a difference.“We just don’t know whether edibles are safer,” said first author and medical resident Dr Nicholas Griffith. “People were asked a yes-or-no question: ‘Have you used cannabis in the past year?’ That gave us enough information to establish that if you use cannabis, your health-care journey will be different, but we can’t know how much cannabis you have to use, or whether it makes a difference whether you smoke it or eat edibles.”He added, “I hope this study opens the door to more research on the health effects of cannabis.”The study is published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

A relatively nearby K-type star called HD 48948 has been found to host three planets, each modestly larger than the Earth. The outermost of these is in the “habitable zone”, where temperatures are right for liquid water at the surface. More investigation is needed – particularly to confirm it is predominantly rock or water, not gas – but there is a good chance this could be rated as the closest known planet to Earth with a good chance of sustaining life.New planets are being found at an astonishing rate, such that one needs to be special to get noticed. HD 48948 d shows every sign of qualifying. The vast majority of planets we have found are either gas giants with no chance to support life themselves (although moons might, if they have them) or are far too hot. Many fail on both counts. Even the few planets that are the right size and average temperature often have problems that make life unlikely, although not necessarily impossible. These include being tidally locked so the same side always faces their star, and being exposed to flares that may well sterilize them. HD 48948 d probably avoids both fates, although the other planets discovered at the same time are certainly too hot. It’s the closest example of a so-called Super-Earth, a planet modestly larger than our home, that lies within its star’s habitable zone.K-type stars have less mass than the Sun, and are consequently somewhat cooler and fainter, but they are more massive than the much more abundant M-type (red dwarfs). They’re sometimes called orange dwarfs since they are the brightest in that part of the spectrum.HD 48948 has a mass 67 percent of the Sun’s and is 55 light-years away in Camelopardalis. It’s a very old star, its 11.5 billion-year life span having offered plenty of time for life to evolve around it. Ten years of observations reveal it wobbling on patterns that indicate it is being affected by the gravity of planets orbiting on periods of 7.3, 38, and 151 days.Even with less luminosity than the Sun, a planet on a 7.3-day orbit would be baked far hotter than Mercury, and even the planet in a 38-day orbit would be more oven than home.HD 48948 d is a different matter. Its orbital distance is similar to Venus, but around a star of this brightness, its temperature would be close to Earth’s, while also being far enough away that flares shouldn’t be a problem.This isn’t a twin of Earth, however – its mass is estimated at 10.59 times our planet’s, give or take an Earth-mass. As far as we know, none of HD 48948’s planets transit across the face of their star from our perspective. Consequently, we don’t know their size, only the mass it would take to produce the gravitational effects we see on their star.A planet of that mass could be a mini-Neptune ball of gas, not a super-Earth, which would be much less exciting. It may be some time before we can tell. Even if solid, its gravity would certainly be tiring.Some previous reports of planets made using this method have been found to be spurious, the result of activity on the star itself. However, Dr Shweta Dalal of the University of Exeter and co-authors express confidence the methods of analysis they used have avoided this."This discovery highlights the importance of long-term monitoring and advanced techniques in uncovering the secrets of distant star systems. We are eager to continue our observations and look for additional planets in the system,” Dalal said in a statement. The paper is published open access in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 

Although it may not make front-page headlines, a bill recently passed by a key congressional committee aims to change a flawed system and help extend the gift of life to more American families.At a recent markup, the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously passed legislation to change the criteria for paying expenses associated with organ transplantation. Specifically, the bill stipulates that organ procurement organizations or transplant centers receiving federal grants cannot consider the income of organ recipients when reimbursing organ donors’ expenses.Sadly, an average of 17 people die every day because they did not receive a lifesaving transplant.Organ donors go to great lengths, sacrificing their time and potentially affecting their health, to give the gift of life to others. The least we as a people can do is make sure that donors do not suffer financial hardship from making that sacrifice — a principle that should apply regardless of who ends up receiving the donor’s organ.This legislation would continue bipartisan efforts to reform and improve the organ donation system, to increase the number of life-saving transplants performed every year. For instance, in December 2019 the Trump administration proposed expanding the scope of reimbursable expenses to include lost wages and childcare expenses during a donor’s recovery. The recent legislation echoes the principle behind the Trump proposal that individuals should not incur financial losses due to their gracious decision to donate organs.Likewise, both the Trump and Biden administrations have taken actions to modernize the organ procurement organizations that coordinate transplants across the country. By