Netflix has previously given us glimpses of its live-action adaptation of the classic anime Cowboy Bebop. Its latest trailer, however, shows actual footage from the series for the first time. You’ll see scenes of the crew in action, from the time they met and decided to team up to the time they start hunting criminals in exchange for bounty. It shows fight scenes with Spike Spiegel (John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda), their spaceship (the Bebop) and their corgi Ein. No Ed yet, unfortunately.
The streaming giant first announced its live-action adaptation way back in 2018, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that production wrapped for season one. While the cast and crew have been shooting since 2019, production was paused after Cho got injured on set, and the coronavirus pandemic delayed things even further. Since then, Netflix has been preparing for its debut. In addition to releasing teasers for the show, the company has added all 26 episodes of the anime to its catalogue, so you can marathon all things Cowboy Bebop without having to hop services. (The anime is also available on Hulu.)
Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop will start streaming on November 19th.
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As Dave Chappelle moves into his third week of defending his Netflix special, The Closer, in which he rehashed the same old anti-trans bigotry he’s been peddling for years, the comedian has both earned an ally in Fox News and begun offering terms for peace accords the “transgender community” didn’t ask for.
In response to the suspensions of trans Netflix staff who daren’t chuckle at his little screed, Chappelle has, via Instagram, “jokingly” offered to meet with those who have lost their livelihoods for publicly finding him unfunny and asserted that comedian Hannah Gadsby is in fact the one who’s not funny.
Per Deadline:
“And if you want to meet with me, I am more than willing to, but I have some conditions,” the currently touring Chappelle says onstage, saying he has not actually been invited to speak with “transgender employees of Netflix.” He says over laughter: “First of all, you cannot come if you have not watched my special from beginning to end. You must come to a place of my choosing at a time of my choosing, and thirdly, you must admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny.”
Chappelle continues to believe that he is some sort of martyr to the culture wars, complaining recently that his name is no longer enough to get his forthcoming documentary into film festivals, despite Rolling Stone’s questions about the veracity of that statement. Even his jokeat the expense of those who are currently facing non-ironic unemployment attempts to position Chappelle as the aggrieved party in the conflict between his words versus many other human beings’ lived experience.
Perhaps hoping for headlines like the one I have reluctantly typed above, Chappelle has also dragged Hannah Gadsby into this, likely because she had the audacity to ask to be left out of this when a Netflix executive used her name to point out that the streaming service presents both sides of the argument. The two sides, of course, are people who think that trans people deserve respect and those who wonder if offering that respect isn’t just some ploy to silence aging Gen X comedians clinging to the heyday of their cultural relevancy by using cruelty as an impetus to feign outrage at the response to that cruelty.
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In the middle of this battle of wanting attention versus requesting human decency, I must offer a bit of clarifying information that I’m sure will be of great importance to those following this situation: I was at the Netflix taping of Gadsby’s Douglas, and I not only saw people laughing, but I also laughed myself. As far as I know, no audience members paid to do so; in fact, I actually exchanged American currency for the opportunity. As for the rest of the audience, I cannot say whether they were laughing because they found Gadsby humorous, but I can say with absolutely certainty that I, many times, was compelled to mirth for no reason beyond the hilarious ways in which Gadsby framed her observations.
However, in the interest of journalistic integrity, I have contacted the gentleman I attended the show with (who wishes to be called Dimitry because that is his name) and asked him, on record, for his observational evidence of Gadsby’s funniness. A transcript of the interview, conducted via text, is included below:
Jezebel: Did you, in fact, see Hannah Gadsby perform a comedy routine called Douglas at the Theater in the ACE Hotel, Los Angeles, California? And if so, did you laugh while Gadsby spoke?
Dimitry: I absolutely did. Not only did I laugh, but I laughed so hard I might have peed a little. Like nothing gross, a respectful dribble befitting such a stellar comedic performance.
Let the record show that two witnesses have now come forward to question the validity of Chappelle’s second demand, and let the pee admission serve as proof of the sincerity of their good faith attempt to simply make sure the truth is known.
More than eight months after she was detained by the military in a coup, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s ousted civilian government, and her lawyers mounted her defense for the first time on Tuesday in a closed-door hearing.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 76, appeared in a courtroom specially built for her in Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar, where the prosecution has spent the last several months presenting its case on charges of “inciting public unrest,” illegally importing walkie-talkies and breaching coronavirus regulations.
