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Transformers: The Last Knight2017
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Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
Reviews Counted: 255
Rotten: 216
Critics Consensus: Cacophonous, thinly plotted, and boasting state-of-the-art special effects, The Last Knight is pretty much what you'd expect from the fifth installment of the Transformers franchise.
Critic Consensus: Cacophonous, thinly plotted, and boasting state-of-the-art special effects, The Last Knight is pretty much what you'd expect from the fifth installment of the Transformers franchise.
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The Transformers leap into action once more in this sequel from Paramount Pictures and director Michael Bay. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
PG-13 (for violence and intense sequences of sci-fi action, language, and some innuendo)
Action & Adventure, Drama, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Michael Bay
Ken Nolan, Matt Holloway, Art Marcum
as Cade Yeager
as Sir Edmund Burton
as Lt. Col. Lennox
Laura Haddock
as Vivian Wembley
Isabela Merced
as Izabella
as Sergeant Epps
as Joshua Joyce
John Turturro
as Agent Simmons
Peter Cullen
as Optimus Prime
as Hound
Ken Watanabe
as Drift
as Jimmy
Santiago Cabrera
as Santos
Liam Garrigan
as Arthur
Martin McCreadie
as Lancelot
Rob Witcomb
as Percival
Marcus Fraser
as Gawain
John Hollingworth
as Tristan
Daniel Adegboyega
as Saebert
Trent Seven
as Hengist
Glenn Morshower
as General Morshower
Gemma Chan
as Quintessa
Claude Knowlton
as JPL Director
Jacob Zachar
as Young JPL Engineer
as Viviane's Grandmum
as Viviane's Mum
Phoebe Nicholls
as Aunt Helen
Rebecca Front
as Aunt Marie
Stephen Hogan
as Viviane's Father
Minti Gorne
as Young Viviane
as Kid
Julio Cesar Chavez
Samuel Parker
Daniel Iturriaga
Aisha Kabia
as Lawyer
Andy Bean
Sam Yim
Mark Dexter
as U.K. Prime Minister
Robert Jarvis
as Downing Street Policeman
Tim Downie
as Polo Player
Elizabeth Croft
as High Society Woman
Emily Tierney
Wolfgang Young
as Saxon Knight
Nicholas Khan
as Scientist
Leighton Sharpe
Christina Tam
Aiyaz Ahmed
Pauline McLynn
as Female Researcher
Matthew Castle
as Student
Mia Maria
Poppy Carter
Seeta Indrani
as News Reporter
Phill Langhorne
Harrison Simon
Wendy Albiston
as Submarine Ticket Agent
as Pentagon Colonel
Granville Ames
as Pentagon Official
Jim Wisniewski
as Government Suit
Mitch Pileggi
as TRF Group Leader
Remi Adeleke
as TRF Lieutenant
Perry T. Yee
as TRF Operator
Brian William Price
Jerome Vincent
Alan Pietruszewski
as F-35 Pilot
Christopher Vásquez
Drew Waters
Krista Schaeffer
as Osprey Pilot
Walles Hamonde
as American Serviceman
as Military Attache
Dan Warner
as Namibian Scientist
Charlie Bouguenon
Jandre leRoux
as Megatron
Erik Aadahl
as Bumblebee
Jim Carter
as Cogman
as Daytrader
as Hot Rod
Reno Wilson
as Mohawk/Sqweeks
John DiMaggio
as Nitros Zeus/Crosshairs
as Wheels
Jess Harnell
as Barricade
Mark Ryan
as WWI Tank/Lieutenant
Steven Barr
as Volleybot
Helen Iesha Goldthorpe
as Passerby at Lincoln in the Field
News & Interviews for Transformers: The Last Knight
38th Razzie Award "Winners" Announced
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38th Razzie Award Nominations Announced
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Critic Reviews for Transformers: The Last Knight
All Critics (255) | Top Critics (57) | Fresh (39) | Rotten (216)
An exhausting distillation of everything that can possibly go wrong with a blockbuster.
July 14, 2017 | Full Review…
Michael Bay has promised that this is the last Transformers movie he will direct, which is no small relief. It will not, alas, be the last Transformers movie.
July 9, 2017 | Full Review…
Christopher Orr
Transformers: The Last Knight is the pinnacle of summer blockbuster stupidity. The only thing that could top it is another Transformers sequel, a nightmare to imagine.
Roxana Hadadi
Chesapeake Family Magazine
The end of the world can't come soon enough in Transformers: The Last Knight.
June 27, 2017 | Full Review…
Tim Grierson
Though convoluted and mostly indistinguishable from piffle, it's by no means the worst of the bunch.
June 26, 2017 | Rating: 3/5
Charlotte O'Sullivan
Regardless of our opinions, we all know what a Michael Bay film is. This one's his most Baysome.
Joshua Rothkopf
One scene features a pair of bickering Transformers voiced by John Goodman and Steve Buscemi. With John Turturro also appearing in the film, it's safe to say THIS is the reunion movie that The Big Lebowski devotees were eagerly awaiting.
Matt Brunson
Film Frenzy
Shall I start with expressing how, in all my years, I've never been so tempted to leave a movie theater?
August 5, 2021 | Full Review…
Carolyn Hinds
Black Girl Nerds
It's heavy metal filmmaking, loud and proud, like a drum solo that goes on for just a hair too long.
March 1, 2021 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…
Richard Crouse
From the opening seconds, there's a perpetual introduction of new characters - for which too little time is given to properly introduce them.
December 5, 2020 | Rating: 4/10 | Full Review…
the cinematic equivalent of a crowd chanting U-S-A, U-S-A! But with robots.
July 1, 2020 | Rating: D | Full Review…
Brent McKnight
The Last Thing I See
If there's such a thing as a lesser Transformers movie, The Last Knight is probably that. What's missing isn't energy or adrenaline; it's enthusiasm and creativity.
May 7, 2020 | Full Review…
Steven Prokopy
Third Coast Review
View All Critic Reviews (255)
Audience Reviews for Transformers: The Last Knight
OK lets just jump into this shall we. The plot: I'm not even going to attempt to explain the plot for this 2 hour plus whirlwind of CGI metal shrapnel. You may well ask why, and the answer to that is simple. Where as I did understand the basic main outline of the plot, its so unbelievably convoluted, choppy, hectic, incoherent, nonsensical etc...that its virtually impossible to explain. Its literally a review in itself, but put basically, it revolves around a mcguffin that can save Cybertron, but is also required to save Earth. Right OK so the movie kicks off in medieval England, 484 AD. It is a time of Arthurian legend, King Arthur, Merlin, the knights of the round table...errr...transformers. Yes so we know this isn't an accurate account of ancient British history. Its a stupid fantasy movie based on (supposed) legend with large transforming alien robots. Nevertheless this opening sequence did actually look pretty good I thought. The idea of ancient transformer knights in ancient medieval Britain was actually way more interesting than the rest of the modern day set movie. I still have to point out the fact Bay and co actually cast a black actor as a British knight in this Arthurian period. That's just as ridiculous as having the fecking robots! That's the second major motion picture that has done that, what gives?! Its at this point we learn about the ancient Cybertronian knights coming to Earth and giving Merlin this magic staff mcguffin. But this did raise questions from me initially such as, what's so special about these transformers that they are called knights? Why did they steal the staff from Cybertron? What does the staff do on Cybertron? I believe they hid the staff on Earth because Earth is in fact Unicron (an ancient enemy of Cybertron). They were trying to protect Unicron from Quintessa, a Decepticon sorceress intent on destroying Unicron to save Cybertron. So this led me to think Unicron is a goodie in this movie? Because he was originally a Decepticon. But also, wouldn't the Cybertronian knights wanna help save Cybertron also? It is their home planet after all. Confusing!!! Its also around this point that Prime (who was spiralling frozen through space, I forget why) lands on Cybertron. But what that intended? He was drifting frozen through space, was it pure luck that he landed on Cybertron or did he put himself on a pre-set course?? Also why was he frozen? Transformers fly through space quite often it seems, or so we've seen before. Heck didn't Starscream fly to Cybertron in one movie? Why didn't he freeze up? Does Bay and co even care what they did in previous movies??? Also when Prime gets to Cybertron he questions what has happened to his homeworld. But...shouldn't he know what happened? The whole Cybertronian war thing... K lets look at the new characters, or in this new movie, the new politically correct characters because Bay's jumpin' on bandwagons. Firstly we now have kids in this movie, some smartass retro lookin' kids. You know because Bay clearly saw [i]Stranger Things[/i] and thought 'I can do that!'. So these kids consist of three tough streetwise kids who happen to be African American, Latino and Asian I think. And then you have the stereotypical curly haired, spectacled, nerdy white kid who's a wimp. These kids are purely in the movie to add more diversity and a kids point of view. Kinda pointless seeing as they do nothing other than get in the way. The final kid is another tough streetwise girl who's a bit older than the others. This is Michael Bay's strong female character to appease the feminists. She's constantly crying, shouting, growling and acting as deadly serious as possible, you know...for gravitas. This was supposed to be 'empowering' for girls and was clearly pushed as such before the movies release with a string of laughable TV spots/trailers. In them the character talks to the camera as if she was doing an interview. Its shot as if the movie was an account of a real war situation or something, its pathetic. Again its all pointless because after the first ten minutes or so she's hardly in the movie. Oh and this time there's also a little BB-8 type character in here too, you know because Bay saw 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' and thought 'I can do that!'. So voilà! Instant merchandise for the movie. What's actually amazing is how this little piece of crap is clearly a cross between BB-8 and R2-D2, like in a copyright kinda way. Things move so thick and fast in this movie its actually hard to keep up. So I realise Transformers have kinda made Earth their new home here and presumably new ones have crash landed over time. But can someone explain where the baby Transformers came from? The baby Dinobots, I presume they were Dinobots. Then you have the same stupid crap carried over from the previous movies with Transformers having hats, chewing cigars, having coats and the Japanese Autobot having a Mercedes badge on him. That really doesn't make sense to me but whatever. But why does this Autobot have the features of a Japanese samurai? I mean...why would he? Then there's the new task force whose job is to hunt down Transformers, they are called the TRF. But...but...what happened to the last task force? So far we've had a plot that started in the dark ages of England with various characters. It then fast forwards to our present day and a US military point of view; from faceless characters that spend the entire runtime in offices behind computers (or John Tururro on the phone the entire time). It then switches to a children's point of view for literally one action scene before then jumping onto our main protagonists point of view (Mark Wahlberg). This is all in the space of the first 30 minute or so, and we haven't even be introduced to all the characters yet either! Despite all the obvious pandering and stealing of ideas, Bay still manages to toss countless more overused and unoriginal ideas into the mix. Outta nowhere we get a calling card sequence for some Decepticons; you know when they stick the characters name up on the screen along with some rock music. Its been done to death in loads of movies and can be effective, but here it looks completely out of place and a desperate attempt at riding the coattails of some recent blockbusters. So we get a team of nasty Decepticons that are so badass they required this calling card sequence to showcase their badass names. Yet despite their gangsta speech patterns and bling, these guys get killed off very quickly which kinda makes you wonder why they were introduced in the first place. Next! Oh my God I could spend the rest of this month writing about this movie and its bollocks. Anthony Hopkins character apparently lives in a huge castle full of ancient artifacts that must be worth millions altogether, not including the castle itself! We get a sequence showing the Autobots helping the allies fight against the Nazi's (wouldn't both world wars have ended pretty quickly with Autobots helping?). There's a high speed chase through Westminster in super performance cars which, if you know London, is a complete joke. Add to that the fact the characters jump from one supercar to another with ease. This all ends with Hopkins, Wahlberg and co stealing British submarine the [i[HMS Alliance[/i] (yes indeed!). Would a defunct WWII submarine being used as a museum since 1981 even run anymore? Oh its a Transformer too, of course it is (he says cackling insanely to himself). I also don't think a submarine of that type and age (or any) would have large windows like this one apparently does. Naturally the TRF have their own sub it seems, a regular fecking [i]G.I. Joe[/i] unit these guys. They then discover the sunken alien ship which no one has ever stumbled across before up to this point apparently. Unsure as to where this was located, I guess the Atlantic somewhere but at this point I gave up even wondering because it could have been anywhere lets face it. Its around this time the movie was heading well north of the standard runtime for a crappy movie of this caliber. As the action pointed towards Stonehenge it slowly became more and more convoluted, nigh unwatchable. There are battles kicking off everywhere as Cybertron attaches itself to Earth, which you'd think would cause irreversible damage to our planet but whatever. The goodies fight the baddies, errr...some are defeated, some are killed...I think. The talisman mcguffin is revealed and stops the destruction of Earth, whilst also leaving Cybertron perfectly OK as well. So essentially what was all the fuss about? In all my days I've never seen such a convoluted mess, which is supposed to be for kids...isn't it?? Jesus fecking Christ it was a chore to get through this; I almost gave up on a few occasions because I was so bored and ultimately confused. Apart from the nonsensical plot and film length, the editing is terrible. Jumping all over the place in a blur of nonstop action (what's new). The aspect ratio is also bouncing around all over the shop. There are multiple characters in here that needn't be, they are literally not required (both human and Transformer). Of course you have all the usual Bayisms we've all come to expect; I don't even need to list them because you know exactly what I'm talking about. Sure it all looks super slick and glossy, but again we've all come to expect that, that no longer holds any weight. Style over substance is an understatement! But we all know that now. It is however ironic that the stupidest part of the movie (the medieval opening), was by far the most intriguing. If this legendary 80's franchise is to have any kind of future at all, it needs to be completely rebooted. Possibly in animated form, and probably going back to the classic original animated designs. In turn, any and all knowledge of these Bayformer movies should be erased from human history.
Phil Hubbs
Unlike many of my critical brethren, I do not view Michael Bay as the devil incarnate. I think the man has definite talent and is one of the finest visual stylists working in the realm of film. I've enjoyed about half of the Transformers franchise and don't consider it the end-all-be-all of modern American cinema. Transformers: The Last Knight is exactly what the detractors have railed against from the start: a cacophonous ejaculation of incomprehensible nonsense. The charge has often been made against Bay's long filmography that his stories are unintelligible, but Transformers 5 proves to be the new measuring point for incensed incredulity. This isn't only the worst Transformers entry in a seemingly never-ending franchise (thanks product placement, merchandising, and toy sales) but an early contender for worst film of 2017. Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is hiding out with other Autobots in a South Dakota junkyard awaiting the return of Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen). Prime ventured into space to find the remnants of the Autobot home world, Cybertron. Once found, he's brainwashed by the Cybertron goddess Quintessa (Gemma Chan) into being her servant. She's after an ancient staff that will prove to be the key to restarting Cybertron. It was last seen on Earth during the Dark Ages and rumor has it was given to Merlin. Cade is enlisted by a centuries-long secret society to help find the staff before the evil forces at bay get hold of it. It feels like the Transformers 5 writers were on a week-long cocaine bender when they cobbled together this impenetrable narrative. Let me give you but a taste of the confusing, muddled, and overall mind-numbing plot as it exists. There's a magic staff from the robot world that will recharge the robot world, and it just so happens 12 robot knights, which form a giant robot dragon, landed on Earth and gave it to Merlin, played by a soused Stanley Tucci who was already a different character in the fourth Transformers movie, who then established a secret order that would keep the giant alien robots secret even as they were doing things as high-profile as literally killing Hitler, and the members of this secret society include Frederick Douglass and Queen Elizabeth and Shia LeBouf, and this staff needs to be retrieved from an underwater spaceship under Stonehenge by Merlin's blood progeny and will be aided by an alien talisman that forms an alien sword that does something, and the evil alien robots are going to recharge their planet by scraping the Earth's crust, which has horns protruding from it that once aligned with Pangaea, and there's an evil alien robot goddess who brainwashes Optimus Prime to retrieve her magical items on demand and then Megatron is being hired the U.S. government and a team of special ops are trailing him to get to the staff and... I'm sorry; did your brain start bleeding out your ears? I looked over to my friend Ben Bailey during the screening and saw him slumped over in his chair and thought, for a fraction of a second, that the movie had literally killed him (he had just fallen asleep for the third time). What an ignoble end. The movie is a nonstop barrage of yelling and movement, an assault on the senses that leaves you dumbfounded and dazed, and without anything to moor onto. Almost every single actor is on screen for one of two purposes: quips or exposition. These are not characters but devices for words that ultimately don't make sense. Wahlberg has two different female sidekicks. For the first half, he's got a plucky teen that serves as a surrogate daughter figure. Izabella (Isabella Moner) is a kid with attitude and carefully arranged strands of hair that always fall over her face in every single shot in the entire movie. Izabella's introduction actually might be the highlight of an otherwise soul-crushing experience. Then Wahlberg leaves for England and he adopts a new sidekick, this time the hot smart woman who changes into a more comfortable outfit but literally keeps her heels. Vivian (Laura Haddock) is pretty much the next in a long line of highly sexualized, tawny female characters under Bay's alluring gaze (I wrote about the second film: "Women don't seem to exist in the Michael Bay world, only parts and pieces of women."). Her mother doesn't care about the end of the human world, or her daughter's many academic credentials, and instead pesters her about getting herself a man. This leads to one of the film's worst comedic moments, as Vivian's mother and friends giggle and eavesdrop on her and Wahlberg trashing a library as a spontaneous bout of sexy time. Wouldn't it be weird for anyone's mother to take pleasure in listening to your escapades and offer a play-by-play? But the strangest characters are Anthony Hopkins' Sir Edmund Burton and his 4-foot robot ninja (voiced by Jim Carter). You can clearly tell that Hopkins didn't care at all what he was saying. He uncorks ungainly monologues with relish and then transitions into strained comedy as a doddering old man. The robot butler begins as a C3PO-esque prim and proper servant with a disarming fighting ability, and it works. However, as the movie progresses, the robot butler gets downright belligerent and seemingly drunk. It's truly bizarre, as if this robot is acting out to be seen like he's one of the cool kids, but whom exactly is he trying to impress? At one point, he tells Wahlberg that he is "on my shit list" and torpedoes out of a submarine, brings back fish, prepares a sushi dinner for the humans while supplying ingredients that were totally not found on a WWII-era sub that was parked as a tourist locale up until 20 minutes ago. The character makes no sense and seems to bounce around behavioral extremes. Take this passage late into the film: Robot Butler: "Of all the earls I've served-" Me: "You were the greatest?" Robot Butler: "-You were the coolest." Me: "Whaaaaaaaa?" Another confusing part of the film is the setting of its story. We're five movies in to an alien civil war taking place on Earth, so you would assume that normal life shouldn't feel normal after so many catastrophes. Egypt was destroyed in the second film (only Six Wonders of the World left in your punch card, Bay), Chicago was decimated in the third film, and China was blown up in the fourth film. It's about time that people started paying attention to these things and behaving differently. A new government agency is tasked with hunting down Transformers and there are war zone portions of the world that are quarantined, but that's about it. I initially thought this fifth movie was going to take place in a somewhat post-apocalyptic Earth where human beings have to struggle to survive. That's not Transformers 5 at all. It seems all too easy to ignore reality; Wahlberg's daughter is away at college. After four movies, the world of this franchise needed a jump in its stakes. Bay's films have always possessed an alarming sense of urgency but it rarely feels earned. Characters yelling, running, and explosions going off like fireworks isn't the same thing as genuinely developed stakes. Another confusing aspect of Transformers 5 is Bay's jumbled aspect ratios (i.e. how wide the frame of the movie is presented). Sizeable portions were shot on IMAX, which has become all the rage for action movie directors since Nolan's The Dark Knight. I expected that. What I didn't expect was three different aspect ratios that jumped from shot to shot. Two characters will be having a conversation and the aspect ratio will cycle and it rips me out of the movie every time (there are SIX credited editors). The Dark Knight's IMAX sequences worked because they were sustained sequences. I expect the higher-grade IMAX film stock for the expansive action or picturesque landscapes to take in the natural splendor. What I wasn't expecting was measly interior conversations to be filmed in IMAX. Did I really need to watch a conversation with Vivian and her mother in IMAX to fully appreciate their bookshelf? Like much else in this perfunctory movie, this game of pin-the-tail-on-the-aspect-ratio makes no sense. I don't normally like to quote myself, but reading over my concluding paragraph of 2011's Dark of the Moon, I was struck by how much of my assessment could equally apply to the fifth film, even down to the exact running-time: "Transformers: Dark of the Moon is likely everything fans would want from a franchise built around the concept of robots that fight. There's wanton destruction, a plethora of noisy explosions, and plenty of eye candy both in special effects wizardry and pouty, full-lipped women. But at a colossal 150-minute running time, this is a Transformers film that punishes as much as it entertains. There's really no reason a movie about brawling robots should be this long. There's no reason it should have to resort to so much dumb comedy. There's no reason that the women should be fetishized as if they were another sleek line of sexy cars. There's no reason why something labeled a 'popcorn movie' can't deliver escapist thrills and have a brain too." Take this assessment and times it by ten for The Last Knight. The incomprehensible plotting, infantile humor, nonchalant misogyny, empty action bombast, and dispiriting nature of the film are enough to suck the life out of you. I was bored tremendously and contemplated walking out on the movie (I stayed for you, dear reader). It feels like the screenplay was put into a blender. Transformers 5 is exhausting and exhaustively mechanical, and if this is the first start in a larger Expanded Transformers Cinematic Universe (ETCU?) then resistance may be futile. Still, it's worth fighting against brain-dead spectacle that only moves you to the exits. Nate's Grade: D
Nate Zoebl
The Transformers franchise has had its ups and downs. How far up and how far down is up to you, because I think this is one of the most divisive franchises out there today. Look, I enjoyed the original live-action film quite a bit. The second isn't good, the third one was a little better, but ever since the original cast left, this franchise has been digging itself an even deeper hole. I didn't have any hopes going into this film, other than the fact that I was hoping for it to be the best one in the franchise. I don't hope to dislike a film and for the most part, I find almost all of these movies tolerable, but Transformers: The Last Knight isn't only the worst film in the franchise, it's one of the worst films I've seen in a very, very long time. I have very few positives to say about this movie, so this may seem like more of a rant, but let's dive right in. With a story crafted by four writers, there will always be conflict as to what fits into a film. Personally, I believe that a film should have no more than two writers, due to the fact that the term "too many cooks in the kitchen" is referenced far too often. The premise of this film is all over the place. The opening to this movie tells the audience that the Transformers have been here since the ancient times, which makes no sense in continuity with the first film, but that's another story. Optimus has his own story on his planet, which the film hardly ever focusses on, and characters/locations from previous films are shown/referenced to show that you're still watching the same franchise. With the addition of Anthony Hopkins unravelling the history of the Transformers, this film just becomes a giant bore, making you wish for an awesome climax, which also never happens. The conclusion to the previous film had Optimus leaving Earth in search of his creator. This small aspect of the last instalment is the only thing that gave any kind of promise to this one being interesting. That being said, they pretty much abandon that for the majority of the movie, rarely ever showing what Optimus is up to until the third act. Sure, sometimes saving the best for last works, but when the most interesting thing happening in the movie forces you to wait and then lets you down in the third act, what was the point of the movie anyways? I can't stress enough how disappointing and hilariously executed the plot twists are throughout this film. Without spoiling anything, the big plot twist that reveals who the last remaining knight is, is the most I've chuckled at a movie in a while. The film asks you to suspend your disbelief, even for the standards of a Transformers movie, and it was at that point that I lost complete interest, which is really saying something, because it was the most interesting aspect about the movie that ends up ruining the movie. We all know if this film makes a lot of money (which it probably will) we're going to see more movies, but in terms of quality, Transformers: The Last Knight is the final nail in the coffin for me. It's one thing when a movie fails to deliver on the one thing that the previous instalment promised, but another thing entirely when the film at hand seems to be adding addition sub plots in order to pad out the run time. From bad humour (again), to cool action that you need to wait two hours to see (again), to the build up of Optimus being the villain, only to completely thrown that away for a twist that is meant to be taken seriously, but ends up being hilarious, this movie is the definitive death of the franchise that has already been dead in the water many times. Look, I'm sure some people may find enjoyment out of this movie, but I would have to ask why that is. From horrible dialogue, to an insanely convoluted premise, to the best characters hardly ever being present, to a climax that is too ridiculous to take seriously, Transformers: The Last Knight is officially the first Transformers movie that I absolutely hate. So take this as an even bigger warning, because when people were tearing apart the second and third instalments of this franchise, I was one of the first to defend them for being dumb fun popcorn flicks, and as bad as Transformers: Age of Extinction was, at least it felt like a continuation of the franchise. With everything this movie tries to accomplish, it also makes itself the most distant from the series. Aside from maybe one or two chuckles and a couple of cool battle sequences, Transformers: The Last Knight is the worst film I've seen in all of 2017. It's easily the worst in the franchise and I can't stress enough to not spend your money on this movie. This film is so drawn out that I fear even kids will be bored out of their mind. Most films don't need reboots, but if they want to make more Transformers movies, please start from scratch, because there is no coming back from this atrocity.
KJ Proulx
Poorly-stretched plot, bland characters, hot-garbage action and senseless direction: everything you'd expect from a Transformers film. The Last Knight brings the 'Bayhem' to an excruciating (and final) peak and lands it as the worst of the franchise. 1/5
Eugene Bernabe
Transformers: The Last Knight Quotes