encouraging more organ donations, and more efficiently using the organs already available, one study found that reforms could save 25,000 lives every year, while reducing taxpayer costs for people awaiting transplants.My experience as a mother of a child with cystic fibrosis and a former member of the National Council on Disability illustrated the need to reform the organ donation system. I recognize that my daughter one day could require an organ transplant, making her one of the more than 103,000 individuals on the waiting list for a donor organ. Behind that list are even more friends and family members agonizing as a loved one struggles and grows sicker while waiting. Sadly, an average of 17 people die every day because they did not receive a lifesaving transplant.That’s why this legislation, cosponsored by Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Suzan DelBene (D-Ore.), would have such an important impact, particularly for people on transplant waiting lists and their families. I hope that House Republican leaders will bring the bill to the floor shortly so that it can pass, that Senate Democrats will do the same, and that President Biden will sign the legislation into law.

Almost three years ago, I wrote in the New York Times that Bitcoin could redeem an America gone off the rails: Through its recent legal threat against Coinbase’s new interest-bearing cryptocurrency account program, the Securities and Exchange Commission has created a stir. … Deviate, and you are shut down. This is the un-American logic of the social credit system being imposed on us. … Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies can free ordinary Americans from the financial and psychological discipline and punishment at the core of this system of control. Three years ago, I began working to help people understand that America needed Bitcoin. Now, the time is ripe for elite technologists and everyday citizens to understand that Bitcoin needs America. I called then – and I’ve been calling ever since – for states “to become broad legal sanctuaries” for digital rights. “Americans need Bitcoin and the like in order to take back their destinies in the digital world instead of entrusting it to more private or public sector overlords.” Vindication for this call to action has been slow. But thanks to Donald Trump, this week, it’s here. The former president’s stubborn resistance to the Biden regime’s lawfare has inspired a growing share of leading technologists to come out publicly as Trump supporters. Had Trump thrown in the towel, those techies would likely have resigned themselves to four more years of the Biden borg’s woke war on the digital rights implicit in our First, Second, and Fourth Amendments: free speech, free association, the keeping and bearing of basic defensive tools, and freedom from warrantless surveillance and seizure. That’s why Bitcoin is the linchpin of the tech-Trump nexus. While most cutting-edge technologies, like AI, remain far from ordinary Americans’ reach and understanding, Bitcoin is fundamentally different. It’s ready, right now, for regular people to use – not just collect in a Wall Street-approved and controlled account – as a medium of exchange, one free from control by overseers hostile to our way of life, our constitutional form of government, and even our humanity itself. As Coinbase cofounder and CEO Brian Armstrong posted this week on X, “Bitcoin is an important check and balance on inflation and deficit spending. It may extend the American experiment, and western civilization along with it. Owning Bitcoin is pro-America.” Bitcoin is like nothing else in tech or in politics – a unique weapon we can wield together to bring America back from the brink. And with Trump’s embrace of it, technologists unwilling to join the Biden borg are ready to hug Trump back. Now is the time for the next, crucial step: getting everyday people involved by the multimillions. The public needs to hear from strong pro-Trump tech leaders that Bitcoin isn’t about getting rich quick off of dollar-denominated speculation; it’s about reclaiming our country’s destiny from control by a woke supercomputer. Buying Bitcoin is great, but it isn’t enough. Since the Founding, Americans have agreed that real wealth is useful – and that honest use toward healthy ends generates true wealth. That’s why millions and millions of Americans need to be using Bitcoin as it was designed: to bend our vast computational resources to serve what’s best and most sacred about us and our lives, not collectivist ideologies or globalist fever dreams. Three years ago, I began working to help people understand that America needed Bitcoin. Now, the time is ripe for elite technologists and everyday citizens to understand that Bitcoin needs America. Despite our myriad misfortunes and mistakes, America is still unique in the world – because of the American people. Like none other, we combine industriousness and spiritual grounding in a special, powerful way. Our mix of fierce devotion to liberty and living faith in the living God might be under siege, but it’s still at a critical mass sorely lacking in other parts of the world. That means we have a special opportunity and obligation to imbue Bitcoin with our uniquely dynamic spiritual life. Without it, without us, Bitcoin is sadly destined to become the biggest tech tool in a global box already overflowing with algorithms and automation, forces that have no inherent reason to care about us as living beings, much less as creatures lovingly made in the image of God. We can’t let Bitcoin become what the Borg wants: just another set of numbers to which our biomass must conform. For Bitcoin to redeem America, the American people must redeem Bitcoin. That’s the message Trump and his tech supporters must rally the country around – to secure victory for us all.

