'He's done. He's done'

News The Substance Demi Moore Loses Control in the Vivid New Trailer for The Substance When the “better version” of yourself takes over. By Molly Templeton | Published on August 15, 2024 Screenshot: MUBI Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: MUBI The beauty industry is everywhere these days—not just in people’s bathrooms, but in novels (Mona Awad’s Rouge) and multiple movies, from the upcoming Skincare to Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, which blew people’s minds at the Cannes Film Festival (and won best screenplay). According to The Daily Beast, “It’s the grossest thing you will see all year.” Demi Moore stars as a woman with the impossible name of Elisabeth Sparkle who has just lost her job for being too old. A new product—the Substance, natch—promises to fix that. And it does: It turns Elisabeth into a new, younger version of herself (Margaret Qualley). Literally. She has to share her body with this other her; they each get seven days, and then they trade back. In theory. As the trailer suggests, it all goes sparklingly. Until it doesn’t. Moore’s delivery of “There’s been a slight misuse of the Substance” is, somehow, maybe the most chilling moment in this trailer, which is flashy and vibrant and seems to only hint at just how apeshit things are going to go. Moore, who is earning buckets of praise for her performance, told IndieWire, “If we step back from it being about an actor, [the film is more about] a desire to have validation, to be seen, to be appreciated, to belong, and what it is to feel rejected and to feel not-enough, that there’s something wrong with you. When you add into it the aspect of aging — which is really about our inability to control — [it becomes] an exploration of a lack of acceptance of self.” The Substance will be available in theaters on September 20th.[end-mark] The post Demi Moore Loses Control in the Vivid New Trailer for <i>The Substance</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News British Fantasy Awards Here Are the 2024 British Fantasy Awards Shortlists Congratulations to all those shortlisted! By Molly Templeton | Published on August 15, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share The British Fantasy Society has announced the shortlists for the 2024 British Fantasy Awards, which recognize work published for the first time in English anywhere in the world during the previous year. The shortlists are voted on by members of the society and FantasyCon; the winners are chosen by juries. The winners of the 2024 awards will be announced at Fantasycon over the weekend of October 11th to 13th, 2024. Congratulations to all on the shortlists! Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel Jurors: Susan Jeferies, Brian Kinsella, Dante Luiz, Kev McVeigh, Amanda Raybould A Day of Fallen Night – Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury) At Eternity’s Gates – David Green (Eerie River Publishing) Beyond Sundered Seas – David Green (Eerie River Publishing) Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon – Wole Talabi (Daw Books) Talonsister – Jen Williams (Titan) Best Horror Novel (The August Derleth Award) Jurors: Rebecca Gault, Rome Godwin, Laura Langrish, Adam Millard, Leanbh Pearson A House with Good Bones – T. Kingfisher (Titan) Boys in the Valley – Philip Fracassi (Orbit) Don’t Fear the Reaper – Stephen Graham Jones (Titan) How to Sell a Haunted House – Grady Hendrix (Titan) Looking Glass Sound – Catriona Ward (Viper) One Life Left – David Green (Eerie River Publishing) Best Novella Jurors: Gagan Kaur, Jonathan Laidlow, Pauline Morgan, Melissa Ren, Kate Towner The Darkness in the Pines – David Green (Eerie River Publishing) The Last Day and the