News Agatha All Along The Trailer for Agatha All Along Offers Up a Witchy New Song Embrace your latest Disney earworm By Molly Templeton | Published on August 12, 2024 Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2024 MARVEL Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2024 MARVEL They’re not just going to walk down the deadly Witch’s Road. They’re going to sing about it. The full trailer—following last month’s odd teaser—for Marvel’s Agatha All Along offers not just a better sense of what the Kathryn Hahn-starring WandaVision spinoff is about, but a better vibe and a new jam. “The Ballad of the Witches Road” is by Oscar-winning songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who wrote “Let It Go.” So, yes: It’s going to be in your head for a minute. The synopsis for Agatha says: The infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth Teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious Teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road… As Vanessa Armstrong noted, there is something very suspicious about this goth Teen—played by Heartstopper’s Joe Locke—being referred to only as “Teen.” According to showrunner Jac Schaeffer, “It’s his idea to travel the Witches’ Road to get her power back. But in order to go on the Road, you’ve got to get a coven together. So how does a witch that no one’s going to trust get a band of sisters together?” Said band of sisters includes Aubrey Plaza, Patti LuPone, Sasheer Zamata, and Ali Ahn; Debra Jo Rupp and Emma Caulfield Ford are also here, returning from their turns in WandaVision. Agatha All Along has a two-episode premiere September 18th on Disney+. As the lady says, last one there is a nice person.[end-mark] The post The Trailer for <i>Agatha All Along</i> Offers Up a Witchy New Song appeared first on Reactor.

News Aurora Awards Here Are the Winners of the 2024 Aurora Awards Congratulations to the winners! By Molly Templeton | Published on August 12, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association has announced the winners of the 2024 Aurora Awards, which recognize science fiction, fantasy, and horror work done by Canadians in 2023. This year’s award ceremony took place on Sunday, August 11th, and also included speeches by this year’s inductees to the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association Hall of Fame. You can watch the entire ceremony here. Congratulations to all! Best Novel WINNER: The Valkyrie, Kate Heartfield, HarperVoyager Bad Cree, Jessica Johns, HarperCollins Canada The Marigold, Andrew F. Sullivan, ECW Press Moon of the Turning Leaves, Waubgeshig Rice, Random House Canada Silver Nitrate, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Del Rey Best Young Adult Novel WINNER: Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, Cherie Dimaline, Tundra Books The Crystal Key: The Dream Rider Saga, Book 2, Douglas Smith, Spiral Path Books Flower and Thorn, Rati Mehrotra, Wednesday Books The Grimmer, Naben Ruthnum, ECW Press The Stars of Mount Quixx, S.M. Beiko, ECW Press Best Novelette/Novella WINNER: Untethered Sky, Fonda Lee, Tordotcom Green Fuse Burning, Tiffany Morris, Stelliform Press I AM AI, Ai Jiang, Shortwave Media “The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World,” Nalo Hopkinson, Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, Random House Pluralities, Avi Silver, Atthis Arts Best Short Story WINNER: “At Every Door A Ghost,” Premee Mohamed, Communications Breakdown, MIT Press “The Dust Bowl Café,” Justin Dill, Augur Magazine, Issue 6.1 “If I Should Fall Behind,” Douglas Smith, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sept/Oct Issue “Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont,” P.A. Cornell, Fantasy Magazine, Issue 96 “Sink Your Sorrows to the Sea,” Chandra Fisher, Saltwater Sorrows, Tyche Books Best Graphic Novel/Comic WINNER: A Call to Cthulhu, Norm Konyu, Titan Nova Atana and the Firebird, Vivian Zhou, HarperCollins Carson of Venus, Ronn Sutton (artist), Martin Powell (writer), and Maggie Lopez (colourist), webcomic Cosmic Detective, Jeff Lemire and Matt Kindt, art by David Rubin, Image Comics It Never Rains, Kari Maaren, webcomic The Secret of the Ravens, written and illustrated by Joanna Cacao, with lettering by Kyla Aiko, Clarion Books Wychwood, Ally Rom Colthoff, webcomic Best Poem/Song WINNER: “Awakening,” Tiffany Morris, Nightmare Magazine, Issue 134 “As a, I want to, so I can,” Kelley Tai, Heartlines Spec, Issue 2, Spring/Summer 2023 “Lying Flat,” Lynne Sargent, Strange Horizons, Issue 9 October 2023 “predictive text,” Dominik Parisien, Augur, Issue 6.1 “Scarecrow,” David Shultz, Polar Starlight, Issue 9 “A Siren’s Call, A Banshee’s Wail, A Grandmother’s Dream,” Ai Jiang, Uncanny Magazine, Issue Fifty-Four Best Related Work WINNER: Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume One, Stephen Kotowych, editor, Ansible Press GAME ON!, Stephen Kotowych & Tony Pi, editors, Zombies Need Brains LLC No One Will Come Back for Us and Other Stories, Premee Mohamed, Undertow Publications On Spec Magazine, Diane L. Walton, Managing Editor, The Copper Pig Writers’ Society Skin Thief: Stories, Suzan Palumbo, Neon Hemlock Press Best Cover Art/Interior Illustration WINNER: Augur Magazine, Issue 6.1, cover art, Lorna Antoniazzi Endless Library – Fantasy, interior art, Marco Marin, Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume One, Ansible Press Green Fuse Burning, cover art, Chief Lady Bird, Stelliform Press The Machines That Make Us, cover art, Brent Nichols, Tyche Books The Passion of Ivan Rodriguez, cover art, Kayla Kowalyk, Tyche Books Tales & Feathers Magazine, Issue 1, cover art, Jade Zhang Best Fan Writing and Publication WINNER: Polar Borealis Magazine, Issues: 24, 25, 26, and 27, edited by R. Graeme Cameron Maria’s Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror Short Fiction Roundup, Maria Haskins Polar Starlight Magazine, Issues: 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, edited by Rhea E. Rose The Travelling TARDIS, Jennifer Desmarais, JenEric Designs Young People Read Old SFF, edited by James Davis Nicoll, online Best Fan Related Work WINNER: ephemera Reading Series, KT Bryski and Jen R. Albert, co-chairs, online Scintillation 4, Jo Walton and René Walling, co-chairs, Montreal Sip & Read / Sip & Social @ Librairie Saga Bookstore, Mathieu Lauzon-Dicso, bookstore owner When Words Collide, Randy McCharles, chair, Calgary The Worldshapers Podcast, Edward Willett, online This year’s inductees to the CSFFA Hall of Fame are Chris A. Hadfield, Nalo Hopkinson, and Jo Walton.[end-mark] The post Here Are the Winners of the 2024 Aurora Awards appeared first on Reactor.

