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Who says you need a pilot to tell if something is going to be a hit? Well, a lot of networks, actually… but not HBO! Without so much as a teaser trailer, it’s been revealed that the streaming service is going all in on their adaptation of the critically-acclaimed video game series The Last of Us. Like, all in. During a recent event detailing Canada’s economic future, Alberta premier Jason Kenny revealed HBO intends to spend a whopping 200 million per season on The Last of Us. In addition, Kenny said the project could could last as many as eight seasons. For those of you keeping track at home, that makes for a grand total of 1.6 billion making the most realistic plant-headed zombies you’ll ever see.

While it’s hardly surprising the The Last of Us is shaping up to be the most largely invested in video game adaptation, comparing it’s budget to other HBO original series is pretty jaw-dropping. Assuming each season of The Last of Us sticks to HBO’s usual 8 to 10 episode format, that means the network plans to spend between 20-25 million per episode. Just to put this in perspective, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ The Pacific — which currently holds the title of most expensive HBO series — sits at a budget of 20 million per episode. The special effects-filled final season of Game of Thrones pales in comparison, with a budget of 15 million an episode. In addition, the sheer number of intended seasons is pretty astounding. If Kenny’s “as many as eight seasons” claim is true, it would make the show one of HBO’s longest running series that’s not related to sports or Bill Maher.

However, while all this might seem excessive (and let’s be real, it is), HBO investing into the apocalyptic tragedy might be what the studio needs to do to keep up with its competitors. Over at Amazon, the upcoming Lord of the Rings series has been given a budget of one billion dollars to spread out over the course of five seasons, resulting in 200 million spent per season as well. At Disney+, Marvel is forking over a staggering 25 million per episode to bring Loki, WandaVision, and all your favorite characters back to life. Only time will tell which of these shows pan out and keep the services up and streaming another day.

On the heels of its Fear Street trilogy, Netflix is signaling that summer is the time for horror (or at last, it can be a secondary Halloween season). Since time does not matter anymore, why not? The streamer’s upcoming limited series, Brand New Cherry Flavor, premieres on Friday, August 13, so there’s a tie-in right there, and the show looks to be a good old-fashioned cautionary tale on trusting the wrong people and the hazards of making the wrong move for revenge. One of those wrong people appears to be a witchy woman (played by Catherine Keener), who’s helping the protagonist, a filmmaker named Lisa (Rosa Salazar), take down another one of those wrong people, an unfortunately-behaved producer with a wrong move.

Lots of wrong people and wrong moves here.

Before long, an entire colony of rabbit holes opens up in this trailer, and there’s a Lynchian vibe in how Lisa’s Hollywood adventure soon reveals fiendish undertones, which later become explicit. Laying that curse on the producer has unleashed all manner of spooky happenings, including faceless creatures who plague Lisa, and maybe that “binding ritual” was a bad idea. Yeah, I’m digging the Sam Raimi-esque afternotes, too. The series is based upon the 1996 novel by Todd Grimson, and here’s the synopsis:

Lisa N. Nova (Rosa Salazar) comes to LA dead set on directing her first movie. But when she trusts the wrong person and gets stabbed in the back, everything goes sideways and a dream project turns into a nightmare. This particular nightmare has zombies, hit men, supernatural kittens, and a mysterious tattoo artist who likes to put curses on people. And Lisa’s going to have to figure out some secrets from her own past in order to get out alive.

Brand New Cherry flavor will spook your pants off on August 13.

On Thursday, Annapurna Interactive held its first ever showcase event. They went around the world and gave a look into all of the games they’re currently assisting with and one of them from BlueTwelve Studio was a much wanted update about the game STRAY. This adventure about a stray cat as it explores the city has been teased many times in the past, but this was the first time we ever got to really dive deep into the gameplay of STRAY and what it’s about.

After watching the gameplay trailer there is really one takeaway that someone can have: the cat the player will take control of is adorable and must be protected at all costs. This cat needs our help to get through a perilous adventure in a dangerous city where it will meet many robot citizens. Some of them may help the cat, others not so much, but the cat will have a drone companion around for the ride to help translate conversations. It will also assist the cat in combat with slug monsters that are going to attempt to hurt it, and in this household, we protect the cat.

While some parts of this adventure sound silly, the trailer actually does an incredible job of creating a sense of anxiety throughout the entire gameplay demo. This cat really does need our help to get through this adventure, because the town itself is anything but safe. It’s painted in beautiful but terrifying neon colors and the music accompanying it creates an atmosphere that something bad could occur at any moment. Gameplay features the cat having to puzzle its way through sharp fans, jumping through toxic sewers, and safely navigating busy alleyways. It seems pretty clear this cat is in a place it shouldn’t be and that means danger.

