All posts tagged: Black

Thriller Books To Read After BLACK DOVES and MR. & MRS. SMITH

Thriller Books To Read After BLACK DOVES and MR. & MRS. SMITH

Published by skeptic

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. I recently watched Black Doves (Netflix) and Mr. & Mr. Smith (Prime) and loved both series. While I excitedly await their next seasons, I thought I’d recommend books to read if you also enjoyed the shows—and if you’ve yet to watch them, here’s your nudge to! Image courtesy of Netflix Black Doves is a British spy thriller starring Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean, Pride & Prejudice), Ben Whishaw (Paddington Bear), and Sarah Lancashire (Julia, Happy Valley) in which Knightley’s character works for a secret organization that takes jobs from the highest bidder. Okay, that’s the zero reveals summary if you don’t want any reveals skip the next bit: she’s married to a government official and reports back everything she learns from him to the organization. But when the man she’s having an affair with is murdered, Knightley, her family, and all her secrets are in danger (Trailer). Image courtesy of Prime Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a …

Razzies 2025: Jerry Seinfeld, Lady Gaga and Jack Black among nominees

Razzies 2025: Jerry Seinfeld, Lady Gaga and Jack Black among nominees

Published by skeptic

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Nominations have been unveiled for the 2025 Golden Raspberry Awards, known as the Razzies, an award show which claims to salute the year’s biggest cinematic failures. This year there is no clear frontrunner, with Borderlands, Joker: Folie à Deux, Madame Web, Megalopolis and Reagan all up for the Worst Picture award and tied with six total nominations each. In the acting categories, Jack Black is nominated both for his performance in satanic Christmas comedy Dear Santa and for his voice role in Badlands. He is also singled out in the “Worst Screen Combo” category. Lady Gaga is up against fellow singer Jennifer Lopez and Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett for Worst Actress, along with Dakota Johnson and Bryce Dallas Howard. In the directing category, Jerry Seinfeld, who is also nominated for Worst Actor, is competing against Francis Ford Coppola, Todd Phillips, Eli Roth and S.J. Clarkson. The awards …

Elon Musk Blames LA Wildfires on Black Firefighters

Elon Musk Blames LA Wildfires on Black Firefighters

Published by José

How does it just keep getting worse? Fuelling the Fire Instead of mourning the devastating destruction and death that’s befallen the city of Los Angeles due to raging wildfires this week, Elon Musk has taken to his far-right hate speech incubator X to blame the fires on — wait for it — diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. In other words, Musk is using unabashedly racist lies to pin the climate change-fueled disaster on minorities. “They prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes,” Musk tweeted. He was responding to a post by the anti-LGBTQ+ hate account Libs of TikTok, which claimed that the LA Fire Department ensured its employees were “racially diverse enough” — something that was then contorted into racist vitriol in Musk’s twisted mind. It’s an appalling — and unsurprising — development, highlighting Musk’s well-documented descent into sociopathic and extremist thinking, inspired by the right-wing cadre he’s surrounded himself with on his social media platform. Racist Antics We won’t waste our time to tell you how incredibly bigoted and misled Musk’s claim is. As …

How Does a Movie Projector Show the Color Black?

How Does a Movie Projector Show the Color Black?

Published by skeptic

Courtesy of Rhett Allain But what about the colors from a video projector? It essentially does the same thing. However, instead of a bunch of tiny RGB lights, it projects RGB colors to different locations on the screen. Projecting the Color Black Now we’re ready for the fun stuff. How does a video projector shoot out black light? Black light would be the absence of any light, as we saw before. How do you project nothing? First, let’s consider a screen like a TV. If you have three tiny lights (red, green, blue), you can make a tiny black dot by just turning off the lights for all three colors in that spot. Boom, it’s black! So, is it possible that you just turn off the projector to make black? That can’t be right, can it? If that was the case, you couldn’t tell the difference between a projected black color and the screen without the projector even on. Yes, that is exactly how it works. Check it out: In the following image, I’m projecting …

More black holes discovered than expected in the early universe

More black holes discovered than expected in the early universe

Published by skeptic

Black holes are among the most mysterious and influential phenomena in the cosmos. They hold the key to understanding the early universe, galaxy formation, and the evolution of cosmic structures. Recent findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, driven by innovative imaging techniques, offer a groundbreaking perspective on how these enigmatic objects shaped the universe’s infancy. A Cosmic Time Machine: Probing the Early Universe Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists conducted an unprecedented near-infrared survey of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF). By comparing images taken over a decade apart, they aimed to uncover active galactic nuclei (AGN) and measure the abundance of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the early universe. This ambitious project revealed a treasure trove of data, including AGN candidates and variable sources that illuminate the dynamics of black hole formation. Photometric variability of 1051264 at z = 2 (upper panels) and 1052126 at z = 3.2 (lower panels) sources. (CREDIT: The Astrophysical Journal Letters) Researchers identified eight variable objects in this survey, three of which are likely supernovae. Two AGN were …

