“Review: 'A Plague Tale: Innocence' (PS4) should burrow into best-of-2019 lists - Santa Ynez Valley News” plus 2 more

Review: 'A Plague Tale: Innocence' (PS4) should burrow into best-of-2019 lists - Santa Ynez Valley News
Mayor Pete Was Heckled By Black Protesters After Police Killed A Man In His Home Town - BuzzFeed News
Bubonic Plague ‘Likely’ Already Present In Los Angeles, Dr. Drew Says - The Daily Wire

Review: 'A Plague Tale: Innocence' (PS4) should burrow into best-of-2019 lists - Santa Ynez Valley News

Posted: 25 Jun 2019 09:59 AM PDT

Beauty from horror, calm from chaos, hope from despair — take your pick of unlikely provenance. In "A Plague Tale: Innocence," Asobo Studio makes it all so like a master alchemist.

The French developer, a veteran of licensed games like "Toy Story 3" and "Disneyland Adventures," finds inspiration for its best and most visionary work yet in its native countryside. There, "Innocence" tells a story about a family, the de Runes, riven by the Black Death in 1349. As seas of rats spread the plague across the continent, the Inquisition comes calling at the family's estate in search of a cure. Siblings Amicia and Hugo, who've been estranged because of the young boy's mysterious health problems, must evade the rodents and religious zealots alike to survive.

It's the kind of 10-hour single-player game that makes you mourn what increasingly feels like the imminent death of them. As the de Runes cross France, past X'd village doors and piles of casualties on the battlefields of the country's Hundred Years' War with England, "Innocence" transports you to history. But the game also transforms it: Eventually, Amicia and Hugo discover that supernatural forces motivate both their human pursuers and the rats that would devour them all. And that fun pivot toward speculative fiction lets Asobo gradually widen the game's possibilities of play.

As Amicia, you must lead her brother by the hand past those threats, in spaces both linear and open. The humans can be snuck by the same way as most stealth games — by making use of tall foliage and manipulating line of sight — but their sharp AI and ability to kill Amicia in one blow keeps your pulse raised. Though she can ask Hugo to stay put at any time, which runs the risk of him suffering a mental attack and alerting their enemies, it almost never proves necessary. So "Innocence" isn't quite an escort game, even if it isn't clear why it includes the mechanic.

The rats, meanwhile, require more puzzle solving, as only light can repel them. Using torches that burn out, lanterns staked into the ground and movable braziers, you must constantly illuminate the path ahead of the siblings. It's like the floor is lava, but with rats. Later, you find some creative ways to deal with them in the form of alchemy, through which Amicia can craft items with cool Latin names that ignite embers, divert the hordes and more. And toward the end of the game, the rats and the Inquisition often inhabit the same spaces, which can lead to some truly devious solutions.

Other craftable items help Amicia take down humans. That's when "Innocence" pays off its name by showing the plucky teen losing hers. The first time a rock from her sling snuffs a life, she cries in remorse. As she continues to kill, the game never stops showing how much the cost of her and Hugo's survival weighs on her. Still, you won't need to loose too many projectiles: Safe passageways are everywhere. And whether it's encroaching rat-nados or the few bosses Amicia faces, you're never too endangered to think through your next move. So the least violent path is always viable.

For that reason, some may consider "Innocence" too easy. But I found the deliberate action a perfect vehicle for the game's atmosphere. It lets you soak in the tour de force of imagery Asobo has created, from the soft pastoral sunsets and castle ruins to the carpets of mutilated corpses and rat nests. The animation of the thousands of plague carriers sharing the screen at any given time is astoundingly sophisticated, too — and you can't really appreciate it if you're always running for your life. The sound design is just as spellbinding, a din of screeches and frenzied violin.

Asobo's most impressive efforts, however, are reserved for the game's narrative interludes. The facial animation and voice acting are some of the best I've experienced in years. Charlotte McBurney betrays the resentment Amicia feels that Hugo monopolized their mother's attention, the burden she nonetheless feels to keep her brother safe, and the abject terror of their surroundings — sometimes within one scene. And as Hugo, Logan Hannan lends depth and, even more impossibly, actual likability to a character so young most directors wouldn't have bothered with second takes.

