In mid-2016, I wrote about YA publisher Month9 Books' abrupt decision to scale back its list, reverting rights to as many as 50 authors across all its imprints. Explaining the culling, Month9 founder and CEO Georgia McBride cited her own health problems, along with staffing issues and the company's "substantial growing pains" over the past six to nine months.

McBride's announcement triggered a surge of complaints from Month9 authors, who described a host of serious problems at the company, including late or missing payments (for staff as well as authors), problems with royalty accounting, delayed pub dates, broken marketing promises, overcrowded publication schedules, communications breakdowns, and harsh treatment and bullying by McBride.

According to authors and staff, these problems were not new or even recent, but had been ongoing for a long time. Why had authors kept silent? Almost every writer who contacted me mentioned their fear of retaliation--along with the draconian NDA included in Month9's contracts. I've rarely encountered a situation where authors seemed so fearful of their publisher.

Things quieted down after the initial flood of revelations, as they often do. Month9 survived and kept on publishing, though its list continued to shrink: between a high point in 2016 and now, the number of titles appears to have fallen about 50%. Apart from a handful of additional complaints in late 2016 and early 2017 (similar to this one), I didn't hear much about Month9 in the years following.

Until now. Over the past few weeks, I've been contacted by multiple writers who say they are still suffering from the same problems that surfaced in 2016: primarily, late (sometimes very late) royalty and subrights advance payments and statements (in many cases received only after persistent prodding by authors and their agents), and allegations of irregularities in royalty reporting.

The intimidation level, too, seems not to have changed. Most of the authors told me that they feared reprisal for coming forward, and asked me specifically not to mention their names or book titles. (Writer Beware never reveals names or other unique identifying information, unless we receive specific permission from the individual. That disclaimer is included on our website and in our correspondence.)

If you've been following the recent ChiZine scandal, you may be feeling some deja vu--notably, in the alleged existence of a toxic culture within the publisher that makes authors fearful and and helps to keep them silent. It's disappointing to learn that even if the issues that thrust Month9 into the spotlight three years ago have gone quiet, they don't seem to have eased. Writers be warned.


I wrote about Black Rose Writing in 2009, in connection with its requirement that authors buy their own books. Writers who submitted were asked how many of their own books they planned to buy; their response was then written into their contracts. (Book purchase requirements are back-end vanity publishing: even if writers aren't being asked to pay for production and distribution, they still must hand over money in order to see their work in print.)

Black Rose got rid of the book purchase requirement a few years later, and claimed to be a completely fee-free publisher. I had my suspicions that money might still somehow be involved, though...and as it turns out, I wasn't wrong.

I've recently learned that new Black Rose authors receive a Cooperative Marketing Catalog that sells a range of pay-to-play marketing and promotional services, with costs ranging from a few hundred dollars to four figures. For instance:


It's true that purchase is optional (though I would guess that authors are heavily solicited to buy). But reputable publishers don't sell marketing services to their authors--and in any case, much of what's on offer are things that other publishers, even very small ones, do for their authors free of charge, as part of the publication process.

That's not the only way in which Black Rose authors are encouraged to pay their publisher. Owner Reagan Rothe is a self-described "financial partner" in two additional businesses: the Maxy Awards, a high entry fee book competition that donates "a large part of every entry" to a charity (how large? No idea; that information is not provided); and Sublime Book Review, a paid review service.

Though Mr. Rothe's financial interest in these businesses is not disclosed on the business's websites, both businesses are clearly energetically promoted to Black Rose authors. On Sublime's website, nineteen of the first 20 book reviews are for Black Rose books. There's also this, from the marketing catalog (note the lack of disclaimer):


As for the Maxys, thirteen of the 17 winners and runners-up for 2019 are Black Rose books.

