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Posts Tagged 'wildcat strikes'
Surprise Friday Night Links for a Day You're Probably Surprised Is Actually Friday
* Don't sleep on Grad School Vonnegut's Jailbird episode! Next week: Deadeye Dick, (genuinely) my sleeper hit of the summer…
* One of my better citations: "Fitness Fanatics: Exercise as Answer to Pending Zombie Apocalypse in Contemporary America."
* I've got book chapters in two new books: Monsters: A Companion (talking about District 9) and Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century (talking about Black Panther).
* Also out now: SFRA Review 50.2-3!
* Octavia Butler just made the NY Times Bestseller List for the first time ever — 14 years after her death.
* Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and the Language of Black Speculative Literature.
* "The daily blitzkrieg of the news," bemoans Tom Barnard in leftist science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson's 1990 novel, Pacific Edge. "Every day everything a little worse."
* A Message from Future Generations.
* Announcing the Ancillary Review of Books.
* "Can we talk abt the fact that Liu Cixin supports internment camps for minorities?"
* Post45 kicks off the academic year with a stunner: The 7 Neoliberal Arts.
* After emotional gathering, Marquette agrees to Black students' demand for cultural center, scholarships, other support. This comes after some occupations and street closures last week. Update from president and provost following meeting with Black student leaders.
* Which doesn't count the die-in.
Here is a statement of support issued by the executive committee of Marquette's English department yesterday. pic.twitter.com/0fIEiMkdMB
— Devi Shastri (@DeviShastri) September 4, 2020
Anti racism is what would actually save literature departments if people would only get out of the way.
— Kyla Wazana Tompkins (@kwazana) August 31, 2020
* One of the things I've had go most viral on Twitter was a simple call to be kind to students.
Speaking as a college professor, the most overawing comment about the American educational system I can make is that students experience schooling as terror. Every semester it takes me a month to convince my students I'm not going to try and hurt them.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) August 29, 2020
* Elsewhere in my social media empire: On Voting Twice. On the Wisconsin gerrymander. On firing university administrators. On self-dealing boards of trustees. On that same thing. On Duke. On running the government like a glitch-exploiting speed-run. It's happening here. Private insurance. UI. If you want a vision of the future. And when Kurt Vonnegut tells the future, he simply does not fuck around.
* We are calling for a Scholar strike #Scholarstrike on September 8-9 2020 to protest ongoing police violence and murders in America.
* Unsurprisingly, this is shaping up as the worst year ever on the academic history job market; less than half as many TT jobs listed through August 31 than even in 2009, and a quarter what there were last year.
Unsurprisingly, this is shaping up as the worst year ever on the academic history job market; less than half as many TT jobs listed through August 31 than even in 2009, and a quarter what there were last year. pic.twitter.com/4QrG4ndBMQ
— Benjamin Schmidt (@benmschmidt) September 1, 2020
* Tenured GWU professor reveals she has been pretending to be Black her entire career. (It's GW's second case of this this year.) Why Did Jessica Krug Create The Jess La Bombera Persona? The view from her students.
* Yale Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld Has Been Suspended for Sexual Harassment.
* CFP: The Journal of Fantasy and Fan Cultures is an annual journal of scholarly work and creative non-fiction by undergraduate and graduate students. Our first issue, on Harry Potter, will be published in Spring 2021. Submissions for this issue are now open until December 2020, but they are limited to UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS. CFP: "Race and Science Fiction: The 5th Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium."
* Stop them before they kill again! Game of Thrones' Benioff and Weiss to adapt sci-fi epic The Three-Body Problem at Netflix.
If you've ever wondered whether white men failing upward really is a thing, observe that Netflix watched these idiots ruin Game of Thrones and then handed them the most conceptual sci fi adaptation of our generation https://t.co/wMu4Otoc4W
— stefanielaine🌹 (@stefanielaine) September 1, 2020
* Sports come to a halt: NBA, WNBA, MLB, MLS postpone games as players protest Jacob Blake shooting. The Milwaukee Bucks and Brewers Strike for Racial Justice.
Obama is, mostly quietly and behind the scenes, the single most powerful counter-revolutionary force in 21st-century US politics https://t.co/QjAnCDOKCS
— Andrew Ferguson (@epiktistes) August 28, 2020
* The Social Fabric of the U.S. Is Fraying Severely, if Not Unravelling. We Don't Know How to Warn You Any Harder. America is Dying. The RNC Makes a Compelling Case for America's Imminent Collapse. For Election Administrators, Death Threats Have Become Part of the Job.
* Today in the Wisconsin gerrymander. Half of Wisconsin's Black Neighborhoods Are Jails. Wisconsin's record of brutality against people of color. Wisconsin is a window into how Republicans who once rejected Trump now cheer him on. Nine people arrested by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for allegedly being outside agitators were in town city to distribute food to protesters, a director of the nonprofit kitchen says.
I think people outside the state just can't fathom that Wisconsin's gerrymander is real. Republicans take 60%+ majorities in the legislature no matter how many people vote for them. In 2018 they took 64% of the Assembly on 46% of the vote. https://t.co/FExUcedl4Z
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) September 4, 2020
* A 17-Year-Old Aspiring Cop Has Been Charged With Murder In Kenosha. Kyle Rittenhouse is America's future. Could A Backlash Against Black Lives Matter Hurt Biden? The Two Don't Appear Linked So Far. Alleged Kenosha Killer Loved Cops, Guns, Trump, and 'Triggering the Libs,' Former Classmates Say.
* Meanwhile: A fascist manifesto is gaining fans on the right, including state Sen. Roger Chamberlain. "When Violence Is Necessary To Defend Civil Society." Right-wing extremists have killed 329 victims in the last 25 years, while antifa members haven't killed any, according to a new study. Missouri lawmakers pass bill making it legal to give guns to kids without parents' permission.
* Teen who held BLM event gets $2500 bill for police overtime. Encounter with Phoenix police leaves teenage girl with permanent burn scars. The Police Are Pretty Sure They're Going to Get Away With It. Cops admit vandalizing cars of man who filed complaint against them, prosecutor says. What Can Stop Cops In Cities Like Kenosha From Brutalizing Black People Like Jacob Blake? Precrime in Florida. The Terrible History of the NYPD's Challenge Coins. The Abolition moment.
Police do not exist primarily to prevent or punish crime. They exist to regulate access to space, and they manage criminality — including generating it where it otherwise would not have occurred — in order to legitimate the spatial hierarchy they enforce.
— Adam Kotsko (@adamkotsko) August 28, 2020
not sure anything has quite gotten to me the way the drive to make rittenhouse a right-wing hero of self-defense has. it is, to me, the single most ominous development of the year.
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) August 27, 2020
Pretty explicit in all of this is the extent to which police and their cheerleaders see these right-wing militia types as essentially performing the same work as formal law enforcement, not crime fighting but the maintenance of (racial, gender, class) "order."
Looking at what's gone down in Kenosha these few days—the police shooting, the immediate crackdown, the militia shooting—is just staring off a dizzying edge into the abyss, knowing things are about to get so much worse & hoping like hell there's some way we don't take the plunge.
* QAnon explained. QAnon is a collective delusion, and that's what BuzzFeed News will be calling it from now on. How QAnon, a fringe online movement, is drawing followers in Wisconsin and across the U.S. with a stew of conspiracies.
* Cases Spike at Universities Nationally. UNC-Chapel Hill Reports 31.3 Percent of Students Tested Have COVID—And There Are Probably More. NC State students ordered to leave university housing after 'rapid spread' of COVID-19. In North Carolina and Around the US, Neoliberal Universities Are Sending Students Into Hell. University of Miami Reports Nearly 100 Positive COVID Tests in One-Week Period. Wisconsin Universities Begin Reporting Cases Of COVID-19. Higher Ed's Hottest Hot Spot? Some Colleges Planned Early for an Online Fall. Here's What They Learned. JMU shifting to online classes, asking students to leave campus after 500 coronavirus cases. UW-Madison orders 9 sororities, fraternities with positive COVID-19 cases to quarantine. Colleges Lost the Moral Authority to Blame Students. The influencer twins I'm weirdly obsessed with just tested positive for COVID while on campus at Baylor. My college reopened. Now I've got COVID-19, along with nearly 500 other students. The University of Alabama reports 566 coronavirus cases after just a week of classes. University of Alabama to Profs: Don't Tell Students About COVID-Infected Classmates. OU Interim provost instructs professors not to hold in-person classes online, notify classes of students' positive COVID-19 cases. Frustrated with fall reopening, faculty members consider vote of no confidence in administration. Trump White House Warns Colleges: Don't Send Your COVID-Infected Students Home! University COVID Model.
* Teaching this fall is not glorified Skype. The University We're Losing. Between f**ked and a hard place. The Pandemic Is No Excuse to Surveil Students.
* University of Oregon Will Charge Students for a Full Year of Dorm Housing Even if They Can't Enter the Classroom.
* Why New Jersey's Plan for In-Person Schooling Is Falling Apart. State report shows hundreds test positive for COVID-19 at Florida schools in August. Here's what happened when students went to school during the 1918 pandemic.
* Our Faculty Union Exposed the University's Debt—And Who's Paying for It.
* Deeply unappreciated fact: the most "impactful" person in science right now is this Kazakhstani hacker queen. She is the one-woman bridge to the largest repository of scientific knowledge ever collected.
* Biden campaign desperate for digital access to students as college campuses remain closed and students don't know where they'll be on Election Day.
* Legionnaire's Disease pathogen found in water at some schools reopening after Covid-19 lockdowns.
* Damn you, Oberlin undergrads! The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down for no good reason.
