Psychic TV

Psychic TV (sometimes spelled Psychick TV) or PTV, is an English experimental video art and music group, formed by performance artist Genesis P-Orridge and video director Peter Christopherson after the break-up of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV signs to Some Bizzare Label working along with Alex Fergusson, musician and producer from Alternative TV.

The band began publishing a monthly series of 23 live albums in 1986, but stopped without explanation after only 17. The tenth, a picture disk most commonly referred to as Album 10, could only be obtained by submitting tokens contained in each of the previous nine releases. The band subsequently earned an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for most records released in one year.

Contributors to Psychic TV have included artists such as Coil, Current 93, Hafler Trio, The Cult, White Stains, Soft Cell, Fred Giannelli, XKP, Master Musicians of Jajouka, Matthew Best, Daniel Simon Black, Bill Breeze, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, Derek Jarman, John Gosling, Timothy Leary, Rose McDowall, Stephen Kent, Vagina Dentata Organ, Andrew Weatherall, Larry Thrasher, Z'EV, Zef Noi$e, Jeff Berner, and many others.

Critical Role (web series)

Critical Role is an American web series produced by Geek and Sundry in which a group of professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons. The series is broadcast live on Thursdays on the Geek and Sundry Twitch.tv, with episodes made available the following Monday on Geek and Sundry's official website. Matthew Mercer serves as the show's Dungeon Master, running the ongoing campaign that is the basis for the show. The campaign began two years prior to the series as a one-time Pathfinder game at a birthday party for Liam O'Brien, after Liam and Sam Riegel discussed the idea on their podcast AllWorkNoPlay. The group enjoyed this initial game so much that they continued to play privately until they were approached by Felicia Day's Geek and Sundry network. In order to streamline gameplay for the live show, the game's characters were converted from Pathfinder to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition before the web series began airing on 13 March 2015. Each stream also serves as a donation drive to support nonprofit organizations such as St Jude's, 826LA, Extra Life, and Doctors Without Borders.

James Randi

James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge, August 7, 1928) is a naturalized American retired stage magician and scientific skeptic who has extensively challenged paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Randi is the co-founder of Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) and the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). He began his career as a magician named The Amazing Randi, and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, which he collectively calls "woo-woo". Randi retired from practicing magic aged 60, and from the JREF aged 87.

Although often referred to as a "debunker", Randi dislikes the term's connotations and prefers to describe himself as an "investigator". He has written about the paranormal phenomena, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and was occasionally featured on the television program Penn & Teller: Bullshit! The JREF sponsors the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, which now makes grants to non-profit groups that encourage critical thinking and a fact-based world view and which, prior to Randi's retirement offered a prize of US$1,000,000 to eligible applicants who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties.

From the New World (novel)

From the New World (新世界より, Shin Sekai Yori) is a Japanese novel by Yusuke Kishi, originally published in 2008 by Kodansha. It received the 29th Nihon SF Taisho Award. The novel has received a manga adaptation in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine, which was serialized between May 2012 and June 2014, and an anime television series adaptation by A-1 Pictures, which aired in Japan between September 2012 and March 2013. The manga series has been licensed by Vertical Inc and the anime by Sentai Filmworks in North America.

Plot

Part I

Set in Japan, 1000 years after the modern era, year 66 in the Kamisu ("The Nest of the Gods") Era, Shin Sekai Yori follows the life of Saki, a girl from the town of Kamisu 66. In this age, all humans possess powerful psychic abilities, and live an idyllic life in agrarian villages. Despite her parents' fears that she may not awaken her powers, Saki gains her special powers at the age of twelve and joins her friends Satoru, Maria, Mamoru, Shun, and Reiko in enrolling at school to hone her gifts. However, the children are unaware that the village government is monitoring and evaluating them through the education system. Based on these evaluations, certain students are removed from society, whether it is for poor performance, such as with Reiko, or for cheating. These removed students are also forgotten by the other children; Saki and her remaining friends have no memory of Reiko. Later, during an unsupervised camping field trip, Saki and her friends encounter the False Minoshiro, a mythical animal revealed to be an ancient library robot. The False Minoshiro explains much of the violent truth of their people's history and what their special powers truly are.