Mr. Rothe does admit his relationship with the businesses in this recent email to Black Rose authors--though only to afford them yet another opportunity to give him money:

Walking down the hallway at school, an administrator stopped me in my tracks. I felt her eyes glare from the top of my head, past my torso and down my legs. She told me that my shorts were too short and that she didn’t want to see me wearing them ever again. I felt embarrassed […]

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#311 — May 8, 2020 Unsubscribe  :  Read on the Web Golang Weekly Caddy 2: The Go-Powered Web Server with Automatic TLS — After over a year of redesign, Caddy 2 has a new architecture to v1. If you want a new HTTPS server that ‘just works’, Caddy is well worth a look IMO. Its lead creator, Matt Holt, answered lots of questions on this Hacker News thread about the release. Caddy Web Server Rek: An Easy HTTP Client for Go — The inspiration here is from Python’s very well known and highly esteemed Requests library.. so the Pythonistas among you might like this! Luc Perkins Modern Redis Features with RedisGreen — Online upgrades to the latest Redis 6.0 features, memory mapping, key size tracking, and more. RedisGreen sponsor Life Without Line Numbers — There’s a lot of buzz around reducing the size of Go binaries (1.15 does so by ~6%) and here’s another tactic: reduce the precision of the position information. The gain is 2-6%, depending on how far you take it. Josh Bleecher Snyder ▶  Discussing Black Hat Go — “Are you excited to learn about hacking and that?” Got an hour? Roberto Clapis, a security engineer at Google, and Tom Steele, a co-author of Black Hat Go, join the Go Time team to discuss security, penetration testing, and more. Go Time Podcast ???? Jobs Enjoy Building Scalable Infrastructure in Go? Stream Is Hiring — Like coding in Go? We do too. Stream is hiring in Amsterdam. Apply now. Stream Find a Job Through Vettery — Vettery specializes in tech roles and is completely free for job seekers. Create a profile to get started. Vettery ???? Articles & Tutorials Mid-Stack Inlining in Go — Inlining a function can lead to serious performance gains, so why not do it for everything? Well, there are always trade-offs. Dave Cheney Asynchronous Preemption in Go 1.14 — How the new preemption implementation works, including the use of a lesser-known signal (SIGURG). Vincent Blanchon Why Are My Go Executable Files Larger Than My Source Code? — We built a data visualization tool to find out. Here’s how we built it, and what we learned. Cockroach Labs sponsor Accelerating Aggregate MD5 Hashing Up to 800% with AVX512 — The culmination of this work is md5-simd, a Go library that performs such rapid MD5 hashing (when running concurrently). The use cases here are quite restricted but you may appreciate seeing how such things are implemented for any high end SIMD wrangling you need to do one day. MinIO Blog ▶  A Beginner's Guide to gRPC in Go — There’s a written version of the tutorial if you dislike videos. TutorialEdge Four Steps to Daemonize Your Go Programs — Daemons are programs that run as non-interactive background processes (e.g. background job processors, Web servers, database systems). Ilija Eftimov Go as a Scripting Language? — There’s plenty of folks that use Go as a scripting language, but there are challenges around REPLs and shebang support. Some of these challenges are being addressed today. Segio De Simone ???? Code & Tools UUID 3.3: A Pure Go Implementation of UUIDs — A pure Go implementation of Universally Unique Identifiers (UUID) as defined in RFC-4122 covering versions 1 through 5. The Go Commune Reed-Solomon: A Reed-Solomon Erasure Coding Library — A Go port of a Java library built by Backblaze that does Reed Solomon erasure coding (a way to send or store data in a larger form that’s resilient to data loss). Boasts operation of over 1GB/sec per core. Klaus Post ko 0.5: Build and Deploy Go Apps on Kubernetes — ko’s objective is to “to make containers invisible infrastructure.” It’s been rapidly maturing in the past few months too. Google Monitor the Health and Performance of Your Golang Apps with Datadog APM. Free Trial Datadog APM sponsor Tengo 2.2: A Fast Embeddable Script Language for Go — Quite a mature project now and worth a look if you need to add some dynamic scripting to your code. Daniel Kang UniPDF 3.7: A Library for Creating and Processing PDF Files — Pure Go, which is neat, but note it’s dual licensed: AGPL for open source, commercial for closed source projects. UniDoc Mockery: A Mock Code Generator for Go Interfaces Vektra Dynamo: An Expressive DynamoDB Library Greg Greg ???? Two Fun Side Projects gasm: An Experimental WASM Virtual Machine for Gophers — “I did this just for fun and for learning WASM specification.” Nonetheless, it works with basic examples. Takeshi Yoneda thdwb: A Homebrew Web Browser and Rendering Engine — Another experimental, fun learning project. You won’t be using it for your day to day browsing any time soon but projects like this keep the imagination fueled up. Danilo Fragoso It'd be quite cool to link to more fun Go experiments and side projects actually, so let us know if you work on any. Bonus points for games, musical, or Web experiences ????

