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This season we are recapping episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale! Hosted by Angelica and Ryanne breakdowns of what happened will be discussed! We breakdown episode 9 “Allegiance”.
Host: Angelica and Ryanne
Music by: Sammus
Edited by: Jamie Broadnax
Since she first appeared in Andor as a rebel leader of the Aldhani operation, we’ve been wondering just what Vel Sartha’s connection is to the nascent rebel power structure was. Well, in episode nine of Andor we found out. It turns out that Vel, played by Faye Marsay, is the cousin of Mon Monthma herself. And thus, she is also from a wealthy elite family on Chandrila. In the previous episode, another character said that Vel “was a rich girl, trying to run away from her family.” Now we know just how prominent that family is.
Vel seems to have a somewhat icy (but still loving) relationship with her cousin Mon, but in her own words, “the Rebellion comes first.” Mon’s husband chastised her for not being married, as on their world, betrothal as teenagers is common. They tend to marry young—Mon got married as a teen. Mon privately expresses doubts to Vel about the extreme measures the rebels have taken in recent days. But Vel reminds her of why they are doing all of this. “We’ve chosen a side. We’re fighting against the dark.” And nothing is as dark as Palpatine’s reign.
Mon Mothma gives Vel a piece of advice. She tells her to “be a spoiled rich girl for a while.” Basically, she’s telling her to take some notes from Batman’s playbook. In other words, play the part of the ultra-rich playgirl. Play it so well that no one will clock her as someone fighting in the trenches for freedom. Pretending to be selfish is the perfect cover. Especially with the ISB out for blood after the events of the past few episodes. We’ll have to see if Vel Sartha takes that advice in future episodes of Andor. Being a part of the Rebellion is a very dangerous business. And as Rogue One showed us, not everyone makes it out alive.
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Yes, the cage fungus smells like rotting flesh, but it does so on purpose. The stench attracts flies, which the fungus needs in order to reproduce. Not only does the brown slime that drips inside the lattice stink, it’s also full of the mushroom’s spores. This stinky oozing substance is gleba, which is a term you may know thanks to an episode of Friends. Rachel is convinced that Emma’s first word is “gleba” and looks it up in the dictionary. When she reads the definition that it’s “the fleshy spore-bearing mass of a certain fungi,” Ross is convinced Emma is going to be a scientist. The short, visceral video below about this stinky fungus will have you rattling off fun facts and using obscure words like a scientist in no time.
The explainer video, which we first saw on Boing Boing, is from KQED, a PBS station in San Francisco. Videos on their Deep Look YouTube channel include other fun facts about the world around us. For instance, that water bugs that breathe out of their butts and barnacle penises are eight times as long as their body. There’s a lot of gross insect content, so this fungus and fly friendship fits the theme.
In the case of cage fungi, the flies its stench attracts are essential to moving spores to new places so the fungus can spread. Each one of these brightly colored mushrooms emerges from the ground and opens within only a few hours. It also dries out and closes again after only about a day. But that’s just what you see on the surface. Like most fungi, there’s a whole network under the ground.
Scientists are studying how the mycelial network works, signaling when and where the mushrooms should emerge above ground. Do fungus have a language? If so, what is the cage fungus’ word for gleba?
Melissa is Nerdist’s science & technology staff writer. She also moderates “science of” panels at conventions and co-hosts Star Warsologies, a podcast about science and Star Wars. Follow her on Twitter @melissatruth.
The post This Mushroom Smells Like Death to Attract Flies appeared first on Nerdist.
This review covers a documentary about an incident several years ago in which a white gunman entered a place of worship and opened fire. During this incident, the shooter was motivated by fantastical notions of white replacement and a “defense” of whiteness. In addition, the incident was one in which people from marginalized communities, many of them elderly, had to debate the merits of running, hiding, or attempting to confront the sounds of semi-automatic gunfire.
