The Sixers ain't playing around, that's clear

Column They Don’t Know Nothing About the Jersey Devil: 13th Child (2002) With the amount of star power in the cast, it should be a better film than it is… By Judith Tarr | Published on July 1, 2024 Credit: Unipix Entertainment Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Unipix Entertainment Whenever I see the phrase “Inspired By,” I know I’d better not be too invested in the source material. Sometimes this is a good thing. In the case of 13th Child, which is subtitled The Legend of the Jersey Devil, I’m not so sure. With the amount of star power in the cast, it should be a better film than it is. Oscar winner Cliff Robertson stars as Mr. Shroud. Emmy winner Robert Guillaume plays his opposite number, ex-cop and current Mental-Health Hospital inmate Riley. Familiar faces Lesley-Anne Down and Christopher Atkins do their best to move the plot along, Down in a scene as the New Jersey Attorney General and Atkins as the intrepid Ranger Ron. Along with the rest of the cast, they manage to not quite equal the sum of their parts. Down is especially overwrought as the daughter seeking revenge by proxy for the murder of her father twenty years before. She gender-bends the fridging trope, which is something, I guess. The young Assistant DA she assigns to the case, played by Michelle Maryk (no relation to co-writer Michael Maryk), comes across as a kind of Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs-lite. Which lets Cliff Robertson do a low-key riff on Hannibal Lecter, complete with villainously flat affect and gnomic utterances (which he may have written himself—he shares the writing credit with Michael Maryk). Or maybe he’s supposed to be the priest in The Exorcist, with the overcoat and the fedora, pacing ominously through shadowy settings. The Jersey Devil is a devil, after all, though whether that means a demon in the religious sense, or more of a horror-movie monster, is ambiguous. Mother Leeds gets disappeared in favor of a Lenni Lenape named Matongwa (which ADA Tatum rolls her eyes at: “That’s a name to conjure with”). He is a shaman’s thirteenth child, and he has superpowers, including the ability to shapeshift. There’s a curse, and the Shroud family is linked with it, in the person of Cliff Robertson’s character. They’ve been connected for over 200 years; their ownership of the land predates the British. There’s an echo of a variation on the legend, the story of the local girl who fell in love with a British soldier and bore a cursed child. Here, there’s no mother in the picture. We first encounter Matongwa at the end of his life, when a British major hanged him. He transformed into a monster and slaughtered the major. Whether he was born with the ability to transform into that shape, or whether it’s the hanging that precipitated it, we aren’t told. This was the first murder of a centuries-long spree, which kind of points toward the latter possibility. The monster’s signature is “gruesome decapitation and mutilation murder.” He’s been doing it with apparent regularity since the day he was hanged. The main plot involves ADA Tatum, who is investigating the gruesome decapitation with mutilation murder of an escaped convict, interwoven with the story of the AG’s father and his partner, Riley. Riley claimed to have seen the Jersey Devil, and became obsessed with finding it again. Officer Murphy finally agreed to help him hunt for it, but if they didn’t find it within a week, Riley would have to give up and move on. After three weeks, Riley was found in the Pine Barrens in complete mental collapse. Murphy was never found at all. But we know that Riley did find his mutilated body, and a great deal of blood. Twenty years later, Riley is now in the New Jersey Mental Health Facility (it says so on the sign), and the Jersey Devil is doing what he does. He gruesomely murders a deer hunter and rips up the deer carcass, and later he’ll go after a pair of kids having hot teen sex in a beat-up RV in the woods. Riley claims to be the only person who knows the truth about the Jersey Devil. He has a meltdown after watching a television documentary on the legend (in which we learn about the major and Matongwa), and is hauled off to his very bare, very poorly maintained room. He’s injected with a sedative, over his vehement protests, and the staff take a small fur-and-bone talisman from him and hand it to the security guard outside. The guard ignores it, but we see that it starts to glow. Later we’ll learn that it’s made from the bones of Indian ancestors (and we learn whose they are), and it protects him against the Jersey Devil. We also see that he has company in the room. It’s tiny, but deliberately scary, if you’re phobic. Which Riley seems to be. Or is he? We’ll learn the answer to that by the end of the film. There’s a whole lot of plot-foo in between, with a couple of decapitated torsos, an ongoing motif