Blasian - black and Asian - couples now exist in South Africa... but they don't always have an easy time.

FIFA.com has begun the countdown to the FIFA Confederations Cup 2017 in Russia, and from now until the start we will share an interesting fact about the tournament every day. Today we remember Michael Ballack’s role as the figurehead of a renewed Germany at their home Confederations Cup in 2005.

India spinner Kuldeep Yadav says he was "lacking in the basics" last season owing to playing one too many games, leading to an IPL that could have been better than how it turned out. He said he didn't plan enough last time and having learned his lesson, the chinaman bowler was "100 percent sure of success" in IPL 2020 whose fate hangs in balance because of the COVID-19 pandemic. "I was fully prepared for this IPL 2020 and I had planned a lot. I was 100 percent sure that this IPL would be a success," Kuldeep was quoted as saying in Kolkata Knight Riders website. Asked about last season, Kuldeep spoke about why he struggled to get going.

"When I came into IPL, I didn't give myself enough time to train. The biggest learning from 2019 was that I did not plan for the season. "There was a lot of cricket in 2019, especially international cricket. I joined the team just three days before the IPL started. So the planning wasn't good. The involvement wasn't good either. And that is very important," he said. "I don't think the last IPL was all that bad for me. I bowled very well. But a leg-spinner's success is based on the number of wickets he picks. I didn't manage to pick many wickets, but my economy was good." The lack of wickets dented his confidence, the spinner said. "When you don't pick wickets your confidence drops a bit. Then there was a game where I went for a lot of runs. So my confidence level dropped," Kuldeep admitted.

"I was lacking in the basics. Playing a lot of cricket affects your basics. "If you are in regular touch with your coach then your basics won't be affected." He heaped praise on former KKR captain Gautam Gambhir and bowling consultant Wasim Akram, saying they had a "big influence" on his career in his early years at the Knight Riders. "Gauti bhai (Gambhir) had a huge influence on me from the start of my stint at KKR. He always spoke to me a lot. Not only during the time he was at KKR, but even after that, over these last two years," Kuldeep said.

"He always kept me motivated. When you get that kind of confidence from your captain, it becomes a huge plus point for any player. It helps you remain confident, and that translates into good performances." The chinaman bowler said former Pakistan captain Akram helped him more with the mental aspect of the game. "Wasim sir used to like me a lot too. He didn't speak much about bowling, but he prepared me a lot in terms of mentally taking on the game. "He prepared me to take on different situations in different ways, and taught me how to react when batsmen put you under pressure," said Kuldeep. "When he was at KKR, I used to sit with him and pick his brain a lot. I used to sit next to him in the dugout during matches and ask questions about real-time situations."

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NCP chief Sharad Pawar has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of deliberately maintaining "silence" on issues like suicide by farmers and unemployment while campaigning for the Lok Sabha polls. Addressing a rally at Bhayander in Thane district of Maharashtra Monday night, Pawar said unemployment has gone up manifold since the NDA government came to power in 2014.