No journalists, diplomats or members of the public have been allowed in court. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s testimony was not made public and the junta has barred all five of her lawyers from speaking to the media, saying their communications could “destabilize the country.” If convicted of all 11 charges against her, she could be sentenced to a maximum of 102 years in prison.
The hearing on Tuesday came as President Biden prepared to attend a virtual summit with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this week, the first time in four years that a U.S. president will participate in the annual meeting. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s junta, was excluded from the meeting, where discussions are expected to focus on the crisis in Myanmar.
Experts say there is little doubt that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi will be convicted and that the trial is an attempt by the military to prevent her and her party, the National League for Democracy, from returning to office after a landslide election victory last November. The United Nations and foreign governments have described the trial as politically motivated.
“It’s a political show trial,” said David Scott Mathieson, a veteran analyst on Myanmar. “They are going to find her guilty on a number of fronts, send her to house arrest and then just hope that she’ll die in isolation.”
The courts have subjected Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi to what she has called a grueling schedule, with hearings four days a week. Earlier this month, she requested that the number of trial days be kept to two a week, citing fatigue, but the court denied her request.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi faces three simultaneous trials on 10 of the 11 charges against her. The first trial involves the two walkie-talkie counts, two Covid protocol counts and one count of inciting public unrest based on statements issued by N.L.D. officials after she was detained.
The two other trials involve a charge of violating the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which prohibits sharing state information that could be useful to an enemy, and four counts of corruption. The trial for a fifth corruption charge has yet to begin.
Prosecutors have given no physical evidence of the corruption charges, which include allegations that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi accepted bribes in cash and gold. She has called those charges “absurd.”
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and her enduring popularity in Myanmar have long been a thorn in the side of the Myanmar military, which ruled for half a century after seizing power in 1962. The military held her under house arrest for a total of 15 years and invalidated the first election she won in 1990. It began relaxing its grip on power in 2010 and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi once again led her party to victory five years later.
During her five years as the country’s civilian leader, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was locked in an uneasy power-sharing arrangement with the military. Under the constitution drafted by the generals, the military retains control of the army and the police, appoints its own commander in chief and controls a quarter of Parliament.
After 2016, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party controlled the civilian side of government. Her critics have faulted her for not overhauling the judiciary and replacing military-backed judges when she had the chance.
It is a decision that may haunt her.
Myanmar’s judiciary is known for siding with the military in human rights and political cases. The judge who is hearing the Official Secrets Act case, U Ye Lwin, sentenced two Reuters reporters who uncovered a massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State to seven years in prison in 2018 on the same charge.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is being detained in an undisclosed location in the vicinity of Naypyidaw. Earlier in her detention, she was transported to court by vehicle while blindfolded, according to one of her lawyers. The generals have also prohibited her from meeting with outsiders, including an envoy from ASEAN who is attempting to mediate an end to the violence brought on by the coup.
In trying to eliminate her as a political force, the junta’s case against Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has only elevated her in the eyes of many of her countrymen. Her face and her name are fixtures on the signs held up by protesters all over the country.
The nationwide anti-coup movement has shown no signs of ebbing despite regular military bombardments, the killing of more than 1,190 people and the arrest of more than 9,000. The country is now on the verge of a civil war, according to the departing U.N. special envoy on Myanmar, and thousands of refugees have crossed into India.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is being tried together with the country’s ousted president, U Win Myint, who is charged with violating Covid protocols and incitement. On Feb. 1, just hours before lawmakers from the N.L.D. were supposed to take their seats in Parliament, the army arrested Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and senior members of her party, including Mr. Win Myint, accusing them of committing voter fraud.
Earlier this month, Mr. Win Myint testified that during the early hours of Feb. 1, two army officers demanded his resignation and that he cite ill health as the reason, according to U Khin Maung Zaw, a lawyer representing him and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi. Mr. Win Myint said he refused and was warned that his defiance could cause trouble. He told the court earlier this month that he would rather die than consent to the army’s proposal.
A man holds a placard as he attends a rally in support of the Netflix transgender employee walkout “Stand Up in Solidarity” to protest the streaming of comedian Dave Chappelle’s new comedy special, in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 20 2021. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
Oct 25 (Reuters) – Comedian Dave Chappelle on Monday addressed the transgender controversy at Netflix in full for the first time on a video on his Instagram account, five days after about 100 people protested near the streaming company’s headquarters. read more
The employee backlash began after Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) decided to release Chappelle’s new comedy special, “The Closer,” which critics say ridicules transgender people.