* Eugene Debs Believed in Socialism Because He Believed in Democracy. The Young Eugene V. Debs.
* Bernie Sanders's Five-Year War: How he lost and where we go from here.
Liberals hate leftists for the same reason you'd hate someone at a theater who kept yelling "These are all actors, none of this is real." Liberals are trying to enjoy a fictional performance about their side being heroic protagonists, and leftists keep disrupting the illusion.
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) August 27, 2020
* The Radicalism of Woody Guthrie.
* Republicans already boobytrapping 2021. Why a Historic Eviction Wave Is Bearing Down on the U.S. Shhhh, we're not talking about a government shutdown, are we? 'We shouldn't have to beg': Americans struggle without unemployment aid as Congress stalls on extending benefits. As permanent economic damage piles up, the Covid Crisis is looking more like the Great Recession.
* Jessamyn Ward: Grief in the Time of Coronavirus. How COVID-19 Led To Soaring Divorce Rates In The US, Visualized. Surge in calls from male domestic violence victims during Covid-19. I thought I was a master doomscroller but "pregnant schoolteacher dies of coronavirus three days after surprise baby shower" actually made me wince in pain.
* 55% of coronavirus patients still have neurological problems three months later. New Trump pandemic adviser pushes controversial 'herd immunity' strategy, worrying public health officials. Drug cocktail touted by Trump to treat coronavirus increases chance of death by 27%, study shows. COVID-19 Might Mean Humanity Has Entered An Age Of Pandemics, Tony Fauci Warned.
* Active shooter drills correlate with a 42% increase in anxiety and stress and a 39% increase in depression among those in the school community, new report finds. Teens' anxiety levels dropped during pandemic, study finds.
* Black men in D.C. are expected to die 17 years earlier than White men. Here's why. Black Homeowners Face Discrimination in Appraisals. Woman, 105, leads lawsuit seeking reparations for 1921 Tulsa massacre. Black Former N.F.L. Players Say Racial Bias Skews Concussion Payouts.
* Trials by Whiteness: Definitions of Whiteness and Eurocentrism, and Their Relevance Post-Racefail.
* The Literature of White Liberalism.
* Kentucky Man Accused Of Breaking Canada's COVID-19 Rules Faces $569,000 Fine.
* Bruce Wayne Gives Up Being Batman After Three Therapy Sessions.
* The Aftermath of Hurricane Laura. Sights, sounds, reactions from historic landfall, recovery across Louisiana.
* Why climate change is a civil rights battle. I do think Pelosi, Trump, Biden, Schumer, and McConnell are the last generation of politicians who are correct in wagering that they can spend the rest of their careers downplaying climate change and not suffer personally from it. A second Trump term would mean severe and irreversible changes in the climate.
* Watchmen director Stephen Williams on uncovering the series' real American hero story. Watchmen screenwriter Cord Jefferson on Hooded Justice and the privilege of nostalgia.
* Why Uber's business model is doomed.
* Serious Supply Issues Disrupt the Book Industry's Fall Season.
* Union-Busting and Quakerism Collide at Brooklyn Friends School.
To get a sense for how unhinged our economy is from the real world, consider the fact that pollinators, earthworms, rainforests, clean air, parenting, friendship, sleep and solidarity are considered to be literally valueless according to our dominant metric of economic success.
— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) September 1, 2020
* Chadwick Boseman. David Graeber. Charles R. Saunders (back in May).
* Never too early: Disney Grapples With How to Proceed on 'Black Panther' Without Chadwick Boseman.
* All roads lead back to All My Children.
* John Boyega vs. Disney, and it's about time.
* Stan Lee's American pantheon.
* On Age and Desire and Willy Wonka.
* More from MetaFilter on Go after AI.
* An Instagram Account Is Waging War on Sexual Assault at Case Western Reserve University.
* Today in dystopia: According to Amazon, how you speak is a useful indicator of your wellbeing, both emotionally and physically. Consequently, the Halo Band will monitor your tone to determine if you're feeling positive enough to get through your day.
* Amazon Is Hiring an Intelligence Analyst to Track 'Labor Organizing Threats.'
* Understanding Batman.
One of the big problems with "dark and gritty" Batman movies is that the people writing them can't craft a mystery that's so complex only Batman can solve it, so Batman's "superpower" ends up being "the ability to violate people's Constitutional rights."
— Sean Kelly (@StorySlug) August 24, 2020
* Understanding Tasha's Hideous Laughter.
* Attention nerds: Gloomhaven May Be One Of The Best-Selling Comic Books (Or Not).
* Development ceases on Amazon Prime's CULTURE TV series, at the request of the Iain Banks Estate.
"Money implies poverty." — an adage in The Culture, Iain M. Banks
— Michael (Noble Continuation) (@OmanReagan) April 9, 2020
* Ah dinnae ken this: I've discovered that almost every single article on the Scots version of Wikipedia is written by the same person – an American teenager who can't speak Scots.
I was today years old when I learned that a "buttload" is an actual measue of volume dating back to middle English, equal to two "hogsheads," or about 126 gallons.
— Benjamin Morris (@skepticalsports) August 20, 2020
* One Community, Burnout, and That One Scene from Deep Space Nine. Star Trek: Discovery's third season to introduce franchise's first transgender, non-binary characters.
* Not today, Satan: Expert says invasive 'jumping' earthworms with destructive potential appearing in Western New York.
* I said the world would end before New Mutants was a #1 movie — and I was right!
* Fuck The Next Call Of Duty Game.
* And we may live in hell, but Nintendo just announced a whole boatload of Mario games and rereleases.
Tagged with #RaceFail, 1918, 2021, academia, academic jobs, Africanfuturism, Afrofuturism, All My Children, Amazon, America, anti-racism, anxiety, apocalypse, artificial intelligence, Barack Obama, Batman, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Panther, Black Student Council, black studies, books, Call of Duty, CFPs, Chadwick Boseman, Charles R. Saunders, China, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, Cixin Liu, class struggle, climate change, conspiracy theory, coronavirus, COVID-19, CWRU, David Graeber, Deadeye Dick, debt, Deep Space Nine, depression, Disney, District 9, divorce, domestic terrorism, domestic violence, doomscrolling, Dungeons and Dragons, dystopia, earthworms, ecology, epidemic, Eugene V. Debs, evictions, extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds, fan culture, fantasy, fascism, Florida, football, free speech, futurity, Game of Thrones, games, general election 2020, George Washington University, Gloomhaven, Go, government shutdowns, Grad School Vonnegut, Great Recession, grief, GWU, herd immunity, How the University Works, Hurricane Laura, hydrochloroquine, Iain M. Banks, Incredible Hulk, Jailbird, James Madison University, Jed Rubenfeld, Jessica A. Krug, Joe Biden, John Boyega, Kenosha, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kyle Rittenhouse, Legionnaire's disease, liberalism, literature, Louisiana, manifestos, Mario, Marquette, Marquette English, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Miami, Milwaukee, my media empire, my scholarly empire, NBA, NC State, neoliberalism, Netflix, New Jersey, New Mutants, NFL, Nintendo, NYPD, Octavia Butler, Pacific Edge, pandemic, Parable of the Sower, pedagogy, pirates, podcasts, police, police brutality, police corruption, police state, politics, QAnon, Quakers, quarantine, race, racism, Sci-Hub, science fiction, Science Fiction Research Association, Scots, sexual assault, sexual harassment, SFRA, SFRA Review, social media, Spanish flu, sports, Stan Lee, Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Wars, strikes, Super Mario, surveillance society, teaching, teenagers, tenure, terrorism, The Culture, the kids aren't all right, Three-Body Problem, TikTok, Twitter, Uber, UNC, unemployment, unions, University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin, Vonnegut, Wakanda Forever, Watchmen, whiteness, wildcat strikes, Willy Wonka, Wisconsin, Woody Guthrie, worst financial crisis since the last one, worst financial crisis since World War II, X-Men, xkcd, Yale, zombies
* Clear your calendars for the An und für sich Star Trek: Discovery blog event, beginning Monday!
* A student project from my Tolkien class gets a great writeup at Marquette's Digital Scholarship Lab.
* KSR's next book has a cover.
* The MCU vs. America. What Black Panther can teach us about international relations. Weapons of Black Panther. And Žižek shows up two weeks late with a Killmonger-was-right take.
* The science of late sleepers.
* Why I'm Writing Captain America (And Why It Scares the Hell Out of Me).
* Mueller news you can use: almost all the Mueller leaks are from witnesses and tell us little or nothing about the true scope of the investigation or its likely outcomes.
* Hardware Wars: A People's History.
* Wildcat teachers' strike in West Virginia (but not on MSNBC). Onward to Oklahoma!
Working class movements always draw on and reanimate memories of past struggles in moments of conflict. This is the cultural core of the process of class formation.
— gabrielwinant (@gabrielwinant) March 2, 2018
One day, some group of workers we haven't yet conceived of will stand up for themselves by comparing themselves to teachers.
* Phew! Lucky coincidence.
* Too Big to Tax?
* Buying a gun around the world. How Defective Guns Became the Only Product That Can't Be Recalled. The Florida legislature's push to arm teachers, explained.
* "The vast majority of healthcare wonkery is brainstorming new ways to rescue private insurers from collapsing every time they're asked to do the one thing they exist to do."
* Public schools have been re-segregating for decades.
* Florida Public School Teacher Has A White Nationalist Podcast.
* NASA releases time-lapse of the disappearing Arctic polar ice cap. The age of climate migration.
* LEGO in the Anthropocene.
* Homelessness in the Magic Kingdom.
* Hitchhiker's, back again.