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What real reader does not yearn, somewhere in the recesses of his or her heart, for a really literate, first-class thriller – one that chills the body with foreboding of dark deeds to come, but warms the soul with perceptions and language at once astute and vivid? In other words, a ghost story by Jane Austen.
Austen we cannot, alas, give you, but Susan Hill's remarkable Woman In Black comes as close as the late twentieth century is likely to provide. Set on the obligatory English moor, on an isolated causeway, the story has as its hero one Arthur Kipps, an up-and-coming young solicitor who has come north to attend the funeral and settle the estate of Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. The routine formalities he anticipates give way to a tumble of events and secrets more sinister and terrifying than any nightmare: the rocking chair in the nursery of the deserted Eel Marsh House, the eerie sound of pony and trap, a child's scream in the fog, and, most dreadfully, and for Kipps most tragically, the woman in black.
So, yep, a good old English Gothic. Hill provides a smoothly paced, carefully detailed ghost story, meditative in tone and full of lovely, eerie descriptions of the silvery salt marshes and sudden "sea frets" (fogs) that surround the requisite abandoned mansion.
Unfortunately, I can't think of much other praise for the book beyond words like "accomplished" and "polished." Hill's easy mastery of all the conventions of the genre – the meticulously built-up suspense, the confident young narrator whose rationality slowly buckles – has the effect of making it all feel rather tidy and expected, particularly since her prose feels about the same. In the twisty-turny thrillery department – I guessed the overall shape of the plot about 20 pages in, and foresaw most of the twists after that well in advance.
All in all, a pleasantly chilly read for a winter night, with one or two lingeringly unsettling images, but nothing that really bit deep.