“It’s been said in the press that I was invited to speak to transgender employees at Netflix and I refused,” Chappelle said in the video. “That is not true. If they had invited me I would have accepted it. Although I am confused about what we are speaking about … You said you want a safe working environment at Netflix. Well it seems like I’m the only one that can’t go to the office anymore.”
“I want everyone in this audience to know that even though the media frames this as me versus that community, it’s not what it is,” Chappelle said. “Do not blame the LBGTQ community for any of this shit. This has nothing to do with them. It’s about corporate interest and what I can say and what I cannot say.”
Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos stoked further unrest with an Oct. 11 staff memo in which he acknowledged Chappelle’s provocative language in “The Closer” but said it did not cross the line into inciting violence.
In interviews before the walkout, Sarandos acknowledged “I screwed up” in how he spoke to Netflix’s staff about the special.
In Monday’s video, Chappelle said that after the controversy he began getting disinvited from film festivals that had accepted a documentary he made last summer, and that he is now making that documentary available in ten American cities.
“Thank god for Ted Sarandos and Netflix,” Chappelle said. “He’s the only one who didn’t cancel me yet.”
Reporting by Helen Coster in New York
Additional reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles
Editing by Matthew Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter gave her first full explanation of her side of the ongoing RFLCT blue-light controversy on YouTube Saturday. In short, she stands by the product and claims to have seen all the research backing it, but she says that they can’t show anyone else that research, so we are just going to have to trust her.
She expressed her understanding of why this upsets people, and said she didn’t know until after the release of the product that the research would remain private, saying “I needed them to release the blue light research specifically.”
The co-owner of 100 Thieves has been under fire all week, after revealing RFLCT, a line of skincare products that she is a co-founder of that claims to protect your skin from the “dangerous” bluelight from your screen.
While many have been supportive of Valkyrae this week, others questioned the science behind the product claiming that blue light screens are doing serious damage to your skin, and further questioning the idea that RFLCT products will somehow protect your skin from the alleged blue-light damage.
“I saw [RFLCT’s] research, I loved it, I thought it was so sick,” Valkyrae explained in regards to her experience with RFLCT. “My involvement with RFLCT for the next year and a half was, they would send me samples of the products. I tested the smell, the texture, the packaging. . . that was my involvement. I am not a chemist, I have never been the to lab in person, I have just seen the research and all that.”
According to Valkyrae, RFLCT ran their own studies demonstrating the dangers of blue light and showing their products will help, though she admitted that those alleged studies are not public and will never be released to the public, so there is no way for anyone to actually check that research or its methodology in any sense.
She explained, “We ran our own studies, we did our own research. . . I was really excited because this whole time I was under the impression that all that research and everything I saw was going to be on the website, and when RFLT dropped it was critical and crucial for there to be information and there was nothing but a WebMD link… I was confused. I had meetings with them after that for the next few days. . . That is when I learned that their studies can’t be publicized. That is the part I was very naive about. I didn’t know that part.”
She said the reason they can’t share the research is that “the specific research can be stolen by other companies.” While she stated that she understands it’s hard for people to just believe her, she also seemingly expects people to buy RFLCT products anyway without seeing any evidence that it works or having access in any sense to the methodology or a peer-reviewed study on the product.
Valkyrae compared RFLCT product research to sunscreen, CBD, and eggs, saying that the research just isn’t widely accepted yet just like what happened with those products where there was some scrutiny. At the same time, she said that she doesn’t want to have to convince people and that she is frustrated with the “pickle” she is in now, since she can’t show the research that convinced her RFLCT was a good product in the first place.
“With how the website launched and also knowing that the research can’t be on the website, it makes me not want to be involved,” Valkyrae concluded. “I was excited for the confirmedness, you know? Like I can point to it, and be like ‘look, they researched it and studied it but it can’t be there. So I don’t really know. . . That is why I want out, no matter what I say, it doesn’t matter that I saw the studies, it doesn’t matter that the company did its own research. . . I don’t know how to continue with it.”
So in summary, Valkyrae completely stands by the product, and its need, but wishes that the website was showing all the relevant information she claims to have seen. She said that she understands where the backlash is coming from, but she isn’t backing down from supporting the product and wants her audience to just trust her, while at the same time she also expressed a desire to no longer be involved due to the fact that the research can’t be shown to the public.