* Consumers Are Revolting Against Animal Cruelty — So the Poultry Industry Is Lobbying for Laws to Force Stores to Sell Their Eggs.
* This is you.
* Great story about retirees who cracked the lottery.
* Brooklyn man wins nearly $1M lawsuit after NYPD cop tried to frame him on DWI charge.
* I'm Gen X again, maybe for good.
* I predicted this would happen: There is no psychohistory, and there never will be.
* I've used this as a hypothetical in class for years; let's say I'm skeptical.
* The last word in Firefly fan physics: The Ultimate Solar System.
* A right-wing online "university" is on track for a billion views in 2018, its professors are some of the best-known conservatives in media, and its founder wants to put it in real schools. So how come you've never heard of it?
* Memory is a virus.
* And your micro-game of the week: Post/Capitalism.
Here is what humans really look like. The majority of your body is there for mobility and interaction. The core of your self is captured in this photograph. This would be conscious if it were still alive. pic.twitter.com/PwyUbL6ihZ
— Matt Taylor (@rhyolight) February 27, 2018
Tagged with academia, Amazon, America, animals, Asimov, Big Data, biology, Black Panther, Captain America, class struggle, climate change, comics, demographics, Disney, Donald Trump, Douglas Adams, eating meat, Elsa, Firefly, Florida, Foundation, Frozen, games, gay rights, Generation X, guns, Hari Seldon, health insurance, homelessness, How the University Works, ice sheet collapse, insider trading, Killmonger was right, Kim Stanley Robinson, labor, labor movements, LEGO, Lord of the Rings, Marquette, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, math, memory, migration, MSNBC, my scholarly empire, NASA, Oklahoma, our brains work in interesting ways, outer space, parody, pedagogy, physics, police corruption, politics, postcapitalism, psychohistory, race, racism, radio, Red Moon, retirement, Robert Mueller, science, science fiction, segregation, Serenity, sleep, Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Wars, strikes, taxes, teachers, teaching, the Anthropocene, the Arctic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Lottery, Tolkien, viruses, war on education, West Virginia, white supremacy, wildcat strikes, work, you do not exist, Žižek
Thursday Links!
* The big story in academia yesterday was the eleventh-hour preemptive firing of Steven Salaita from UIUC (which according to reports may have cost him his tenure at Virginia Tech as well). Especially disturbing in all this is the participation of former AAUP president Cary Nelson, on the side of the firing. Some commentary from Corey Robin, Claire Potter, Philip Weiss, and Electronic Intifada. A statement for the Illinois AAUP. A petition.
* Delayed gratification watch: This week I finally cracked and read Chris Ware's Building Stories after nearly two years of anticipation. So great. I can't wait to teach it. I may write more about this later, but for now I can tell you that my arbitrary path through the book told a beautiful story that began with the couple's fateful move to Englewood and drifted backwards in time, Ulysses-like, to the day the couple met, before culminating in a quietly nostalgic trip to the eponymous building as it stood about to be torn down. So great. My friend Jacob's review. "I Hoped That the Book Would Just Be Fun": A Brief Interview with Chris Ware.
* Call for applications: Wisconsin Poet Laureate.
* Oak Creek, Two Years After the Sikh Mass Murder.
* On adjuncts and wildcat strikes.
* I was born too early: N.Y.U. to Add a Bachelor's Degree in Video Game Design.
* I was born too late: MIT looking into paying professors by the word.
* College rankings, 1911. Class III! How dare they. #impeachTaft
* The conservative plan to destroy higher education by capturing accreditation.
* UMass-Dartmouth to Pay $1.2-Million to Professor in Discrimination Case.
* Voter Fraud Literally Less Likely Than Being Hit By Lightning.
* The country's largest environmental group is profiting from oil drilling.
* NYPD sadly forced to arrest its critics.
* Medical Workers Say NYPD Cops Beat Man Shackled In A Stretcher. It Is Time We Treat Police Brutality as a National Crisis.
* The CIA Must Tell the Truth About My Rendition At 12 Years Old.
* "America is always losing its innocence," Perlstein tells me, caught between the men who say we never lost it, and those who counterfeit its coming back again.
* State's rights we can believe in: New Jersey drivers may be able to ignore other states' speed cameras.
* Netflix Says Arrested Development Season 5 Is 'Just a Matter of When.'
* Maria Bamford and the Hard Work of Acting Normal.
* Porn production plummets in Los Angeles.
* How Marvel Conquered Hollywood.
* The Lost Projects of Dan Harmon. In addition to Building Stories, I also cracked this week and finally started watching Rick and Morty. Now, granted, it's no Building Stories — but it's pretty good!
* The New Inquiry's "Mourning" issue is out today and has some really nice essays I think I'll be using in the second go of my Cultural Preservation course next spring.
* Why Civilization: Beyond Earth Is The Hottest New Space Strategy Game.
* Disney Is Really Building A Star Wars Theme Park.
* Ethics vs Bioethics.
* You Are Given An Unlimited Supply Of Something. The One Catch? The Next Person Sets A Condition.
* Wikipedia's monkey selfie ruling is a travesty for the world's monkey artists.
* Apparently Kid for President.
* Now we see the violence inherent in the system: Insurance Company Pays Elderly Man's Workman's Comp Settlement With $21,000 in Coins.
* Department of diminishing returns: The British Office: The Movie.
* And the kind of headline where I really don't want any details: NASA: New "impossible" engine works, could change space travel forever. Second star to the right, and straight on till morning…
Tagged with #impeachTaft, 1911, AAUP, academia, academic freedom, accreditation, adjuncts, America, apparently, Arrested Development, auto insurance, bioethics, books of this arbitrary length of time, Building Stories, cars, Cary Nelson, Chris Ware, CIA, civilization, college rankings, comedy, comics, cultural preservation, Dan Harmon, Disney, drill baby drill, driving, ecology, environmentalism, ethics, extraordinary rendition, film, for-profit schools, game studies, games, Gaza, genies, Guantánamo, guns, Hollywood, How the University Works, insurance, Israel, labor, Los Angeles, Maria Bamford, Marquette, Marvel, Milwaukee, MIT, monkeys, monkeys' paws, mourning, murder, NASA, Netflix, New Jersey, now we see the violence inherent in the system, NYPD, NYU, Oak Creek, oil, outer space, Palestine, pedagogy, poetry, police brutality, police state, porn, Rick and Morty, Ricky Gervais, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science, selfies, Sikh community, Star Wars, Steven Salaita, strikes, superheroes, teaching, television, tell me the odds, tenure, The New Inquiry, The Office, the Other, theme parks, torture, true crime, tuition, UIUC, Ulysses, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, unnecessary epilogues, Virginia Tech, voter fraud, voter suppression, war on education, war on terror, Wikipedia, wildcat strikes, Wisconsin, work


I sit here writing this in the start of fall in 2018. I look at my PS4 collection and am baffled that I have not one or two Yakuza games in my library but 4 of them. Yes, 4. Yakuza 0, Kiwami 1, 6, and now Kiwami 2. I am bewildered as to how this happen, not just how it happened to me specifically but how it's happened to the gaming world at large. Yakuza used to be a series that was for Japanophiles who wanted to really go there and were (at the time) begging for Shenmue 3. Not for "normal" people but alas, here we are. Let's start!
Kiwami 2 is a bit of an odd beast. Functionally, it is about…96 to 97 percent of how Yakuza 6 plays. It's the same "Dragon" game engine, same fighting system, same leveling up system, etc.
Kiwami 2 takes place a year after the events of Kiwami 1. The Togo Clan is in a bit of a shambles and Kiryu is all but retired to take care of Haruka (the young girl he ends up with in the last game). However, the clan leader makes a request of Kiryu to stop an impending gang war with the Omi Alliance and he finds himself pressed into service. Considering they make 4 more of these games, I find this happens quite a lot to Kiryu.
Thankfully, the fighting engine from Yakuza 6 is used here with only a few minor tweaks. You still punch with the square button do kicks/heat moves with the triangle button, grab with circle and dodge with X. It's still over the top and impactful with specific strategies from Yakuza 6 (grab enemies and spin them around to win the game) holding strong.
The two changes I really noticed are as follows: You can now holster certain weapons and hide them from use. Like, if you find a switch blade in a fight, you can put it inside your coat pocket for later use. If you don't, when the fight is over the weapon is discarded. Second, you can now hold square or triangle for a few seconds to charge up your attacks. This is a neat idea but the drop kick you do when holding triangle seems to miss more often than it hits.
Kamurocho returns as ever and is roughly the same as in Kiwami 1 or Yakuza 6. There are a few small changes but nothing too important, just businesses moved around or a few of the new additions. Instead of Onomichi (the other city in Yakuza 6), Sotenbori returns, which was the locale from Yakuza 6, with a fresh coat of paint.
Quite frankly, this is a marked improvement over Yakuza 6. One of the few negatives of the game was that Onomichi was a gnarled mess of a city that had a very confusing lay out. Sotenbori, by contrast, makes complete sense and you can actually find your way around the city quite easily. It has changed more from Yakuza 0, but the basic lay out is the same and it'll become second nature in no time.
The way you get skill points in Kiwami 2 is exactly the same as in Yakuza 6. You can fight, do side activities, or eat to accrue points to buy new skills and upgrades. This falls into the same red/blue/yellow/green/purple mechanic from Yakuza 6. Some skills only require one color, others might need two or three, and some require all 5 colors.
I still have the same problem with this system as I did in Yakuza 6, it's hard to get specific points if you really need them. Like, if a skill requires 300 yellow and you only have 100 yellow points, it can be a real grind to get more. There are things you can do, like drinking certain things or just getting into fights/doing entertainment stuff but it's still a slog if you need it. You get a lot of points for doing story missions and such but the system is somewhat broken in this respect.