First – Tim Lebbon (PS Publishing) The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar – Indra Das (Subterranean Press) They Shut Me Up – Tracy Fahey (PS Publishing) Thornhedge – T. Kingfisher (Titan) Untethered Sky – Fonda Lee (Tordotcom) Best Short Fiction Jurors: Andrew Freudenberg, Stephen Kotowych, Stephen McGowan, Abbi Shaw “Professor Flotsam’s Cabinet of Peculiarities” – Shona Kinsella (Great British Horror 8) “The Brazen Head of Westinghouse” – Tim Major (IZ Digital) “The Pilfered Quill” – Rachel Rener & David Green (From the Arcane) “The Ripe Fruit in the Garden” – C.A. Yates (Great British Horror 8) “Turn Again, O My Sweetness” – C.A. Yates (At the Lighthouse) Best Collection Jurors: Steven French, Heather Ivatt, Penny Jones, Graham Millichap, Stephen Theaker A Curious Cartography – Alison Littlewood (Black Shuck Books) Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic – Tobi Ogundiran (Undertow Publications) No Happily Ever After – Phil Sloman No One Will Come Back for Us – Premee Mohamed (Undertow Publications) The House on the Moon – Georgina Bruce (Black Shuck Books) Under My Skin – K.J. Parker (Subterranean Press) Best Anthology Jurors: Colleen Anderson, Adri Joy, Creag Munroe, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, Abbi Shaw At the Lighthouse, ed. Sophie Essex (Eibonvale Press) Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology, ed. Wole Talabi (Android Press) Never Whistle at Night, ed. Shane Hawk (Vintage) Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, ed. Jordan Peele (Random House) Something Peculiar: Great British Horror 8, ed. Steve J. Shaw (Black Shuck Books) The Other Side of Never: Dark Tales from the World of Peter & Wendy, eds. Marie O’Regan & Paul Kane (Titan) Best Independent Press Jurors: Andy Angel, Andrew Freudenberg, Morgan Greensmith, Corinne Pollard Angry Robot Black Shuck Books Eibonvale Press Flame Tree Press Luna Press Publishing Newcon Press Best Non-Fiction Jurors: Jessica Lévai, Susan Maxwell, TJ Moules, Eleanor Pender Spec Fic for Newbies: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror – Tiffani Angus & Val Nolan (Luna Press Publishing) The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts – Delyth Badder & Mark Norman (Calon) The Full Lid – Alasdair Stuart, ed. Marguerite Kenner Writing the Future, eds. Dan Coxon & Richard V. Hirst (Dead Ink) Best Magazine / Periodical Jurors: Carla Bataller Estruch, Arden Fitzroy, Adam McDowall, Siân O’Hara Hellebore Interzone (IZ Digital) khōréō Occult Detective Magazine Shoreline of Infinity Best Artist Jurors: David Green,Stephen Kotowych, Stephen McGowan, Kate Towner, Paul Yates Jenni Coutts Vince Haig David Rix Asya Yordonova Best Audio Jurors: Eugen Bacon, Robin CM Duncan, Ann Landmann, Caroline Mersey Cast of Wonders (Escape Artists) The Penumbra Podcast – Harley Takagi Kaner, Kevin Vibert, Ginny D’Angelo, Alice C. LeBeau, Noah Simes PodCastle (Escape Artists) PseudoPod (Escape Artists) Simultaneous Times Podcast (Space Cowboy Books) The Tiny Bookcase – Nico Rogers & Ben Holroyd-Dell Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer Jurors: Rhian Drinkwater, Devin Martin, Arturo Serrano Moniquill Blackgoose, for To Shape a Dragon’s Breath (Del Ray) Vajra Chandrasekera, for The Saint of Bright Doors (Tordotcom) Hannah Kaner, for Godkiller (HarperVoyager) Charlotte Langree, for Fractured: Tales of Flame and Fury (Clarendon House Publications) Em X. Liu, for The Death I Gave Him (Solaris) Teika Marija Smits, for Umbilical (Newcon Press) & Waterlore (Black Shuck Books) You can read more about the British Fantasy Awards at the British Fantasy Society site.[end-mark] The post Here Are the 2024 British Fantasy Awards Shortlists appeared first on Reactor.