The former Union minister alleged that the Modi government lacked policies for ensuring industrial and agricultural growth. He was canvassing for Anand Paranjape who is the NCP candidate from Kalyan Lok Sabha constituency.

"Due to lack of any industrial policy, unemployment has gone up in Maharashtra which is the most industrialised state in the country. Modi government is deliberately not making any attempts to ensure the growth of industries and agriculture," the NCP chief said.

Claiming that as many as 11,990 farmers have killed themselves since the BJP government assumed office, Pawar said the prime minister avoids talking about this reality as well as other issues like farm distress, water scarcity and price rise at hustings. "Modi also keeps mum on the Rafale deal scam. Under Modi regime, institutions like RBI, CBI, supreme court etc. are being undermined," he alleged.

Last week, Pawar lambasted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he is "peeping into the homes of others" as he has no family of his own. Addressisng a poll rally at Partur here Monday, Pawar said Indian Air Force pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was released by Pakistan under pressure from the world community and the Modi government had no role in it.

"I have my wife, daughter, son-in-law and nephews. What Modi has?...no one," he said, attacking the PM over his remarks on feud in the Pawar family. "That is why Modi is peeping into the homes of others. How will he (Modi) know how to run a family, he has no one?" the former Union minister said.

The Maratha strongman said Modi stooped low by making comments about his family, but he cannot behave in the same way. At an election rally in Wardha early this month, Modi had said a family war is going on in the NCP. The PM had also claimed that Pawar's nephew Ajit Pawar is slowing capturing the 1999-founded party. Pawar said if Modi had a 56-inch chest, as he has claimed, then why his government has failed to ensure the release of Kulbhushan Jadhav, a former Navy officer, from Pakistani jail.

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Pics/Crossing lines

On a fine April morning, when Mumbai-based slackliner Samar Farooqui drove into Settlement Number 63 in Chtaura, a town wedged between Beirut and Damascus, all he could see was a sea of white tents glistening in the sun. Under the plastic tarps lived thousands of displaced Syrians who had fled to the Bekaa Valley, the largest affected area and temporary home to over 3,00,000 Syrian refugees, when a brutal civil war broke out in 2011. Lugging the nylon webbings, carbiners and other slacklining equipment, Farooqui and 14 other volunteers, stationed themselves at the nearby parking lot waiting for the refugee children.

This was to be their playground for the next two weeks. Life on the line Slacklining is the art of balancing along a narrow, flexible piece of portable fabric which is usually anchored between two points, mostly trees. "Apart from being a fun fitness activity, it has an incredible ability to connect people, start conversations and change lives," says 27- year old Farooqui. It's the reason he booked a flight to Beirut and signed up for the Crossing Lines Project, an initiative launched in 2013 by Sonya Iverson, a scientist from San Francisco, who uses slacklining to change the way we see and talk about refugees. "I had met Sonya several times at different events. The last time we interacted was at the Move Copengagen festival in Denmark, when she mentioned her plan to introduce slacklining to Syrian refugees and organise a highline festival in Lebanon. It was just the kind of inspiration I was looking for," says the Neral resident who made a career out of slacklining when he founded Slacklife Inc. — a sport and recreation company — in 2014. A level playing field At the Chtaura parking lot, the lines are hooked to the cars in the absence of trees. It's one of the things the sport has taught him — to make the best use of whatever is available at hand. "In Mumbai, I've slacklined in building compounds, garden and promenades. In fact, I was even been arrested for slacklining at Marine Drive," he laughs. Once the line was set up at the camp, Farooqui says the excitement among kids was palpable.

"Children everywhere are the same. You don't have to be concerned about the language or the way you look. I didn't speak Arabic but we managed to communicate fairly well through non-verbal cues in those two weeks. With hand gestures, I would tell them to slow down or stop or move ahead," he says. It was through two local volunteer-based NGOs Salaam and Sonbola that provides education and recreational facilities to those living in the camps in the Bekaa Valley, that the team got access to the children. Forging a personal rapport with each child — there were nearly 400 of them — was difficult for the volunteers who hailed from Iran, America and the UK.