There are two really big mini-games in Kiwami 2 although one is a bit recycled. The recycled one is you (as Kiryu) can host a cabaret club just like Majima did in Yakuza 0. EVERYTHING is the same, they might have different female models and I think a few hand signals are slightly different but other than that, it's the same mini-game. I don't have Yakuza 0 installed but if I took a side-by-side shot of the cabaret club, I'm sure even the same assets are used in spots. This isn't completely bad as the mini-game is fairly easy and you can make a ton of money off it but it feels slightly cheap.
The other mini-game is Majima Construction thing. Yakuza 6 had the "Kiryu Clan" which was a reverse tower defense mini-game. Majima Construction *is* a tower defense game slightly mixed with a RTS. Your towers (the men you control) aren't stationary but you can move them around at will. The different units are split into a few categories such as: attack, defense, balance and support. There are also different rarity levels for your units and such.
This construction mini-game isn't fun at all. RTS games generally work because you have a mouse and can assign control groups to different units. You only have 4 quick select options (the dpad) to select units. So trying to select a unit that is on the opposite side of the screen, if your quick select is already full, is really tedious.
Also, there's no codes to enter (like in Kiryu Clan) and the entire mode seems very flat. Not having some NJPW Wrestlers in there does make a difference. Plus, the super units you got with the codes really broke the game, and that was fun.
Kiwami 2 has other stuff for you to occupy your time with. There is the usual karaoke, darts batting practice and UFO catcher machines for you to do. The arcade games in this game are Virtua Fighter 2 and Virtual On. Here's a hot take: Virtual On is a bad game, especially when you don't have two joysticks to pilot your mech. There is a new (and somewhat bad) photo-taking model mini-game that replaces the chatroom in Yakuza 6. You have to string together a sentence to entice the model but it seems really random.
The last really notable mini-game is something called "Toylet". This mini-game involves you "controlling the spray" at a urinal equipped with a video screen against a CPU player. It's a horribly designed mini-game that gives you no feedback on what it is you're actually supposed to be doing.
Eventually, you can play as Majima in his own separate storyline/quest. It is fun to play as him but it's an extremely short experience. I finished it in about an hour or so and even then I was kind of purposefully screwing around to extend it out.
In some respects Kiwami 2 is a better game than Yakuza 6 but that's almost strictly related to the battle system. Most of the other ideas in the game are recycled from past games or there is a slight reduction in production quality over Yakuza 0 or 6. Still, Kiwami 2 is definitely better than Kiwami 1 and if you're a fan of the series, you'll pick it up of course.


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Oxford School of Global and Area Studies
DPhil in Area Studies
MPhil in Global and Area Studies
MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies
MSc in Modern South Asian Studies
Oxford 1+1 MBA
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Nayanika Mathur's Research on the Indian state, law, and bureaucracy
Nayanika Mathur is an anthropologist with an area interest in South Asia. She is the author of Paper Tiger: Law Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India, Cambridge University Press (2016). Paper Tiger is an ethnography of the developmental Indian state. It traces the translation of two widely commended laws into practice through an ethnography of quotidian bureaucratic life. Paper Tiger rejects standard explanations for developmental/state failure – rooted in inefficiency, incapacity, dysfunctionality, corruption, or violence – to present an alternate, ethnographically driven reconceptualisation. One of its original contributions has been to demonstrate the counter-intuitive effects of the push for 'transparency' in the functioning of the post-liberalisation Indian state. It also makes a strong case for restudying and re-analysing corruption in the global South. Ultimately, this work devises a new language to capture the banality of state bureaucracy and makes a radical case for rethinking what the state is in practice and, therefore, how notions of success and failure of development need to be assessed.
In recognition of the originality of Paper Tiger, this book won the Sharon Stephens Prize awarded bi-annually by the American Ethnological Society for the best first book by a junior scholar.
Nayanika's doctoral research on financialisation, bureaucracy, corruption, and transparency led to a call for a new anthropology of bureaucracy. Currently, Nayanika is extending the arguments of Paper Tiger through a focus of the relationship between politics, technocracy, new technologies and bureaucracy. Her research and writing has been supported by fellowships awarded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust held at Cambridge's Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH).
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I read about a week ago from Grub Street about Payard re-opening and ogled at their dessert menu. I am a sucker for desserts and Payard's is no exception. I was shocked when they did have to close their Lexington Avenue restaurant/café the past June or so and it's about time for us Payard fans to rejoice and have his desserts and chocolates.
On the day of opening (yesterday, November 4th), I went there with Helen after work. I was curious and dying to have a good cup of hot chocolate since it was cold and I craved for a chocolate-y indulgence. When we entered Maboussin jewelry store on Madison Avenue, we were greeted both by the doorman and a woman who stayed in the back, I requested to go upstairs to the Chocolate Bar and she guided us to the posh and plush elevator that was lined in three sides, a beige quilted wall (maybe leather? I'm too scared to mar the surface) and on the side was a dark wooden table filled with a tray of delicate perfumes, the jewelry store's hardcover book and a mirror that's right above it.
Once we exited the elevator, we're greeted by a woman who works for the Chocolate Bar and I've asked about their verrines and she took us over to the display case.
After I'm done with my photo-taking, I've asked if we could have a verrine. They would like to but they can't. The reason why is because they're still waiting for the permit to sell their goods. So, as a way to make up for our time they comped us with a (generous) sampling of white hot chocolate with red berries and hibiscus flowers. Though I'm not a big fan of white chocolate (I personally just use it for cake or pastry decorations rather than ingesting it), this isn't bad. As one might expect, white chocolate is sweet but the tart, luscious red berries and hibiscus flower tones down the sweetness a bit. This is something Helen enjoyed more than I have since it's sweeter than I'd personally like.
Determined to go back, I persuaded my co-worker Liz (not much persuasion needed since she's a chocoholic) to accompany me to the Chocolate Bar again today in hopes to get my hands on the verrines. Since it's a short walk from our office, it's not a big deal. To the jewelry store and up the posh elevator we went and we walked into the empty café. I met the same young man who gave me the white hot chocolate from last night. He remembered me and I asked him the same question again, "May we have a verrine?" He said they're still waiting for the permit to arrive but he let us each have a verrine. How kind of him.
Then he let us have another (for my case) generous sampling of their milk hot chocolate with Sichuan peppercorn and cinnamon. I love the floral, gently spicy aroma of this hot chocolate. It's barely spicy and it's quite chunky and viscous like drinking thick hot chocolate but there's a milk/spice layer that floats on top that made it a bit off, texturally. In other words, if you're looking for a real spicy kick in your hot chocolate, this ain't it.
Liz and I started on the Verrine de Fruit Rouges made of layers of dark chocolate mousse , black sacher biscuit, cranberry and raspberry balsamic compote, white chocolate mousse and dark chocolate glaze. Sounds divine. The pipette that's sticking out of this verrine holds the balsamic vinegar/compote. The other gentleman who works there explained to us that you can add as much or as little vinegar as you'd like into your verrine, even though there's a bit of balsamic infused in the layers of mousse. This verrine was very good. Delicately sweet with a touch of tartness from the berries all surrounded by the cloud-like mousses.
Moving onto the Verrines du Japonais, it contained layers of hazelnut dacquoise, milk chocolate mousse, yuzu citrus crémeux, milk chocolate chantilly and dark chocolate glaze. It was a favorite of the employee who served us. I honestly have to say this verrine blew me out of the water. It's rich and decadent without being dense and overwhelmingly chocolate-y even though pretty much everything I'm eating is chocolate based. There's raspberry jam and yuzu-infused cake in the middle of the terrine that brightens up the entire flavor profile made it really interesting. The tartness of the raspberries shined through with the yuzu mingling in the background of the milk chocolate mousse with a touch of crumbly hazelnut dacquoise. It's pretty much an OMG moment.
If you're still wondering when are they really selling their goods? Hopefully tomorrow, November 6th. Let's keep our fingers crossed.
If you'd like to see all the photos I've taken within the two days I've visited there, click here.
Love the photos…the textures on the chocolates came out nicely.
Incredible photos! I definitely want to try the Verrines. I don't think they had those at the old Payard.
Wow, I would give up a toe for the Verrine de Fruit Rouges on my table right now. What is on top? Is it spun sugar or hibiscus?
Great post and great pictures as usual. I am perhaps Payards biggest fan and this is a great incentive to get over there.
fressagirl: The dark red thing on top is hibiscus flavored spun sugar.
Niko: Thanks. I do suggest going there!
I was there at FC chocolate bar on 11/07/09. I tried the hot chocolate and cookies and it is delicious and it was great.
oh my goodness…i have to get back to ny!


The Howard Hughes Medical Institute – Janelia Farm Research Campus houses flexible, state of the art research laboratories as well as a conference center and support facilities, in an integrated structure designed to LEED Gold standards. Set into a gentle hillside on a 689-acre woodland site, the terraced building blends into its lush surroundings through an 18,000 square foot green roof that is the second-largest in the United States. Planted with native species of grasses, flowers and other plant varieties, the roof contributes to the overall project's storm-water management strategy, which also employs retention ponds that help organize the experience of the site and enhance views throughout the complex.
Research laboratory workplace environments receive abundant natural light by means of a structurally-glazed sinuous corridor which runs the length of the 1000-foot building and also connects the labs to office "pods" overlooking the roof gardens.


When I started school, I found out I couldn't talk. But the teacher would let me sing, you know. She'd take me around to different classes and let me sing. And I could sing without stuttering.
