Venustum

Shockingly, the extremely ill-advised Netflix reality game show based on the Netflix scripted series about a game show where the powerful exploit the poor through a series of extremely dangerous challenges is, wait for it, exploitative, dangerous, and now allegedly scripted as well. Whoever could have guessed!

An unnamed participant in Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge (based on 2021 hit K-drama Squid Game) recently spoke to Vice about the horrific conditions they endured while filming. They echoed previous reporting by British tabloid The Sun, which described the below-freezing temperatures producers on the show—which cast 456 players to compete in extreme (but hypothetically not lethal) versions of children’s games for a chance to win a $4.56 million prize pot—forced them to endure during the “Red Light Green Light” challenge. They also alleged that the entire show was scripted.

“I started to realize, this was never a game I could win,” the participant, who took a leave of absence from work to film the show, said. “I’m not a contestant, I’m an extra.”

The participant claims that in advance of the first challenge, only some of the cast were fitted with functional microphone packs, while others received prop packs that wouldn’t turn on. They applied for the show themselves after receiving a targeted ad on Instagram, while other cast members included a TikTok star, a set of twins, a father-child pair, and others who had been directly contacted by production.

Perhaps most damning, contestants (illegally) compared notes and realized that production had booked some of their flights earlier than others, as though the boot order had been decided well in advance of the actual challenges. “I’m like, ‘Well, maybe it’s just cheaper for them to do that and do a change fee,’” the participant recalls saying, while others were less convinced.

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The water in Ogale, a rural community in Nigeria, is so toxic and polluted with oil that it comes out brown and stinks of sulphur. Children and families get sick just trying to bathe or stay hydrated. In Bille, a fishing community of around 45 islands surrounded entirely by water, there are no fish left. Oily water seeps into people’s homes, and, without a source of income, money is scarce. The signs that once warned people of the dangers of chronic pollution are covered in rust.

These Niger Delta communities have been facing pollution caused by Shell for decades, devastating their health and livelihoods. In 2011, the United Nations Environment Programme reported that the threat to public health warranted “emergency action.” At the time, the cleanup process would have taken 30 years, if initiated immediately.

It never happened. Shell refused to cooperate, and the situation has only gotten worse, with 55 oil spills in the last 12 years. Amnesty International called the Niger Delta region “one of the most polluted places on earth.”

On January 27, over 11,300 residents from Ogale — which has a population of approximately 40,000 — and 17 local organizations, including churches and schools, filed individual claims at the High Court in London against Shell. With the existing claims from the Bille community, this brings the total number against the oil company to over 13,650.

The Ogale and Bille locals attribute environmental destruction, death, and diseases to the repeated spills. Infants in the Niger Delta, for instance, are twice as likely to die in their first month of life if their mothers live near an oil spill, according to a study published in 2017.

Local leaders are distraught and angry. “As we speak, oil is spilling in my community every day, people are dying,” King Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi, leader of the Ogale community, told The Intercept.

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Obviously Catholic church does way more harm than good but better than not doing this for sure

Pope Francis has made what many are calling a historic statement against laws that criminalize homosexuality.

In an interview with the Associated Press, the pope says that God loves everyone and told Catholic bishops to welcome queer people.

“Being homosexual isn’t a crime,” Francis told the news wire.

The pontiff still referred to homosexuality as “sin,” but criticized Catholic bishops and church leaders who were involved in pushing for the criminalization of homosexuality across the world.

He added that those sorts of sentiments stemmed from the leaders’ cultural backgrounds.

“These bishops have to have a process of conversion,” Francis told the AP, saying they needed to use “tenderness, please, as God has for each one of us.”

He said that these laws are “unjust” and that the Catholic Church should work to stop them.

“It must do this. It must do this,” Francis said. “We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are and for the strength that each of us fights for our dignity,” Francis added, quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

We interviewed the 23-year old Swiss hacker who got access to the No Fly List and leaked it to the media and other organizations: Maia Arson Crimew. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like 'Manclan' and 'Trickle Down': http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Maia: https://twitter.com/_nyancrimew / https://maia.crimew.gay/ Merch: http://merch.qanonanonymous.com Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.

The Transportation Security Administration’s No-Fly List is one of the most important ledgers in the United States, containing as it does the names of people who are perceived to be of such a threat to national security that they’re not allowed on airplanes. You’d have been forgiven then for thinking that list was a tightly-guarded state secret, but lol, nope.

A Swiss hacker known as “maia arson crimew” has got hold of a copy of the list—albeit a version from a few years ago—not by getting past fortress-like layers of cybersecurity, but by...finding a regional airline that had its data lying around in unprotected servers. They announced the discovery with the photo and screenshot above, in which the Pokémon Sprigatito is looking awfully pleased with themselves.

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President Joe Biden’s administration released more than 13,000 records of President John F. Kennedy's assassination Thursday, but it fell short of fully complying with the spirit of a 30-year-old law demanding transparency by now.

With Thursday's action, about 98 percent of all documents related to the 1963 killing have now been released and just 3 percent of the records remain redacted in whole or in part, according to the National Archives, which controls the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection.

The records include more information on accused gunman Lee Harvey Oswald and his time spent in Mexico City.

But about 4,300 records remain redacted in part — with no record completely blacked-out — according to the agency, and experts say there's no justification for withholding them to protect national security or intelligence gathering.

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