In 1987, Disneyland developed a spectacular nighttime show by which ghosts, skeletons and black widows escaped from the haunted house to entertain the crowds along the Rivers of America – five years before “Fantasmic” became a surprise sensation.

Disneyland consultant Don Dorsey discussed the history of the shelved haunted house-themed nighttime spectacular through the Magic After Dark panel on the D23 fan event on the Anaheim Convention Center.

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In 1987, Dorsey was working on the brand new nighttime spectacular “IllumiNations” for Epcot in Florida when the Disney entertainment team was asked to create the same show for Disneyland.

The marching orders: Create an exciting evening show the likes of which has never been seen before on the Anaheim theme park.

After touring the park, the team decided that the Rivers of America can be the perfect location to perform the show, because the waterfront area of ​​New Orleans Square offered the most important audience capability.

The next challenge was to develop a show concept that will fit the thematic environment of New Orleans Square. Their big idea: What would occur if the 999 ghosts from the haunted mansion took over Tom Sawyer Island?

The concept image developed for the nighttime spectacular with the theme “The Haunted Mansion” shows ghosts streaming out of the classic haunted house and flowing in a ghostly rainbow over the Rivers of America on Tom Sawyer Island.

Performers on river rafts handled fire rings while tombstones bobbed within the water and skeletons danced on a Tom Sawyer Island stage.

In a spooky castle scene, headless knights lifted a coffin into the air while ghost brides lingered amongst scattered skulls.

Another scene developed for the nighttime spectacle featured pirates fighting with swords within the mast of a ghost version of the sailing ship Columbia while fireworks exploded near the strict.

In the finale, the villain of Chernabog from Fantasia towered over us as flames consumed the water below.

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“Everyone thought, 'Oh, this is going to be great,'” Dorsey said through the D23 panel presentation. “Then it was put on hold for a while until Disneyland celebrates its 35th anniversary.”

After the thirty fifth anniversary celebration in 1990, attention turned to a different nighttime water and fireworks display, ultimately held at the identical location on Disneyland's Rivers of America.

“Fantasmic” premiered in 1992 – but that was not the unique name of the show.

“The actual show was called 'Imagination,'” said Steven Davison, vice chairman of parades and spectacles at Walt Disney Imagineering, through the D23 panel. “That's why you heard 'I-mag-i-na-tion' at the top of the show.”

However, the word “Imagination” couldn’t be trademarked, so Disney’s creative team had to start out from scratch.

“Everyone pitched names and Fantasmic was born,” Davison said through the D23 panel.

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“Fantasmic” is a play on the word “phantasmic,” which refers to an illusion that exists only within the imagination—a fitting description for a show by which Mickey Mouse uses his imagination to bring Disney characters to life.

Fantasmic also evokes the 1940 Disney cartoon “Fantasia,” the word “fantastic,” and the “mic” in Mickey. And most significantly, Fantasmic was unique enough to be trademarked by Disney Enterprises.

Dorsey, who worked on the parades and spectacles at Disneyland and Disney World for a long time for the reason that Nineteen Seventies, later designed the sound effects for “Fantasmic.”

Originally published: August 14, 2024 at 11:02 am

The shooting of a security guard nearby the house of Drake in Toronto is the newest chapter within the ongoing beef between the Canadian rapper and his Pulitizer Prize-winning rival Kendrick Lamar.

Rap battles have historically been a way for emcees to showcase their lyrical superiority over others through the art of dissent or irreverence. As the name suggests, dissidents have all the time attempted to make jokes through many means, including the specter of violence and humor. Since hip-hop went global, media and corporations have exploited the spectacle of violence—including rap battles—for financial gain.

In fact, shortly after the song's release “Like that“” with a pointed, aggressive verse from Lamar, posters appeared in New York and Los Angeles reading: “Hip-hop is a competitive sport.”

These billboards were sponsored by Spotify and RapCaviarthe service that curates Spotify's popular hip-hop playlist.

But the history of violence projected onto rappers and the profitability of their deaths suggests that Spotify and RapCaviar could also be profiting more from fomenting this conflict than the artists.