More than 60 years later, Langston Hughes’ ‘Black Nativity’ is still a pillar of African American theater

More than 60 years later, Langston Hughes’ ‘Black Nativity’ is still a pillar of African American theater

Published by skeptic

(The Conversation) — During the end of every calendar year, a particular holiday performance pops up in African American communities and cultural centers across the nation. “Black Nativity” is a cherished cultural tradition to some and completely unknown to others. One wonderful yet confounding thing about this show is that depending on where you see it, you will see significantly different productions – from Intiman Theatre in Seattle to Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul or the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston. This might seem counterintuitive, but it is exactly what was intended by the author: Langston Hughes. The poet’s Christmas play was first produced in 1961.Charles A. Smith/Jackson State University/Historically Black Colleges & Universities via Getty Images 1 artist, 2 movements Hughes, a noted although still underappreciated writer, is often associated with the Harlem Renaissance just after World War I, which spurred the growth of jazz. This era – when he penned some of his most famous poems, such as “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” – was the first African American arts movement …

Astronomers Were Watching a Black Hole When It Suddenly Exploded With Gamma Rays

Astronomers Were Watching a Black Hole When It Suddenly Exploded With Gamma Rays

Published by José

Woah. Blast Radius In 2018, astronomers took the first-ever picture of a black hole, a fascinating and unprecedented glimpse of an event horizon. And as it turns out, the black hole — dubbed M87* and located some 55 million light-years away — also let out a massive belch of gamma rays while scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope team, an international collaboration combining data from sensors around the globe, were getting a closer look. The campaign gathered data from 25 terrestrial and orbital telescopes in April 2018, and scientists are still poring over the results. “We were lucky to detect a gamma-ray flare from M87 during this Event Horizon Telescope’s multi-wavelength campaign,” said University of Trieste Giacomo Principe, coauthor of a new paper accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, in a statement. “This marks the first gamma-ray flaring event observed in this source in over a decade, allowing us to precisely constrain the size of the region responsible for the observed gamma-ray emission.” Violent Delights The team is hoping the gamma ray outburst data …

There’s a Scandal Growing About That Paper About How Black Spatulas Are Killing You

There’s a Scandal Growing About That Paper About How Black Spatulas Are Killing You

Published by José

Image by Getty / Futurism Remember that huge panic around black spatulas? It turns out that the whole thing may have just been a crock of crap. A study published in October contended that kitchenware made of black plastics, and especially utensils like spatulas, contained alarmingly high amounts of toxic flame retardants due to the recycled materials they were sourced from. It almost immediately caused a major scare, and articles published everywhere from The New York Times to CNN recommended throwing these ubiquitous plastic items out in favor of safer alternatives. But after some scientists questioned the research, the editors of the journal that the study was published in, Chemosphere, issued a correction over the weekend clarifying that the toxic levels indicated by the work were, in a nutshell, wrong; a simple math error was behind the startling, but now seemingly debunked, claim. The work, conducted by researchers at the advocacy group Toxic-Free Future, examined over two hundred black plastic household products, roughly half of which were utensils, to see if they contained brominated flame …

Two monstrous black holes are consuming a massive gas cloud

Two monstrous black holes are consuming a massive gas cloud

Published by skeptic

At the heart of most galaxies lies a supermassive black hole, often surrounded by a disk of matter that feeds it. This combination, known as an active galactic nucleus, can emit powerful light, varying across the electromagnetic spectrum. These fluctuations usually follow predictable patterns, but some objects defy expectations, revealing new insights into the universe’s workings. Astronomers have recently uncovered a groundbreaking discovery involving two monstrous black holes. This event, called AT 2021hdr, has challenged conventional understanding of galactic activity. Observations suggest that these black holes are disrupting and consuming a massive gas cloud, creating an oscillating light pattern unlike anything seen before. “This is a very unusual event,” explained Lorena Hernández-García, an astrophysicist in Chile. She and her team believe the gas cloud envelops the black holes, and as they orbit each other, the interaction disturbs the gas, causing periodic emissions of light. This discovery, detailed in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, is a remarkable step in understanding black hole dynamics. NEOWISE-R light curves (top panel) and color evolution (middle panel) based on WISE …

Enormous black hole napping after eating a ton of gas

Enormous black hole napping after eating a ton of gas

Published by skeptic

You’ve likely been there–snoozing on the couch after a large or decadent meal. A similar phenomenon is being observed with a black hole detected in the early universe. Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) a team of scientists detected a black hole that is laying dormant after consuming too much matter. The sleepy black hole is described in a study published December 18 in the journal Nature.  Eat, sleep, repeat The black hole is located in the early universe, existing just 800 million years after the big bang. It is also massive. At 400 million times the mass of our sun, it is one of the largest black holes that JWST has observed at this point in the universe’s development. It is so large that it makes up about 40 percent of the total mass of its host galaxy. By comparison, most black holes in the local galaxy are only about 0.1 percent of their host galaxy mass. Get the Popular Science newsletter Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Despite this …