However, while the cat is in a dangerous place, there is a sense of mystery to all of it that makes the exploration sound incredibly fun. Why is this cat here in the first place and what does it even want? Also, while the drone can translate what others are saying to the cat, will the cat be able to speak itself in any way? Typically in games with silent protagonists we, the player, are supposed to see ourselves in the character, and almost interact with it in a roleplay element. So it may be that the developers are trying to put us in the role of this cat. They want us to feel as scared as a stray cat would.

It’s early, and we won’t get to play STRAY until 2022, but early signs point to an adventure that could be incredibly gripping. This is a game that might emotionally break people if the anxiety in the trailer carries over into the game itself. It also could be one of the best video game experiences of 2022. Utilizing the emotions that people feel towards animals in an adventure like this is going to get the kind of emotional reaction that only video games can create.

STRAY makes all of us want to protect this cat at all times. That feeling is going to be the driving force of this game and it’s going to be what pushes a lot of players forward. However, that won’t be enough for everyone, there needs to be a story about why this cat is here in the first place. Hopefully future details tell us why it is we’re a stray cat in a strange city, but for now we’ll just continue hoping that it’s going to be okay by the end of the adventure.

Jay-Z and Will Smith are the unofficial avatars of Black wealth, and with their latest venture, they hope to provide a means for building wealth for more people. Their investment funds, Roc Nation and Dreamers VC respectively, have joined a group of investors raising $165 million in housing startup Landis, which will rent homes to clients until they can afford to buy them.

According to Bloomberg, the company purchases a house, rents it to the client, and then sells it to them at a preset price (including a fee on top of its original value) up within two years from the initial purchase. Landis also provides financial coaching to clients to help them manage their budgets, build credit, and save the down payments they need to purchase their homes. After the first two years, the company may offer more time or sell the property.

The idea is, of course, to make it easier for aspiring homeowners to actually achieve their goal in a housing market that has become increasingly expensive and risky in the years since the Great Recession, which was in part caused by a housing market bubble bursting in the mid-2000s.

Bloomberg reports that the typical Landis client is a first-time buyer with a budget under $400,000. The $165 million investment will allow the company to buy around 1,000 homes with the hopes of following through on 80% of its initial customer base. That would be way more than traditional rent-to-own companies. The company’s founder, Cyril Berdugo, credits the business model, which would see Landis “make money when our client buys the house back.” “If we leave money on the table,” he says, “That’s our problem.”

Among other industries Jay-Z has invested in, the mogul has put money behind Bitcoin, cannabis, and will reportedly begin producing film and television sometime in the future.

Soraya Marquez is a fighter. Growing up in a single-mother led household in Far Rockaway Queens after arriving from Puerto Rico at the age of 10, Marquez was raised with the cards stacked against her, but that didn’t stop her from letting her daily commute in the rich and vibrant city of New York inspire her to strive for more.

“I didn’t have art in my house, but when I went to the street it was like graffiti everywhere. It was like a moving museum,” Marquez says in the above video. “We would always take the A Train all the way to Washington Heights. Seeing all the graffiti in the tunnels, I was able to connect the dots, like ‘this is art too.’ I wanted to be a part of that, I wanted to be somebody.”

With tons of passion but little means, Marquez was able to carve a space for herself in the New York art scene, throwing graffiti on the walls under the name Indie184, a pseudonym Marquez views as a superhero-like alter ego who isn’t fazed by life’s challenges. Given the boy’s club nature of the NYC graffiti scene, this was no easy task.

“At that time there were very few women in New York City doing graffiti, and I was one of them. Being new in any culture, you’re going to be questioned. If you didn’t do a certain task… then you’re going to be criticized.” Seeing the challenge to be accepted in the graffiti scene ahead of her, Indie184 didn’t let the hurdles of being an outsider stop her from realizing her dreams,

“I had to prove myself, I had to prove my lettering skills, my can control, so I did that my way. I taught myself graphic design, photography. So I mixed all these styles [and] and all these mediums. I’m making my own lane, I’m not following this patriarchal format of being an artist in graffiti, you’ve just got to blaze your own trail.”

Indie184 credits that boldness with the fighting spirit of her mother,

“I center women in my murals because I grew up with a single mom. I absolutely admire that, women are constantly inspiring me to own my power… Creating these colorful murals in all these neighborhoods I grew up in, it’s a visual diary. I get to put a piece of myself out there to share with the world. The role of the muralist in the community is to beautify and empower its people.”