More people were probably in search of the music of Tupac Shakur And Notoriously BIG after her tragic death within the late Nineties. Since then, rappers have liked Pop Smoke And Juice WRLDto call just a couple of, became increasingly popular after they died.

As a Hip hop artist which examines the best way black art and black individuals are exploited and erased from history, the widespread promotion of beef and conflict between rappers is dangerous. Conflict could also be lucrative for some parties and is unlikely to vanish from the culture, but Spotify's invitation to view hip-hop as a competitive sport for its global audience makes it particularly problematic.

“Battle Royale”?

The feud between Lamar and Drake has been simmering for years and gained public attention in 2023 when Drake and J Cole selected the song “Ego shooter.”

In this song, Cole rejects critics' attempts to pit top-selling rappers against one another:

“I adore it after they argue with the hardest presenter. / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or I? / We're the massive three like we began a league, / but straight away I feel like Muhammad Ali.”

Lamar apparently didn't just like the comparison. In a song released in March 2024, Kendrick tried to distinguish himself from J. Cole and Drake: “Like that”:

Given the long history of witty puns amongst rappers, it's comprehensible that hip-hop fans are all in favour of who takes the crown as the very best amongst their favorite rappers.

Longtime fans can remember the skill with which he did it Count Coolout described in exaggerated terms about fictional universes where people rocked out to the “disco mania” of the Nineteen Eighties in a spot called “Rhythmvania.”

Even more famous: Roxanne Shante was the beginning of “The Roxanne Wars” in 1984. The rap group “UTFO” wrote a song a couple of “snooty” girl they called “Roxanne.” The then 14-year-old rapper adopted the name and released her “Roxanne's Revenge,” which proclaimed her superior rapping skills.

Today's dissidents proceed a convention that dates back to the beginnings of hip-hop, only now for a worldwide audience.

The current portrayal of rap battles as a public spectacle pits modern rappers like Drake and Lamar against one another in similar competitions Ralph Ellison described as “Battle Royale.”

Ellison's groundbreaking novel states: “Invisible man“Wealthy white men gather a bunch of black men and encourage them to fight until just one is left standing. The winner receives a prize for his or her efforts. But considering what it takes to win, it's hard to say whether he actually won anything.

Diss tracks beyond rap

The flood of diss songs and the media coverage of every salvo reveal something in regards to the values ​​of the artists, their audience and the industry.

The dissidents that audiences eagerly consumed upon the discharge of every track included violence, childhood assault victim blaming, accusations of pedophilia, misogyny and homophobia and transphobia. As fans reward disrespect with attention and streaming and social media platforms become profitable, people vulnerable to the sort of attacks artists use against one another must contend with damaging words from global superstars and “joke people.” as answer.

The songs and media coverage also show how even perceived dissidents are promoted in other musical genres and across cultures.

On Taylor Swift's latest album, for instance, one in every of the songs on “The Tortured Poets Department“ is rumored the long-standing feud between Swift and Kim Kardashian and her former husband Ye (formerly Kanye West).

The rumors triggered her Explaining Vogue 2024 the “year of the diss track”.

The dissident even found his strategy to the USA 2024 presidential election. President Joe Biden released one Advertisement online dissident GOP rival Donald Trump. The ad shows Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris and within the background Kendrick raps:

“It's all the time been about love and hate, now I would like to say I'm the most important hater. / I hate the best way you walk, the best way you talk, / I hate the best way you dress./

But in politics and sports like skilled wrestling, trash talk is commonly understood by audiences and competitors as a performance quite than reality.

If rap is definitely viewed as a competitive sport akin to skilled wrestling, and Spotify invites us to gawk at it, then rappers is likely to be more like interchangeable objects that add excitement to the conversation – the chair being broken over someone's head, the ring into which wrestlers are thrown, or turnbuckle into which an opponent's face is smashed.

When something terrible ultimately happens, it's hardly seen as a tragedy after they're destroyed – and there's not even a temporary lull in streaming their music after they disappear.