You know, it comes from my mother's side of the family. She had seven sisters and one brother, and all of them could play instruments. I suppose I picked it up from that. And my daddy could play a harmonica and also the guitar, so I guess I got a little bit from both of 'em, but I think mostly from my mother's side of the family.
In the early days we didn't have the bus, we had a station wagon.
My stories are 85 percent true. If they need a little help, I'll help them.
If you put a script up in front of me to read, or a cue card, I couldn't do it without stuttering.
I'm working on a novel. It's my first one. I heard one time someone asked Mark Twain how he did it. He said "Well, I get up in the morning about 4:00, maybe 5:00, put on a pot of coffee, light a cigar and just start lying!" And I said "Hell, I can do that!" So I'm attempting one and I'm enjoying it.
Well, you know, back then there wasn't many albums, it was the singles. You sold singles. And then later on, if you sold 25 thousand albums at $40,000 you had a hit. But in those days — in the mid-'50s, early '60s — there was less than 300 radio stations that were playing country music and a lot of that wasn't full time. WSM [Nashville] only had country music early in the morning, and they came on at 10 o'clock at night with The Eddy Hill Show, and that was just about it for country music. And now they've got, what, over 3,000 stations that are playing it. So, hard to imagine that, but it's happened.
If you write a song and it's a hit, boy does that make you feel good. If your record's a hit, that makes you feel good. If you draw a good crowd and they're happy, that makes you feel good, and all the good things that come with it. The money is good. It allows you to do some things that would probably be impossible if I'd just stayed a baker.
When I went to Okinawa in 1952 I was a baker. I served my country; I served cakes, cookies, pies, and donuts.
Well, you now, all my life, comedy has been a part of me. I remember when I started school. I was six years old, in Plant City, Florida, and I didn't know that I stuttered. My dad stuttered a little bit, and my brother stuttered a little bit, and we thought it was just normal. But when I started going to school, they got to laughing at me. And I didn't know what was happening. I came home the first day, and I asked my mom, "Momma, do I stutter?" And she said, "Yes you do, son." And I said, "They laughed at me, momma." And she said, "Well, if they're gonna laugh at you, give them something to laugh about." And I went back to school the next day — and that was my first day in show business.


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Life in India's IT capital was severely disrupted as a decades-old dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over sharing of Cauvery river water turned violent on Monday.
Curfew was imposed in 16 sensitive police station limits and around 15,000 policemen were on watch in the city.
Cops had a tough time controlling protestors.
Commercial and business establishments were vandalised and ransacked at various places in the city including Domlur and nearby areas.
Attacks targeting vehicles and businesses linked to Tamil Nadu were reported from around Bengaluru.
Miscreants set fire to vehicles.
Over 100 phone calls were received by the fire control room.
Cops trying to control chaos in Bengaluru.
Students were the worst affected as educational institutions declared a holiday and asked parents to pick up their wards.
A day after witnessing widespread violence, Bengaluru appeared to limp back to normalcy on Tuesday.
Shops downed shutters in the IT city after the violence stepped up.
An uneasy calm prevailed in Bengaluru on Tuesday, as parts of the city was still under curfew and heavy security cover.
A day after witnessing widespread violence, the city seemed to be limping back to normalcy.
Curfew was imposed in 16 sensitive police station limits and around 15,000 policemen were on watch in the city.Police imposed curfew in Rajgopal Nagar, Kamakshipalya, Vijaynagar, Byatarayanpura Kengeri, Magadi Road, Rajajinagar, RR Nagara, KP Agrahara Chandra layout, Yeshwanathapura, Mahalakshmi layout, Peenya, RMC Yard, Nandini Layout and Jnanabharathi.
Life in India's IT capital was severely disrupted as a decades-old dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over sharing of Cauvery river water turned violent on Monday, leaving vehicles and property damaged in both states.
Two were killed in the clashes. While a man died in police firing on Monday night, in another incident a man fell to his death while escaping lathicharge on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court, on Monday, modified its earlier order and asked Karnataka to release 12,000 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu till September 20.
Pro-Karnataka protestors were out on the streets across the city on Monday, specifically targeting vehicles with Tamil Nadu registration on Mysuru road, Kengeri Satellite bus stand, Outer Ring road and nearby areas.
At least 65 buses were set ablaze near Dwarakanath Nagar at Hosekahalli on Monday evening. A group of protestors also set as many as 30 Tamil Nadu registered trucks on fire at the new timber yard on Avalahalli.
Namma Metro services were suspended and Karnataka authorities have stopped bus services to Tamil Nadu for an unspecified period of time as a precautionary measure.
The Cauvery River, which originates in Karnataka and flows into Tamil Nadu, has been the source of a bitter water dispute for decades.


Photographs have been an excellent source of history for all persons for numerous years. Newborns require to be pictured so that the photograph can offer them the opportunity to know how they looked like at birth. It is in this regard that newborn photography centers were established so that they can take the photo of the newborn kids. To get to an individual who can provide you the right service can be a daunting assignment since the centers numerous professionals do exist. The fact will discuss the tips that will help you when selecting a newborn photography professional.
There is a need to have done something for many times then you can be sure that the profession will sink into your mind. It is thus imperative that you hire a photographer who has been in the industry for a duration which is significant to have the skills that are needed in the field. You can ask them the length of time that he has offered these kinds of services just to be sure that you are dealing with the right person.
Since newborn babies are delicate and need to be handled with care it is wise that you check the skills that the professional has acquired through various training. It is imperative that you choose a professional who knows how to do first aid to the infants so that they can help you in case of an accident during the process. You should even look whether the individual has expert skills needed in the industry so that you can be sure that they will deliver quality services.
There is a need to see to it that you hire a professional who is insured against the risks that are associated with these kinds of jobs. There is a possibility of the infant sustaining injuries if they are not handled with care. If such incidences happen, the insurance company will compensate the parent for the injuries which helps them to seek medication for the baby.
No person can afford to have a low-quality photo of their newborn. The only way to do this is to select a reputable newborn photographer for the crucial assignment. It is possible to acquire such details from the from the portfolio of the said professionals.
It is crucial that you check service fee before you can choose the professional in question to offer you the essential service. It is wise to make sure that the service fee is within the cash limit that you have decided to spend for the job. It is wise that you check the quality of service as well so that you do not select a photographer whose services are cheap but the quality is low.


Here at PMWorld 360, we pride ourselves on providing top-notch highly professional project management content. Our content is provided by an all-star team of certified project management professionals. We have numerous categories of content that will provide you with a 360-degree view of project management. This particular page features relevant project management Business News and Events. Explore this category to keep up to date on the latest Business News and Events and how it impacts your organization. Stay up to date on our latest articles, by subscribing to our weekly newsletter. Also feel free to follow us on social media and share our posts with your network!


Auto Blueberry Domina delivers very generous yields within a very short time. This Indica dominant variety has been created by mating Blueberry and Black Domina and then adding Ruderalis to the blend. The result is an autoflowering variety that rushes through its flowering time within only 45-50 days. At the end of its life cycle each plant carries 110g of thick flower clusters.
Auto Blueberry Domina is an Indica dominant variety, created by mating Blueberry and Black Domina and then adding Ruderalis to the genetic mix, resulting in a plant with only 10% Sativa influence, 70% Indica and 20% Ruderalis. Looking at the broad fingers of the leafs and feeling the intense body numbing effect it becomes obvious that Black Domina dominates this variety (how fitting, she is used to dominate).
These feminized Auto Blueberry Domina seeds are suitable for outdoor, indoor and greenhouse cultivation and deliver very generous yields within a very short time. The plants hurry through their flowering time within only 45-50 days and produce incredibly fat columnar buds covered in a layer of sticky resin. In an indoor plantation you can expect a harvest of 110g per plant, respectively 220g per plant outdoors.
Apart from the high yield, neither is Auto Blueberry Domina miserly in regards to potency or quality. She boasts with a high quality end product with the pleasant flavor of berries and a hashy aftertaste and 17% of the properly cured loot is pure THC. The smoke of Auto Blueberry Domina triggers a sweet cerebral kick, paired with a very relaxing effect. Savored in higher doses this relaxing aspect outweighs the cerebral effect and makes you look for the next couch to rest your numbed body.


Purpose of the project is to develop computer aided teaching of mathematics. The most important areas of development are automatically graded exercises and the display of mathematics online. The project uses an open source software called STACK. STACK is a question type for the Moodle environment that makes possible the randomization of initial values, automatic grading as well as personalized, informative and automatic feedback. More information on the STACK system is available here. The project produces and develops STACK questions on the Abacus server. The project is coordinated by Aalto university and many higher education institutes in Finland are already participating.
The goal of the S3M2 project was to produce bridge material on the open source Mumie system. More information can be found on the project homepage.
The Mattia project produced and developed computer aided materials to aid in mathematics education. The materials can be found on the homepage (in Finnish).


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PC Game Reviews •
RPS discusses... the gruesome glories and nonsensical excesses of Resident Evil 7
The verdict - with full spoilers
7th February 2017 / 9:00PM
Alec: Resident Evil 7 Biohazard Resident Evil 7 Biohazard Resident Evil 7 Biohazard Resident Evil 7 Biohazard Resident Evil 7 Biohazard Resident Evil 7 Biohazard [official site] is a new first person horror/action game that definitely has nothing whatsoever to do with anything else called Resident Evil, no siree. Definitely just some creepy people in a house. That's all.
We've both played it now, Adam. Shall we throw all caution to the wind and go FULL SPOILERS as we discuss what works, what doesn't and how it does or does not tie into the rest of this stalwart survival horror series?