Ten Americans have died of drug overdoses for every Ukrainian soldier killed in the war with Russia, but you wouldn’t know it based on the Biden administration’s policy choices. Joe Biden’s support for the Ukrainian cause, in dollars and diplomacy, dwarfs his response to the crisis of addiction and death ravaging the American interior. While Biden signed a much-praised anti-fentanyl bill, a close examination reveals the law will do little toward reducing overdose deaths, which continue apace at all-time highs. The number of migrants Joe Biden has led America to face at the border is nearly double the size of the Russian army. The fentanyl crisis is a far greater calamity for America than a distant border war in Europe. The 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers who died since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022 equals 10% of the 300,000 Americans who have died of drug overdoses during Biden’s first three years in office. As with the war in Ukraine, there is no end in sight for the fentanyl crisis, only assurances of more suffering. The federal government has passed five bills and spent more than $175 billion to help the Ukrainians defend their borders. These appropriations have furnished Ukraine with tanks, anti-aircraft missiles, artillery shells, and other expensive military equipment. Some $68 billion is allocated to support the nations neighboring Ukraine and other undefined U.S. interests. Compare this legislative largesse with this administration’s “landmark” anti-drug law, the awkwardly named Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence Off Fentanyl Act or the FEND Off Fentanyl Act. Though the media heralded the bill as a major accomplishment, it does not deserve the hype. For example, the law is designed to combat money laundering, which has become significantly harder to do. Mexican drug cartels have partnered with China. They no longer utilize smaller countries, such as Panama, to launder their ill-gotten profits. Communist China is now the preferred country to launder drug money. High-level Chinese officials will be much harder to bring to justice than Panama dictator Manuel Noriega, who was captured by U.S. forces in Operation Just Cause in the 1980s. The FEND Off Fentanyl Act mandates that federal law enforcement seize assets from cartels to help cover enforcement costs. While law enforcement has been confiscating such assets for some time, cartels continue to generate substantial profits through human trafficking. They have divided the Mexican side of the border into territories that they control tightly, charging thousands of dollars per person to smugglers, known as "coyotes," for illegal crossings. However, these lucrative operations remain unaffected by the new law. This uneven policy response is particularly puzzling given the numbers involved. The Russian military tops 3.5 million personnel, including active soldiers, reservists, and paramilitary units. Meanwhile, the House Committee on Homeland Security reports that by the end of this summer, the Biden administration is projected to face over 10 million migrants attempting illegal crossings into the United States. Additionally, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security has already reported 6.5 million illegal crossings at the southern border. Even accepting the lower figures from the DHS, the number of migrants Joe Biden has led America to face at the border is nearly double the size of the Russian army. Ironically, the Russians understand fentanyl’s potency as a weapon better than anyone. The Russians invented a gas aerosol version of the drug to end a hostage crisis caused by 50 well-armed Chechen terrorists. The fentanyl gas killed all the terrorists and more than 100 hostages, but it effectively ended the crisis. Since this incident, fentanyl has only gotten stronger as Mexican drug cartels manufacture Chinese precursor chemicals into more powerful analog versions of fentanyl. It is not far-fetched to suggest that America is under attack, and fentanyl is a lethal weapon.