Scientists said on Thursday the fossils include more than 100 dinosaur eggs and the bones of about 80 juveniles and adults of a Jurassic Period plant-eating species called Mussaurus patagonicus, including 20 remarkably complete skeletons. The animals experienced a mass-death event, probably caused by a drought, and their bodies were subsequently buried by wind-blown dust, the researchers said.
“It is a pretty dramatic scene from 193 million years ago that was frozen in time,” said paleontologist Diego Pol of the Egidio Feruglio Paleontological Museum in Trelew, Argentina, who led the research published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Mussaurus, which grew to about 20 feet (6 meters) long and about 1.5 tons, possessed a long neck and tail, with a small head. It was bipedal as an adult but newborns were quadrupedal. Mussaurus lived early in the Jurassic, the second of three periods comprising the age of dinosaurs. It was a relatively large beast for its time — much bigger than contemporaneous meat-eating dinosaurs. Dinosaurs became true giants later in the Jurassic.
“The site is one of a kind,” Pol said. “It preserves a dinosaur nesting ground including delicate and tiny dinosaur skeletons as well as eggs with embryos inside. The specimens we have found showed that herd behavior was present in long-necked dinosaurs since their early history. These were social animals, and we think this may be an important factor to explain their success.”
The animals were found to have been grouped by age at the time of their deaths, with hatchlings and eggs in one area while skeletons of juveniles were clustered nearby. The eggs were arranged in layers within trenches. Adults were found alone or in pairs.
This phenomenon, called “age segregation,” signals a complex social structure, the researchers said, including adults that foraged for meals and cared for the young. The researchers suspect that members of the herd returned to the same spot during successive seasons to form breeding colonies.
“The young were staying with the adults at least until they reached adulthood. It could be that they stayed in the same herd after reaching adulthood, but we don’t have information to corroborate that hypothesis,” said paleontologist and study co-author Vincent Fernandez of the Natural History Museum in London.
Herd behavior also can protect young and vulnerable individuals from attack by predators.
“It’s a strategy for the survival of a species,” Fernandez said.
The oldest previous evidence for dinosaur herd behavior was from about 150 million years ago.
The nesting ground was situated on the dry margins of a lake featuring ferns and conifers in a warm but seasonal climate. The eggs are about the size of a chicken’s, and the skeleton of a hatchling fits in the palm of a human hand. The adults got as heavy as a hippo.
A scanning method called high-resolution X-ray computed tomography confirmed that the embryos inside the eggs indeed were of Mussaurus.
Mussaurus was a type of dinosaur called a sauropodomorph, which represented the first great success story among herbivorous dinosaurs. Sauropodomorphs were an evolutionary forerunner to a group called sauropods known for long necks and tails and four pillar-like legs.
The largest land animals in Earth’s history were the sauropod successors of sauropodomorphs, as exemplified by a later denizen of Patagonia called Argentinosaurus that reached perhaps 118 feet (36 meters) in length and upwards of 70 tons.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk did not participate in the company’s earnings conference call for the first time on Wednesday, making him one of the rare top executives in the United States to miss the quarterly ritual of talking to Wall Street.
Musk’s popularity among investors and customers is a major asset for the electric car maker, and his absence – if it continues – is likely to turn Tesla’s quarterly calls into more staid reviews of business than unpredictable platforms for the celebrity CEO’s latest thoughts.
Earlier on Wednesday, Tesla beat Wall Street expectations for third-quarter revenue on the back of record deliveries as it navigated a prolonged global shortage of chips and raw materials.
Apple Inc’s late CEO, Steve Jobs, did not usually speak on quarterly conference calls, but his successor, Tim Cook, makes an appearance at the events. So do other major executives like Ford Motor Co’s CEO, Jim Farley, and Facebook Inc’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Amazon.com Inc’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, did not attend the e-commerce giant’s earnings calls prior to his stepping down as CEO earlier this year. Musk and Bezos have been vying for the title of world’s richest person.
Musk said during Tesla’s July earnings call that he would not necessarily be present at such future events, “unless there’s something really important that I need to say.”
In the past, the outspoken tycoon has used the quarterly calls to make promises about delivering technology and products and to fire back at analysts, the government and critics.
These days, Musk often focuses on another major venture, SpaceX, which is developing a massive rocket to transport people to Mars with the ultimate goal of colonizing the planet.
Morgan Stanley has said its clients believe SpaceX could make Musk the first “trillionaire” and that the company could ultimately command a higher valuation than even Tesla, the world’s most valuable industrial/manufacturing company.