"On the face of it, you couldn't tell that the children had gone through so much trauma. There were some who were more reserved and took time to open up," he says. Periodically, the team would sit down and discuss the day's progress. "If one of students perhaps struggled through the slacklining experience and we noticed it, we discussed it and psycho-analysed it till we came up with a solution to make sure that we didn't leave with someone feeling demoralised," he says. In the two weeks, Farooqui picked up a couple of Arabic words from them, and in turn taught them English. What was most interesting, though was how the sport changed the dynamics among the children themselves. "When you are standing on the rope, wobbling and holding the hand of the person standing on ground, you are opening up to them. So the bullies in the group ended up bonding with the rest. Everybody was on the level playing field," he says.

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Mutual funds are a great way for investors to channel their savings for long term investments and to generate returns.... [Read More]

Glass

U/A: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Sarah Paulson, Bruce Willis, James McAvoy
Rating: 

Shyamalan’s earliest films (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs) were brilliant, they intrigued, shocked and entertained all at the same time. The same cannot be said about the films that came later. The big budget ones especially were all jumbled up and schlocky. It felt as though the director never really achieved his vision. ‘Glass’ is a far better effort in terms of visual context but it fails on cohesion and lucidity – especially in the third act dominated by Shyamalan’s signature twists.

Glass, a sort of sequel to both Unbreakable and Split, spends its two hours plus without a strong story to tell. It is every bit as inconceivable and snaky a film as his worst but it still has a psychological depth that could have amounted to much more - if only the director had been a little more focussed. There’s so much he is wanting to say that it all gets lost in the confusion and incoherence brought on by a lack of emphasis.

Glass opens with Dunn(Willis) tracking down Split's villain, Kevin Wendell Crumb aka 'The Horde' (James McAvoy), a serial killer suffering from multiple personality disorder who has been preying on girls in the Philadelphia area. After some visceral action Dunn and Crumb are captured and taken to a secret wing of a psychiatric hospital also housing Mister Glass(Jackson) – to be studied by Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychiatrist obsessed with decoding the phenomenon of men who believe themselves to possess the powers of comic book characters.

Check out the trailer here:

This is an indie film (in partnership with Blumhouse)with no big studio backing it so there are budget constraints which Shyamalan could have overcome by running a tighter ship. Shyamalan manages to get close to poignant and memorable but the third act(rather threadbare) pulls you off that track all the way through. The twists don’t make much sense and in fact renders the entire work rather directionless.

The build-up is pretty good even though the action is all visual, internalised and verbose but the third and final act fails to make something out of that. The director and DP Michael Gioulakis manage to compose some fascinating and striking visual mayhem but it doesn’t amount to anything powerful. If you followed ‘Unbreakable’ and ‘Split’ then there is a chance that you might cotton on to Shyamalan’s wavelength but for a large part of the audience this is going to be a film without a strong sense of purpose.

James McAvoy is simply the best thing about this movie. His enthusiasm and effort in playing out multiple personalities is extraordinary. Jackson wakes up from his stupor a little late and loses out on creating an impact while Willis looks on strategically- the thing he does best I guess. This is at best a baffling and inconsistent exercise in cinema!

Also Read: James McAvoy on Glass co-star Bruce Willis: He is most chilled dude

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Despite strict instructions from the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) and the state government, most private clinics in the area continue to remain shut. While patients are finding it really difficult to get treatment for other ailments, physicians claim that non-availability of PPE kits and sanitisation of clinics were their biggest challenges.

Following several complaints, Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner, Sanjay Kumar through his official twitter handle appealed to doctors on humanitarian grounds to remain open. The tweet says, "A humble and humanitarian request to all the doctors having private clinics to open up their clinics for non COVID-19 treatments... We are ready to extend all out support for the purpose."

