By Michael Schulson/Undark

For years, experts have said that Goop, the wellness and lifestyle brand founded by the actor and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, markets pseudoscience and overblown cures. And for years, despite the criticism, Goop has just kept growing.
Now the company, which was valued at $250 million in 2018, seems poised to reach an even larger audience. Earlier this month, Goop announced details of three new ventures: a distribution partnership with the cosmetics giant Sephora; a “wellness experience at sea” with Celebrity Cruises; and – to the chagrin of many science advocates – a six-part series on Netflix, the streaming service with more than 150 million subscribers.
The Netflix show features Paltrow and colleagues exploring a range of alternative healing practices, including energy healing, exorcism, and sessions with psychic mediums.
“What we try to do at Goop is to explore ideas that may seem out there, or too scary,” Elise Loehnen, the company’s chief content officer, explains in the series trailer, which also boasts that the show will feature risky and unregulated treatments.
“We’re here one time, one life,” Paltrow exudes in the trailer, reflecting her signature embrace-new-ideas attitude. “How can we really milk the shit out of this?”

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Posted on January 28, 2020

By One America News Network

One America News Network (“OAN”) has announced that Chanel Rion will lead OAN’s White House coverage as the network’s Chief White House Correspondent.
“We’re delighted to have Chanel lead our White House coverage. She’s fully engaged in the news cycle and not afraid to ask the tough questions,” stated Robert Herring, Sr., CEO of One America News Network. “Chanel has garnered a large following amongst OAN viewers.”
Ms. Rion has been instrumental in One America News’s coverage of President Trump’s re-election campaign, the White House, and US National Security. She has taken her reporting and investigative efforts globally – reporting from the North/South Korean border; Kyiv, Ukraine; and Budapest, Hungary.

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Posted on January 24, 2020

By NASA

Four astronauts will venture outside the International Space Station for three spacewalks in January to complete battery upgrades and finalize repairs to an invaluable cosmic ray detector.
Expedition 61 Flight Engineers Jessica Meir and Christina Koch of NASA are scheduled to conduct spacewalks Wednesday, Jan. 15, and Monday, Jan. 20, to finish replacing nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries that store power generated by the station’s solar arrays on the station’s port truss.
Assuming the battery work goes as planned, NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and space station Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency) will exit the station Saturday, Jan. 25, to finish installing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer’s (AMS) new cooling apparatus and lines begun in November and December, and verify they are ready for use.

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Posted on January 10, 2020

By Paul Wells/The Conversation

For more than 100 years, across the world, in many diverse cultures, animation has featured talking animals. Indeed, the anthropomorphized cat, dog, mouse, ape, duck and rabbit have populated animation in a way that has defined much of its distinctive nature – by using animals to subvert social and cultural norms.
Netflix’s animated comedy-drama BoJack Horseman is another example of this. But BoJack, played by Will Arnett, is not a horse as playful companion like Maximus in Tangled or Bullseye in Toy Story. He is not an abused victim like Boxer in Animal Farm, and does not possess the lyrical equine beauty of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. BoJack is literally a horse-man.
Like Bottom in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he seems to have acquired a head that makes him think and feel differently. Not for BoJack the revelry of love, however. His thoughts are dominated by his own mortality, sense of failure, and deep misanthropy.

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Posted on January 4, 2020