Catégorie : Articles

Embracing the New Year: A call to purposeful growth for adult learners  Washington Times
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People in the News—Dec. 27, 2024—Stevens & Lee, Chartwell Law  Law.com
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From hiccups in NASA’s plan to return to the moon to the first-ever private space walk, 2024 was a year of firsts for space travel. That includes the first ‘crewed launch’ of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which led to an extended stay in orbit.
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Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens  BleepingComputer
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2024 will go down as a wild rollercoaster of a year at the box office. For those who don’t follow this stuff regularly, the first half of the year was impacted greatly by last year’s SAG and WGA strikes, which shut down Hollywood for months on end. That being the case, the calendar was light to kick off this year and, as a result, the box office suffered. No mainstream horror movies hitting it big for months, with only (all due respect) relatively minor hits like Late Night with the Devil and Tarot us warm. 
Quite a few big movies majorly underperformed, leaving us on uncertain ground. Fortunately, the turnaround did come in the back half of the year and, by year’s end, the domestic box office will only be a few percentage points behind 2023. That’s a qualified win. All of this setup to make the point that horror had a big part to play in all of this. From the breakout hit that was Longlegs to the record-breaking Terrifier 3 and everything in between, it was another huge year for genre films. 
Today, we’re going to look at the biggest of the big movies. Before getting into the list, we should note that we are counting worldwide grosses, for one. Secondly, for the purposes of this list, Venom: The Last Dance ($476 million worldwide) isn’t going to qualify as horror, even though some might argue it’s body horror of a sort. With that all out of the way, let’s dive in. 

 
While it may not have been a resounding success relative to its budget, Sony kept trying to make bustin’ feel good this year with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. The sequel 2021’s Afterlife took the action back to New York City, with members of the old cast uniting with the young cast to fight a new, big threat. The film pulled in a very respectable $202 million worldwide, which is almost exactly what Afterlife made, give or take a couple million. On the surface, that seems like a good thing. The problem? A $100 million budget.
Sony made Afterlife for a little more than $70 million, which allowed the film to be a hit. Increasing the budget to nine figures complicated matters. In any event, it’s still one of the highest-grossing genre films of 2024. Director Gil Kenan did the job he was asked to do and audiences showed up in similar numbers. The end result wasn’t nearly bad enough to kill the franchise, as a new Ghostbusters animated film is in the works, alongside a new animated series. 
Overall, there’s still quite a bit of value in producing mainstream horror comedies that can appeal to a wide array of moviegoers. This franchise still has a loyal audience, to be certain, it just needs to be made at a certain price point to make it make sense in the future. 
 
 
Few horror franchises birthed in the last handful of years have shown as much promise as that of A Quiet Place. The notion of a world ravaged by alien monsters with ultra-sensitive hearing has proved to be a surprisingly fertile ground for storytelling. This year, director Michael Sarnoski proved that with his compelling prequel aptly titled A Quiet Place: Day One. Thanks in no small part to the filmmaker’s knack for human storytelling, the film also proved that the audience for these films is pretty loyal. 
Hitting theaters in the heart of what was a pretty disappointing summer movie season up to that point (from a box office POV anyway), Day One proved to be the first outright mainstream horror hit of 2024. The film pulled in $261 million worldwide against a reasonable $67 million budget. That’s certainly on the high end for horror but this is more blockbuster horror. That doesn’t always come cheap. 
In any event, it proved to Paramount that they can continue to squeeze juice from this series in the right hands. To that end, the video game A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead also arrived this year, further expanding the scope of the franchise. We can only hope that whatever comes next, it contains performances as good as the ones delivered by Lupita Nyong’O and Joseph Quinn in this crowd-pleaser. 
 