Speaking about the problems doctors were facing, Dr Chetan Chhajed, orthopaedic surgeon, Navi Mumbai, said, "I run a private hospital in Kamothe, which is open but we face a threat to our lives because of the unavailability of PPE kits. They are not available. We have somehow arranged for some masks for our staff but the local authorities are not sanitising the clinic. We allow only patients with serious conditions to visit the clinic, the rest are given consultation online. Another problem is that no transport is available and not all patients have vehicles."

Dr. Pratik Phake runs a private clinic in old Panvel, which has been declared a containment zone. He gives appointments to his patients in advance and opens his clinic twice a week for three hours. Speaking to mid-day, he said, "The non- availability of PPE kits, thermal guns, housekeeping staff and medicines are challenges. Some shops are selling PPE kits and thermal guns at very high price, which needs to be looked into. Apart from this, sanitising the clinic is a major problem."
Meanwhile, Dr N Yewale, who runs a private clinic in Kamothe, said, "The society where our clinic is has locked its gate and we are not getting water supply, which is why I have shut the centre and have been speaking to patients over the phone. Maybe the society people are scared. Unavailability of PPE kits and sanitising of the clinic are other challenges."

Similar situation in city

The doctors in Mumbai are facing similar issues and despite warnings of legal action from the BMC, they haven't opened their clinics.

National vice-president, IMA headquarters, Dr Anil Pachnekar, who has his clinic in Dharavi, said, "Doctors in Mumbai have smaller clinics where it is difficult to follow social-distancing rules. The doctors are also scared due to the lack of PPE kits and N95 masks." "Different types of patients visit doctors' clinics and not all of them wear masks and use hand sanitizers. In such a situation, the clinic should be sanitised by the local municipal corporation," Dr Pachnekar added.

'Help the society'

When contacted, Navi Mumbai Municipal Commissioner, Annasaheb Misal told mid-day, "This is my appeal to all doctors to help the society and keep their clinics open for the people in need. The PPE kits are available in the market and we will extend full support to them. We have not taken any action yet and don't force us to do so."

"Many clinics have resumed operations. The health department is checking nursing homes first. Today itself 15 nursing homes restarted their services," said Dr. Daksha Shah, executive health officer, BMC. Speaking about the health issues he has been facing, Kharghar resident, Abrar Chaudhary said, "I have a neurospine problem since almost a year and I get my primary treatment from Bombay Hospital. I have been consulting some local doctors in Navi Mumbai but due to the lockdown they are not available at their clinics. They do undertake online consultations but respond as per their wish. I have swelling all over and am unable to walk without a support. Doctors need to check me first before prescribing medicines."

Worli resident, Anurag Singh, said, "It has been very difficult to find a doctor in our locality. A couple of days ago I had fever but when I went to my personal physician's clinic, it was closed."

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F1 leader Lewis Hamilton heads into this weekend's Japanese GP grateful to have extended his overall championship advantage, but conscious that his Mercedes team have their work cut out to rediscover their car's lost speed. The German team were the third slowest team for the second weekend in a row at the last race in Malaysia, after also similarly struggling for pace in Singapore.

Lewis Hamilton

The Briton heads into Sunday's race at the Suzuka circuit, where he has won twice before, with a heftier 34-point lead over the Ferrari driver with five races to go, but only because of the misfortune that has blunted the German's championship charge.

It's going to take a while before we can swallow the fact that Irrfan Khan is no more with us. He fought till his last breath and refused to give up. To be able to smile and spread happiness despite your own struggles is the very notion of any artist in the world, and Khan was one such gem that will always continue to shine.

He was admitted to the Kokilaben hospital last night due to colon infection and passed away today morning. Nearly all the Bollywood celebrities paid homage to the actor on their social media accounts by sharing messages and pictures. Shah Rukh Khan called him his friend, inspiration, and the greatest actor of their times.

However, Deepika Padukone, who shared screen space with him in Shoojit Sircar's Piku, shared a black picture that reflected the void that his unfortunate demise has left in Bollywood. She also shared a broken heart in the form of her caption.