Column Mark as Read The Road Goes Ever On: When Fantasy Sends You on Your Own Journeys Fantasy may be a means of escape, but it is also an education in, and encouragement toward, traveling itself.  By Molly Templeton | Published on August 15, 2024 Photo by Kira auf der Heide [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Kira auf der Heide [via Unsplash] The things I remember best from the fantasy novels I encountered as a youth are journeys. Ged leaves Gont, eventually leaves Roke, visits strange islands and sails across the sea. Sam and Frodo walk ever so many miles. There are boats big and small, whether for long journeys or for simply messing about in. There are horses, from Shadowfax to Artax and beyond, and there are other creatures that might lend a protagonist a ride; there are railroads and subways and wardrobes. In fantasy, people are always going somewhere. And this feels like both the most obvious thing in the world and something I had never thought about until I sat here, deep in the late-summer doldrums, and found myself wanting to go—that fantasy is not just a means of going somewhere else when one cannot travel, but an education in, and encouragement toward, traveling itself.  No, we’re not sleeping under the stars with our cloaks rolled up under our heads, or at least most of us aren’t. We are not riding noble steeds for hundreds of miles or getting seasick in terrifying handcrafted vessels while we cross unknown oceans. (No talking ships, either, alas.) But we are going on walks and getting on airplanes (basically magic, if you squint) and taking trains and stepping, in a very real way, from one world into the next, transforming as we go. Often we are doing these things alongside companions, or at least strangers moving in the same direction. Practically speaking, when setting out on a journey you need very good shoes, or very resilient feet. You need clothes you don’t have to wash too often (I am thankful for modern plumbing on a maybe-weirdly-regular basis). You need a map, which is now in the little science fictional device you carry in your pocket, or possibly in your pack or glovebox if you are venturing somewhere where that science fictional device doesn’t quite work the way you’d want it to. Maybe you need a guide. Maybe you need a plan, if you are going for a very, very long walk, which people do on purpose, on the regular, all the time. Maybe you have to weigh the things you’re putting in your pack and carefully consider how many times you want to wash your underwear in a sink. (Let’s not talk, or even think, about the state of undergarments in your average fantasy novel.) When I am traveling, with today’s many modern conveniences, water-bottle-refilling stations, generally functioning toilets, terrible cramped airplane seats, or swelteringly hot broken-AC train cars, I think a lot about fantasy, and how long it took everyone to get to their extremely important destinations. How they probably had no variety in their dinners most of the time. How dirty and miserable it must have been, and how rarely authors make us think about that. (Mostly.) I think about how part of the magic of fantasy is that going somewhere new always changes you: you meet an important person, discover an important item, make major steps on your quest, wind up with a horrible setback. I think about the characters in Kristen Cashore’s Winterkeep who meet, in a new country, sentient blue foxes, and about traveling via house with chicken feet (in Gennarose Nethercott’s Thistlefoot, most recently, but in many older stories as well). I think about how far Essun goes in The Broken Earth series—how far, and to how many strange places. Bookish people talk a lot about what books do for us; there is a perpetual and exhausting argument, for example, about whether reading makes one a better person, which then leads to more questions about what that means, and then more questions about what one reads, and the quality of said reading. I don’t read with the goal of self-improvement, though I do think the inevitable outcome of reading widely and diversely is that you understand more things about more people. Generally, that seems like a win.  But maybe there are more pragmatic things. Does reading make us more curious? When you encounter a word you don’t know in a book, do you look it up, or figure it out from context clues? Do you find out about things you very much want to eat? Do you learn about other countries, fictional or real? Does reading about made-up places ever so often give you insights on the place you live, how it works, what matters in it, why the people are how they are? Does it make you think twice about trees, or crows, or the importance of a good hat? Does it turn you into someone who wanders whenever possible and wishes to learn to properly wave swords around? It would have been very easy, as a small child growing up in a small town, to not understand or be curious about how much else was out there. Every so often, as a kid, I read a book set in the real world, and those made me curious too. But I think fantasy was what made me want to go. If you grow up in a fantasy novel, there is probably a coming-of-age quest in your future whether you like it or not. You have to find your way, sometimes whether you want to or not. Fantasy told me that those journeys were difficult, and long, and exhausting, and also necessary and astonishing. Sometimes they are less literal journeys—the kind that eat up miles—and more mental, or emotional, or spiritual. One way or another, they lead to change. You grow up in this world, and if you’re lucky, you get to invent your own coming-of-age adventure. Maybe across the world; maybe in your own backyard. And then you get to do it again, and again, whenever there is something new to find, and somewhere else to go. [end-mark] The post The Road Goes Ever On: When Fantasy Sends You on Your Own Journeys appeared first on Reactor.