text:
Southern US Army Recruits So Overweight They Threaten 'Military Readiness'
https://sputniknews.com/military/201801181060839733-southern-US-army-recruits-overweight-threaten-military-readiness/
A recent study reveals that US Army recruits from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas "are significantly less fit, and consequently are more likely to encounter training-related injuries than recruits from other US states."
The findings, published by South Carolina military college The Citadel, the US Army Public Health Center and the American Heart Association, reveal that regardless of gender, soldiers from those states are 22 to 28 percent more likely to be injured during training.
© AFP 2019 / Bonny Schoonakker
US Plans to Bolster Military Capabilities in Afghanistan With Drones, Personnel
"Our results suggest that the states identified here pose a greater threat to military readiness than do other states. Each recruit lost to injury has been estimated to cost the Department of Defense approximately $31,000," reads the study, published earlier this month in the Public Health Management and Practice journal.
The report also warns that "physical inactivity and obesity are well recognized among the most critical public health challenges of the 21st century," explaining that one third of Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 are too overweight to meet military service requirements.
The aim of the analysis, led by Citadel Health, Exercise and Sport Science professor Daniel Bornstein, is to motivate those states and their federal organizations to establish policies that encourage more physically active lifestyles.
"It is our hope that the states identified through this analysis, along with federal entities, work to establish policies and environments proven to support physically active lifestyles," Bornstein said in recent statement.
© Photo : Driedprawns
Pyongyang, Seoul Agree to Reopen Military Hotline in Yellow Sea District
"If such actions were taken, physical fitness levels among residents of these states would rise and each state's disproportionate burden on military readiness and public health could be minimized," he added.
According to retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, the findings are a disturbing insight into the real national security threat posed by obesity and physical inactivity.
"I know firsthand the challenges faced in addressing the fitness levels of our youth after having served as commander of all US Army basic training units," Hertling said.
"While commanding in combat, I saw the effect training-related injuries had on mission accomplishment [and] in basic training, the number of unfit recruits forced changes to our physical training procedures and dining menus," he added.
More US soldiers come from the South than from any other US region.
Three Killed as Military Training Plane Crashes in Turkey - Reports
At Least Seven Killed in Military Helicopter Crash in Colombia – Army
Ankara to Prevent All Military Support to Syrian Kurds' YPG Militia
Tehran Reiterates 'Access to Military Sites is Not Part of Nuclear Deal'
overweight, health, obesity, military, United States