Sadly, these criteria don’t necessarily narrow the options much. For example, this documentary is not about the March 15, 2019 mosque shootings in New Zealand in which 51 people were killed. Nor is it about the June 17, 2015 Charleston church massacre that left nine Black parishioners dead. Rather, this documentary, directed by Trish Adlesic and executive produced by an eclectic group including Billy Porter and Mark Cuban, covers the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. In this incident, eleven human beings were shot to death amid their morning worship.
HBO’s documentary, A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting, is not easy to view. There will likely be times during its relatively short run that you may have to pause it. I know I did. It is a documentary that, at its most focused, centers on three almost equally important subjects: the victims, the survivors, and the antisemitism that led to this violent, tragic occurrence.
Recorded mainly as talking head testimonials, interviews with the victims’ families, and those that survived the incident form the most integral part of the film. Here we learn about the humanity behind the names of the dead. We learn about David and Cecil Rosenthal, two brothers with learning disabilities known around town for their affability and kindness.
We learn about Jerry Rabinowitz, a doctor who, along with survivor Dan Leger, ran towards gunfire in an attempt to provide medical aid to anyone shot. We learn about Joyce Fienberg, whose nine-year-old grandson wondered if, at her funeral, there was a chance he and his parents might also be shot.
Overall, A Tree of Life has a pretty loose structure. Sometimes we watch a beat-for-beat account of what happened in the synagogue. Other times, we briefly learn about a couple of the survivors’ lives leading up to the shooting. Occasionally, the documentary will digress into topics that seem almost perfunctory for a film of this nature: gun control, what the victims think about it, and what the national milieu is like.
Since the filmmakers never make an explicit case on the matter (besides, well, the seemingly obvious), the attempt feels more shallow than it should. The same goes for the specter of Donald Trump’s presidency. While it’s probable that the filmmakers don’t hold the former president in the best of lights, the film itself lets the survivors have the final say.
Did they find it odd that a president who, despite denouncing white supremacy in speech, still cozied up to white nationalism in action came to visit the site of a Jewish massacre? One felt it was within his right to come; another thought it should have read the room and kept a respectful distance. In all, the vibe concerning former president Trump is “let’s not make this about him.”
What is tough about that proposition, however, is what survivor Audrey Glickman says: Trump received support from white nationalists. Even if he is not the cause of antisemitism in America, he is, in part, supported by its main American proponents.
The gunman, whom survivor Carol Black does not refer to by name, and neither shall this article, occupies little space in the documentary. It does highlight his antisemitic remarks and anti-immigrant views. What’s strange is the gunman didn’t even have a criminal record. What he did have was a vocal, online presence.
On fringe social networking sites like Gab, the gunman espoused talking points similar to what the former commander-in-chief might have said. These included the migrant caravan coming, they’re coming to take jobs and replace white people, etc. The gunman, though named in the doc for informational purposes, remains nameless in this review because, to paraphrase Glickman, he’s not even really a person. He’s a symptom of a larger malaise. He’s synecdochic of a body of ideas that begins with jokes and quips about supposed Jewish frugality but threatens to evolve into baseless claims about cabals and financial puppeteering.
Just ask Kanye West about that.
A Tree of Life succeeds largely because, while it is necessarily a tough viewing, it is extremely hopeful. It briefly looks at 20th-century American antisemitism. But it also shines a light on solidarity. The outpouring of grief over the massacre invited the interfaith Pittsburgh community to come together, with the Pittsburgh Islamic Center raising $250,000 to cover victims’ medical and funeral costs.
Elsewhere, years later, the Pittsburgh survivors now communicate with survivors of other tragedies like the Parkland high school shooting and the previously mentioned Charleston massacre. It’s a community no one is happy to be a part of, but they are happy for the support. It is this solidarity that Audrey Glickman calls for moving away from death and setting forth a “path of life.”
A Tree of Life premiered Wednesday, October 26, 2022, at 9pm PT/ET on HBO and is currently streaming on HBO Max.