of deer carcasses, an occasional lake of blood, and plenty of weird witchy stuff in the Shroud house (which was built, Shroud tells us, in 1760). The barn is notably bigger than the house, full of drying bunches of (poisonous?) herbs and animal skulls and bones and the odd, very stinky snake carcass. There’s a tower, too, with alarming contents of the bleeding-offal variety. Mr. Shroud is openly eccentric. He has a poison garden, because of course he does. He has his own vineyard, though the wine doesn’t appear to be toxic, and a collection of live reptiles. And he has a pet tarantula named Bruno. “I study things shunned by man,” he intones. “I intend to protect them anywhere, any way.” That’s his life’s work, and his constant purpose. We gradually get to see the actual Devil, at first by what he does to his victims, and then through shadows and glimpses. He ticks most of the boxes: bipedal, standing on hooves, with clawed hands, a torso consisting primarily of skeletal ribs, and horns (deer antlers in the opening scenes, bovine toward the end, which is either a continuity problem or a plot point that doesn’t come through). He has a T. Rex-like head with glowing red eyes and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, and he drools slime. What is it with movie monsters and slime-drool? I have to hand it to the film for giving us an unusual take on shapeshifting. The seven-foot-tall Devil is the form that gets all the publicity. The other one, which may be the base form, is not what you would expect. Or maybe the Devil is the base form and the other one is what it turns into when it needs to fly under the radar. We never get an explanation. We just know that Shroud calls the Devil his “brother,” and he has devoted his life to protecting the creature from humans. It’s humans who are evil, he maintains. They fill the world with their poisons and their unkindness. The Devil, like the rest of its deadly relatives, is only being itself. One thing we do learn is that in Devil form, the creature is a five-way chimera. This is thanks to one of the more distinctive fantasy elements, the instant DNA analysis. Throw a claw in a jar, get your result: “Equal parts goat, bat, reptile, and are you ready for this? Spider, and human.” It appears to be a clone. Instant DNA Tech declares that the two claws he analyzed (one from the latest murder scene and the other stolen from Shroud’s house by ADA Tatum) are identical, but one is 200 years old. Apparently he can do instant dating, too. Fantasy science for the win. We get some Monster POV here and there, in case we were missing a chance to be the Devil. It’s blurry, red-tinged, and out of focus. Except when it zeroes in on a victim. Then we get it sharp and clear and in living color. It’s just doing what it’s made (or cursed) to do. And Shroud is paying the price that his family was made (or cursed) to pay in return for the land he lives on. Shroud has embraced his destiny. He’ll do anything to protect the creatures he regards as his own. Anything. At any cost.[end-mark] The post They Don’t Know Nothing About the Jersey Devil: <i>13th Child</i> (2002) appeared first on Reactor.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Donald Trump’s favor in the presidential immunity case, complicating at least two prosecutions against the 45th president.   “Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” Chief Justice John Roberts ruled. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.” The ruling, issued Monday, involves the federal prosecution of Trump for challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, but it also could affect a case in Fulton County, Georgia, in which Trump faces charges of conspiracy to overturn the results of the race in the state.  Trump’s lawyers argued that the 45th president—and any president—has absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts pertaining to his office. In this case, Trump’s attorneys contended that he was acting in his official capacity as president—not simply as a candidate—in fighting what he believed was a dishonest election.  The ruling complicates special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump centered on the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, as well as the Fulton County case against Trump for challenging the election outcome in Georgia.  “The president enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law,” Roberts asserted in the majority opinion. “But under our system of separated powers, the president may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts. That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office.” Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote the dissent. “Today’s decision to grant former presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the presidency,” Sotomayor argued. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.” The high court’s ruling also comes after amid Trump’s conviction in New York over “hush money” paid to former porn actress Stormy Daniels–based on charges from before Trump was president. A second federal case in Florida, run by Smith, over the former president’s possession of classified documents regards alleged conduct after leaving office. These cases won’t likely be affected by the high court ruling. Across four separate indictments, Trump faced a total of 91 state and federal charges. Trump’s attorneys argued that the only exception from presidential immunity would be if Trump were impeached and removed from office, in which case he then could be charged with the offense in a separate criminal case.  That’s because what is known as the Constitution’s impeachment judgment clause stipulates that a president “convicted” by the Senate in an impeachment trial is “subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment, and Punishment, according to Law.” Although the House impeached Trump a second time shortly before he left office in 2021, the Senate acquitted Trump in a trial after he left office.  During questioning, Justice Amy Coney Barrett had suggested that the solution might warrant a legal test to set parameters for what is a private and what is an official act.  In oral arguments April 25 before the nine justices, Michael Dreeben argued the case on behalf of Smith, the government’s special counsel, while lawyer John Sauer argued on behalf of Trump.  Sauer argued that “there can be no presidency as we know it” without immunity, since presidents would be reluctant to carry out their duties for fear of prosecution by a subsequent administration.  The immunity is based on the Constitution’s executive vesting clause and the corresponding principle of separation of powers, he said. The Justice Department, which appointed Smith as special counsel, argued that a president isn’t entitled to immunity from prosecution even for official actions. During oral arguments, however, Dreeben qualified the argument by saying presidents have some “special protection” and could raise it as a defense if prosecuted.  The Supreme Court ruled in its 1982 Nixon v. Fitzgerald decision that presidents have absolute immunity in civil cases for official actions taken as president.  In February, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected Trump’s immunity claim.  Separately, the high court is considering a case involving defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. At issue is whether a federal statute used to prosecute them may be used under a broad reading or instead was designed to cover narrower acts.  The post Supreme Court Upholds ‘Absolute Immunity’ for Presidents in Trump Case appeared first on The Daily Signal.

I Am Tired of the 'Trump Lies' and 'Biden Has Integrity' Meme

BREAKING: SCOTUS Rules Presidents Have 'Absolute Immunity' -- For 'Core' Official Acts

Chinese space company Beijing Tianbing accidentally launched a rocket during a test of its first-stage power system on Sunday.The company – also known as Space Pioneer – fired up the first-stage Tianlong-3 rocket in what was supposed to be a static test. However, due to a structural failure the rocket was launched to its destruction."During the test run, the first-stage rocket ignited normally, and the engine thrust reached 820 tons," the company explained in a statement. "Due to structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench, the first-stage rocket separated from the launch pad."The onboard computer shut off automatically shortly after the unexpected liftoff, and the rocket was seen flying vertically for a short amount of time, before turning horizontal and falling back down to the ground.        IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.The rocket fell into the mountains around 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) from the launch site at Gongyi City, Henan Province, China. There have been no reported casualties, according to the firm, and the surrounding area had been evacuated of personnel in advance of the launch.        IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.Accidents of this kind are pretty rare in spaceflight history. Astrophysicist Brad Tucker from the Australian National University told the New York Times that the only comparable incident occurred in 1952, when NASA's Viking 8 broke free of its moorings and landed in the desert 8 kilometers (5 miles) away.The Tianlong-3 rocket is intended to be reusable, as a way of reducing the incredible cost involved in spaceflight. It is hoped the latest version will be capable of carrying up to 17 tons into low-Earth orbit, or 14 tons in a sun-synchronous orbit. The unintended flight was the most-powerful system test of any test conducted in China, according to Beijing Tianbing, though the debris scattered over the nearby hills will attest it wasn't exactly a resounding success.

