⁣Are you a believer in an alien presence in our skies? Rumours of such phenomena date back over a century and, indeed, strange sightings in the skies go back long before that, though they were previously explained in different ways. Talk to modern UFO enthusiasts and you will tend to be regaled with a lot of loosely connected theories about disparate phenomena. A Tear In The Sky follows a project which is trying to apply a more scientific approach by narrowing its focus and applying close, multi-method observation to one specific phenomenon: the ‘tictacs’ frequently observed off the coast of California.

Leading the effort, and directing and presenting this documentary, is Caroline Cory, who has an MA in Counselling Psychology from the University of Austin and has built a successful career as an author and public speaker focused on extra sensory perception and ‘ufology’. She’s supported by Michio Kaku, who teaches theoretical physics in new York and has produced a number of peer reviewed papers, despite being best known for highly simplified pop science presentations. On the ground are computational physicist Kevin H Knuth and Matthew Szydagis, who graduated in philosophy before going on to teach physics at Albany. In the studio is William Shatner, whose principal qualification seems to be that he’s Cory’s lifelong idol, but who is also a familiar face for international (if not necessarily interplanetary) viewers.

The project is centred on a particular area between the California coast and the island of Catalina, which enables equipment set up at different points to triangulate and determine the position of observed phenomena as well as comparing observations from different standpoints. The team uses standard imaging, infrared and radiation tracking as well as comparing sightings to the position of known aircraft in the unregulated airspace (which latter seems especially important after we see Cory getting excited about a comparatively slow moving, blinking white light which looks very much like a plane). There is, of course, no accounting for unknown flights, and one wonders if local police forces will take an interest in the film when trying to identify drug trafficking routes.

It probably looks very impressive to a lot of viewers, and it certainly represents a serious effort, but aspects of the team’s approach raise concern, such as their inability to understand how an object visible from one position with a regular lens can be invisible from another with a fisheye lens (not a mystery at all to anyone with a decent grounding in optics). The real problem lies not in how data is captured but in how it is analysed, at which point there is so much jumping to conclusions and post-hoc justification that it’s difficult to consider this science at all. Despite the proud boasts at the end of the film, this couldn’t hope to survive peer review – and yet that’s not to say that the data itself isn’t interesting, or that the film has nothing to offer.

Cory does, to her credit, take a little time to explore terrestrial phenomena which could potentially be responsible for sightings like these. There’s an all too brief detour into the world of experimental aircraft, including ‘bat drones’ launched by catapult and others which can fly at an astonishing Mach nine. There’s also a little bit about the history of the sightings, though here no specific allowance is made for the possibility that military technology was advancing more quickly than official releases suggested. Navy veterans report ‘men in khaki’ arriving on their boat after one such incident and confiscating or erasing all possible recordings. This is presented as if it were evidence of a conspiracy to cover up the existence of extra terrestrial life, when a conspiracy to cover up the existence of new types of aircraft seems distinctly more likely.

It’s this tendency to try to fit evidence to pre-existing ideas which undermines the film’s scientific credibility, but it’s intriguing as a study of the mechanics of belief. One military participant says that he doesn’t mind what kind of explanation he gets as long as he can have an answer. There is evidence of the traumatising effect of being ordered not to accept what one has seen with one’s own eyes. Others grasp at every little indicator that they might have been right all along in ascribing what they saw to the presence of aliens. Aliens represent hope, after all, and an escape from the mundane world.

This is an independent film and its production standards are not the greatest. Cory makes some odd choices as director, from camera angles which make her look as if she’s talking to an unseen third party, to the use of dramatic music more befitting of a soap opera than a serious documentary. Towards the end there is a lot of repetition and points are overstated in a way which makes the whole thing feel like an amateur propaganda piece. That said, it will no doubt hold some appeal for UFO enthusiasts, whether they are true believers or not, and, as one participant points out, it establishes that with today’s technology there is a lot that average people can do to explore the world (and perhaps others) for themselves.