When Bewitched first aired on September 17, 1964, no one imagined it would still be alive today. While the show itself lasted eight seasons, Samantha’s signature twitchy nose is something nearly everyone still recognizes today. Multiple spin-offs hit the airwaves, however, none of the attempts could quite capture what the original could. While Samantha tried her best to keep her own secrets... Source

Cirque du Soleil is a unique circus that went from being a group of about 20 performers to becoming an elaborate and jaw-dropping production that millions see in cities worldwide. Founded in 1984 in Montreal, this show is sure to keep growing and gaining fans around the globe. Here, you will learn the show's 35-year history. You'll also find out what the performers and owners are planning next and... Source

Most people have some kind of insurance, whether it's related to their health, car, or home. You might think that reading about insurance would be as interesting as watching paint dry, but there are actually some pretty interesting facts related to the topic. For instance, there's a famous coffee chain that spends more money on health insurance than its frappuccinos. And we mustn' Source

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Many of us like to jet off on holiday around this time of year, leaving in our plane’s wake a curious white trail. We’ve all seen them, but what are they?The white trails planes leave behind are called contrails, and they’re effectively artificial clouds produced by the water vapor released by aircraft engines. One more cloud in the sky might not seem all that bad, but new research has shown that contrails are changing with the development of modern aircraft, and it might not be doing our climate any favors.What are the white trails planes leave behind?Contrails are the white lines we see in the sky trailing behind planes, hence the name (con = condensation, trail = trail). They are the result of the way a jet engine works, as it burns fuel and creates water vapor as a by-product of combustion, and you know what else is made of water vapor? Clouds.This is why contrails look so much like clouds, because they effectively are. They’re most comparable to cirrus clouds, and it’s here that contrails can have downsides for the planet below.  Contrails' impact on the climateScience has no beef with naturally occurring clouds but it’s been noted that cirrus clouds do have an influence on the planet. This is because they can trap heat coming from the planet below, and the same is true of the artificially created contrail variety, adding to the downsides of air travel.“It's common knowledge that flying is not good for the climate,” said the lead author of a new study, Dr Edward Gryspeerdt, who is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Grantham Institute, in a statement. “However, most people do not appreciate that contrails and jet fuel carbon emissions cause a double whammy warming of the climate.”Gryspeerdt’s team established that contrails are lasting longer than ever before because planes have started flying at a higher altitude. Planes’ graduation up to heights of 12 kilometers (38,000 feet) was a smart move to experience less drag, meaning they generated fewer emissions. However, it comes with the side effect of contrails that take longer to dissipate.“This study throws a spanner in the works for the aviation industry,” continued Gryspeerdt. “Newer aircraft are flying higher and higher in the atmosphere to increase fuel efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. The unintended consequence of this is that these aircraft flying over the North Atlantic are now creating more, longer-lived, contrails, trapping additional heat in the atmosphere and increasing the climate impact of aviation.”“This doesn’t mean that more efficient aircraft are a bad thing – far from it, as they have lower carbon emissions per passenger-mile. However, our finding reflects the challenges the aviation industry faces when reducing its climate impact.”Are contrails chemtrails?No.A study of scientists in the most relevant fields found even less support for that conspiracy theory than exists for climate change denial. Unfortunately, it seems even that wasn’t enough to get people to stop talking about it. So, if you need more convincing, click here.