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Margetts, H. & Escher, T., (2007) Understanding governments and citizens on-line: learning from e-commerce. Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA). Chicago, USA 30 Aug - 2 Sept.
by Helen Margetts (Oxford) and Tobias Escher (Oxford).
This paper has been presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in Chicago (30 August - 2 September 2007).
Economists studying commercial activity on-line argue that the most significant difference between on-line and off-line commerce is the ability of firms to 'know who your customers are and treat them differently' (Vulkan 2006), customizing prices and offerings. This difference comes from the huge amount of data generated by on-line transactions, in terms of historical records, usage statistics and real-time data. Yet in political life, governmental organizations and political parties have been far slower to use such data to improve their service offerings and devise innovative policy interventions, such as differential pricing and personalized information provision. Likewise, political scientists lag behind economists in terms of analyzing new on-line relationships between citizens and political organizations, for example through the use of experiments and modelling of transaction data. This paper investigates ways in which political scientists might also further understanding of on-line political behaviour, using analysis of webmetric data and the results of laboratory experiments where subjects are incentivized to simulate social choices on-line. The findings might be used by governmental organizations to feed into service improvements and policy innovation processes.


text:
Eurohypo flags share offering (DE)
Eurohypo could make a mass secondary offering of shares as soon as the summer, Bernd Knobloch chief executive, said yesterday. He told Handelsblatt, the business daily: 'We will be ready for the capital markets in the second half of the year. Real estate banks are in fashion at the moment.'
Currently, the group has only a 2 per cent free float, with the balance controlled by the big banks Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and Dresdner Bank, out of which it was spun three years ago.
The offering could come hot on the heels of an IPO by Premiere, which on Monday said it planned to raise up to €500m ($653m) as early as March. Both plans are seen by the market as ambitious, given the scant appetite for German IPOs last year.
There were only five flotations in Germany last year, including a messy €1.6bn listing by Postbank, the post office bank.
Eurohypo has been preparing aggressively for a full market listing, reflecting the desire among its shareholder banks to distance themselves from a non-core business that cost them hundreds of millions of euros in bad debt provisioning.
When Eurohypo was spun off, the banks were forced to back it with €1bn of provisioning guarantees.
In November, the group struck a deal with Citigroup to manage €2.4bn of bad debts. A further €1.4bn of bad debt could now be handled by that platform.
When Eurohypo was created, the partners pledged to increase the initial 2 per cent free float to 25 per cent by the end of 2004. The scale of the balance sheet clean-up delayed the operation. The plan now is to float more than 50 per cent.
Source: Financial Times


We're on the road for the first time in 2015 this weekend, with the first of two episodes from the 10th annual Victoria Whisky Festival in Victoria, British Columbia. The weekend kicked off with the annual Canadian Whisky Awards presentation Thursday night at the Hotel Grand Pacific, including a special Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Forty Creek founder John Hall. We'll hear from John and Canadian Whisky Awards founder Davin de Kergommeaux on WhiskyCast In-Depth. In the news, Montreal police are looking for a robber with very expensive taste in whisky following a holdup Thursday at the SAQ's flagship store in Montreal, Collingwood Rye takes Canadian Whisky of the Year honors, and Beam Suntory plans to export Alberta Premium for the first time.