 
The Alien franchise had been dormant for seven years following the release of Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant in 2017. When Disney purchased Fox in 2019, that opened the door for a revival of this, among many other properties. That gave us the much-beloved Predator prequel Prey on Hulu in 2022, for example. When it came to bringing Xenomorphs back, the Mouse House tapped Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) to put his stamp on the series – and they also let him bring that vision to the big screen. It worked out insanely well for all involved. 
Romulus proved to be a sizable end-of-summer hit, taking in $350 million worldwide. That includes more than $245 million from overseas audiences. There’s still a huge appetite for these films, it seems. Giving the film an $80 million budget certainly didn’t hurt, as the pressure to over-deliver wasn’t there. Fortunately, Alvarez delivered the goods and, in the process, gave us the highest-grossing IMAX horror movie ever. That’s impressive. 
As for what comes next? Predator: Badlands is getting a theatrical release, suggesting that Disney is very happy with the returns. No more direct-to-Hulu for these movies! Meanwhile, the possibility of a new Alien vs. Predator movie of some kind now looms large. The possibilities are endless thanks to this movie’s success.
 
Tim Burton was in need of a hit and boy did he get one with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. For a moment, it seemed like Burton’s golden days were behind him after lackluster performances from the likes of Dumbo and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. But when the legendary director finally decided to reunite with Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder for a sequel to Beetlejuice, it proved to be just what the doctor ordered. 
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hit theaters in early September and resonated with audiences, allowing it to make its money all the way through the Halloween seasons. It was particularly popular in North America, with the sequel finishing its run with $451 million worldwide. It is, as of this writing, the tenth-biggest Hollywood release of 2024. Gladiator II might overtake it when all’s said and done but, either way, Warner Bros. and Burton got a much-needed win. Again, horror comedy for the masses can be good for business. 
The real money, in the end, might be in all of the product tie-ins. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had everything from branded Fanta to wild popcorn buckets. The success means it shouldn’t be remotely surprising if Burton is persuaded to come back for a third installment in the series sooner rather than later. Money talks, and this movie spoke rather loudly, as it were. 
 
Even though it may not be “horror” in the more traditional sense, there’s no denying that giant monsters destroying cities would be downright horrific. So now is not the time to have that conversation. That having been said, director Adam Wingard’s exuberant, ridiculous and crowd-pleasing Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire stood tall above the competition this year. The King of the Monsters is still very much the king, with King Kong still an appropriate name, it seems. 
Wingard previously helmed 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, which helped lift theaters back up in the aftermath of the pandemic. Clearly, audiences liked his brand of kaiju madness as they showed up en masse to see a big, pink Godzill and Kong with a metal arm. The film pulled down just shy of $572 million worldwide. That’s A) the seventh biggest movie of 2024 overall and B) the biggest box office total for a MonsterVerse movie to date. 70 years later and Godzilla is showing no signs of slowing down. 
This has ensured a bright future for the MonsterVerse. Not only are we getting a Godzilla x Kong sequel in 2027, but Apple is currently working on a second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. Long live the king. 

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8PM Friday Pro & Hilarious Stand-up | Comedy Kickoff & Laughs guaranteed  Toronto.com
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NFL Week 17 odds, how to watch, live streaming: Expert selections, best bets, survivor picks and more  CBS Sports
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AUGUSTA, Kan. (KWCH) – Firefighters in Butler County are responding to a building fire near Augusta Friday morning.
According to the Augusta Fire Department, firefighters are battling a fire at a structure in the 10800 block of Ashley Road just southwest of Augusta.
12 News has a crew heading to the scene and will share more information once it becomes available.

Copyright 2024 KWCH. All rights reserved. To report a correction or typo, please email news@kwch.com