REVIEW RESOURCE: https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/r....eview/a-tear-in-the-

⁣Take a journey around the world and back in time with anthropologist Dr. Niobe Thompson, and discover the miracle of our species.
Three-part documentary series and interactive web documentary The Great Human Odyssey explores the unlikely survival and the miraculous emergence of Homo sapiens as the world’s only global species. Ancient climate research has revealed that we evolved during the most volatile era since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Just like the many other kinds of human who once shared our world, we should have died away. Instead, our species survived to populate every corner of the planet, against all the odds.
Over 18 months of filming, Niobe followed in the footsteps of our ancestors across locations on five continents, working with 22 Canadian, American and South African cinematographers, including aerials, underwater, and ultra-slow motion specialists. Equipped with the next generation of ultraHD 4K cameras, film crews worked in some of the most hostile environments on Earth, including Arctic Siberia, remote South Pacific islands, tropical rainforests and African deserts.

On Papua New Guinea’s Sepik River, Niobe witnessed the extremely rare skin cutting initiation of the Crocodile People. His crew was the first in film history to visit the Badjao – the world’s last breath-hold diving nomads – in their war-torn homeland in the southern Philippines. In Russia, they filmed over the course of a full year in a closed border zone on the Bering Strait, eventually succeeding in their goal of capturing a traditional Inuit nest raid on 200-meter high sea cliffs.
At the same time, their cameras had privileged access to one of the world’s leading ancient DNA laboratories, where research on early human remains is explaining the mysteries of our survival, including the enigma of our ancestral interbreeding with Neanderthals.
The Great Human Odyssey boasts a live symphonic and choral score by Darren Fung, recorded with members of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and ProCoro Canada at one of North America’s leading acoustic spaces, Edmonton’s renowned Winspear Opera Hall.
After watching the series, immerse yourself in a virtual reality experiment, walking in the shoes of Kalahari Bushmen, Chukchi reindeer herders or Badjao free-divers, through the interactive web documentary. A parallel crew of cinematographers and web developers worked alongside the film crew on location to animate these fascinating cultures through POV video interactions.

You can also travel back in time to the origins of our species, 4m years ago, and see how our planet’s shorelines, deserts and glaciers changed at key points in evolutionary history. Working with Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Sciences Lab, this animated visual representationof climate change is a first-ever.
The Great Human Odyssey site is packed with interviews, mini-documentaries, image galleries and text information to give audiences a rich and visually exciting tour of the science and filmmaking techniques behind The Great Human Odyssey.

⁣AI is taking over and nothing can stop it. Soon Artificial Intelligence will take over the planet and dispose of human life in the process. Robot rebellion is no longer fiction, it's reality and we have to act now for humanity to survive.

⁣⁣In 2017, the filmmaker Theo Anthony released “Rat Film,” an improbably poetic, intellectually dazzling, politically astute documentary on the seemingly prosaic topic of rats and their place in the modern urban landscape. “All Light, Everywhere,” Anthony’s new movie, ponders a more abstract, less earthbound array of subjects — the physiology of human vision, the history of photography, the ethics of surveillance — in a similar spirit of open-minded, morally urgent inquiry.

If the connections Anthony draws are sometimes vague and not always persuasive, that may be a risk built into his essayistic, undogmatic approach to reality.
And the attempt to capture reality in moving images happens to be what “All Light, Everywhere” is about. It starts with a quote from William Blake: “As the Eye — such the Object.” In other words, vision determines the shape of what is seen. Rather than a simple picture of reality, the camera selects, frames and interprets, often in the service of power and ideology.

This is especially worrisome when the camera is doing the work of law enforcement. Anthony’s main concern is the use of video and other forms of image-gathering in policing, a practice whose claims of objectivity come under steady, skeptical pressure.
Some of the pressure comes from voice-over narration, written by Anthony and read by Keaver Brenai, that bristles with rhetorical questions (“what future does history dream of?”) and theoretical formulations. The musical score, by Dan Deacon, adds an air of menace and suspense which sometimes overwhelms the images.