A powerful solar storm created an astonishing display of sunshine within the skies across the globe overnight, but it surely appears to have caused only minor disruptions to the ability grid, communications and satellite tracking systems.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said extreme geomagnetic storm conditions continued Saturday and there have been preliminary reports of irregularities in the ability grid, deterioration in radio frequency communications and global positioning systems.

However, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said no FEMA region had reported significant impacts from the storms as of early Saturday morning.

NOAA predicted the strong outbreaks will last no less than through Sunday, and a spokeswoman said in an email that the agency's Space Weather Prediction Center had prepared well for the storm.

On Saturday morning, SpaceX's Starlink satellite web service said on its website that service was affected and the team was investigating. CEO Elon Musk wrote on X overnight that his satellites were “under a lot of pressure but have held up so far.”

Brilliant shades of purple, green, yellow and pink the northern lights have been reported worldwide, with sightings in Germany, Switzerland, London, Prague, Barcelona and elsewhere.

In the United States on Friday evening, the solar storm pushed lights much further south than normal. People in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and other Midwestern states were capable of capture photos of colours on the horizon.

NOAA said the solar storm will proceed through the weekend, providing one other probability for a lot of to see the northern lights on Saturday evening.

The agency issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning as a solar flare reached Earth on Friday afternoon, hours sooner than expected.

NOAA warned operators of power plants and spacecraft in orbit, in addition to FEMA, to take precautions.

“For most people here on planet Earth, they don’t have to do anything,” said Rob Steenburgh, a scientist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

“This is truly the gift of space weather: the aurora,” Steenburgh said. He and his colleagues said the very best aurora views could also be achieved with phone cameras that may capture the sunshine higher than the naked eye.

Take a photograph of the sky and “maybe there's actually a little treat for you,” said Mike Bettwy, operations manager for the prediction center.

The most intense solar storm in recorded history in 1859 triggered auroras across Central America and possibly even Hawaii.

This storm poses a threat to high-voltage power lines, not the ability lines typically present in people's homes, NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl told reporters. Satellites may be affected, which in turn could disrupt navigation and communications services here on Earth.

For example, an extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003 caused an influence outage in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa.

Even if the storm passes, signals between GPS satellites and ground receivers could possibly be disrupted or lost, in line with NOAA. But there are such a lot of navigation satellites that any outages are unlikely to last long, Steenburgh noted.

According to NOAA, the eruptions look like related to a sunspot 16 times the diameter of Earth. This is all a part of solar activity, which increases because the Sun approaches the height of its 11-year cycle.

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Dunn reported from Cape Canaveral, Florida, while Krisher reported from Detroit and Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska.

Protest movements can look very different depending in your viewpoint, each literally and figuratively.

For protesters, demonstrations are typically the results of careful planning by interest groups and leaders with the goal of spreading a message to a bigger world or to specific institutional targets. However, to outsiders, protests can appear disorganized and disruptive, and it may possibly be difficult to discern the depth of the hassle or its goals.

Take the pro-Palestinian protests which have popped up on campuses across the United States in recent weeks. For the participating students, they’re, within the words of 1 protester, “Raise the voices of Gazans and Palestinians facing genocide.” But for many individuals outside of universities, the main focus was on Conflicts and arrests.

Where does this separation come from? Most people not participate participating in street protests or experiencing the unrest they cause. Rather, they depend on the media to supply an entire picture of the protests.

For over a decade, my research has examined in depth trends in how the media shapes narratives around various kinds of demonstrations. Much of the media's coverage of the campus encampments suits a general pattern of protest coverage that focuses more on the drama of the disruption than on the underlying reasons for it – and that may leave audiences unaware of the nuances of the protests and Movements are informed behind them.

Cover drama over demands

Protests – from small silent sit-ins and mass marches to the present student-led encampments – have similar components.

They require a specific amount of planning, Focus on a perceived injustice And search for reforms or solutions. Protests, by their nature, are disruptive actions of various degrees that involve confrontation with something or someone, and so they employ strategies that attract the eye of the news media and others.