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What began as a protest against a college religion requirement led to sects nationwide and, arguably, a religion
Last week, the Earth’s north pole tilted to its farthest point from the sun, ushering in the longest night of the year. For those who base their spiritual practice on the seasons, the solstice is a time of ritual and reflection, of communing with the darkness of nature and the light to come. At henges and groves throughout Britain, people gathered to mark this day: wiccans, neo-pagans of all sorts, and druids.
Druids are best known as iron age ritual workers, practitioners of an earth-based spirituality found throughout what is now England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The movement in the region still has many adherents who trace their inspiration back to these ancient forebears.
In North America, however, things are different. Modern druids on the continent can trace their origin back to what was, essentially, a college prank. It began with a tongue-in-cheek protest movement, started in reaction to an overbearing college religion requirement in the 1960s.
The Reformed Druids of North America began as “a gag, a finger in the eye of the administration”, said Howard Cherniack, one of the group’s founders. Nearly 60 years later, it’s become something much larger: a movement that has spawned new sects, “groves” across the country and, arguably, a religion.
The later 1960s were a revolutionary time on American college campuses. But in 1963, freedom summer and free speech movements were years away. At schools like Carleton College, a liberal arts college in Minnesota, the administration still took a paternalistic approach that many students began to find stifling, with men and women relegated to separate dormitories (although only women were subject to curfew). Universities of the era essentially played a parental role (legally, in loco parentis). This included overseeing the students’ moral character.
“ One of the minor irritations was that we were required to go, I think six or seven times per 10-week semester, to something that would presumably be ‘spiritually good for us’,” explained Cherniack, who was a Carleton student in 1963. This would be a religious service on campus or in town, or a lecture on a spiritual topic. While some of the lectures were admittedly interesting, students resented being forced to attend, Cherniack said.
Sitting in a dormitory room one night, Cherniack, along with his friends Norman Nelson and David Fisher, hatched a plan: to invent their own religion, and attempt to get credit for attending its services.
“After all, any religion we invent is no more or less true than any other religion,” laughed Cherniack.
To establish a religion, you need a name. Cherniack grew up in a secular Jewish household, but said whenever his parents were asked about their religious affiliation, they would attempt to shut down conversation by answering “druid”. So he suggested that.
The group agreed, but they knew nothing about actual druids. So, to excuse themselves from authenticity, they decided on the Reformed Druids of North America.
The students crafted organizing tenets open enough not to alienate people of other faiths (“nature is good”, more or less), drew a sigil and donned some robes. They wrote a liturgy, built an altar in the college’s arboretum, called upon the Earth mother and passed around the waters of life (watered-down whiskey, in a clear violation of the college’s alcohol policy). And the Reformed Druids of North America (RDNA) was born. Cherniack submitted a public letter to the dean of students, asking how the college – which encouraged intellectual questioning within its classes – could call any established religion more valid than the one they had created. He never received an answer, but declared it a victory.
“I thought we had made a moral point, pointing out the hypocrisy of the system … and that there was no point in getting dressed up in robes and going out to the arboretum on Sunday. I preferred to sleep in,” he said.
Although Cherniack spent his Sundays in bed, other students continued – either for protest, or because they enjoyed gathering to hear something with the cadence of worship among the trees.
The protest worked. Within a year, the religion requirement was abandoned. But religions, like children, take on a life of their own – often in ways those who brought them into being might never have imagined.
 Although Cherniack was quite clear that RDNA was founded in jest, for another early member, Deborah Frangquist, it was not a joke, but “a deeply spiritual sense of not taking ourselves too seriously”.
Deborah and her husband, David – who still identify as druid – argued the invocations, though inspired by protest, brought together a haphazard group of college students into a ritualized space, accessing sacred questions. The focus on nature was a welcome departure from mainstream religious practice of that era.
They’re not the only ones to take it seriously – either at RDNA, or the groups that came from it. Jean Pagano is the arch-druid of Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF), an order that split off from RDNA in the 1980s to pursue a more neo-pagan approach, and has since become one of the largest druid groups in North America. “RDNA was started as tongue in cheek,” said Pagano. “And still some people approach it that way. But the rituals I’ve seen are serious.”