text:
Economy and Policy
Consumers, but Not Foreign Bourses, Defy Stock Slide
Updated Oct. 16, 2000 12:01 am ET / Original Jan. 19, 2020 11:50 am ET
J ust when will the markets, the pundits and the policy makers finally wake up to the fact that the U.S. economy is still humming along at the same feverish pace of the past five years? Up until last week, my theory had been that the watershed moment would come on the Friday morning of the 27th of this month, soon after the Bureau of Economic Analysis issues its advance estimate for third-quarter growth in gross domestic product.
Now, it's quite possible that the headline number will be dragged down by a slowdown in inventory building from the rapid rate of the second quarter. But analysts do readily grasp the importance of that thing called final sales, which is GDP minus the change in private inventories. Indeed, the common perception is that a quarterly slowdown in inventory building inevitably leads to a rebound in the next quarter, especially if final sales are strong.
So if, as now seems likely, third-quarter final sales growth prints at an annual rate of close to 5%, up markedly from the second quarter's 3.9%, then how easy will it be to continue to believe that the boom has come to an end?
As noted, that's what I theorized until last week. But the past week's awful events -- the market crash, the oil price spike, the death toll in the Middle East -- might now encourage Street economists to dismiss all signs of strength and to keep looking for that downturn that is just beyond the next hill.
As a case in point, analysts chose to dismiss the significance of Friday's news that September retail sales ran a wayabove-consensus 0.9%, which brought the three-month growth rate in real retail sales to an annual 7.7%. And somehow the irony was lost that auto sales led the rise, with a 1.4% increase that was the strongest since February's 1.5%, even though stock prices in September showed their worst performance since March.
So far, at least, the shopping public doesn't appear to be nearly as concerned about the shrinking equity market as are the commentators on CNN, whose personal portfolios are undoubtedly much larger.
As one indication, September's retail sales figure probably means that real consumption growth over the first nine months of this year will uncannily match that in the corresponding '99 stretch, even though last year's shoppers enjoyed a soaring bull market, while this year's haven't been nearly as lucky.
Or consider that the MBA index of mortgage applications continued to run near its record high through the first week in October. Somehow, consumers still feel emboldened to buy this most basic of household durables, undoubtedly because they're lured by the backup in mortgage interest rates, not to mention the evidence of their own rising incomes.
The year is finally putting Wall Street's theory of the one-legged boom to a severe test. That theory held that the boom that began in 1996, and that consistently confounded their expectations, was due solely to the greatest bull market in history. It's time for them to master the theory of the three-legged boom, the other two legs being the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years and the highest housing affordability ratio in more than two decades.
As the chart on this page shows, equity prices as measured by the comprehensive Wilshire 5000 index plunged 10.6% from the beginning of this year through Thursday's close. But the chart also shows that as the U.S. market went, so went the markets in Tokyo, London and Frankfurt. Throughout this year, every time we caught cold, they became ill, too. The day may come when the U.S. economy is no longer the world economy's locomotive, but that day hasn't come yet.
The envelope, please: Americans win Nobel
M aybe the Nobel Prize committee secretly knew how pleasantly subversive it was to bestow the award last week on U.S. economists James Heckman and Daniel McFadden, but you wouldn't know it from the official statements.
Heckman supposedly got it "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples," and McFadden "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choices" statements that gave the media the impression that this year's winners were a couple of boring types specializing in what's called methodology.
But in McFadden's case, at least, a more appropriate script might have read, "for calling into question much of mainstream economic theory, including some of the work of past winners of the Nobel."
Check out McFadden's 1998 paper called "Rationality For Economists?" which declares intellectual war on "Chicago man," a term inspired by the gaggle of rational theorists at his own institution, the University of Chicago. "I will call a consumer Chicago man, if he conforms to the standard economic model," he writes. "Chicago man is associated with one-way flows from perceptions and tastes to the cognitive task of preference maximization."
That is, our Man from the Windy City pretty much knows what he wants, and goes after it. The circumstances he confronts never decisively influence his choice. For example, despite the experience of restaurateurs, he never uses price as a guide to the quality of the wines being offered. But as McFadden reports, somehow the second lowest-priced wine is usually the best seller on the wine list.
This belief in the immutability of Chicago man's actions inspired Nobel laureate economist Paul Samuelson to develop his famous theory of "revealed preference." (Samuelson won, in part, for "the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory.") Revealed preference theory assumes that the average consumer has an underlying preference scale that determines his buying decisions and that remains constant over time. Samuelson then used complex mathematical procedures to "map" the individual's preference scale on the basis of those decisions.
But all we can really say is that the choice of a wine reveals that man's preference scale on that particular evening. The following week, if the restaurant changes the prices and brands of the wines being offered, he'll probably choose a different wine and reveal a difference preference scale.
Lifetime perspective
A similar obsession with Chicago man inspired overlapping contributions to economic thought from Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and Franco Modigliani. Friedman, who won in part "for his achievements in the field of consumption analysis," called it the "permanent income hypothesis," while Modigliani, who won in part "for his pioneering analysis of savings," called it the "life cycle theory."
For both economists, the basic idea is that the average person employs a lifetime perspective when allocating funds between saving and consuming. Let him win $100 in the football pool and he will immediately anticipate spending the extra $1.55 by which this windfall gain augments his lifetime income. But as any financial planner will tell you, people sometimes take a lifetime outlook and sometimes don't.
To my mind, the Nobel laureate who raised Chicago man to the highest of intellectual arts was economist Gary Becker, who won "for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including non-market behavior." For Becker, Chicago man made virtually all the major life decisions, including when to marry and whether to divorce, and literally ran his family as though it were a business firm.
As McFadden writes, "Chicago man is an endangered species. Behavioral decision theory has accumulated experimental evidence that severely restricts his maximum range, and he is not safe even in markets for concrete goods where he was once thought secure."
By bestowing the award on McFadden this year, let's hope the Nobel committee hastens Chicago man's well-deserved demise.
E-mail:gene.epstein@barrons.com
J ust when will the markets, the pundits and the policy makers finally wake up to the fact that the U.


Amy Reviews "A Field Guide for Birds" And More!
The October/November 2017 shop newsletter for Amy's Golden Strand is out. I always look forward to these and this month's doesn't disappoint. The highlight for me is Amy's very thorough review of Carolyn Hedge Baird's latest book, Needlepoint Stitches A Field Guide to Birds. My copy just arrived a few days ago and I'm starting to read it so I was very curious about what Amy thinks.
But there is much, much more! New stitch guides are out and more on the way. There are lots of new accessories in Amy's shop. Amy shows off her Home Study progress, new canvases she got in Dallas, and of course her students' fabulous stitching.
Pour yourself a cup of your favorite beverage and enjoy.


text:
<?php

/**
 * Mage_Cms_IndexControllerTest
 *
 * @package    Mage_Cms
 * @subpackage Mage_Cms_Test
 *
 *
 * @uses PHPUnit_Framework_Magento_TestCase
 */
class Mage_Cms_Helper_PageTest extends Ibuildings_Mage_Test_PHPUnit_ControllerTestCase {

    /**
     * Member variable for the Page Helper
     *
     * @var Mage_Cms_Helper_Page
     **/
    protected $_helper;

    /**
     * Setup fictures and dependencies
     *
     * @return void
     * @author Alistair Stead
     **/
    public function setUp()
    {
        parent::setUp();
        $this->_helper = Mage::helper('cms/page');
    }

    /**
     * Teardown fictures and dependencies
     *
     * @return void
     * @author Alistair Stead
     **/
    public function tearDown()
    {
        parent::tearDown();
        unset(
            $this->_helper
        );
    }

    /**
     * getPageUrlShouldReturnString
     * @author Alistair Stead
     * @test
     */
    public function getPageUrlShouldReturnString()
    {
        $this->assertTrue(
            is_string($this->_helper->getPageUrl()),
            "getPageUrl does not return a string value"
        );
    } // getPageUrlShouldReturnString

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
L Catterton est une entreprise de capital-investissement (un fonds d'investissement) franco-américaine basée à Greenwich dans le Connecticut. Elle trouve ses origines en 1989 mais est issue de la fusion entre L Capital et Catterton en 2016. Ce fonds se concentre sur les entreprises du marché intermédiaire et les entreprises émergentes à forte croissance. L Catterton a réalisé plus de 200 investissements dans des marques de tous les segments de l'industrie de la consommation.

Historique
Catterton est fondée en 1989 sous le nom de Catterton-Simon Partners par Frank Vest et , avec l'ancien secrétaire américain au Trésor William Simon. Celui-ci, président de la société d'investissement privée , est, au début des années 1980, un investisseur.

En , Catterton, LVMH et Groupe Arnault, la holding familiale de Bernard Arnault, s'associent pour créer la L Catterton avec respectivement 60 et 40 %. Le partenariat combine les opérations de capital-investissement existantes en Amérique du Nord et en Amérique latine de Catterton avec le duo L Capital (investissements dans l'« art de vivre », les cosmétiques ou l'hôtellerie) et L Real Estate ; ces deux dernières réalisant déjà des opérations de capital-investissement et immobilières en Europe ainsi qu'en Asie. La société fusionnée, dirigée par les dirigeants de Catterton, s'appelle donc « L Catterton » et investit dans le monde entier à partir de 18 bureaux, ainsi que deux sièges, Greenwich et Londres. Cinq ans après sa création, elle dispose de 30 milliards de dollars sous gestion, faisant intervenir nombres d'investisseurs extérieurs, dont le fonds souverain singapourien GIC Private Limited. Elle est décrite par le magazine économique Challenges comme le .