Adam: We have to, mainly because I've been wanting to talk about it with FULL SPOILERS since I finished it what seems like ages ago now. But first, let's do a quick non-spoiler bit for anyone who hasn't played yet and might be interested in a second opinion. If you want to avoid full spoilers, don't read past "FULL SPOILER KLAXON". Search for that phrase now if you don't want to accidentally scroll into end-game stuff.
My review is over here and I was very cautious about spoiling things because one of the things that I like so much about Resident EVII: BioHazard is the pacing – it doesn't stick with any of its several ideas for long enough to bore me, but I wouldn't want to spoil what all of those ideas are. It's a bit like flicking through someone's VHS horror collection though and watching an hour of each, isn't it? And some of those hours work better than others, for me, but I never felt it slumped for long.
Alec: Yeah, it's definitely a slasher flick anthology, and I imagine the forthcoming DLC will explore new entries in the gris-o-spooks lexicon, which I'm very much looking forwards to. It's not just the switching between genre styles and tropes though – it also understands when to let up on the almost excruciating tension and when to pump the anxiety back up.
Even as you gradually gain a little more freedom of movement and ability to deal with what it throws at you, it finds new ways to destabilise, or at least surprise. Even during the more action-centric final act – which we'll get to later – there are a few effective psychological curveballs that kept me feeling deeply uncertain about what I could or should do.
I've seen people complain it's too short, but it was bang on for me. There's only so long that kind of atmosphere and the attendant guessing games can be sustained for. If anything, in the final stretch I was feeling ready for it to be over.
Adam: A thumbs up then? I've played it through twice now and it's odd the second time around. Not as frightening, for obvious reasons, but there was a lot more about it that made me do little appreciative nods. It's really smartly constructed.
Alec: Yeah, thumbs up. It's the 2017 game I've had the best time with so far. I wish it had gone in a different direction in its final third, but I understand why it did it and don't really begrudge it – particularly because the first two major sections were so strong. It's Texas Chainsaw Massacre vs Evil Dead – the sheer menace of the former (pre-too-many-sequels) and the laughing-while-screaming gross-outs of the latter. It's so unusual to have foes that recur in the way they do here. I know Resi 3 did it a bit, but that was always A Monster in scripted appearances, whereas this is 'someone who is more or less a person is going to appear unexpectedly at any point, and seems to shrug off death as though it were dandruff.' The game's clearly made a decision to play pretty fast and loose with any concepts of mortality, and it suits it down to the ground – leaves it free to keep on pulling the rug in any way it chooses, which is why it's brilliantly tense and menacing. Though the downside of this is that the apparent finality of the final encounters is hard to swallow.
Adam: Let's move into full spoilers now.
FULL SPOILER KLAXON
Alec: Hear ye spoilers, hear ye spoilers.
So, in a nutshell: Resi 7 kicks off in a classic slasher flick murder house in which live an apparently cannibalistic, sadistic hick family, moves into making them Evil Deady undying mutants and then does trad Resi 'evil corporation did bad science and created monsters' shtick, by way of J/K-horror spooky little ghost-girls. It's a mad grab-bag of horror that effectively defuses its early, terrifying brilliance by ultimately going too over the top. Thing is, I think it could have kept its Resi ties without going all the way into total overboard everything as it does in the climax.
Adam: The biggest surprise for me is that I found myself buying into the actual Resi parts of the plot, Umbrella Corp and all. There's a major caveat to that, which is that if they follow up on any of this in a sequel they damn well better acknowledge that Mia, lead character Ethan's wife, is a baddie. Because she's totally a baddie. I can't tell if the ending (and there are two possible endings, more on which in a moment) gets that and is playing with the apparent happy-joy-joy of husband and wife being reunited ironically, or if all is apparently forgiven because….love wins in the end?
Essentially, Mia works for what appears to be a biological weaponry outfit and is babysitting a little girl who is in fact a weaponised agent, to be inserted into a populated area so that it can infect and mutate everyone who comes into contact with it. SHE'S A BADDIE. I really find it hard to read the tone of the ending though. It is, on the surface, a happy ending, even though it absolutely shouldn't be for many reasons.
But what I think it does really well is to re-humanise the Baker family. Those Texas Chainsaw cannibals who become Evil dead shrieking cackling killers were victims. I like that there are clues in the details of the house – big angry monstrous Jack has books on photojournalism and philosophy rather than "How to Kill a Dog and Cook Your Mum". They aren't monstrous humans become actual monsters because of the infection; they were probably a lovely family.
Alec: Sure, but I think perhaps that stuff depends too much on implication rather than statement. There's a bit near the end where there's some kind of fungus-fueled vision of the 'real' Jack, who's all lovely and sympathetic, and we need to take that at face value at the same time as, as you say, wondering if heroising Mia is some kind of double-bluff. It's confused. And we never get a chance to meet the real Marguerite or understand who Lucas really is what is going to happen to him – loose ends presumably left for DLC, although frankly much of the storytelling comes across as so arbitrary that they may simply have forgotten or sliced a part of the ending off without caring.
Re: Mia – I wasn't 100% sure if she actually worked for Umbrella or was part of a group of people trying to spirit the bioweapon away from them. The guy working with her in the flashback sequence on the boat seems to be a decent, worried sort too. If they do work for Umbrella, they still have some kind of conscience. But yes, I was expecting a twist in the ending sequence, where she suddenly turned into Deadite Mia on the helicopter again. Apparently the ending with her we do get is considered the 'good' ending, whereas choosing to save the apparently innocent Zoe instead is the 'bad' ending. But this could be playing with expectations. It feels like a mess rather than smartness to me, though.
Adam: Yeah, I agree it's messy. There's only enough serum for either Mia, your wife, or Zoe Baker, who has guided you through the game via phone calls, and I did like that at the point you can choose who to save you don't have enough information to make an informed decision. It's only after the choice that you realise that Mia has been lying to you about her involvement (she doesn't even remember any of it herself because of Convenient Plot Amnesia) in all of the nastiness.
From what I understand, Mia is working for a DIFFERENT bioterrorist corporation and Umbrella swoop in at the end, presumably to retrieve samples for their own nefarious purposes. Though there's also speculation that Umbrella have reformed as the good guys now because Chris Redfield is apparently working for them, but that might not really be Chris Redfield, because clones, or something, and I have totally tapped out at this point and remembered why I don't care about the Greater Resi Plot.
There's one brutally efficient little piece of text though, late in the game, referring to usages for these new mutant child bioweapons. It talks about dropping them into "refugee populations" for maximum infection and terror. Ugh. There's some astonishing cruelty on a global level in that there world, ain't there?
Alec: Not just that there world, Adam. #littlebitofpolitics. But yeah, there's also the stuff about how they made the bioweapon look like a little girl because people would try to help it even as everything turned to hell around them, which is potentially another nice, nasty detail, but I think the way it presents almost all of its dialogue and background info is too crude and broad to really push any buttons. It's atmosphere – light, shadow, sound, unpredictability – that makes its first couple of acts so deft, nothing to do with the story it's telling. Any plot stuff is just a sap to series fan-folk who might otherwise be outraged that a cool game about some murderers was waving a Resi banner.
Adam: I knew the bridge back into the main series would come at some point so I was just happy that it didn't derail the game entirely. A little bit, but not entirely. And I liked the 'reveal' of Grandma Baker.
Let's talk about the really good stuff though, and that's the house(s), isn't it? And the Bakers. There are three of them, in terms of actual threats. First up there's Jack, who is a fairly traditional large angry man with chainsaw-scissors. Then there's Marguerite, the matriarch, who is full of bugs and goes all spider-y when she mutates. And Lucas. I don't really get Lucas. He grows bits back when he gets hurt, but he doesn't do a big confrontation. He's sort of Jigsaw from Saw, with his traps and his videotapes, but he also just seems like the person who pulls wings off flies.
I really liked him as an antagonist and it was only the second time through that my girlfriend who was watching said, "oh, so he's like the Riddler but actually scary". And, yeah, of course he is.
Alec: IMPORTANT INTERJECTION! I was just reading about the Dark Judges coming back to 2000AD and thought 'Resident Evil 7 but with the Dark Judges!' Amazing. Sorry.
Adam: Resident Evil 7 with all manner of things would be great. It's a very good formula. But, yes, 2000AD 4 life. I was going to watch that Future Shock documentary last night but failed.
But back to Resi. Which member of the Baker Family would you most like to go on vacation with? Post-infection.
Alec: I guess I'd take Jack's sporadic disinterest in killing me in favour of very slowly walking after me over having to repeatedly glimpse Marguerite's wasp-nest-groin. That was a disturbing sight, and a disturbing thing to have to attack in order to defeat her. I dunno about Lucas. It felt like something might have been cut there – they build him up in a way they don't really build up the others, then you never get to actually meet him. I'm going to guess that the first major DLC, which apparently stars 'Redfield', will be about hunting him down in the mines, but even so it's a deflating conclusion to his main-game arc.
Some of the most effective terror of Resi 7 was worrying about what these guys were actually capable of, back when it was keeping cards close to its chest and only hinting at their true nature. When I knew I was going into the Lucas part of the map, all my old anxiety returned, even though I was carrying a flamethrower and a grenade launcher by that point, because I presumed he'd be given some kind of monstrous transformation or ability as Jack and Marguerite were. Disappointing that he was just a hillybilly Riddler, as you say. I also feel like Zoe should have gone somewhere – she needed the serum, so it would have been nice to see what her condition was, rather than Just A Bit Grumpy.