On an earnings call last year, Musk called the U.S. government’s stay-at-home restrictions to curtail the coronavirus outbreak “fascist.”
In another call in 2018, he refused to answer questions from analysts on the electric vehicle maker’s capital requirements, saying “boring, bonehead questions are not cool.” Tesla shares fell as a result.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco and Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis)
The latest collection of wallpapers available to Pixel owners, “Community Lens,” offers some incredible shots including quite a few photos taken by Google employees.
With the launch of Android 12 and the broader Material You redesign — small parts of today’s Pixel 6 event — the wallpaper on your phone has never been more important, as it will set the color palette of all of your apps. To that end, Pixel phones have many collections of wallpapers to choose from in the official wallpapers app, and just before the Pixel 6 event, Google added yet another collection.
Entitled “Community Lens,” the new collection features 18 intensely colorful wallpapers and is available for all current Pixel phones. Interestingly, many — if not all — of these wallpapers were actually captured by Google employees. For example, the “Whistler Sunset” wallpaper was taken by Bill Luan — a Senior Program Manager & Greater China Regional Lead, Developer Relations at Google — and can be found on his Flickr account.
Meanwhile, a similarly mountainous “Sierra Sunset” wallpaper was shot by Romain Guy, Director of Engineering on Android, who has previously had photographs featured as Chromecast backgrounds. If “Sierra Sunset” looks familiar to you, that’s because it was one of the default wallpapers for 2013’s Google Nexus 5.
It should come as no surprise that Google, as big of a company as it is, has a large pool of talented photographers in its ranks. At one point, Google even had an internal class — now public — on the nitty-gritty of how to take excellent digital photos.
As you’d expect, each Community Lens wallpaper generates a fantastic Material You theme on your Pixel phone once you’ve installed the Android 12 update. Firefall, in particular, crafts a bold look with its bright streak of orange contrasted by the blue hues of the rock, which are picked up by Material You widgets.
Header image: Jingyu Wu
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Netflix has always closely guarded the exact streaming metrics that may reveal why programs are considered a success… or cancelled. That black box cracked open a bit with documents obtained by Bloomberg detailing the company’s scores for “impact value” and “efficiency.” An example of that is Squid Game, which generated $891.1 million in impact value on a budget of just $21.4 million for an efficiency of 41.7X, according to Bloomberg‘s latest report.
The documents first came to light with Dave Chappelle’s controversial special after the company fired an employee for supposedly leaking confidential information about the show’s viewing data. (That employee reportedly spoke out against leaks to colleagues, according to The Verge.) Those metrics revealed that Chapelle’s previous special, Sticks & Stones, generated slightly less impact value than it cost to make, according to Bloomberg.
Other figures showed that around 132 million people watched at least two minutes of Squid Game in the first 23 days, beating a record set by Bridgerton. Netflix occasionally releases similar information for certain shows, but it doesn’t disclose how many people stuck with or finished shows — which can often inflate figures compared to typical TV ratings.
According to Bloomberg, however, Netflix estimated that 89 percent of people who started Squid Game watched at least 75 minutes, or more than one episode, and 87 million people finished it in the first 23 days (66 percent). Viewers watched 1.4 billion hours of the show in total.
An attorney representing Netflix told Bloomberg that it would not be appropriate to disclose confidential data contained in documents it reviewed. “Netflix does not discuss these metrics outside the company and takes significant steps to protect them from disclosure,” the attorney said.
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Although she was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and spent most of her career in southern California, in 2006 Lynn moved to Mt. Airy, North Carolina, the town which served as the inspiration for Griffith’s Mayberry.
She served as an ambassador for the Andy Griffith Museum, regularly appearing at the museum to speak to fans and sign autographs.
“I love watching the old shows and still laugh out loud,” Lynn told HuffPost in 2013. “Those days were some of the happiest of my life.”
After a number of bit parts in films like “Cheaper by the Dozen” and small roles in TV series including “Disneyland,” Lynn first appeared as Thelma Lou in 1961.
Her character was often flustered by the tightly-wound personality of boyfriend Barney Fife, played by Don Knotts, but they continued to date throughout most of the series.
After two decades of on-again, off-again romance, they finally married in the reunion TV movie “Return to Mayberry” in 1986, the characters’ final appearance together on screen.
“I saw her last a few years ago where she still lit up the room with the positivity,” director Ron Howard, who played Sheriff Andy Taylor’s son Opie, posted on Twitter Sunday. “It was great to have known and worked with her.”