Quelques investissements

 est un fonds , suivant et conseillant les entreprises dans lesquelles il investit ; celui-ci possède une prise de participation dans environ 200 entreprises, avec un retour sur investissement élevé, de l'ordre de 15 à 25 % nets chaque année. Face à la concurrence d'autres fonds tels Carlyle, Cinven, Blackstone ou Advent, le carnet d'adresses et le nom de .

 Jott (2021), marque Marseillaise de vêtements d'extérieurs
  (2021)
 Etro (2021)
  (2021)
  (2021)
 Hungryroot (2021), entreprise d'épicerie, américaine
 Zenyum (2021), entreprise de produits dentaires, basée à Singapour
 Birkenstock (2021) investissement estimé à quatre milliards d'euros par les analystes
  (2020)
  (2019)
 Ginza Six (2017)
  (2017)
 Pinarello (2016)
  (2015).

Notes et références

Voir aussi

Bibliographie

Articles connexes
 Coentreprise
 Société de portefeuille

Fonds d'investissement
Gestion d'actifs

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Śluza w Przegalinie – śluza komorowa w Gdańsku, w dzielnicy Wyspa Sobieszewska (na południowo-wschodnim krańcu wyspy), umożliwiająca żeglugę śródlądową między Martwą Wisłą i Przekopem Wisły. Wspólnie z portem rzecznym w Przegalinie stanowi węzeł wodny Przegalina.

Przeznaczeniem śluzy była również regulacja wód Wisły i zabezpieczenie przeciwpowodziowe dzielnic i osiedli Gdańska położonych nad Martwą Wisłą.

Obiekt hydrotechniczny w Przegalinie składa się z dwóch śluz: czynnej "Południowej" (powstałej w latach 1975–1982) i nieczynnej od roku 1992 "Północnej" (oddanej do użytku w roku 1895). Nad śluzą wybudowano most (łączący Wyspę Sobieszewską z Żuławami Gdańskimi), na który wprowadzono również trasę Gdańskiej Kolei Dojazdowej do Świbna. Śluza Północna została wpisana do rejestru gdańskich zabytków.

W kwietniu 2011 r. rozpoczęła się przebudowa śluzy z budową mostu zwodzonego nad kanałem, który stał się pierwszym w historii, zbudowanym od podstaw ruchomym mostem drogowym między Wyspą Sobieszewską a stałym lądem. Obiekt ma nośność klasy C, co m.in. pozwoliło na dojazd samochodów ciężarowych do późniejszej  budowy mostu zwodzonego między Wiślinką a Sobieszewem. Wykonawcą jest firma Mostostal Warszawa SA, zaś sama inwestycja, obejmująca także przebudowę układu drogowego ul. Akwenowej, została zrealizowana do połowy maja 2012 r. za kwotę 14,12 mln zł.

Od początku października 2019 przewidywany jest kolejny remont śluzy, który ma trwać do końca września 2021.

Zobacz też
 Gdańska Głowa
 Kiezmark
 Rzeczne lodołamacze na Wiśle

Przypisy

Linki zewnętrzne
 śluza w Przegalinie
 most zwodzony przy śluzie w Przegalinie
 Schemat śluzy i portu w Przegalinie
 strona Regionalnego Zarządu Gospodarki Wodnej

Budowle wodne w Gdańsku
Wyspa Sobieszewska
Przegalina
Mosty nad Martwą Wisłą
Mosty w Gdańsku
Wisła (rzeka)
Zabytki na Wyspie Sobieszewskiej


With all the weather emergencies going on this month, and resulting lost pets or rescued pets, it's good to think about what to do if an emergency results in your pet running (or swimming?!) away. We are impressed with the consideration that first responders and advance planners have made for "family" shelters where we can bring our pets with us when we evacuate. It's good to know the general public really does consider their pet part of the family and won't go without them. However, pets do get scared and run away in emergency situations when we can hardly get ourselves together to evacuate.
Here's a clever tip that I read about from the Florida Veterinarians. Take a selfie of yourself with your pet, or your family with your pet. Yes, you can identify your pet if you find him but will the shelter let you leave without proving that she's yours? Further it's best to have an actual photo - even one printed on regular printer paper - because traditionally the power is out in emergencies and our phones run out of juice. Here's hoping there are no readers out there that have lost a pet as the result of the hurricanes.


text:
Architecture All Study Guides Homework Help Lesson Plans
Identify, and then compare and contrast, the architectural styles of the cathedrals in Toulouse and Chartres.
The Basilica of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse is distinctly Romanesque, with its barrel vaults and rounded arches. In contrast, Chartres is distinctly Gothic, with its flying buttresses, pointed arches, and rose window. Even though the cathedrals feature several similar elements like vaults, arches, apses, and ambulatories, the different ways they approached these elements highlight differences in style. Romanesque cathedrals had thicker walls and darker atmospheres, while Gothic cathedrals had thinner walls, higher ceilings, more windows, and lighter atmospheres.
"Identify, and then compare and contrast, the architectural styles of the cathedrals in Toulouse and Chartres. " eNotes Editorial, 18 Nov. 2020, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/identify-and-then-compare-and-contrast-the-2540551. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023.
Quinn Abbate
Teacher (K-12), Professional Tutor
B.A. from Fordham University
Romanesque architecture flourished during the tenth through thirteenth centuries. It was meant to reflect elements of ancient Roman architecture. The Gothic style grew out of Romanesque and was born in France around the twelfth century, later spreading throughout Europe, and was popular until the sixteenth century. Gothic style is most known for differing from Romanesque style because it used pointed arches instead of rounded arches and introduced flying buttresses and ribbed vaults to cathedrals. But there is a lot more to it than that. For instance, Gothic architecture placed a specific emphasis on filling a space with light. This was a way to make the space feel heavenly, in contrast to Romanesque cathedrals which had thick walls and not many windows which created a dark, heavy atmosphere.
The Basilica of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse is the largest Romanesque church in Europe. Constructed around 1077, it is a prime example of Romanesque architecture, with its barrel vaults and rounded arches. Construction on the Chartres cathedral began in 1194, and it is considered by many to be a perfect example of Gothic architecture. It shared several elements with the Toulouse cathedral, including buttresses, vaulted ceilings, and arches. But its tall, flying buttresses, its pointed arches, and its rib-and-panel vaults are distinctly gothic. Also, consider how its famous rose window allows an incredible amount of light to flood the space. This is a distinctive development from the Romanesque style and is quite characteristic of the Gothic style.
Compare and contrast Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's and Philip Johnson's Seagram Building to Robert Venturi's Vanna Venturi House.
Why was St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, Australia, built?
Why is Gothic architecture called skeletal?
How is the difference between French Baroque architecture and Italian Baroque architecture a reflection of the political system of the seventeenth...
What is Brutalist architecture?
What are the differences between Roman and Greek temples?
Latest answer posted May 13, 2021 at 4:25:15 PM
What style of architecture does the Basilica of Saint-Denis represent? What are some of the defining characteristics of that style?
Latest answer posted November 08, 2020 at 4:23:07 PM
Analyze the use of definition in Paul Goldberger's "The Heatherwick Effect."
Latest answer posted November 27, 2013 at 6:09:48 AM
What is the design of the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, and what is the relationship between its interior and exterior? What statements did the patron and architect seek to communicate? How...
Latest answer posted February 03, 2013 at 8:41:39 PM
Explain Louis Sullivan's functionalism as it relates to the Wainwright Building in St. Louis.


The Home Builders & Remodelers Association of Northern Vermont is pleased to present the 50th Annual VT Home & Garden Show at the Champlain Valley Expo April 6th 9am-6pm and April 7th 9am-4pm.
Visit our Energy Pavilion to learn about the latest Energy Saving Products & Service.
Our Association's Mission is to Promote & Enhance the Business and Economic Environment Conducive to the Construction & Renovation of New and Existing Housing. Est. 1957 Come out and support your local professionals while having a wonderful time!