Adam: For all the Texas Chainsaws and Evil Deads we've mentioned, we haven't actually used the term 'body horror' yet. It's not particularly something I'd associate with either of those series, though Evil Dead creeps into it, but it's on a different level with Marguerite in particular. The first time she grabbed me, after mutating, limbs all stretched out dangling through a window, I was properly terrified. And just before that you see her scuttling down a corridor on all fours. The tech helps, of course. I've seen lots of writing about the brilliant griminess of the house, all the little cruddy details that make it seem like a genuinely rotten place, but the visual detail on the wounds and the mutations is superb as well. I mean, what a sentence that is to write – true though. It does grotesque very well.
Let's talk about what doesn't work for a bit though, since we're being mostly positive even through our gripes. Did you have the same complaint as me in that it's really annoying to have a game that has so much creeping around and semi-stealth bits, but doesn't let you lean around corners? And, if you did, was that complaint magnified when you realised that stuff is possible in the VR version which isn't on PC yet, and which I'll never play anyway? Because, damn, that annoyed me. The game has such a good sense of place and is mostly great at making me feel like the character is actually IN that space, with little details like putting up his hand to rest on walls when you're standing against them, but JUST LET ME LEAN.
Is this a really minor quibble? Am I daft?
Alec: Not daft, but maybe a little myopic. For it's just a small part of a broader whinge that the stealth is, frankly, crap. Its sneaking element depends more on the big bads somehow not seeing or pursuing you unless you get right up in their grills than it does any concerted avoidance. I tested the limits of this stuff a bit and the fantasy broke down somewhat when I did – there are places they will simply not follow, or very obvious hiding places they will never check, or triggers where they will too abruptly give up the chase, and as such the inability to lean became only a minor element. It would be useful in terms of checking a corner or corridor out instead of getting jumped by a fungo-beast, but I don't think it would meaningfully redeem what is an extremely perfunctory but realistically quite short-lived stealth element.
Adam: That's interesting, in that I'd noticed a lot of the shoddiness myself but didn't actually test its limits. Like anything else that relies on even rudimentary AI behaviour, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors, and I think there's a legitimate argument that Resi 7 has some of the best smoke and mirrors (and dirt and dust and mould) around, and that they're concealing a fairly ordinary game. And of course the game is all of the smoke and the mirrors and everything else, but the initial feeling, from both the opening of the game and the demo, that Resi might be doing something new does fade away somewhat. It's doing lots of old things, and it's doing them with modern techniques and doing them incredibly well, but it's a backward-looking game in many ways.
I don't mean that as a criticism, but it's not what I expected. Survival horror is an old-fashioned genre in many ways, with all that resource management and weirdly functional environmental design (I refer to This Sort of Thing, and as much as I love that old-fashioned stuff (Silent Hill 2 is my favourite game ever if you ask me on certain days), I'm still waiting for the game that kicks the whole genre up the backside. Resi pats it on the backside, but doesn't move things along as much as I thought it might.
Alec: For me it's most successful at two things. One is running away as opposed to hiding – all the issues with stealth and fake doors or contrived locks fade away because you're just sprinting for your life in those earlier moments, desperate to find anywhere that Jack or Marguerite cannot find find you, and particularly so with Jack, whom you have little to no means of realistically fighting for many of the encounters. I don't care about hiding or solving lock puzzles, I'm just looking for an opening to get the flip out of there, and that feels very true to a lot of those great 70s horror movies. The heroes/victims don't spend twenty minutes hiding behind a box, but instead are constantly dashing somewhere, hoping to put enough ground between them and the baddie to have a chance of survival.
The second are the setpieces, which are when Resi 7 is at its most magnificent, its most graphic and its funniest. That first proper fight with Jack in the garage, where you're trying to ram him with a car in an enclosed space, is gloriously ridiculous, and also spectacularly violent. He's basically The Terminator or a middle-aged Deadpool in that sequence, constantly getting back up from awful things and not seeming to care. It's madcap as well as tense.
The second major fight with him, in the chainsaw dungeon, is also a treat – it just keeps getting more and more icky. Braindead/Bad Taste sort of stuff, where you're literally chainsawing into his brain and he's all but laughing it off. Then the apparent coup de grace, when you just keep sawing and sawing and sawing into this infinite blob of bloody horror, followed by his severed legs chasing you – glorious. I laughed like hell, while still shaking uncontrollably. It's diminishing returns from thereon in, but Marguerite does make for an extremely sinister figure in the initial encounters, when she's this immortal infinite moth factory that you can't do anything about.
There's one last gasp of the killer setpiece when you get to reverse-engineer Lucas' SAW escape room, which is a complex but fluid piece of puzzling, and then sadly it's all trad. boss fights remaining. But when Resi 7 is smart at combining spectacle with situation, it's really smart.
Adam: The reverse-engineering of the escape room is great because it ties back to the videotapes as well. I wish there'd been more of them, teasing what's to come and showing what came before. By the time you get to the final one, which is a huge extended impossibly framed reveal section on a big tanker, starring Mia, the idea of them as grimy little found footage things is completely gone. It's just flashback by a different name at that point.
And isn't it odd that of all the films we've talked about the game referencing, we haven't touched on found footage stuff at all? That seemed to be the game's big idea at one point, with the demo built around a trio of doomed ghosthunters and the footage they left behind, but it's a very small part of the actual game. I suppose Outlast got there first anyway, using its camera as a fundamental part of the game, with the nightvision and all.
I can now reveal, dirty platform traitor that I am, that I've played the first round of DLC. The Bedroom section is a splendid but short escape the room bit, much like Lucas' Happy Birthday tape, though not as enjoyable. It's got a neat little angle though – you have to keep putting all the puzzle parts back in place to avoid being caught trying to escape, so there's a lovely little wrinkle to the tension. It feels like it could have been in the main game though; would have been a better use of half an hour than some of the stuff that's already there, and would fit well enough.
What I want is a DLC where I control one of the Bakers just after the infection takes hold. See the family fall apart, start to disintegrate (literally) and lose themselves. It'd be horrid in a different way, but it really could be horrid. But, hey, if they want to do more puzzly bits and more action-y bits (as the other section of the first chunk is; wave-based shooty survival and not half bad for what it is) then that'd be fine too.
I definitely want more and I hope the eventual sequel doesn't go full BIOCORPHAZARDBRELLA, though I suspect it will. Seven is fascinating because it feels like the side story, the human tragedy and horror happening off to the side of the main series, but I reckon normal service will resume. Everything drifts back toward the centre and the centre is a man called Wesker, punching a mutant forever. Probably.
Alec: Hopefully Capcom are asking themselves some serious questions about where they want the series to go now that it seems to have done pretty well. I mean, everyone's talking about the Bakers and not about Eveline and the more direct ties to the wider Resi world – if the money lies in exploring new horror frontiers rather than appealing to fans, that's surely where they'll go. Then again, they followed up their last attempt at a sweeping rethink, Resi 4, with more of a back to basics (ill-judged setting aside) approach that they then doubled down on in 6, so perhaps they are too fearful to push this further.
I certainly want more superfiends and fewer bullets'n'disposable monsters, but I imagine the masses need to be able to let rip at some point, so we can't escape that.
Adam: By the time the shooting came, in this one, I was glad to let rip as well. I'm sitting there in the early stages, hoping it doesn't turn into a shooting gallery, and by the time it did, I was just about ready for a bit of payback. Well, payback isn't really the right word because everything I shot felt like it was just sort of suffering and accidentally in my path, but…
What I'm saying is I enjoyed shooting all of those poor wretches because eight hours of being on the receiving end of all kinds of abuse left me itching for some kind of response. I do think the latter stages, on the ship and in the mines, drag a little, but I appreciate the pacing. It's not just a bit of this and then a bit of that, it has great little swerves and crescendos. I think that's my favourite thing about it, the pacing. It's very good at getting out of the way when it needs to, knowing when to tighten the vice, and when to let you breathe a little easier, and then to get your adrenalin pumping again.
Alec: The ship's the section I'd lose, where the game most threatened to fall into routine after all the unpredictability that had gone before. Partly it was the fairly straightforward monsters and door locks approach, partly it's because their spooky little girl simply wasn't spooky, and instead just A Sneering Baddie. Conversely, when we unknowingly met her in a different form earlier in the game, when the silent old woman in the wheelchair keeps appearing in unexpected places, that was when my heart came closest to stopping. It's a shame they didn't do more with that, really – or even the opposite, simply never addressed it and left her terrifying and unexplained.
The first three sections though – the repeat encounters with the initially immortal Mia, Jack and Marguerite – are simply brilliant, though. Best horror game I've played in ages, that. Though I could see through much of the AI/stealth smoke and mirrors, I was in a sustained state of fear that is deeply unusual for me. Almost to the point that I wanted to stop playing, but the setpieces gave me the catharsis I need. What a great reinvention this has been.
Adam: It's my favourite horror game from the last few years as well. Probably just about beats Alien: Isolation. Direct comparison isn't entirely useful, but Resi is much more energetic. It sprints forward where Alien creeps around for an eternity.
It's a cracker. And what a lovely start to the year. On a final note, have you played the Remake of Resi 1? Because when I replayed that a couple of years back, I adored it, much more than I expected to, and a lot of its design does show itself in seven, in interesting ways.
Alec: I've not, but I'm tempted to – got a real appetite for more now. I remember the one on a train – Resi Zero was it it? – very fondly. Had some of the same claustrophobic, oh-god-what's-behind-the-door thrills, even if the baddies themselves were nowhere near as effective.
I think I want them to remake the whole lot in first-person, mind you. Can't imagine going back to shouldercam now.