Horses might be smarter than we give them credit for, a new study has indicated. In the study, horses were rewarded for tapping a target – but their reaction when a time-out penalty was introduced for tapping at the wrong time indicates that horses might have more of an eye for strategy and cost-benefit analysis than their brains were previously thought capable of.“At first we found that horses would just keep touching the card over and over, as they probably realized they would still get a frequent reward with minimal mental effort,” lead researcher Dr Carrie Ijichi of Nottingham Trent University, UK, said in a statement. “There was no cost for indiscriminate hitting, sometimes it paid off, sometimes it didn’t. When we introduced a cost for their errors, however, they could instantly understand and play the game properly.”“This suggests that the horses knew all along what the rules of the game were,” added study co-author Louise Evans.Now, those well-versed in the weird and wonderful history of horse behavior may have just been reminded of Clever Hans, the horse that was purported to be able to do mathematics (but was revealed to simply be observing the responses of those around him, responding accordingly to get a little treat). However, the study authors note that “though it is never possible to rule out a Clever Hans effect when a human is present, such unintended cues would have been present in sessions one to three, where subjects did not demonstrate that they understood the task.”The study involved 20 horses aged between 11 and 22 years old at Nottingham Trent University Brackenhurst Equestrian Centre. They were conditioned to associate a whistle with being given a tasty handful of Ulsakind cubes, and were then tasked with tapping an A3 laminated card with their nose or muzzle, with a whistle and a treat accompanying a correct touch response.Then, a “stop” signal was thrown into the mix, consisting of an LED cyclist’s torch strapped to the trainer’s upper abdomen. When the light was on and the horse tapped the card, a 10-second time-out period began, where the trainer stepped back, looked down, and lowered the target, removing the opportunity to earn a snack. The duration of the stop signal was randomized to ensure “it was the light itself that signalled the No-Go contingency and not predictable intervals.”The researchers wrote that “though some individuals reduced their errors from session three to four more than others, all but one individual reduced errors in response to the introduction of the cost suggesting a remarkably prevalent ability within the group to do so.”“We were expecting horses’ performance to improve when we introduced the time-out, but were surprised by how immediate and significant the improvement was,” Evans explained. “Animals usually need several repetitions of a task to gradually acquire new knowledge, whereas our horses immediately improved when we introduced a cost for errors.”“Horses are not natural geniuses, they are thought of as mediocre, but this study shows they’re not average and are in fact more cognitively advanced than we give them credit for. We now think that horses may be able to use a form of learning called ‘model-based learning’ which was thought to be too complex for them. This will now help us to understand their behaviour and capabilities much better,” Ijichi said. “It’s fascinating because they have a very underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex which is what we typically credit with producing that type of thinking in humans.”“This means they must be using another area of the brain to achieve a similar result and this teaches us that we shouldn’t make assumptions about animal intelligence or sentience based on whether they are ‘built’ just like us.”The study is published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science.

A potentially life-threatening pathogen has just welcomed a new family member, as researchers have identified another distinct group of Candida auris. The discovery brings the number of known clades of the fungus – an emerging multidrug-resistant superbug – to six.C. auris is a type of yeast that can cause severe illness and is often resistant to antifungal medications. Although healthy people typically don’t get sick, it spreads easily among patients in healthcare facilities and can be dangerous for people with weakened immune systems. The yeast can cause a range of conditions from superficial (skin) infections to more severe, life-threatening illnesses, such as bloodstream infections. Because of its multi-drug resistance, it can be difficult – sometimes impossible – to treat. Infections are still relatively rare – however, cases have risen drastically in recent years, and as such the pathogen “poses a serious threat to global public health due to its worldwide distribution, multidrug resistance, high transmissibility, propensity to cause outbreaks, and high mortality,” the authors write.Previously, five geographically distinct clades – or groups – of the fungus had been described: one in South Asia, another in East Asia, and others in Africa, South America, and Iran.The latest clade to join the fold was discovered in April 2023, when doctors from the Singapore General Hospital identified a patient carrying an unusual strain of C. auris as part of a routine screening program. Usually, these cases originate from people who have recently traveled, but this patient had not left the country for two years, which rang some alarm bells.After analyzing the strain’s genetics, the researchers found that it didn’t match any of the five existing clades of the fungus, and so must represent a novel, sixth clade. They then tested strains taken from past patients and found two more isolates of this group of C. auris in Singapore and another in Bangladesh.It is as yet unclear how widespread the new clade is or whether it has the potential to cause invasive infections and outbreaks. Nonetheless, the researchers write, “it is imperative to ensure its early detection and containment for the purpose of patient safety.”"The implications of this discovery extend far beyond the laboratory. Now that we have discovered the sixth Candida auris clade, there is a pressing need to improve surveillance capability or develop new methods to augment current surveillance strategies so that health care facilities can keep a close watch on its emergence and contain the spread once found," Dr Karrie Ko, co-first author of the study, said in a statement.Fortunately, the cases described in the study were still susceptible to all tested antifungals, which should help abate fears of a Last Of Us-style pandemic – but it’s clear the threat of C. auris isn’t going anywhere, hence more needs to be done to identify new strains, track their transmission, and contain any adverse clinical effects.The study is published in The Lancet Microbe.