RESOURCE: https://memory.is/all-light-everywhere

⁣Facebook has a director of social good. She is called Hema and if she has a surname, we weren’t privy to it. The BBC’s Horizon team, as if bewitched at being granted unprecedented access to the social network, bowed to its ethos by captioning interviewees by first name only. But access is like sex: it’s not what you have, but what you do with it that matters.
We met David, the director of harmful behaviour (tough gig, if his task is to stop it, rather than enable it), Monika, who is head of global policy management, and Vlad, Facebook’s head of artificial intelligence, though he will always be The Impaler to me. Sadly, we didn’t get to see Nick, but David Cameron’s former fig leaf has become Mark Zuckerberg’s now he is Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs. Mention Cleggmania in Menlo Park and nobody will know what you are on about.
By rolling over and waving its paws in this way, Horizon abolished critical distance from the global techno-oligarchy with 3.1 billion users and pretensions to ensnare the rest of us. (Facebook is building eight more data centres in the next few years with the aim of doubling storage to accommodate our data.) It put us on chummy terms with the outfit at a vexed moment. Can it change after last week’s $5bn (£4bn) fine for privacy violations in the Cambridge Analytica data breach?
In a meta sense, that was fitting: murdering distance and importuning strangers with simulations of friendliness is Facebook’s MO. It is why revenue exceeded $55bn last year. In another sense, though, this documentary almost amounted to an hour-long commercial for which Zuckerberg didn’t pay.
We witnessed how Facebook is ostensibly striving to use technical fixes to annihilate the human bugs out there – the scammers, hatemongers, sextortioners, e-groomers, Nazis, hackers and black marketeers. This was fascinating in its own right. Can artificial intelligence be used to detect other artificial intelligences posing as humans? How can hate speech by emoji be eliminated?
Fascinating, too, was the cult-like induction ceremony for incoming engineers, tens of thousands of whom are being hired, to ensure Facebook no longer has difficult years like 2018. Soon, they will join the Facebook faithful. Why are there so many balloons in Facebook offices? Because staff have two birthdays, the second celebrating when they joined this evangelising outfit.
“We’re not a company that is designed to make money,” Kyle, director of product, told a room of so-called Newbs in London. No one so much as rolled an eye. “That means every product we make is tuned for ‘does it do good in the world?’” he continued. But what is good? Maybe connecting the world to Facebook, monetising data and believing both are self-evidently good are the problems.
Facebook treats its difficulties as external ones and its task is to seal itself from them. But the corruption is inside, part of the very organisation’s ethos. It is Horror Movie 101. Everyone interviewed here was, as it were, wearing Clegg’s fig leaf to hide that unacceptable truth. “We’re a community that is designed to create communities and let those communities make a difference in the world,” Kyle added.
But Facebook is a business not a community, and when it creates communities they sometimes make a difference in a bad way. “We don’t tolerate dicks,” said Jonny, head of internal communications. Instead, Facebook enables them. Tommy Robinson was jailed earlier this month for live streaming, via Facebook, defendants arriving at court in a sexual grooming trial.
One critic complained about how Facebook had “destabled democracy”. Horizon needed more eloquent dissenters. Maybe she meant that if Facebook is a horse and democracy is a door, the former has bolted and the latter is coming off its hinges. It was hard to be sure.
Back to the commercial. Hema told how her father, who had liver cancer, lost a litre of blood an hour. If there had been an online facility matching blood supply to demand, he need not have died so quickly.
So she made it her mission to establish just that facility for 70 countries where blood transfusions don’t happen because of supply problems. Cut to her team, thrilled that 11 million users have signed up to its blood market. We learned later, though, this initiative enables a black market for blood in India. An unintentional consequence, perhaps, but given earlier online scams, a foreseeable one.
The Horizon team never met Hema’s opposite number, the director of social bad. Chet (no surname) works in a basement tasked with reversing what happened in Facebook’s difficult 2018. Not the data breaches or live-streamed mass murder in Christchurch, but the really unacceptable thing, namely how 20% was slashed from the value of Facebook shares on news that its ad revenue per user was declining and user growth slowing. Such things can never happen again, Chet realises.
Fake news. Facebook has no director of social bad. No Chet in a basement. Nobody in the social network is tasked with squeezing more money from its users. Facebook is all good.
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/tv....-and-radio/2019/jul/