It's fair to say that Cody Wilson, the creator of the first 3D-printed gun, is an accommodating documentary subject. The company Wilson founded, Defense Distributed, has always taken a build-in-public approach, both as a practical matter of fundraising and to frame its project — the free distribution of blueprints for personal, at-home gun manufacturing — as a fundamentally political one. 'I think people want an intellectually rigorous experience that's cinematic and beautiful at the same time. But they're scared of the political ramifications of the feelings that they might encounter.' Wilson is an articulate and charismatic spokesperson for this project. While he can fluently cite post-Marxist theorists to justify his anti-state provocations, there's a certain mischievous swagger behind the Baudrillard quotes. He doesn't mind playing the villain a bit. Early in "Death Athletic: A Dissident Architecture," filmmaker Jessica Solce's intimate portrait of an eight-year span in the techno-gadfly's life, Wilson even pulls a classic villain move — explaining his devious plan: To a certain level, all this is theater. If Google's motto is "don't be evil" — and we all know how good Google is at doing that — Defense Distributed's motto is "be evil," or at least "think evil." I've always been up front about how it's going to go, what I plan to do before I do it. And really, only when people reach out and try to stop it does that seal the deal and make it happen. In other words, when various federal, state, and corporate forces single out Defense Distributed and do their best to thwart it, they're playing right into Wilson's hands. At the same time, as much as Wilson seems to thrive in the spotlight, it's also clearly taken its toll. At home with ambiguity About 15 minutes into "Death Athletic," Solce gives us our first look at this more vulnerable side of Wilson. Having been dropped by his second payments processor, he makes a confession: "I'm telling you, I can't handle it, emotionally, mentally ... I'm gonna be screwed up because of the highs and lows." He stews on the "the insult, the humiliation" of "malicious bureaucrats" making him a target, "the constant ... dread and fear" they've instilled in him. As if to illustrate his mood swings, Wilson suddenly becomes defiant. "They can all go to hell. They can all go to hell. They can go to hell." Taking a big swig from gallon plastic jug of spring water, he turns from his computer to the camera: "Live with the federal monkey on your back for years. Live with it and do what I do. Live with it and build a multimillion-dollar company despite what they want to do to you. And sue the f*** out of your enemy." Then Wilson gets up from his desk and walks abruptly out of frame, continuing to talk as the camera finds him again. He looks directly at us, his agitated movement bringing him in and out of focus "I can't ... this is ... this is turning me into a cartoon character, a strange zealot ... bizarre monkish figure who lives only for revenge," he says, and for a split second, he seems to be speaking of Solce and the very film we're watching. Is he about to walk off? It's a thrilling moment, and it testifies to Solce's talent and taste as a director, especially given the moribund state of the documentary today. In a genre in which most directors aim for worldview-affirming propaganda or quirky, undemanding crowd-pleasers, Solce is at home with ambiguity. DEATH ATHLETIC - A DISSIDENT ARCHITECTURE - TRAILER www.youtube.com Irrational commitment "Death Athletic" opens with artful close-ups of 3D-printed guns, dappled in shifting, geometric patterns of light, as slow piano chords play. The weapons look beautiful and mysterious, setting a mood that evokes one of those old James Bond opening credit sequences. Solce then pulls back to reveal that we're observing a photo shoot orchestrated by Wilson himself. He fiddles with the camera as he continues the first of his many eloquent politico-philosophical monologues in the film. To what extent are we observing Wilson objectively? And to what extent are we already seeing things through his point of view? From the start, Solce makes it unclear. So it is with the of atmosphere of paranoia that Solce creates this film with surveillance footage-esque long shots and sinister synths. How much of this sense of persecution is real — and how much is of Wilson's own creation? For his part, Wilson seems to agree. In an interview late last year with Compact, Wilson said that Solce's film “captures something true about being committed to your work to the point it may become irrational. There’s a Freudian death drive or something.” The result is that "Death Athletic" succeeds in being as unsettlingly confrontational and contradictory as Wilson himself. Embracing 'No Control' While the reception for "Death