Have a look right here:

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

💔 #irrfankhan

A post shared by Deepika Padukone (@deepikapadukone) onApr 29, 2020 at 3:51am PDT

Irrfan Khan and Deepika Padukone were supposed to collaborate once again for a film that was to be directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, but due to the actor's illness, it was pushed indefinitely. May Irrfan's soul Rest In Peace!

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Welcome aboard! But before you read this one, let us be clear that the next few paragraphs are filled with nothing but spoilers. If you are nerd enough to gorge on all the sci-fiction shows the web throws at you, you've landed on the perfect page. Amazon Prime Video released a good sci-fi show, that has a hint of comedy and a dash of romance and drama, on May 1, 2020, and we couldn't help but binge on this one.

Black Mirror, the popular Netflix show, which gave us some good dark and gritty content to watch out for, has kind of an uncanny resemblance to this show. How, you ask? An episode on Black Mirror showed an alternate world where people who die can move to a place named San Junipero, and live an afterlife on their own terms. Watching Upload, you'll surely be reminded of that episode.

Here we have four reasons that make Upload a good watch:

A futuristic approach

As the lockdown extends, and so does our watch-list (of course, it is a never-ending one), we have got you the scoop on one more show, and this time, it is a futuristic approach towards the afterlife of a human. In the new show Upload, our loved ones or us, 'upload' our memories and special moments on a database, which will help you to experience everything, just like a living person. Even the seven sins of a human -  pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth, have been shown by the great brains who work on the artificial intelligence of this 'afterlife heaven'.

A life, after life

Okay, so the essence of this entire show lies in the afterlife of people who have decided to 'upload' themselves, and live a kingsize life in a virtual world. This manmade heaven is no less than a fairyland, where everything is just happy and the way we want it. But, the only glitch in this virtual world is the bugs and the viruses. Just like our real-world has problems, the digital world created beyond the horizon by some great nerdy minds have to face multiple technical difficulties.

Watch the trailer of Upload here:

A gamer's show

The show Upload starts with a brat Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell), who is deeply in love with his girlfriend Ingrid (Allegra Edwards). The duo sees their future together, but Nathan's death faults Ingrid's plan. To keep him forever, she uploads his memory and avatar in an afterlife - Horizen - and what comes next is AI personified! Video game lovers will connect with this show for real. The only difference is one doesn't have to sit with a joystick to select the next move.

A reimagined heaven

Upload shares a materialistic world which many people mistake for life and realise it once everything is gone for real. Nathan experiences the same thing when he meets his angel, Nora (Andy Allo), given by Horizen, to guide him. She not only becomes his 'guiding angel' but also helps him solve the mystery behind his sudden death caused due to a technical glitch in his auto-driven car. What comes next is kind of predictable.

The entire struggle to maintain a lifestyle in the afterlife will make you cringe about the world's perception of leading a good life, and also an afterlife. This show will actually make you think about what went wrong with these people.

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His female fans have missed seeing him on television ever since he announced his sabbatical last year. Now, Nakuul Mehta is back for a date with his admirers, albeit on the web. The actor's latest offering, BAE Control, explores the idea of having the perfect relationship by controlling a partner's emotions through an app. As he wins praise for his act in the sci-fi comedy, Mehta discusses transitioning from TV to digital entertainment.

Edited excerpts from the interview.

A blend of sci-fi and rom-com, the show is a far cry from what you've headlined in the past.
I have spent over seven years in television. So, over the past one year of my sabbatical, I have been trying to explore different mediums. I have been a fan of the work Dice Media has been doing, be it Little Things or What the Folks. Their audience is starkly different from the one I cater to on television. When they narrated the idea about controling another person's emotions through an app, it sounded crazy. But who knows, in the future, this may be the order of the day!