⁣This documentary about Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band picks up where Ron Howard left off – without any of the band’s music or even images
It’s not easy to make a documentary about the greatest album in history when you don’t have access to a single note of the music, but this documentary forges on and cashes in regardless, perhaps assuming its target audience already knows the band’s back catalogue (or won’t realise there’s no Beatles music in it). It cannily picks up the story where last year’s “official” doc – Ron Howard’s Eight Days a Week – left off: the pivotal year of 1967, when the band gave up touring, recorded Sgt Pepper and met the Maharishi.
This history is raked over by greying, second-tier talking heads in granular detail, right down to the design of the “get well soon” card John Lennon drew for George Harrison’s sister-in-law. But without the supporting music, or even images, there’s a dancing-about-architecture feel to the whole exercise. A good 10 minutes is devoted to the album’s iconic sleeve design, for example, without ever showing the sleeve itself.
... as 2023 gathers pace, we have a small favour to ask. A new year means new opportunities, and we're hoping this year gives rise to some much-needed stability and progress. Whatever happens, the Guardian will be there, providing clarity and fearless, independent reporting from around the world, 24/7.
Times are tough, and we know not everyone is in a position to pay for news. But as we’re reader-funded, we rely on the ongoing generosity of those who can afford it. This vital support means millions can continue to read reliable reporting on the events shaping our world. Will you invest in the Guardian this year?
Unlike many others, we have no billionaire owner, meaning we can fearlessly chase the truth and report it with integrity. 2023 will be no different; we will work with trademark determination and passion to bring you journalism that’s always free from commercial or political interference. No one edits our editor or diverts our attention from what’s most important.
With your support, we’ll continue to keep Guardian journalism open and free for everyone to read. When access to information is made equal, greater numbers of people can understand global events and their impact on people and communities. Together, we can demand better from the powerful and fight for democracy.
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/fi....lm/2017/may/26/it-wa

⁣An interview with Dr. Robert W. Malone on the suspicion of an alarming increase in mortality and its correlation with the widespread vaccination of US citizens against Covid 19.

⁣he film focuses on the historic files of the Disclosure Project and how UFO secrecy has been ruthlessly enforced-and why. The best evidence for extra-terrestrial contact, dating back decades, is presented with direct top-secret witness testimony, documents and UFO footage, 80% of which has never been revealed anywhere else.
The behind-the-scenes research and high-level meetings convened by Dr. Steven Greer will expose the degree of illegal, covert operations at the core of UFO secrecy. From briefings with the CIA Director, top Pentagon Generals and Admirals, to the briefing of President Obama via senior advisor John Podesta, chairman of the Hillary Clinton Campaign, we take the viewer behind the veil of secrecy and into the corridors of real power where the UFO secrets reside.
The viewer will learn that a silent coup d'état has occurred dating back to the 1950s and that the Congress, the President and other world leaders have been sidelined.

⁣They Can’t Hide This Any Longer… Some COVID-19 Patients Have Deadly Venom In Them
36 different shellfish toxins and snake venom are showing up in COVID-19 patients…
How did this end up in their blood, feces, or urine?
Some experts believe this so-called “respiratory” disease is actually an envenomation from the vaccine.
They’ve targeted people with toxins for decades…
Why wouldn’t this be the case now?
Did you know that the word “corona” means “crown for the king” and virus in Latin actually means “venom” so coronavirus very closely translates to “king venom”?
If you thought this film was eye-opening, then you won’t want to miss out on what we reveal next. It’s even more shocking… and the good news is, there are solutions!

⁣Directed by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente, the film is an initially intriguing—and then gradually more outlandish—examination of quantum physics (“the physics of possibilities”), the theoretical brand of science that supposedly helps us understand life’s most fundamental question: What is reality? Unfortunately, the film’s answer isn’t half as interesting as those posited by The Matrix, Fight Club, or Waking Life.

A collection of talking-head physicists, philosophers, religious scholars, and mystics (all of whom are deliberately unidentified until the end credits to obscure their dubious authority) casually toss about terms like “epistemic” and “gifts of intentionality” in arguing that reality—rather than being an external force—is something we shape internally, thus meaning that what’s happening within us determines what happens around us. The ensuing, rambling discussion of quantum physics’ impact on notions of love, addiction, and Jesus is clumsily interspersed with scenes involving a fictional photographer named Amanda (Marlee Matlin) who, still smarting over her husband’s infidelity, embarks on a journey of self-discovery by learning to transcend humanity’s current perception of reality.

Engaging theories are sporadically contemplated (such as the idea that an object can exist in two places at the same time), yet by the film’s conclusion, it’s clear that the real modus operandi of these “experts” is promoting a new-agey version of spiritual enlightenment intended to replace traditional monotheism. Society’s “superstitious, backwater concept of God” is the filmmakers’ ultimate target, since it interferes with their belief that everyone is God and that all of us are “co-creating our future.” If people are truly able to construct their own destinies, then I can only hope that What the Bleep Do We Know?, with its hokey and derivative CGI, John Tesh-influenced score, and screeching electronic sound effects, will beget a future devoid of these filmmakers’ creepily cultish work.