Athletic" has been enthusiastic, it was never a forgone conclusion that it would ever be seen at all. Once she'd assembled enough of a rough cut, Solce worked with an industry PR person she knew to try to sell it to get funds for post-production. "Streaming services basically said, 'We will not touch this film,'" Solce tells Align. "And one even said it was on the wrong side of history because I was profiling [Wilson]." According to Solce, her let-the-viewer-decide approach would not have been such a hard sell 10 or 15 years ago. "But if you touch the gun world right now and you want it to be mainstream, it has to be anti-gun. It just has to." If Solce came to the subject without an agenda, in part it's because she came to it — and documentary filmmaking in general — by accident. Solce's background is in acting, writing, and theater directing — she mounted a small but well-regarded New York City production of "The Crucible" some years back. "I never thought I was going to make documentaries," she says. "I literally never thought about documentaries at all, other than to sometimes watch one and enjoy it." A chance meeting in 2013 with a family friend named Greg Bokor changed that. When Bokor casually mentioned that he was about to debut an art installation in reaction to the Sandy Hook shootings (which had happened the previous December) something clicked. "That was moment in my life where I had finally [started to realize] how media worked and how every time you saw this issue, there was nothing really important being discussed," says Solce. "Just fear and the imagery of terror to get this emotional response." Solce called up a director of photography she knew, and five days later, she was filming. Originally, she had only planned to cover the installation, "but within two weeks, I realized I was making a feature." That feature was Solce's self-funded 2014 debut, "No Control," a notably even-handed examination of the gun debate that features interviews with figures across the political spectrum. Among the gun rights advocates Solce spoke to was Wilson. In fact, "No Control" ends with Wilson prophetically announcing the inevitability of the new freedom promised by 3D-printed guns. The moment all but demands a follow-up; Solce soon began working on one. Solce threw herself in to making what would become "Death Athletic" the same way she started her first film: "impulsively." An unfinished story "I wasn't done with the story. I was tired of seeing people making ineffectual, small, biased shorts on what Cody was doing," Solce says. "I realized that this gun issue wasn't really about guns. It was about the First Amendment. It was about sharing information online. It was about the digital era. It encapsulates and incorporates everything that's happening in the Bitcoin space." Solce contacted Wilson, and he got on board. Like its predecessor, "Death Athletic" was paid for out of Solce's pocket. Despite the obvious limitation of this approach, Solce says it can be motivating. "Nobody can tell you not to do it. You don't have to wait for permission. You don't have to pitch for six to eight months. [If I'd had to] do that with either of those films, neither of them would have happened." Forging a career Getting the movie noticed is its own struggle. "Right now, it's a lovely trickle [of viewers] and I appreciate every single person who watches it," says Solce. "But it's still kind of lost in this niche world. Breaking out into any kind of mainstream has been a process of talking to people, trying to get on podcasts," Solce says. And Solce remains optimistic that "Death Athletic" will slowly find a bigger audience. "There's something evergreen about it. Everybody [who sees it] has these incredibly visceral reactions and they want to discuss it." Solce recalls the surprising reactions of some longtime acquaintances when they finally saw "Death Athletic" at the New York City premiere. "Throughout the eight years of me doing this film, they were aggressively against it. Oddly enough, they ended up being extremely moved by it." Solce's next project is "Forging a Country," a short film about the recent re-election of El Salvador's populist president, Nayib Bukele. Solce will premiere "Forging a Country" this August at the Palestra Bureau conference in San Salvador. While Bukele is another potentially divisive subject, Solce says she doesn't court controversy for its own sake. She merely asks that audiences watch her work with an open mind. "I think people want an intellectually rigorous experience that's cinematic and beautiful at the same time," Solce says. "But they're scared of the political ramifications of the feelings that they might encounter." "Death Athletic" can be streamed on Amazon and Apple TV. Both "Death Athletic" and "No Control" can also be bought directly from the filmmaker.