Some supporting characters the siblings meet along the way are voiced just as well, particularly Tabitha Rubens as world-weary thief Melie. But not all of those characters make it to the end of "Innocence." And Asobo ensures their last moments are meaningful. So it's genuinely touching to see those who remain form a new family after the events of the game, just as the world rebuilt itself after the devastation of the Black Death. It seems the studio knows that creating something special and lasting — like one of the best games of 2019 so far — takes a cruel kind of balance.

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Mayor Pete Was Heckled By Black Protesters After Police Killed A Man In His Home Town - BuzzFeed News

Posted: 22 Jun 2019 11:25 AM PDT

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg returned to the campaign trail Saturday, a day after a tense and emotional rally over a police shooting in his town of South Bend, Indiana, where members of the crowd lashed out at him for not doing enough to help the black community.

The young Democrat canceled most of his campaigning stops this past week, skipping several high-profile events in New York, Hollywood, and South Carolina, to spend time with his frustrated constituents after a white police officer shot and killed Eric Logan, a 54-year-old black man, last Sunday.

Around 3:30 a.m. local time, South Bend Police Sgt. Ryan O'Neill responded to a report of a man reportedly breaking into cars outside of an apartment building. Police say that when Logan flashed a knife when the officer approached him, and O'Neill opened fire. However, neither O'Neill's body camera or dash camera were turned on, enraging the black community and prompting calls for a federal investigation.

Buttigieg, who's as known as Mayor Pete, has solidified himself as one of the stars in a crowded Democratic field. The 37-year-old, who could become the youngest and first openly gay president, has risen in the polls in recent months, but has struggled to attract black voters. The shooting and its aftermath have now jostled his campaign and thrust the leader of the small city into the national debate on policing and the black community.

On Friday night, the presidential hopeful attended a march in front of police headquarters. About 150 people attended, according to the South Bend Tribune, and footage from the gathering showed several angry demonstrators hounding the mayor for siding with police, failing to proactively address racism against the black community, and not taking immediate action.

The law enforcement in South Bend, like that of many cities in the US, does not reflect its population. The city is 26% black and 14% Latino, records show, but the police department is predominantly white. Over the past few years, as CityLab reports, the police force and Buttigieg have come under fire for several allegations of racial discrimination.

Organizers and several members of Logan's family have also criticized Buttigieg, who has led the city since 2012, for skipping a vigil at the scene of the shooting and not making any public remarks about the incident until Wednesday, when he spoke at a police headquarters to talk to the city's new cadet class, all of whom are white, about the importance of transparency and turning on body cameras.

"How's he handling it? Well, he talked to the media before the family," Oliver Davis, a veteran black member of the South Bend Common Council, told the Washington Post. "He skipped the family vigil, full of black residents. And then he gave a speech to the police. So how do you think that went over?"

Logan's mother, Shirley Newbill, also told the Post that the family had a brief but frustrating meeting with their mayor, adding, "[He] ain't done nothing."

"He ain't recognize me as the mother of nothing. He didn't say nothing to me," she said.

The family plans to file a lawsuit, their attorney, Brian Coffman, told BuzzFeed News, and they're seeking answers about why Logan was killed as well as what Buttigieg and police officers are doing to prevent similar deaths in the future.

"I appreciate the Mayor's efforts in attempting to be transparent with the process and investigation," he said. "However, the family views that as more of a reaction now to the awful and tragic events instead of taking the necessary steps and planning to prepare and train SBPD officers to properly use their body cameras, and [attempting] deescalating techniques instead of immediately jumping to and using deadly force on a citizen."

However, other residents have defended Buttigieg's leadership, acknowledging his efforts to pause his presidential campaigning to return home.

Rev. Michael Patton, the president of the South Bend NAACP, said on CNN that the mayor "has taken steps to draw our community together. ... He's brought community leaders together, our chief of police, as well others to the table to bring some calm to the storm. ... He's done a phenomenal job."

Videos and photos from Friday's rally show Buttigieg in the center of the protest, listening to demonstrators, answering their questions, and addressing their demands.

In one exchange, an attendee handed the leader a petition for him to sign, calling on the Justice Department to investigate Logan's death. The presidential candidate studied it, but then told the activist that he couldn't sign it because certain language would prejudice the internal investigation.