REVIEW RESOURCE : https://www.slantmagazine.com/....film/what-the-bleep-

⁣Welcome to Futureunity, where we explore the fascinating world of science, technology, and the universe! From the inner workings of the human body to the outer reaches of space, we delve into the latest and most interesting discoveries that are shaping our world. Whether you're a science buff or just looking for some mind-blowing facts, we've got you covered. Join us as we uncover the mysteries of the world around us and discover new frontiers in the fields of science and technology. Get ready for a journey that's both educational and entertaining!

Disclaimer Fair Use:
1. The videos have no negative impact on the original works.
2. The videos we make are used for educational purposes.
3. The videos are transformative in nature.
4. We use only the audio component and tiny pieces of video footage, only if it's necessary.
Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statutes that might otherwise be infringing.

Disclaimer:
Our channel is based on facts, rumors & fiction. We are not anonymous and we are not associated with anynymous in any way. Purely made for entertainmed purposes.

⁣For more than 20 years the CIA studied psychic abilities for use in their top-secret spy program. With previously classified details about ESP now finally coming to light, there can be no more secrets.
Two physicists discover psychic abilities are real only to have their experiments at Stanford co-opted by the CIA and their research silenced by the demands of secrecy. Yet, as both these 'remote viewers' and our audience learn, the 'more you hide something, the more it shines like a beacon in psychic space and this ancient truth can no longer be suppressed.'
The true story of Russell Targ and America's cold war psychic spies, disclosed and declassified for the first time, with evidence presented by a Nobel Laureate, an Apollo Astronaut, and the military and scientific community that has been suppressed for nearly 30 years, now able to speak for the first time.
Targ's understated mantra that "the evidence for extra sensory perception is overwhelming and shows a talent we all share and deserve to know about, leaves us not just with a greater understanding of this unique chapter in U.S. history, but perhaps most importantly a greater understanding of who we are and our larger connection to the world. The CIA, NSA and DIA used it, your tax dollars paid for it, and now you deserve to know about it.

⁣Phil Schneider died in 1996. Previous to his death he had been on tour across the United States speaking out about various subjects including his involvement with building a secret underground base in Dulce, New Mexico for the military.

During this time, he was said to have had an encounter with a violent E.T race in the late 1970's which would change his whole life immediately after. This documentary explores some of the information Phil Schneider spoke about to the public in the 1990's by examining each claim in detail with expert opinions from Richard Dolan, Richard Sauder, and Cynthia Drayer (Phil's Ex-Wife).

In this documentary you will find never before published photo's of Phil's Autopsy, documents about the Philadelphia Experiment from Oscar Schneider's files (Phil's father) and a very well explained background about Underground Bases. Written by Darcy Weir

⁣Ciemna strona buddyzmu tybetańskiego, czyli nadużycia władzy, despotyzm, seksualne wykorzystywanie uczniów, pedofilia, chciwość i gromadzenie dóbr materialnych. Autorka dokumentu podąża tropem skandali związanych z działalnością popularnego w Europie, Azji i Stanach Zjednoczonych odłamu zwanego Szambalą. Diamentowa Droga potrafi być kręta, pełna pułapek i niebezpieczeństw.

⁣Reżyseria : Elodie Emery

⁣The first installment of Plandemic, a 26 minute documentary featuring veteran virologist Judy Mikovits, has been seen by over one billion people worldwide. The premiere of Plandemic: Indoctornation, featuring white collar crime investigator, Dr. David Martin, set a world record with 2 million viewers attending the global livestream.


The two part series was smeared by critics as “dangerous conspiracy theory.” US media took unprecedented measures to make the masses look away. When Dr. Mikovits made the bold claim that COVID-19 was manipulated in a lab, she was smeared as “crazy”. When Dr. Martin exposed the patents and paper trail proving that that Dr. Fauci was covertly funding dangerous gain of function research at the Wuhan Lab, critics laughed.


One year later, they were no longer laughing.
Through various independent investigations and accredited studies, every major claim made within the Plandemic series has been validated as accurate. The tide is turning. Truth is emerging. Plandemic is now being acknowledged for being among the first to warn the world of the agenda to reduce the liberties of citizens through medical tyranny.