These core elements – grievances, demands, disruption, confrontation and spectacle – are present in just about all protests.

However, for the media, some elements are more newsworthy than others, with confrontation and spectacle often high on the list. Therefore, these elements are likely to be covered more ceaselessly than others.

In research focused on social movements reminiscent of Black Lives Matter, the 2017 Women's March, and others, I even have found this time
and againcoverage tends to make headlines in regards to the parts of the protest which can be sensational and disruptive.

And the political substance of the protests is neglected. The complaints, demands and intentions often remain within the shadows. For example, the evaluation of the In 2020, protests took place following the murder of George Floyd from me and my colleague Rachel Mourão found that Associated Press and cable news headlines focused on unrest and chaos fairly than police violence or protesters' demands.

This pattern is is named a protest paradigm. Although there are numerous aspects that could cause this paradigm to fluctuate, reminiscent of: the timing of stories And the situation of a news organizationMovements that seek to disrupt the established order are probably to receive initial coverage that portrays protesters as criminal, irrelevant, trivial, or illegitimate parts of the political system.

If the media takes notice

This pattern might be seen within the initial coverage of anti-war protests in US universities. These protests began in 2023 and only today expanded to campus camps after months of campaigning.

In the months leading as much as the camps, many students committed to the Israeli campaign in Gaza demanded, amongst other things, that their universities separate from corporations reference to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Brown University students took part in a hunger strike in February. Also in February, a coalition of scholars from several historically black colleges emerged created a joint call to motion for all university systems. Students at my university – Michigan State – gathered support through a web-based petition after which Lobbying at board meetings. When the board of trustees issued a press release rejecting any sort of divestment, the scholars said continued marching to the steps of the headquarters constructing where they continued to protestall before the camp protests were planned.

Compared to late April, when coverage of the organization of student camps at universities increased and university officials began to reply, little of it made it into mainstream news reports. The universities, which called on the police to force the dispersal of the demonstrators, increased the intensity of the confrontation and due to this fact the coverage.

And as a substitute of specializing in the demonstrators' grief – i.e. concerns in regards to the dead, injured, etc impending starvation among the many Palestinians – In reports in regards to the campus encampments, confrontations between protesters and police have grow to be the main focus of reports media coverage.

As with all trends, there are at all times deviations and outliers. Not all reported pieces conform to the protest paradigm. In research Examining the reporting following the killing of George FloydWe have found that when stories in major news outlets deviate from the protest paradigm, it is commonly as a result of work by journalists who’ve engaged deeply and ceaselessly with a community.

In the present protests on campus, student journalism has emerged as an outlier on this regard. Let's take for instance an article from the Indiana Daily Student published throughout the height of the unrest, explaining the lesser-known last-minute administrative policy changes that ultimately confounded the logic of protest planning and contributed to the arrests and temporary bans of college and student protesters.

Who is quoted and who shouldn’t be

There are business the reason why some newsrooms Focus on the spectacle and confrontation – the old journalism adage “If it bleeds, it leads“Many newsroom decisions still prevail. In the primary weeks of the campus protests, this penchant for sensationalism became the main focus of chaos, Clashes And Arrests.

But it’s a call that delegitimizes protest targets.

This delegitimization is facilitated by the sourcing routines that journalists often resort to to inform stories quickly and simply without legal consequences. In current news situations, journalists are likely to deal with and directly quote high-status sources reminiscent of government and university officials. This is because reporters may have already got a longtime relationship with such officials, who often have dedicated media relations teams. And especially during campus protests, reporters have done it had difficulty making direct contact with protest participants.

As a result, official narratives could dominate reporting. So when officials just like the governor of Texas Greg Abbott equates protesters with criminals with anti-Semitic intentionsthat normally is roofed – definitely greater than any rebuttal from protest participants.

And since readers and viewers are unlikely to be there to evaluate Abbott's characterization of protesters for themselves, coverage can influence how a protest movement and the politics surrounding it are understood.

The media shapes the best way most individuals understand it. But as university coverage of the protests has shown, the main focus is commonly on the spectacle fairly than the substance.