Pagano noted that tenets as simple as “nature is good” can be taken lightly, or explored as deeply as a practitioner wants. As someone who maintains daily devotional practices, Pagano said he wouldn’t want RDNA (and the groups that came out of it) dismissed because of their origin. “Regardless of its foundations, it has developed its own legs. They created something that was beautiful, functional, inspirational, and has withstood the test of 60 years,” he explained.
RDNA arguably became something – but was it druidry? Carleton College students chose the name because it was, in a sense, an empty vessel – they didn’t know much about the actual druids. But Ronald Hutton, a historian at Gresham College and University of Bristol who has written extensively about the druids, said honestly, nobody else does either.
“ What we can say for sure is the original druids were the main specialists in religion and magic – spiritual affairs in general – among the peoples of north-western Europe” about 2,000 years ago, Hutton said. “That’s all we can say about them with certainty.”
The problem is that the druids didn’t leave any writings of their own. And Hutton advised that the records left by their Greek and Roman contemporaries be viewed with some measure of skepticism.
“They were writing propaganda – either glorifying druids as being incredibly wise, nature-based philosophers who could teach the Romans a lot, or condemning them as priests of savagery, ignorance and despotism, with a particularly tacky line in human sacrifice,” Hutton said.
He explained that even the very image we have of druids – bearded sages wearing cloaks and sandals – actually comes from statues of Greek philosophers that a Renaissance writer mistook to be druids; his mistaken description stuck. But this lack of knowledge has served to shape the druid legacy.
“You have all these colors on an artist’s palette from which you can pick,” Hutton said, allowing for all sorts of interpretations: “You can have wise druids, scientists and philosophers deeply in touch with the secrets of nature. You can have patriotic druids, rallying native resistance against Roman conquerors. You can have ‘green’ druids, people who hang out in natural places as part of their love of nature.”
According to Eric Hillemann, senior associate at Carleton College’s archives, RDNA’s approach to druidry also went through many incarnations – sometimes delving deeper into Celtic mythology or dabbling in Native American spiritual practices, and sometimes having more significant overlap with the campus Doctor Who society. But a constant was the playfulness. “They never took themselves over-seriously in any stage. A vein of humour runs through the whole thing,” he said.
Hillemann added that the Carleton “mother grove” maintained solid participation for about a decade after its founding – long after the initial protest impetus had gone. It waxed and waned through the 70s and 80s, and in recent decades has maintained a solid presence, Hilleman said, albeit never numbering more than a few dozen. But outside of Carleton, it flourished.
RDNA members – especially those who graduated in the early years – brought their enthusiasm for the practice with them as they traveled beyond Minnesota. Unsurprisingly, the first groves were in university towns, as alumni moved to cities such as Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Berkeley, California, to attend graduate school (and, apparently, recruit their flatmates into druidic practice). Members formed a national governing body, but Hillemann says that by the 1970s it had dissolved, with each RDNA grove basically operating independently.
As in all religions, things began to splinter. RDNA begat New RDNA, the Henge of Keltria, Order of the White Oak and other sects. While many have dissolved, some, like ADF, maintain solid membership across the US.
So what are we to make of RDNA? A protest, a surprising story – sure. But an actual religion?
Ethan Doyle White, a lecturer in folklore at the University of Hertfordshire who has written about modern druidry, said it was easy to dismiss modern druids. “It’s seen as the silly hobby of bearded eccentrics – that’s the stereotype,” he acknowledged.
But while RDNA and its offshoots may lack the patina of authenticity that time renders, Doyle White said they do a fine job meeting the (debated) criteria of an actual religion. “Is sincerity necessary?” mused Doyle White. “Maybe not.”
David Fisher was in that Carleton College dorm room with Howard Cherniack crafting the RDNA liturgy all those years ago, and later went on to become an Episcopal priest. While he’s quite happy with his home in the church, Fisher did acknowledge that this “unserious jest ended up a source of meaning in people’s lives”.
While he said, laughing, that he might have thought twice about his actions in 1963 if he’d known what it would become, he doesn’t regret what was created.
“Whatever it is, or might be, it met the needs of people,” he said. “People who were drawn to seeking the spirit’s presence in nature. And that seems to me to be a spiritual insight.”

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