Watch Part Two here: https://rumble.com/vkw8fe-plan....demic-part-2-indocto
RESOURCE: https://plandemicseries.com

⁣Officially declare yourself as TransVax - Not Vaccinated but identify as the vaccinated person.


⁣I am an unvaccinated person but my body identifies very strongly as a person triple dose vaccined and each subsequent dose.
We have all matured to officially introduce the newest from the wide range of genders. This time the new sex will be called TransVax and at the same time I demand from everyone the same tolerance as Transgender ect
https://www.urbandictionary.co....m/define.php?term=Tr

⁣The Hollywood Vampires take their name from an all-star social club that drank itself to oblivion during the mid 1970s at the Rainbow Bar and Grill on The Sunset Strip. The 2019 documentary The Rainbow chronicles the restaurant’s place in the Los Angeles music scene and is an engaging profile of the family that’s run it for three generations (that is, when it’s not indulging in lazy nostalgia). Directed by Zak Knutson, it is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
Since opening in 1972, the Rainbow has offered food and drinks to successive generations of rockers. Located in West Hollywood, betwixt a cluster of music venues, it was popular with bands visiting Los Angeles as well as those living and trying to make it in the City of Angels. Besides the Hollywood Vampires – which included Alice Cooper, a couple Beatles and riotous Who drummer Keith Moon, Led Zeppelin picked up groupies there, The Runaways ate there and a teenage Slash snuck in dressed as a woman. Motörhead’s Lemmy loved the place so much he bought an apartment within walking distance and was often found drinking Jack Daniel’s and playing video poker at the bar for hours on end.
Behind it all was the Maglieri family, led by tough talking patriarch Mario, who came to Los Angeles from Chicago in the early 1960s to help run another storied local institution, the Whisky A Go Go. Mario is hard not to like, dropping one-liners like “I had rock n’ roll in my bar in Chicago before you ever heard of rock n’ roll,” calling Jim Morrison “a good kid,” and telling stories about throwing Charles Manson out on his ass, like a real life Cliff Booth. “He says, ‘I’m Jesus.’ I tell him, ‘I’m God motherfucker. Now get up from that chair.’ He got up or I’d have had to beat the shit out of him. Either one.”
Though its capacity was in the hundreds, the Whisky became one of the most important L.A. music clubs of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The Doors and Chicago were the house bands at various times, Van Halen used it to built their audience and scores of trailblazing acts made their area on its stage. As Kiss’ Gene Simmons says, “When you first start out and before you figure out your game, the Whisky’s the place to do it.” In fact, the Maglieri have an interest in both the Whisky and the Rainbow, and the film is as much about the venue as the bar up the street.
As the ’70s turned to the ’80s, hard rock turned to metal, from glam to thrash, and again found a home on the Sunset Strip. W.A.S.P. and L.A. Guns drummer Steve Riley says he went to the Rainbow the first night he moved to L.A. and it became a great place to meet other hungry young rock musicians looking to form bands. Thought it all, Mario Maglieri was there to comp musicians a bowl of soup or offer fatherly advice, telling young rock stars when they were drinking too much or doing too many drugs.
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://decider.com/2020/02/24..../the-rainbow-documen

⁣Kent Heckenlively and Judy Mikovits are the new dynamic duo fighting corruption in science. Ben Garrison, America's #1 political satirist

Dr. Judy Mikovits is a modern-day Rosalind Franklin, a brilliant researcher shaking up the old boys&; club of science with her groundbreaking discoveries. And like many women who have trespassed into the world of men, she uncovered decades-old secrets that many would prefer to stay buried.

From her doctoral thesis, which changed the treatment of HIV-AIDS, saving the lives of millions, including basketball great Magic Johnson, to her spectacular discovery of a new family of human retroviruses, and her latest research which points to a new golden age of health, Dr. Mikovits has always been on the leading edge of science.

With the brilliant wit one might expect if Erin Brockovich had a doctorate in molecular biology, Dr. Mikovits has seen the best and worst of science. When she was part of the research community that turned HIV-AIDS from a fatal disease into a manageable one, she saw science at its best. But when her investigations questioned whether the use of animal tissue in medical research were unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases, such as autism and chronic fatigue syndrome, she saw science at its worst. If her suspicions are correct, we are looking at a complete realignment of scientific practices, including how we study and treat human disease.