SHOCK: Secret Service Agent Left Her Post Protecting Trump to Breastfeed Baby She Brought to Rally

Humans have drilled a record-breaking 1,268 meters (4,160 feet) into Earth’s mantle, gifting scientists with an extraordinary glimpse into the planet’s deep geology – and possibly the origins of life. The drill hole was made in a volcanically active region of the mid-Atlantic ridge located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.The mantle is the thickest layer of Earth, located between the crust and the core. While the mantle is typically located many miles below the crust, it is exposed by faulting in the mid-Atlantic ridge, providing a vantage point to explore the inaccessible layer through a "tectonic window."With the help of ocean drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution, the team managed to obtain a 1,268-meter (4,160-foot) long cylinder that provides a nearly continuous sample of mantle rock. In their new study, the international team of researchers have detailed the first insights from the unprecedented sample."Our study begins to look at the composition of the mantle by documenting the mineralogy of the recovered rocks, as well as their chemical makeup,” Professor Johan Lissenberg, study author from Cardiff University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said in a statement.Typically, Earth’s crust is between 4.8 to 69 kilometers (3 to 43 miles) thick, below which lays the mantle. In some parts of the world, however, the mantle rock is exposed due to tectonic activity.Image credit: Kolonko/Shutterstock.com"Our results differ from what we expected. There is a lot less of the mineral pyroxene in the rocks, and the rocks have got very high concentrations of magnesium, both of which results from much higher amounts of melting than what we would have predicted," explained Lissenberg. "We also found channels through which melt was transported through the mantle, and so we are able to track the fate of magma after it is formed and travels upwards to the Earth's surface,” he continued.This, the researchers explain, could help to inform our understanding of volcanoes, since mantle melt helps to fuel volcanic activity on the surface.Perhaps most exciting of all, the core sample may shed light onto the origin of life on Earth. The core sample offers early insights into the interactions between olivine, a plentiful mineral in mantle rocks, and seawater. These interactions trigger a cascade of chemical reactions that generate hydrogen and other molecules that are vital for sustaining life as we know it. "The rocks that were present on early Earth bear a closer resemblance to those we retrieved during this expedition than the more common rocks that make up our continents today,” explained Dr Susan Q Lang, an associate scientist in Geology and Geophysics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who served as a co-chief scientist on the expedition."Analysing them gives us a critical view into the chemical and physical environments that would have been present early in Earth's history, and that could have provided a consistent source of fuel and favorable conditions over geologically long timeframes to have hosted the earliest forms of life," she said.Bear in mind that this drill core is not the deepest hole ever dug by humans; that honor goes to part of the Kola Superdeep Borehole called SG-3. Soviet scientists bored the hole in the late 1980s, achieving a depth of 12,263 meters (40,230 feet) into the ground below northwestern Russia, not far from the border with northern Norway. Owing to the thickness of the crust here, the hole never made it into Earth’s mantle – unlike this latest study.The new study is published in the journal Science.

Some species in the animal world are known for their sleeping habits. From sloths snoozing in the trees to octopuses dreaming, what these animals get up to at bedtime is a source of fascination. Sharks, however, probably don’t feature very highly on the list of interesting sleepers – but they have just made a pretty strong bid to join, when researchers uncovered a surprise shark slumber party happening on the seafloor.In the Beagle Marine Park in the Bass Strait, Australia, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) filmed thousands of sleepy Port Jackson sharks (Heterodontus portusjacksoni) snoozing together on the seafloor. The sharks were first spotted here six years ago and the team have returned to conduct a survey on how conditions might have changed in the area. The ROV was operated from the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) research vessel MRV Ngerin.“It was very exciting when we managed to traverse over a rise in the reef to get a glimpse of the sharks snoozing 65 metres [213 feet] below the vessel in almost the same location as they were six years ago,” said Voyage Leader Dr Jacquomo Monk, of the University of Tasmania Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), in a statement. “A spectacular scene was relayed to us by a remotely operated vehicle equipped with seven cameras that was custom built by Boxfish Robotics in collaboration with IMAS. There were thousands of sharks tightly packed like a carpet spread across the seafloor.”      Port Jackson sharks are a distinctive species with blunt heads and harness-like markings across their bodies. They typically live in rocky environments near the bottom of the sea in southern Australia. They feed on a diet of mollusks, crustaceans, and sea urchins as well as small fish, foraging at night, explains the Australian Museum. The team noticed that the sharks sleeping together on the seafloor were only the females. While there is not a clear explanation for the girls-only slumber party, Port Jackson sharks are known to only come together for mating and live apart as males and females most of the year. “We don’t know exactly why the females are here. Perhaps they are feasting on the local delicacy – doughboy scallops – before the long trip north to lay their eggs,” continued Monk. There is one theory that the sharks are feasting before making the long swim to lay their eggs. These swims can be as far as 600-800 kilometers (373-497 miles) and occur between the breeding and laying sites.The fact that the sharks are still here six years after the first study shows the team that the habitat is still an important area for them. The park protects a range of diverse ocean habitats including reefs and sponge gardens, and is crucial not just for the sharks but for a wide range of above- and below-water species. 