Watch the video above to learn more about Indie184’s story, how she got her name, and how she’s continued to carve a space out for herself in the NYC graffiti scene over the last 20 years. Be sure to keep an eye out for additional episodes from our Salud to Summer series, created in partnership with Modelo.

This article originally appeared on 08.12.15

Every parent wants to see their kid get good grades in school. But now we know social success is just as important.

From an early age, we’re led to believe our grades and test scores are the key to everything — namely, going to college, getting a job, and finding that glittery path to lifelong happiness and prosperity.

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It can be a little stressful.

All GIFs from “Billy Madison.”

But a new study shows that when children learn to interact effectively with their peers and control their emotions, it can have an enormous impact on how their adult lives take shape. And according to the study, kids should be spending more time on these skills in school.

Nope, it’s not hippie nonsense. It’s science.

Researchers measured the social skills of 800 kindergarteners in 1991. Two decades later, they looked them up to see how things turned out.

Kindergarten teachers evaluated the kids with a portion of something called the Social Competence Scale by rating statements like “The child is good at understanding other’s feelings” on a handy “Not at all/A little/Moderately well/Well/Very well” scale.

The research team used these responses to give each kid a “social competency score,” which they then stored in what I assume was a manila folder somewhere for 19 years, or until each kid was 25. At that point, they gathered some basic information about the now-grown-ups and did some fancy statistical stuff to see whether their early social skills held any predictive value.

Here’s what they found.

1. Those good test scores we covet? They still matter, but maybe not for the reasons we thought.

Traditional thinking says that if a kid gets good grades and test scores, he or she must be really smart, right? After all, there is a proven correlation between having a better GPA in high school and making more money later in life.

But what that test score doesn’t tell you is how many times a kid worked with a study partner to crack a tough problem, or went to the teacher for extra help, or resisted the urge to watch TV instead of preparing for a test.

The researchers behind this project wrote, “Success in school involves both social-emotional and cognitive skills, because social interactions, attention, and self-control affect readiness for learning.”

That’s a fancy way of saying that while some kids may just be flat-out brilliant, most of them need more than just smarts to succeed. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt spending a little more time in school teaching kids about the social half of the equation.

2. Skills like sharing and cooperating pay off later in life.

We know we need to look beyond GPA and state-mandated testing to figure out which kids are on the right path. That’s why the researchers zeroed in so heavily on that social competency score.

What they found probably isn’t too surprising: Kids who related well to their peers, handled their emotions better, and were good at resolving problems went on to have more successful lives.

What’s surprising is just how strong the correlation was.

An increase of a single point in social competency score showed a child would be 54% more likely to earn a high school diploma, twice as likely to graduate with a college degree, and 46% more likely to have a stable, full-time job at age 25.

The kids who were always stealing toys, breaking things, and having meltdowns? More likely to have run-ins with the law and substance abuse problems.

The study couldn’t say for sure that strong or poor social skills directly cause any of these things. But we can say for sure that eating too much glue during arts and crafts definitely doesn’t help.

3. Social behaviors can be learned and unlearned — meaning it’s never too late to change.

The researchers called some of these pro-social behaviors like sharing and cooperating “malleable,” or changeable.

Let’s face it: Some kids are just never going to be rocket scientists. Turns out there are physical differences in our brains that make learning easier for some people than others. But settling disputes with peers? That’s something kids (and adults) can always continue to improve on.

And guess what? For a lot of kids, these behaviors come from their parents. The more you’re able to demonstrate positive social traits like warmth and empathy, the better off your kids will be.

So can we all agree to stop yelling at people when they take the parking spot we wanted?

But what does it all mean?

This study has definite limitations, which its researchers happily admit. While it did its best to control for as many environmental factors as possible, it ultimately leans pretty heavily on whether a teacher thought a kid was just “good” or “very good” at a given trait.

Still, the 19-year study paints a pretty clear picture: Pro-social behavior matters, even at a young age. And because it can be learned, it’s a great “target for prevention or intervention efforts.”

The bottom line? We need to do more than just teach kids information. We need to invest in teaching them how to relate to others and how to handle the things they’re feeling inside.

Ignoring social skills in our curricula could have huge ramifications for our kids down the road.

This article originally appeared on 11.11.13

This is short, but it definitely packs a punch. Be sure to pay close attention from 1:34 to 2:06; it’s like equal parts “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and “Econ 101.”

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This article originally appeared on 05.22.15

This is not news: America does pretty badly when it goes up against other countries academically.

This is true even if we take it one state at a time—no single state, no matter how wealthy or small, matches the top scoring countries. And yet, the U.S. spends more per student than many other countries in the world.