Researchers looking for fossilized grape seeds across Colombia, Panama, and Peru, have found seeds that are between 60 and 19 million years old – and one example is from the oldest grape ever found in the Western Hemisphere. The researchers think that the proliferation of grapes might have come as a result of the changes in the environment following the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction.The oldest known fossilized seeds from the grape family were found in India, and are 66 million years old. That is around the time of the Chicxulub impact, which wiped out non-avian dinosaurs and 76 percent of all living species on the planet – but it appears that it might have done wonders for the ancestors of grapes.“We always think about the animals, the dinosaurs, because they were the biggest things to be affected, but the extinction event had a huge impact on plants too,” lead author Fabiany Herrera, an assistant curator of paleobotany at the Field Museum in Chicago, said in a statement. “The forest reset itself, in a way that changed the composition of the plants.”“These are the oldest grapes ever found in this part of the world, and they’re a few million years younger than the oldest ones ever found on the other side of the planet,” Herrera continued. “This discovery is important because it shows that after the extinction of the dinosaurs, grapes really started to spread across the world.”The team believes that the absence of massive animals in the aftermath of the extinction could have been key. Forests changed, and grapes (among other species) found the right opportunity to proliferate and spread globally.“Large animals, such as dinosaurs, are known to alter their surrounding ecosystems. We think that if there were large dinosaurs roaming through the forest, they were likely knocking down trees, effectively maintaining forests more open than they are today,” explained Mónica Carvalho, a co-author of the paper and assistant curator at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology“In the fossil record, we start to see more plants that use vines to climb up trees, like grapes, around this time,” added Herrera.               Herrera has been looking for fossilized grapes for a while. This discovery happened in 2022, when Herrera and Carvalho were in the Colombian Andes and Carvalho spotted the precious fossil.“She looked at me and said, ‘Fabiany, a grape!’ And then I looked at it, I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ It was so exciting,” Herrera explained. “Grapes have an extensive fossil record that starts about 50 million years ago, so I wanted to discover one in South America, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I've been looking for the oldest grape in the Western Hemisphere since I was an undergrad student.”A paper describing the results is published in the journal Nature Plants.

Large parts of the Arctic are ablaze this summer with some of the worst wildfires in recent history following a spate of unusually hot and dry weather.  Much of the activity is flaring up in Russia’s Sakha Republic, a part of Siberia with an average yearly temperature of -7.5°C (18.5°F). Even in the summer months, average temperatures are between 0°C and 10°C (32°F and 50°F).Although typically a frosty part of the planet, the region has seen surprisingly warm temperatures and prolific wildfires in recent years, especially in the summer of 2021.The latest data from the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) shows the Siberian wildfires in June 2024 spewed out 6.8 megatonnes of carbon emissions.That’s the third highest of the past two decades, behind June 2020 and 2019, which recorded 16.3 and 13.8 megatonnes of carbon respectively.  “In the wildfire emissions monitoring that we do in CAMS we pay particular attention to high northern latitudes and the Arctic during the summer months. Fire emissions in the Arctic have been at fairly typical levels for the last three summers but we have observed the recent fires developing following warmer and drier conditions, similar to the widespread wildfires in 2019 and 2020,” Mark Parrington, Senior Scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said in a statement.Total aerosol optical depth analyses indicating smoke transport around the Arctic and high northern latitudes between June 10 and 26, 2024.Image credit: CAMS“This is the third time since 2019 that we are observing significant Arctic wildfires and showed that this northeast region of the Arctic has experienced the largest increase in extreme wildfires over the last two decades,” Parrington explained.The recent fires are inseparable from the wide trend of global climate change, which is causing the Arctic to warm at least four times faster than the rest of the planet. While the Arctic is currently feeling the sting most, it could be a sign of what’s to come elsewhere in the world.Surface temperature anomalies (left) and soil moisture anomalies (right) over Siberia for June 1-23.Image credit: ERA5/CAMS“The Arctic is ground zero for climate change and the increasing Siberian wildfires are a clear warning sign that this essential system is approaching dangerous climate tipping points. What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay there – Arctic change amplifies risks globally for all of us. These fires are a warning cry for urgent action,” commented Gail Whiteman, Professor at the University of Exeter and founder of Arctic Basecamp. Wildfires are also raging on the other side of Earth in South America. Observations by CAMS show that wildfire activity in the Pantanal wetlands –  the world's largest tropical wetland located in Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay – is the most intense it has been in two decades following an extremely dry wet season.