A man has turned to Facebook for answers after noticing that his neighbor's house was projected upside-down onto his bedroom wall. It's not a sight you expect to wake up to – for one, neighbors' houses are generally not upside-down, and rarely on the inside of your own house. So, sharing photos of the incident, Stefan Lægaard Andersen appealed for an explanation."I'm sure that some of you fine gentlemen and/or gentlewomen know the answer to this ginormous mystery, that has my head spinning," Andersen wrote in the post. "Last night, as I was tucking my daughter into bed in our new house, this mirror image of the neighbours house showed up as a projection of sorts on our bedroom wall. I have absolutely no idea, how this happened, but I am hoping some of you can help understand this mystery."The man's window was covered at the time.Image courtesy of Stefan Lægaard, Heraldic artistFurther confusing the situation, and offering the explanation, was the fact that the man's bedroom window was covered at the time. Although stopping most of the light getting through, people were quick to point out the explanation. "So, having the window blocked off like that effectively makes it a pinhole camera, or camera obscura," commenter John Tougas explained. "The light reflecting off the building comes through the window, which is acting like a lens, and projects onto the wall. Very early experiments in photography used similar arrangements."      Pinhole camera effects are fairly commonplace, though not usually as spectacular as the one witnessed by Andersen and his daughter. Gaps in the light between the leaves of trees can create the same effect. On ordinary days, when the sun is out, you will see projections in the shape of the sun on the floor. This can be particularly pleasing during an eclipse.     IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.A similar effect using "pinhead mirrors" means you can even turn disco balls into an eclipse-viewer. Which is pretty neat.

Meet the latest act of leftist hypocrisy: accusing social media platform X of sabotaging Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid while ignoring the months-long election interference by Google against former President Donald Trump. On Monday, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) requested House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) launch an investigation into the Elon Musk-owned X platform, suggesting its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was attacking  “free and fair” elections by tipping “the scales in favor of one political party”—implying Republicans.  But why the concern now? MRC researchers caught Google burying Trump’s presidential campaign website on numerous occasions over 328 days, while it only took Musk’s Grok to make a correction after 10 days. “Happy to see that Congressman Nadler is finally in agreement with the MRC that Big Tech censorship is a major problem, especially as it pertains to protecting democracy,” said MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris. “Instead of cherry picking pro-free speech platforms like X who make corrections quickly, Rep. Nadler should focus his ire on those Big Tech platforms that are doing an overwhelming amount of election-interfering censorship.”  Morris’s remarks referred to two MRC recent studies showing the 41 times Google interfered in elections, and 39 times Facebook interfered in elections, since 2008 is a good place to start. Nadler’s cynical call to action stems from claims that Grok committed the unforgivable sin of affirming Harris had missed the ballot deadlines in nine states. The error lasted just over a week, with X taking swift action following complaints from the Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. In his five-page letter to Jordan, Nadler sounded the alarm (albeit unsuccessfully) about X’s “clear and imminent threat” to the 2024 presidential election. Of course, the so-called threat is that, for 10 days, an AI chatbot made an error despite openly warning users it might do so. Nadler’s hysteria stands in stark contrast to the left’s silence over Google’s nearly year-long interference in the 2024 presidential election by propping up the campaign website of the Biden-Harris campaign while burying those of Republican candidates, including former President Trump, now the presumptive nominee. MRC Free Speech America first unveiled evidence of such censorship on Aug. 22, 2023. Since then, MRC has published several reports about Trump and other Republicans' campaign websites being buried in Google’s search results. MRC conducted its most recent Google Search study, which drew similarly biased results, on July 15, 2024. That amounts to 328 days of continuous censorship. Speak about tipping the scale.  Nadler Press Secretary Daniel Rubin and Communications Director Matt Jansen did not immediately respond to MRC Free Speech America’s request for comment before publication. Minnesota Secretary of State Deputy Communications Director Cassondra Knudson did not offer detailed answers to MRC’s questions. Instead, she said, “Our office has not communicated with Rep. Nadler or the House Judiciary Committee on the letter.” Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.