As the crypto world continues to expand, it's becoming clear that there won't be a single universal cryptocurrency. While Bitcoin remains one of the more popular digital currencies out there, Ethereum is quickly gaining traction.
For example, a recent report from Weiss Ratings assigned grades to dozens of cryptocurrencies based on a number of metrics, and Ethereum received a higher rating than Bitcoin. Yet as Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies become more desirable, crypto holders now require a single application to leverage all financial products in one place.
The Swiss-based startup Eidoo has solved this problem by creating a mobile app that serves as a multicurrency digital wallet for Bitcoin, Ethereum and all ERC20 tokens. Additionally, Eidoo functions as a hybrid exchange, allowing users to sell, buy, spend and convert cryptocurrencies on one platform.
Eidoo aims to simplify the interaction between the blockchain and its users to help make cryptocurrency mainstream. Eidoo does this by providing an easy-to-use application with a "human to blockchain" interface designed for all cryptocurrency needs. As a result, the complexity of the crypto world becomes easier to manage.
One of the main benefits of Eidoo is that the user experience is based on simplicity and control. Once users download the Eidoo mobile app, they can secure all their multi-asset accounts and addresses, as well as their signing keys. Eidoo simplifies and protects wallets by allowing users to access their cryptocurrencies in one place with one password, which is comprised of 12 words. In case of emergency, Eidoo also offers a "recovery tool" designed to provide users with their tokens in a simple manner.
Additionally, Eidoo just announced in a blog post that the Eidoo wallet will soon become "hypersmart" by integrating artificial intelligence algorithms from the Swiss company ORS SA. This will allow Eidoo users to automatically use AI algorithms when trading and investing crypto assets on the basis of their own preferences and risk profiles.
Another way Eidoo distinguishes itself from other popular cryptocurrency wallets is by automatically recognizing ERC20 tokens. According to Eidoo's white paper, it is currently not possible to enforce unique names and symbols on ERC20 tokens, meaning users can create new tokens that have the same name or symbol as existing ones. This becomes problematic, though, for the simple and secure use of a wallet. The Eidoo wallet solves this problem by implementing a special index that will group tokens issued by companies with legitimate tokens. Tokens that are not in this special index are labeled as "untrusted" in order to help people avoid scams.
In addition to its multicurrency wallet, Eidoo serves as a hybrid exchange which is expected to launch in the coming weeks. Currently, two teams — an Ethereum team and a Bitcoin team—are working on applications and the advancement of the Eidoo exchange.
The first pair of cryptocurrencies to be made available on the Eidoo exchange will be EDO/ETH (EDO is the Eidoo token). Subsequently, ERC20 token pairs will reportedly be launched.
The hybrid architecture of the Eidoo exchange allows users to maintain complete control over their funds in a simple manner. Users' accounts are based on an Ethereum smart contract, where tokens will be placed. This prevents the exchange from having unauthorized access to users' funds. Ethereum smart contracts are also used to settle and finalize trades.
The Eidoo exchange also utilizes an off-chain order book and server to provide end users with the familiar experience of traditional exchanges. Users will be able to create as many orders as their trading balance allows for, and they will not be charged until an order is matched and executed on Ethereum (smart contracts double-check the matching).
This process helps provide multiple layers of security, while accruing lower gas costs on-chain. This demonstrates how a hybrid approach will be a good scalability solution for exchanges in the future.
Also, similar to decentralized platforms, transactions between wallets will entail atomic swaps. This means trading operations can only take place with a full exchange; otherwise, nothing will happen.
It's also worth mentioning that the first time users open the Eidoo exchange, they will be asked to make a small ETH transaction to cover the Ethereum blockchain fees and to activate the smart contract to enable exchanges on the account.
As if a multicurrency wallet and hybrid exchange weren't enough, Eidoo plans to implement a decentralized marketplace and a debit card in the near future. As the crypto world continues to evolve, Eidoo realizes the importance of improving both technology and the user experience to help cryptocurrency become mainstream and accessible.


text:
Easy Virtue puede referirse a:

 Easy Virtue, una obra de teatro de 1924 del dramaturgo Noël Coward, sobre la que se inspiran las dos películas homónimas.
 Easy Virtue, una película británica de 1928 dirigida por Alfred Hitchcock.
 Easy Virtue, una película británica de 2008 dirigida por Stephan Elliott.


text:
Q: Django with Amazon S3 via boto3: ImproperlyConfigured I followed this tutorial to set up Amazon S3 with Django.
But as I'm using Python 3.3, I installed a Python-3 compatible fork of django-storages and boto3 instead.
Here is settings.py file:
AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME = os.environ['LIVIN_AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME']
S3_REGION_NAME = os.environ['LIVIN_S3_REGION_NAME']
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = os.environ['LIVIN_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID']
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = os.environ['LIVIN_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY']

AWS_S3_CUSTOM_DOMAIN = '%s.s3.amazonaws.com' % AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME
STATIC_URL = "https://%s/" % AWS_S3_CUSTOM_DOMAIN

# Tell the staticfiles app to use S3Boto storage when writing the collected
# static files (when you run `collectstatic`).
STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'storages.backends.s3boto.S3BotoStorage'

When I try, python manage.py collectstatic I get this error:
ImportError: No module named 'boto'
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
...
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Could not load Boto's S3 bindings.
See https://github.com/boto/boto

It seems the storage backend is the boto one, not the boto3 one.

A: All the configuration is OK, it's just a confusion.
To configure Amazon S3 with Django and Python 3+, I have to use :

*

*Python 3 compatible django-storages (named django-storages-redux)

*Standard boto package (boto3 has nothing to do with Python actually..)

So, pip install django-storages-redux, boto will work like a charm :)

A: Django-storages has built in python3 support now. To use django storages with boto3 the following worked for me:
pip install boto3
pip install django-storages==1.5.1  --> only version 1.5 and above have boto3 support.

use the following staticfiles_storage setting
STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'storages.backends.s3boto3.S3Boto3Storage'

instead of:
STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'storages.backends.s3boto.S3BotoStorage'

A: I follow to line of code error in file storages\backends\s3boto.py and found this error is missing package google_compute_engine

Solution: pip install google_compute_engine and collectstatic again.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
PowerPost
Democrats open investigation of White House security clearance process
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), pictured in 2017, announced the investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Karoun Demirjian
Congressional reporter focusing on national security
House Democrats are opening an investigation of the Trump White House's security clearance practices and what they are calling "grave breaches" of procedure that allowed potentially compromised people to access the country's most sensitive secrets.
The investigation, announced Wednesday by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), seeks both to expose why the White House allowed certain people with security clearance issues to continue to access sensitive information and to close those loopholes.
The panel also plans to challenge administration officials on why they have not been more responsive to congressional requests regarding the security clearance process, as required by law.
Among the people whose cases the panel plans to scrutinize are former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who recently pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials; Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, who did not disclose several contacts with foreign officials on his security clearance forms; and former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who was accused of spousal abuse.
Over the course of Trump's presidency, the committee's Democrats have sent letters to the administration asking for information regarding the security clearances of officials who were shown to have problems on their application forms or who were operating on interim clearances for abnormally long periods, and why the White House had not revoked the clearances of people who engaged in conduct that could have compromised their fitness to have access to sensitive information.
In a Wednesday letter to White House lawyer Pat Cipolline, Cummings reminded him that the White House had already acknowledged it needed to make adjustments.
"Last year, General John Kelly, President Trump's Chief of Staff at the time, conceded that there are major 'shortcomings' with the White House's security clearance process. He warned that the White House 'should — and in the future, must — do better,' " Cummings wrote, adding: "I agree."
The investigation will focus not just on Trump's time in the White House, but also on actions of his transition team, members of which also handled sensitive information with questionable clearances. Vice President Pence, who was chair of the transition team, received Cummings' letter, as did the FBI, the State Department and the National Rifle Association.
House Democrats are interested in learning whether security officials limited, suspended or turned down any White House staffers' applications to acquire permanent security clearances — a request that could disclose why the intelligence community never approved Kushner to view highly "sensitive compartmented information" despite his proximity to the president.
Other figures of note who are expected to be scrutinized under the probe include Flynn's son and transition team member, Michael Flynn Jr.; his former deputy, K.T. McFarland; his former Africa director, Robin Townley; and his eventual successor, John Bolton. Sebastian Gorka, the onetime deputy assistant to the president whose security clearance Kelly reportedly revoked, is also a subject of the probe.
Cummings did not include in his letter any pledge to investigate Trump's pledge last summer to revoke the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, who has frequently criticized the president's policies on television and Twitter.
Read more at PowerPost