Adam: Tanks, but no tanks.
Tagged with Capcom, feature, review, verdict, Resident Evil / biohazard HD REMASTER, Resident Evil 7 Biohazard.
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ON THIS DATE (September 1, 1990) ... The Red Sox had won nine straight on September 1st, the longest winning streak in the American League. They reintroduced power to their lineup with four home runs accounting for 10 runs and clobbered their oldest and biggest rivals, the New York Yankees, and clobbering them good. This time it was 15-1, with a 19-hit attack.
After Ellis Burks' three-run homer and Tom Brunansky's two-run blast in the first off Andy Hawkins got the Red Sox off to an unbeatable start, the biggest clump of runs on one swat came on Mike Greenwell's inside-the-park grand slam. Go back to Gary Geiger's inside-the-park grand slam in 1961 for the last sighting of such an animal at Fenway. The ball actually got down the line swiftly past Kevin Maas and then got by Gold Glove right fielder Jesse Barfield, who bruised a knee in pursuit.
The Red Sox wiped out two Yankee outfielders in the seven-run fifth. Mel Hall injured a wrist on Wade Boggs' double, which put runners on second and third after Carlos Quintana walked. Burks also walked to set up Greenwell's slam.
Jody Reed later doubled in a run and Quintana doubled in two in the fifth. The Sox were up, 12-1.
The Red Sox offense lately has been astonishing. They have driven in 13 runs in their last seven plate appearances with the bases loaded. Burks, with two home runs and four RBIs, is now hitting .310 with 18 home runs and 76 RBI. The Nos. 3, 4, 5 and 6 hitters in the Red Sox lineup went 12 for 18 with 12 RBIs. After Tom Brunansky's two-run homer, Yankees manager Stump Merrill walked out to end Andy Hawkins' misery. The manager noticed that Hawkins was talking to himself. The Sox had gone 10 straight days without hitting a homer, and now they have hit 12 in the last six. Burks hit a solo shot in the sixth. In the eighth, Greenwell hit a ground-rule double for an RBI, while Brunansky singled in the 15th run.


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FEATURE: Champ Bell hails hill-climb appeal
Men's national hill climb champion Tom Bell says that the light-hearted atmosphere around events maintains their grassroots appeal.
The 32-year-old has turned his focus from mountain biking to hill climbing over the last two seasons with successful results including a first and second in the national championships.
Bell, from near Harrogate, says that the atmosphere at events prevent them from becoming too serious or closed off.
"First of all it's a good spectator sport," said Bell.
"People at the side of the road can see real kind of effort and grit right there in front of them with riders coming up every minute or 30 seconds which is part of it.
"I think it's just a nice grassroots appeal about it. Everyone is pretty serious and want to do the best ride they can.
"But there is a very light-hearted atmosphere. It is hard to go too serious or closed off because there is this set up where the headquarters is in a community centre or a Methodist church.
"It's just very low key. I think people who do hill climbs have a bit of an awareness that it's a bit strange.
"It's a bit of a weird thing to want to do. To stand there in the winter stationary and then go into this maximum effort for three or four minutes, I think everyone kind of knows it's a little bit weird.
"I think there is a bit of a fondness around that."
Bell won nine events last season including storming to victory in the National Championships on Winnats Pass with his time of three minutes and 1.6 seconds some seven seconds clear of his nearest rival.
Bell who was only beaten twice during the hill climb season, both times to former national champion Andrew Feather, said it was an almost perfect season.
"I think I pretty much had every race go just as I wanted," said Bell.
"If I was to single out one I don't think I got completely right was the Buxton CC event on Bunsall Cob where I was second to Andrew [Feather].
"That day I didn't feel good coming into the event, I had a weaker feeling during the week coming into the event and on the day held back a little bit.
"In hindsight I held back a little bit too much. But it wasn't a terrible result by any means. Other than that I was happy with how every other race went.
"Overall I was definitely happy with the season."
One of Bell's favourite climbs in the Jackson Bridge climb which he holds the record on Strava of 4-35 some 26 seconds faster than his nearest challenger.
Bell hopes to continue his focus on hill climbing again next season as reigning National Hill Climb Champion.
"I haven't really had many full seasons except last year and this year," added Bell.
"I've always like Jackson Bridge before which is a bit of a classic climb and where I grew up. It's always one I've done a lot in training and then I've done it quite a few times in hill climbs."


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The Niche-Reduction Hypothesis: Rethinking how we manage threatened species
When researching or managing threatened species, the status of the species is commonly described in terms of percentage declines. For example, species X may have experienced a 90% decline in distribution, or species Y may have seen an 85% decline in abundance in the last 20 years. Declines in range and population abundance are standard metrics in conservation science. However, only focusing on the rate and magnitude of species declines can miss important aspects about why species are declining, and this missing information could be crucial for developing effective management. Dr Ben Scheele and Dr Claire Foster from the Australian National University explain work they are involved in that explores threatened species and the idea of a reduced niche breadth.
To conserve species, we need to know why they decline more rapidly or severely in some locations than others. It's more than just measuring the size of the overall decline. Our new research shows that it is common for species to decline much more in some parts of their range than others. This is because the severity of threats can be reduced or amplified by environmental conditions, or because the species' ability to tolerate the threat is different in different environments. We describe these environmentally-determined declines as 'reductions in niche breadth'.
A species niche is the multidimensional environmental space in which a species is able to survive and reproduce. As a species' niche is shaped by its environmental tolerances, interactions with other species and movement barriers, threats that modify one or more of these factors can lead to reductions in the size of that niche (niche breadth).
Figure 1: A conceptualised model of how the abundance of a species can vary over space. The fundamental niche is the environmental space the species can occupy when it is not limited by other species and threats. Its historical niche is that part of the fundamental niche the species occupied prior to threat emergence, being limited by native competitors, predators and pathogens. Its contemporary niche is where it is currently found following the introduction of some new threat (such as chytrid fungus for frogs, or cats for small mammals). The important thing about this conceptualisation is that we shouldn't constrain our thinking or our management to where a threatened species is found today without considering the implications of threats and management to the other parts of its niche where it no longer occurs. (Modified from Scheele B, CN Foster, SC Banks & DB Lindenmayer (2017). Niche Contractions in Declining Species: Mechanisms and Consequences. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534717300496 )
Species such as the armoured mistfrog have been lost from closed canopy rainforest sites where they were known to historically occur and now persist only in open savanna sites where the chytrid fungus doesn't do so well. Image: Conrad Hoskin
An example helps to illustrate this. The armoured mistfrog, pictured above, is a species that was originally thought to live only in tropical rainforest. With the arrival of chytrid fungus (an introduced pathogen that has been wiping out many different species of frog), it was feared the armoured mistfrog had gone extinct when all known populations disappeared. However, a new population of the frogs was later discovered in open savanna habitat. This site was hot and dry enough that it was poor habitat for the chytrid fungus, and so even though chytrid is present, its impacts on the mistfrogs are greatly reduced. Since the arrival of chytrid, the armoured mistfrog has been unable to survive in rainforest, its pre-decline primary habitat, but it can persist in open savanna sites because they are less suitable for chytrid.
Another example is the decline of many small Australian mammal species that have now been lost from open grassy habitats due to predation by introduced feral cats and foxes. Before the arrival of cats and foxes, many small mammal species used a variety of habitats, from open grassy woodland, to dense heath and forest. However, these days, many of these small mammals are now only found in dense, structurally complex habitats, where they can more easily escape predation by foxes and cats. This represents a major reduction in these species' niche breadth.
Recognizing that declining species can experience reductions in niche breadth can help to identify where to focus conservation actions. For example, for species which declined many decades ago, recognising that currently occupied habitat (where they are found now) could represent only a small part of the species' potential habitat may open up new areas for conservation actions. In contrast, for species that have declined only recently, it is important to identify whether the species' niche has been reduced, and what has caused this reduction. This understanding is important to avoid conservation efforts being wasted on areas that are no longer suitable for the species.
The threatened alpine tree frog pictured top (image: David Hunter) is now only found in larger alpine ponds such as those pictured above, where high breeding success allows the frog to persist even if the population is afflicted with chytrid disease. Image Joslin Moore.
In many cases, long-term control or removal of threats is not possible. In these cases, recognising parts of a species' niche where threats are reduced or where the impacts from threats can be tolerated is crucial. For example, threatened alpine tree frogs in the Snowy Mountains are now locally extinct in sphagnum wetlands because of chytrid fungus. The species is now only found in larger ponds, where high breeding success allows the frog to persist, even though most frogs now die after only one year (compared with the frog's 'normal' life span of four or more years prior to chytrid). As it is not feasible to eradicate chytrid from wetland habitats, a practical conservation option is to create new large ponds to increase the number of populations of this species.
Recognising that a species niche is shaped by many different but interacting factors can be useful for identifying novel conservation actions, particularly when direct threat control is not possible. Returning to the example of a small mammal that now persists only in dense scrubby habitats, this habitat may be good for predator evasion, but poor in other ways, such as food availability. In such circumstances, conservation actions to increase food resources may help to increase species abundance. In other areas, it may be possible to artificially create some of the features that help the species to evade predators in dense habitats, allowing the species to re-expand into more open habitats.
In an era of mass biodiversity loss, understanding how threats shape the realized niche of declining species can assist the development of new management responses and identify where to prioritise conservation actions. This 'niche-reduction hypothesis' provides a new lens for understanding why species decline in some locations and not others, with important implications for how we research and manage declining species.
Ben.Scheele@anu.edu.au or
Claire.Foster@anu.edu.au
Top image: The threatened alpine tree frog. Image: David Hunter


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