Image via Amanda Ripley/PopTech.

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In the above image, each state is mapped to a country that had similar scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, an international test of mathematical reasoning given to 15-year-olds. The top 15 countries are in purple. No, there isn’t any purple on this map.

Reporter Amanda Ripley wanted to figure out why U.S. education outcomes are so mediocre.

She started asking random people what they thought and she followed up on their ideas. The same theories came up over and over: People blamed poverty and diversity for the difference between U.S. students and students everywhere else. But when Ripley dug into the numbers, she discovered that, while those are factors, they don’t fully explain the difference.

No adult could give her a satisfactory answer, so she went to the experts: kids.

Kids spend more time in school than anyone. They’ve got strong opinions about school. They have opinions on what is working.

She talked to the only students who could have firsthand knowledge of the differences between schools in top-performing countries and those in the U.S.: American kids who were exchange students in those countries.

She surveyed hundreds of exchange students and found three major points that they all agreed on.

The students all said that in their host countries:

1. School is harder. There’s less homework but the material is more rigorous. People take education more seriously, from selecting the content to selecting the teachers.
2. Sports are just a hobby. In the U.S., sports are a huge distraction from the business of school, but that’s not the case in other countries.
3. Kids believe there’s something in it for them. The students in other countries deeply believe that what they are doing in school affects how interesting their lives were going to be. Even if they don’t like a class, they see their education as a stepping stone to their future.

To hear more from these amazing kids (and a great story about how an education reporter managed to take an international standardized test), check out the video from PopTech.

In a new featurette for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige has confirmed that the film is connected to the events of the first Iron Man movie that officially kicked off the start of the MCU. While most Marvel fans immediately recognized the Ten Rings name when it appeared in the Shang-Chi title, the organization has had a convoluted presence in the MCU, so there was justifiable doubt about whether it was a reference to Iron Man or not. Well, in the very first moments of the new Shang-Chi featurette, Feige makes it clear that the Ten Rings connection is legit.

“We’re going back to the very beginning of the MCU,” Feige says in the video. “We have a keystone event, and that event is Tony Stark becoming Iron Man. He’s forced to build these weapons for an organization, and that organization was the Ten Rings.”

Here’s where things get messy. While the first Iron Man film never shows The Mandarin, who’s the head of the Ten Rings and a longtime rival of Tony Stark in the comics, Iron Man 3 introduced The Mandarin to the MCU — except not really. The film pulled a divisive twist on fans by revealing that Sir Ben Kingsley’s portrayal of the classic villain was really just a bumbling British actor named Trevor, and not The Mandarian. However, Marvel slightly retconned that creative decision in the short, All Hail the King, which revealed that the real Mandarin does exist in the MCU, and he wasn’t thrilled with Trevor’s ruse.

But with all of that in the past, Marvel fans will now get a proper introduction to the MCU version of The Mandarin played by Tony Leung. As the featurette reveals, The Mandarian is Shang-Chi’s father, who’s hoping to bring his son back into the fold of his criminal empire, but our hero has other plans.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings punches into theaters on September 3.

On Thursday afternoon, Scarlett Johansson filed what is shaping up to be a monumental lawsuit against the Walt Disney Company for allegedly breaching her contract by releasing Black Widow on Disney+ at the same it hits theaters. At issue is Disney’s contractual obligation to pay Johansson a percentage of Black Widow‘s theatrical haul, which was negatively impacted by the simultaneous streaming release. According to Johansson’s lawsuit, Disney allegedly failed to negotiate a compromise before pushing Black Widow onto Disney+.

The lawsuit triggered a response from Disney, which fired back at Johansson in a statement, and now, her talent agency, CAA, is getting involved in making this an all-out war in the press. In a fiery retort, CAA co-chairman Bryan Lourd blasted Disney for accusing Johansson of being “insensitive” to the pandemic and airing her salary in an attempt to allegedly “weaponize her success.” Via Variety:

“They have shamelessly and falsely accused Ms. Johansson of being insensitive to the global COVID pandemic, in an attempt to make her appear to be someone they and I know she isn’t,” Lourd said.

Lourd went on to note that Johansson has appeared in nine Disney and Marvel movies, which he said have earned the company billions of dollars in ticket sales.

“The company included her salary in their press statement in an attempt to weaponize her success as an artist and businesswoman, as if that were something she should be ashamed of,” Lourd added.

Lourd is reacting to Disney’s statement (to The Hollywood Reporter), in which Disney declared that Johansson’s lawsuit “has no merit whatsoever” before suggesting that she didn’t care about the pandemic.

“The lawsuit is especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Disney said.

(Via Variety)