The series seems similar to an episode of Black Mirror. Agree?
The series shows how technology will change the way humans interact in the future. In fact, if one compares [the behavioural patterns] of our parents, our generation and Gen-Z, it is evident how human interaction has changed and not necessarily for the better. People interact not only face-to-face, but also over the dark web. So, [controlling one's partner] could be the future. To me, it all seemed like a Black Mirror episode, but this one has elements of comedy.

Given a choice, would you consider controlling your partner's emotions with an app?
No, relationships are based on trust and have no place for [manipulation]. However, I am old-school in matters of the heart and have never even used a dating app. So, I may not be the right audience for this. On a bad day, when you don't know how to deal with your spouse, you might be tempted.

If this were to happen in the near future, what would be the flipside?
That we would lose touch with each other as human beings. It's ironic that this show has released at a time when we are all under lockdown and craving human interaction. It is making us yearn for our families and friends. If not for this lesson, we would have headed down a road where we were looking for the perfect relationship and finding the perfect app to control the imperfections.

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Extreme weight gain and sudden weight loss have always been matters of concern for everyone, especially actors who have to stay in front of the cameras and in the limelight for half of their lives. One such star who has worried his fans with his sudden and surprising weight loss is the Black Panther actor, Chadwick Boseman.

It all started when he took to his Instagram account to share a video but all that people and fans noticed was how much weight he lost. But it seems he wasn't happy with the fact that he was constantly being asked the same question so he took it down. He uploaded another post where he spoke about his donation that he named Operation 42. This was for the African-American community that he wants to help amid the Coronavirus pandemic. This was a great initiative and all his fans lauded him for the same.

Have a look at the post right here:

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

Throwing it back to the ultimate game changer. Thank you to my friend Thomas Tull for launching #Operation42 to celebrate #JackieRobinsonDay and deliver 4.2M dollars in masks and vital personal protective equipment to hospitals in African American communities devastated by #Covid19.

A post shared by Chadwick Boseman (@chadwickboseman) onApr 16, 2020 at 9:33am PDT

But at the same time, as we stated above, they couldn't help but raise questions and concerns about the amount of weight he suddenly lost. A user wrote- "You okay chief? You looked rather odd on the other post." Another fan wrote- "I guess he got tired of people asking is he sick. He took the video down."

Well, fans are likely to get worried as they all love him, but his weight loss could also be for a potential role! Let's not be quick to judge!

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Popular K-Pop band BLACKPINK member Lisa has been accused of plagiarising choreography of a black choreographer named Cierra Nichols.

Lisa posted a video of her performing a dance style to the number "Mushroom Chocolate" before Nichols accused her of stealing her choreography, reports aceshowbiz.com.

In the K-pop star's video, Lisa could be seen performing while lying on the floor, she later got back up and continued her routine, reports aceshowbiz.com.

In Cierra's video, which was uploaded a month before Lisa's, she mostly danced laying on the floor.

When Cierra got to know about Lisa's choreography, she took to Instagram to call her out saying: "In today's episode of 'Let's Steal from Black People' a Korean singer gets 7.8 million views in a day using most of your choreography. Love that for us."

Cierra then took to Twitter and wrote: "Convinced people can't read. I know to credit someone if I clearly pulled from it. I seen the inspiration the girl looks great."

"It's okay, though doesn't look s**t like when I did it anyway."

Cierra even responded to a social media user who watched her video after looking at Lisa's: "Because of Lisa and her choreographer using my moves."

In another post, she insisted: "It's not about the drama girl I could care less but it's clear where the beginning got its inspiration. It's clear there not doing anything like mine. That's why I'm fine."

Lisa has not replied to the accusations yet.

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Greens/EFA members of the European Parliament have called on the EU Code of Conduct Group to be more transparent about the criteria it used to create the EU's new blacklist of non-cooperative territories and how it will manage it going forward.

The EU has removed two countries from its list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions and found a further five to have met their commitments on tax cooperation.

The EU has announced the removal of eight jurisdictions from its tax blacklist.

The EU has removed three countries from its list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions and added a further three.