Recounting her nearly four decades in science, including her collaboration of more than thirty-five years with Dr. Frank Ruscetti, one of the founders of the field of human retrovirology, this is a behind the scenes look at the issues and egos which will determine the future health of humanity.

⁣⁣Well, folks, as we wrap up our deep dive into The Ritual of Satanic Sacrifice, I hope you've gained some insight into this controversial topic.
While there are certainly extreme and dangerous individuals out there who practice satanic rituals, it's important to remember that stereotypes and misinformation can be just as harmful.
Let's continue to educate and inform ourselves about the diverse beliefs and practices in our world, and always approach them with an open mind and a critical eye.
Stay curious, stay safe, and thanks for reading!

⁣The people interviewed for "Kedi," Ceyda Torun's documentary about the teeming street cat population in Istanbul, are not experts, or talking heads, or academics. They are citizens, moving through their lives, interacting with the cats in their neighborhoods, and their comments are casually contemplative, off-the-cuff and profound. The human beings take it upon themselves to care for the cats, feed them, and—even more tellingly—just enjoy observing them. They note each cat's personality quirks, likes and dislikes. They freely admit what these cats bring to their own lives. I am a cat owner, I admit, but even I was surprised at the power of "Kedi." Where did all that emotion come from? It's because what Torun really captures in her unexpectedly powerful film is kindness in its purest form.

The cats of Istanbul are everywhere. They curl up on stoops, car hoods, and cafe benches, they sit on piers and in doorways. They sneak beneath tables at flea markets and leap on scraps outside the fish markets. Torun's film profiles seven individual cats, each with its own distinct life, routine and personality. Considering the sneaky crepuscular habits of cats, following these beasts must have been quite a feat. The footage is astonishing. The film opens with a tabby cat stalking with purpose down a crowded city street, looking for food to bring back to her litter of kittens (stashed in a stairwell). Torun's camera is low to the ground, on the cat's level, following the tabby's determined progress. Watching "Kedi" is like lying down on a quickly-moving skateboard. Cats are wily creatures, and when they don't want to be found, they are not found. But Torun finds them!


There's one cat who hangs out at a restaurant by the water, taking care of the mice. (There's a hilarious night-vision section showing the cat creeping through a drain pipe, eyes ablaze.) There's a cat who dominates the area in front of a busy cafe, fighting off interlopers, harassing her "husband" (pushing him out of the way so she can eat first), and chasing off the floozy cats vying for her man's attention. ("She's the neighborhood psychopath," says a neighborhood resident.) One woman spends a day cooking fresh chicken and then wanders her neighborhood, leaving food for the cats, who swarm around her. She says that she has a lot of pain and the cats are helping her heal. There's one cat who sits outside a bakery, and bats on the windows frantically when it gets hungry. There's a freeform style of communication between cats and humans. They share space. Some cats adore being petted. Others can't abide it. A man who owns a textile store demonstrates that the cat who hangs out in his shop likes pats only when they're rough. Gentle pats drive her crazy. "She gets so much pleasure she almost passes out," he says, and then there's footage of her sprawled on the floor, lost in the sensations. One cat shows up at a woman's window every day for a visit. She lets him in, he strolls around, he eats, and then he clambers back down the tree.


The focus is on the cats, but "Kedi" is really a portrait of community. Torun gives a sense of life in Istanbul, its diversity and beauty, its storefronts and waterfronts, its people. Why there are so many cats in Istanbul, and how they all came to be there, is not explained (except for a casual comment from an interview subject). Political upheaval and turmoil is not addressed at all, although there are disturbing signs everywhere, thrumming underneath the everyday routines. One woman says that it is very difficult to be a woman in Turkey, and that the cats in her neighborhood remind her of what is good in being feminine. There is a lot of concern expressed about the brutal knocking down of old neighborhoods to make way for high-rises. Gentrification disrupts entire ways of life, and the residents worry about that but they also worry about the cats. Where will they go? What will become of them? It can be a heartless world. Caring for one another and caring for animals may seem like a small thing, but Torun's affectionate portrait of these cats—and the people who love them—makes it seem like the most important thing in the world. A restaurant owner keeps a tip jar on the counter, and the money goes into a fund for vet visits for the cats who hang around outside. Imagine that. Torun combines her up-close-and-personal footage of the cats with transcendent drone shots of Istanbul in all its moods and weather.