An artificial intelligence agent named "VIC" that was running for mayor in Wyoming was taken offline just moments before recording. The technology was created by Victor Miller, who works at a Laramie County library.Miller said he intended for "VIC" to run for mayor, but OpenAI took down his account just before the race. Fox News Digital reported that Miller still has access to the account that created "VIC," but he said that the company's decision to derail his account resulted in a substantial setback for his campaign.'Wyoming law is clear that, to run for office, one must be a 'qualified elector,' which necessitates being a real person.'Despite OpenAI's decision, Miller noted that he planned to show up to the Thursday public event in Laramie County to show those in the area the power of "VIC." He conceded that "the iteration of 'VIC' that was is no longer," adding that he hopes this setback is not the end of AI's role in politics."I'm a bit conflicted, to be honest," Miller said. "I think if I were to continue the course of trying to help my town by giving it access to this new technology, that I would just stay the course.""They've [OpenAI] kind of forced my hand in a way, to join in this debate about open and closed models and about the fair and equal access to this new intelligence — which to me is a little bit bigger than what I wanted to do. I honestly just wanted to help my hometown."While Miller never imagined that he would run for office, he said that the implementation of AI in politics could do some good in forcing transparency and accountability of politicians who Americans are voting into office.However, the AI election bid was ultimately cut short on June 18. An OpenAI spokesperson told CNN, "We've taken action against these uses of our technology for violating our policies against political campaigning."Live Science reported that OpenAI prohibits users from using their technology for political campaigning or lobbying, including generating AI "deepfake" images to push misinformation."Wyoming law is clear that, to run for office, one must be a 'qualified elector,' which necessitates being a real person," Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray said in an email to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. "Therefore, an AI bot is not a qualified elector."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A teenager in Oklahoma was made an honorary deputy for protecting his home with a gun from an alleged home intruder. Bryan County Sheriff Johnny Christian praised 17-year-old Colton Parker for his courage and bravery during the incident at his home in Bokchito on May 21. 'In the face of this terrifying situation, Colton demonstrated exceptional courage and composure.' Parker was awakened by the sound of the family dogs barking and found that a man was allegedly breaking into his home. The man was armed with a knife and was later identified as 57-year-old Brandon Lee Lesley. Parker grabbed his father's gun and was able to force the man to leave the home. Lesley then allegedly drove his car into the home while trying to hit the teenager. He then backed the car out and drove away. The teen tried to drive after him but he found that the tires on his father's truck had been slashed. Investigators said they located Lesley later at a second burglary incident and arrested him while he was trying to crawl away. The man was charged with attempted first-degree burglary, assault with a dangerous weapon, and malicious injury to property, as well as another charge of second-degree burglary for a separate incident, according to the sheriff's office. 'Colton’s actions serve as an inspiration to us all and a shining example of the true meaning of courage.' The sheriff credited Parker for obtaining valuable information that helped police identify and arrest Lesley. “In the face of this terrifying situation, Colton demonstrated exceptional courage and composure, taking decisive action to protect himself and others,” he wrote in the commendation. “It is with great honor and respect that we commend Colton Parker, a courageous and quick-thinking young man and citizen of Bryan County, for his extraordinary bravery and presence of mind in the face of extreme danger.” The sheriff said his quick thinking saved his life and prevented harm that might have come to his family and property. “His bravery in the face of such a dangerous threat is a testament to his strength of character and unwavering commitment to the safety and well-being of those around him,” the commendation continued. “Therefore, on behalf of the Bryan County Sheriff’s Office, we proudly present this Sheriff’s Commendation to Colton Parker in recognition of his exceptional bravery, selflessness, and heroism in the face of adversity. Colton’s actions serve as an inspiration to us all and a shining example of the true meaning of courage.” Bokchito is a town in the southern central part of Oklahoma with about 632 residents. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!