1186 – Journey (2012 video game)

Journey is a multiplayer / single-player indie adventure game developed by Thatgamecompany and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released for the PlayStation 3 via PlayStation Network in March 2012 and ported to PlayStation 4 in July 2015. It was later ported to Microsoft Windows in June 2019.

In Journey, the player controls a robed figure in a vast desert, traveling towards a mountain in the distance. Other players on the same journey can be discovered, and two players can meet and assist each other, but they cannot communicate via speech or text and cannot see each other’s names until after the game’s credits. The only form of communication between the two is a musical chime, which transforms dull pieces of cloth found throughout the levels into vibrant red, affecting the game world and allowing the player to progress through the levels. The developers sought to evoke in the player a sense of smallness and wonder, and to forge an emotional connection between them and the anonymous players they meet along the way. The music, composed by Austin Wintory, dynamically responds to the player’s actions, building a single theme to represent the game’s emotional arc throughout the story.

Reviewers of the game praised the visual and auditory art as well as the sense of companionship created by playing with a stranger, calling it a moving and emotional experience, and have since listed it as one of the greatest video games of all time. (wiki)

http://thatgamecompany.com/journey/   /   EPIC store

1178 – Pandora’s Promise (2013 documentary)

Pandora’s Promise is a 2013 documentary film about the nuclear power debate, directed by Robert Stone. Its central argument is that nuclear power, which still faces historical opposition from environmentalists, is a relatively safe and clean energy source which can help mitigate the serious problem of anthropogenic global warming. Richard Branson is credited as an executive producer, as are Paul and Jody Allen, whose production company, Vulcan Productions, helped provide financial support.  A total of $1.2 million (US) was raised to finance the film, “particularly through Impact Partners, which provides documentary financing from individual investors. Mr. Stone said the money came mainly from wealthy “tech heads” who have worked in Silicon Valley.”

The title is derived from the ancient Greek myth of Pandora, who released numerous evils into the world, yet as the movie’s tagline recalls: “At the bottom of the box she found hope.” (wiki)

---

The New York Times: “You need to make an argument. A parade of like-minded nuclear-power advocates who assure us that everything will be all right just doesn’t cut it.” > Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “In the end, by dismissing the protesters and failing to engage them in significant debate about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, the film undermined its own message.” > Seattle Weekly: “But the doc’s bigger flaw is that no one is allowed to make a reasoned anti-nuclear argument. To the well-made film’s many statistics, graphics, and common-sense assertions, the lack of a rebuttal is deafening.”

imdb   / Q&A with Jeremy Rifkin   /  review

1177 – Fukushima: A Nuclear Story (2015 Documentary, News)

“A four-year long journey in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and twofold tragedy that befell Japan in the March 2011, directed by Matteo Gagliardi, written by Christine Reinhold, Matteo Gagliardi e Pio d’Emilia.  (…) “Fukushima: A Nuclear Story” offers a completely original point of view on the tragedy, narrated by the actor Willem Dafoe in the English version.

Christine Reinhold and Matteo Gagliardi combine different elements in the film: The story of a journalist, Pio d’Emilia, who refused to abandon his job even when the nuclear danger was at its greatest; the doubts and fears of man in the days following the threefold tragedy; the search for the truth regarding what really happened inside the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The former prime minister Naoto Kan, in a previously unreleased interview, will reveal how Tokyo, and probably the whole of Japan, avoided a much bigger tragedy thanks to sheer luck.

The director describes the tragic events using Manga Drawings, to make them more comprehensible to our perception (…)” – vimeo

imdb

---

see also https://timespacewarps.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/868-william-t-vollmann/

1173 – Hiiro (2016 game)

Hiiro is a 2D platform game focused on ambient exploration and puzzle solving.

Features:
• Exploration – One vast world to travel through with eight distinct environments. Think Seiklus, Knytt, or An Untitled Story.
• Discovery – Hidden secrets and puzzles scattered throughout the world. Various levels of hidden and various levels of difficulty.
• Dynamic Soundtrack – Meditative music that seamlessly transitions as you move through the world.
• No Death – Explore a world without fear.
• No Language – A story told without words, spoken or written.
• Wide Range of Gameplay – Easy mechanics for the non-gamer, hidden secrets for the casual gamer, challenging puzzles for the hardcore gamer, awesome rewards for the completionist. Something for everyone.

---

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): OS: Windows 7 / Processor: 1 Ghz / Memory: 512 MB RAM / Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card / DirectX: Version 9.0 / Storage: 100 MB available space

---

steam

1171 – The Electronic Doppelganger: The Mystery of the Double in the Age of the Internet (Book by Rudolf Steiner / Andreas Neider 1917 – 2016)

“Large temptations will emanate from these machine-animals, produced by people themselves, and it will be the task of a spiritual science that explores the cosmos to ensure all these temptations do not exert any damaging influence on human beings.” —Rudolf Steiner 
In an increasingly digitized world, where both work and play are more and more taking place online and via screens, Rudolf Steiner’s dramatic statements from 1917 appear prophetic. Speaking of “intelligent machines” that would appear in the future, Steiner presents a broad context that illustrates the multitude of challenges human beings will face. If humanity and the Earth are to continue to evolve together with the cosmos, and not be cut off from it entirely, we will need to work consciously and spiritually to create a counterweight to such phenomena.
In the lectures gathered here, edited with commentary and notes by Andreas Neider, Rudolf Steiner addresses a topic that he was never to speak of again–the secret of the geographical, or ahrimanic, Doppelganger. The human nervous system houses an entity that does not belong to its constitution, he states. This is an ahrimanic being that enters the body shortly before birth and leaves at death, providing the basis for all electrical currents needed to process and coordinate sensory perceptions and react to them.
Based on his spiritual research, Steiner discusses this Doppelganger, or double, in the wider context of historic occult events relating to spirits of darkness. Specific brotherhoods seek to keep such knowledge to themselves to exert power and spread materialism. But this knowledge is critical, says Steiner, if the geographical Doppelganger and its challenges are to be understood.

goodreads   /   amazon

---

+

The Computer and the Incarnation of Ahriman

By David B. Black (online)

1166

1164 – Good Omens (TV Mini-Series 2019-)

Good Omens is a miniseries based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Terry Pratchett (dw) and Neil Gaiman. A co-production between Amazon Studios and BBC Studios, the six episode series was written and created by Gaiman, who also served as showrunner, and directed by Douglas Mackinnon. The series stars an ensemble cast led by David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Adria Arjona, Miranda Richardson, Michael McKean, Jack Whitehall, Jon Hamm and Frances McDormand.

All episodes of the series were released on May 31, 2019, on Amazon Video, and will later broadcast weekly on BBC Two.

Set in 2018 (Tadfield ++), the series follows the demon Crowley (David Tennant) and the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen), who, being accustomed to life on Earth, seek to prevent the coming of the Antichrist and with it Armageddon, the final battle between Heaven and Hell. (wiki)

imdb

---

Why Bible Accurate Angels Are So Creepy

---