"But I will sign a petition if it's clean ... if it just calls for an outside investigation," Buttigieg explained, prompting the demonstrator to tell the crowd that they need to retool the petition so it excludes specific details about the case, and, that way, Buttigieg could sign it. The group then erupted in applause.

The mayor has said he's extremely "frustrated" that the officer's cameras were not activated and promised marchers at the "Justice for South Bend rally" on Friday that he will work tirelessly to ensure that "there will be more steps to change what is happening in the community."

While he acknowledged he could not fix the system alone, and that his city was dealing with the ramifications of "centuries of racism in this country and in South Bend," he vowed to listen and ensure there would be "accountability for what happened."

"There will be a process to investigate what happened on Sunday," he told the crowd. "And if the community does not have confidence in those processes, then we will find a way to bring somebody from the outside to regain confidence."

By Saturday, the presidential candidate was back on the campaign trail. Speaking at the South Carolina Democratic Convention in Columbia, he talked about the "challenging week back home."

"It is as if one member of our family died at the hands of another," he said. "And even as an outside process works to determine what happened, we already know why such wounds are surfacing and why our whole community hurts."

Buttigieg will be back home Sunday, where he's called a town hall to further discuss the shooting, the police force, and race in South Bend.

Ryan Brooks contributed reporting from South Carolina.

Bubonic Plague ‘Likely’ Already Present In Los Angeles, Dr. Drew Says - The Daily Wire

Posted: 31 May 2019 12:00 AM PDT

Los Angeles is going down the drain.

The city, with a population topping four million and a broader metropolitan area with many millions more, is awash in massive problems — overcrowding, lack of housing, and high demand for free services among them. But other far more serious problems are lurking, Dr. Drew Pinksy said on Thursday.

"We have a complete breakdown of the basic needs of civilization in Los Angeles right now," Pinsky told Fox New host Laura Ingraham. "We have the three prongs of airborne disease, tuberculosis is exploding, rodent-borne. We are one of the only cities in the country that doesn't have a rodent control program, and sanitation has broken down."

Pinsky said bubonic plague — also known as the "Black Death," a pandemic that killed off millions in the 14th century — is "likely" already present in Los Angeles. The plague is spread by infected fleas and exposure to bodily fluids from a dead plague-infected animal, with the bacteria entering through the skin and traveling to lymph nodes.

Typhus, which broke out in the city last year, will likely return, Pinsky said. Already, a Los Angeles police officer has contracted typhoid fever, which infects fewer than 350 Americans each year. The various types of typhus are caused by a bacterial infection and spread by body lice, chiggers or fleas. In the 1600s, the disease decimated Germany.

"This is unbelievable. I can't believe I live in a city where this is not Third World. This is medieval," Pinsky said, according to Fox News. "Third World countries are insulted if they are accused of being like this. No city on Earth tolerates this. The entire population is at risk."

Pinsky said the city simply can't handle the demand for services, noting that many homeless are mentally ill and don't want to accept housing.

"[T]he government is somehow insisting that housing is the problem when in fact we have chronic mental illness, we have addiction, we have people who don't want to leave the streets," Pinsky said. "They literally won't take the housing if we give it to them. And that's the population that's vulnerable, and is going to get so ill this summer. It scares me for their well-being."

The famed doctor also said California cities are suffering after allowing thousands of illegal aliens to flow in. He said the liberal politicians running most cities are "disgustingly negligent."

Homelessness is also exploding in San Francisco — the home district of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.

"A federal count shows the number of homeless people increased by double-digit percentages in three San Francisco Bay Area counties over two years as the region struggled to tackle the growing problem, including 17% in San Francisco and 43% in the county that includes Oakland," the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, a new map compiled by the group Open the Books titled "2011-2019 San Francisco Human Waste Reportings" features a little pin (appropriately brown) showing where city residents have reported human feces. From the looks of the map, the entire city has been covered in poop.

"Since 2008, over 23,800 cases of human waste were reported in the heart of San Francisco. There were 13 reports of human feces in front of City Hall; 17 events at the U.S. Marshals office; and 67 reports at the Tenderloin police station on Eddy Street," Forbes reported.

Even the biggest companies that call San Francisco home have not been spared. "The largest concentration of complaints was in the area of Market St., where the headquarters of companies such as Twitter and Uber are located. Nearly a hundred markers also were clustered along the block that surrounds city hall," Fox said.

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