text:
High & Dry: A Collaboration Surveying the American Desert
Thursday on the NewsHour, President Trump announces he's ending his legal battle to add a controversial citizenship question to the 2020 census.
Wednesday on the NewsHour, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta publicly addresses his role in the controversial 2008 prosecution of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Monday on the NewsHour, how residents of Southern California are coping with earthquake aftermath.
Tuesday on the NewsHour, new charges against billionaire Jeffrey Epstein renew attention to the problem of child sex trafficking in the U.S.
High & Dry: A Collaboration Surveying the American Desert | KCET
High & Dry
High & Dry is a long-term collaboration between photographer Osceola Refetoff and writer/historian Christopher Langley. Together they survey the legacy of human enterprise in the California desert.
Entrance to 'Burro' Schmidt Tunnel, Last Chance Canyon, CA, Infrared Exposure, 2011 | Photo: Osceola Refetoff.
High & Dry surveys the legacy of human enterprise in the California desert. Together, writer/historian Christopher Langley and photographer Osceola Refetoff will document human activity, past and present, to inform decisions about future development.
Surveying the legacy of human enterprise in the California desert, "High & Dry" is a partnership of writing and photography. Voice, structure and the nature of collaboration will be its subject as well as its process. We will be examining how images and words can enhance each other. There are big philosophical issues at stake: truth, beauty, inquiry, the very nature of language and visual information. First person explication and collaboration are complex and on-going investigations.
Osceola Refetoff introduced me to two books: "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee with photographs by Walker Evans and "Believing Is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography)" by Errol Morris. Long periods of discussion ensued as we shaped the overriding structure of the project, struggled to articulate our mission and got to know each other's working style.
We discovered we have much in common personally but we have lived very different lives. Refetoff lived all over the world in urban settings and seemed to know what he needed and wanted in the association. He had collaborated several times before.
I have lived in the Mojave at the edge of the Great Basin for forty-two years and during that time have developed an empathy with arid lands. In that sense I am very comfortable with the people of the desert. Osceola sees me as an "insider," while he remains an "outsider."
"It's a Mess Without You!," Cinco, CA, 2011. Abandoned farm worker's trailer, now demolished. Currently construction site for Beacon Solar Energy Project. | Photo: Osceola Refetoff.
Natural vista 'despoiled' by water tank, painted rocks and rear end of Chris Langley's dog, Simon, 2013. | Photo: Osceola Refetoff.
I feel at home with the people there. In turn, many desert inhabitants appear comfortable, after a moment of trust building, in opening up and telling me their stories. We both share an overriding passion and love for the desert and that has brought us to work together.
In our mission statement we wrote:
The myth of California's deserts is charged with human hope and inextricably tied to that most American ambition: the pursuit of freedom and happiness. Iconic images of these arid lands are part our cultural DNA, essential to our collective understanding of the West and to our assumptions of what it means to be an American.Against these grand ideals exists a loose patchwork of struggling communities, military compounds and vast open spaces, long a refuge for loners, dreamers, and broken spirits. In the near future, immense wind and solar projects will likely dominate many areas, transforming the landscape in ways that are complex and irreversible.
I wanted to learn more about the desert and to write about that understanding. I was not sure beyond that what I brought to the project. The collaboration between writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans became not so much a guide as a departure point. Now as I read and studied Agee's writing, I understood how brilliant a writer he was.
Refetoff and I continued to read the Morris book in our respective locations. Then one night he emailed me a section of Agee's application for a Guggenheim grant made in 1937. In the application, Agee had written, "It should be as definitely a book of photographs as a book of words: in other words, photographs should be used profusely, and never to 'illustrate' the prose. One part of the work, in many senses the crucial part, would be a strict comparison of the photographs and the prose as relative liars and relative reproducers of the same matter. The sectioned that I have italicized jumped out to me. I gained a new understanding as soon as I read it.
Water Tank, Lone Pine, CA, Infrared Exposure, 2013. 'Despoiled' vista receives more formal treatment. Dogs instructed to clear frame prior to exposure. | Photo: Osceola Refetoff.
I realized that I was not there merely to write about or even caption the photographs Refetoff took, as I had feared. Instead, I was there to bring a kind of meta-description or commentary to the project. This led to the following flash of insight now part of our mission: Our objective is to engage you with compelling images and stories of an extraordinary region we hold dear to our hearts....Our hope is that you will find beauty not only in its spectacular vistas, but also the puzzling juxtapositions and remarkable narratives that embody this distinctly American landscape.
When we began our association, I had started writing a "Landscape Journal," which in the first year swelled to hundreds of pages. It was a personal exploration of all these issues, which we are discussing in reference to landscape, photography and the exact nature of the project's teamwork. When it became clear I would be writing "Dispatches" and he would be adding accompanying photographs in the spirit of Agee and Evans, I thought my journal and all the various experimental styles and voices I had used would be of great assistance. The journal was a wonderful assistance to my life as a writer but not as a collaborator writing the dispatches. They did not translate into the "Dispatch" form I was trying to create, with Agee's example in mind.
Agee again sets the bar very high when he describes the writing he (and I, as it turns out) finally set as a goal. In the application he wrote: "The record I want to make of this is not journalistic; nor on the other hand is any of it to be invented." He identifies it as 'scientific,' yet not acceptable to many scientists. He labels it as skeptical and analytic. Agee identifies two points: "to tell everything accurately as possible, and to invent nothing." By the way, Agee did not receive a Guggenheim.
Of extreme importance to Refetoff and me, as it was to Agee and Walker, is how this kind of writing works with photography and how they affect each other. More importantly we must explore and understand how they can best enhance each other in the pursuit of truth. In that spirit we begin.
William 'Burro' Schmidt Cabin (at left) and Abandoned Caretaker's Tunnel, Last Chance Canyon, CA, Infrared Exposure, 2011 | Photo: Osceola Refetoff.
The first dispatch finally published on our website was one on Burro Schmidt where our collaborative explorations of the western desert had begun. I concluded that essay with:
Burro's secret disappeared with him. I know many of the facts of his story. I know it tells something very important about the desert. The desert is a cruel cold mistress to which some men dedicate their passions and their loyalty. It is all about solitude, work that breaks you physically, and the dreams that often remain forsaken. For the people who stick around for a lifetime, to use Refetoff's words, "Something compels them to be in the desert..."
Our motivations are simple: we share a passion for the desert. We have no particular agenda; we are not funded by any agency, art group or any group involved in political advocacy. We want to give a voice to the people of the desert, who like Agee and Evans' Alabama sharecroppers, have been marginalized to the point of silence.
We are consulting with the people who live in the desert and who are never consulted. The dialogue with these people will take place in local media, and in art installations and exhibits, and on the internet through our website and social media. Books will gather the work together and preserve it for future consultation.
Our next major focus will be on the town of Trona, California and its tenacious population. Trona, a hundred-year-old mining town just south of Death Valley, clings to life despite some of the harshest economic conditions we have witnessed in California this century.
Searles Valley Minerals Plant, Trona, CA, Infrared Exposure, 2011 | Photo: Osceola Refetoff.
With a shrinking population (from both people who have decided to migrate to greener pastures and workers who have resettled their families to the nearby city of Ridgecrest), challenges to the survival of the town are growing. Yet, mining the brine in the three plants continues, producing over a million dollars a day of "product" including borax, potash, soda ash and other chemicals. We have set the scene in our dispatch, "Emerald City of the Salts." Many issues and decisions will come to bear in the near future for the desert. Green energy projects, solar plants and windmill fields, are spreading like a wild fire across the open wind swept lands. The efficacy of the desert as a garbage dump and toxic disposal area, not to mention a military test site, are questions that are growing and have enormous impact for the future.
'Never Say Never, 'Katlynn & Alyssia, Trona Centennial Weekend, 2014 | Photo: Osceola Refetoff.
We intend to tell the peoples' story with compassion. We will endeavor to minimize the voyeuristic nature of the photographic process. In general, Trona and the western arid lands are conundrums. Only with both photography and writing do we have any hope to untangle and tell the story of the desert and its people.
Our desert project "High & Dry: dispatches from the land of little rain" is well underway. The early results are gathered at www.desertdispatches.com and on Facebook. A solo exhibition of Refetoff's desert landscape photography was presented recently at the Los Angeles Art Association Gallery 825. A four-artist exhibit quickly followed.
We look forward to reporting future developments of High & Dry here at Artbound.
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Owens Valley


The Henderson collection is constructed of American alder hardwood solids and veneers, stocked in a cafe catalyzed oil based lacquer finish that provides extra durability against everyday wear and tear. Features solid wood tops, bronze finish hardware, mortise and tenon joinery to ensure strength and durability and adjustable leveler foot glides. English dovetail drawers feature full extension metal ball bearing drawer glides. Side table features one storage drawer. May not be shown in all locations.