Incredible as it may seem, the end of March marks 20 years since the release of the first film in the Matrix franchise directed by The Wachowski siblings. This "cyberpunk" sci-fi movie was a box office hit with its dystopian futuristic vision, distinctive fashion sense, and slick, innovative action sequences. But it was also a catalyst for popular discussion around some very big philosophical themes.

The film centres on a computer hacker, "Neo" (played by Keanu Reeves), who learns that his whole life has been lived within an elaborate, simulated reality. This computer-generated dream world was designed by an artificial intelligence of human creation, which industrially farms human bodies for energy while distracting them via a relatively pleasant parallel reality called the "matrix".

This scenario recalls one of western philosophy's most enduring thought experiments. In a famous passage from Plato's Republic (ca 380 BCE), Plato has us imagine the human condition as being like a group of prisoners who have lived their lives underground and shackled, so that their experience of reality is limited to shadows projected onto their cave wall.

A freed prisoner, Plato suggests, would be startled to discover the truth about reality, and blinded by the brilliance of the sun. Should he return below, his companions would have no means to understand what he has experienced and surely think him mad. Leaving the captivity of ignorance is difficult.

In The Matrix, Neo is freed by rebel leader Morpheus (ironically, the name of the Greek God of sleep) by being awoken to real life for the first time. But unlike Plato's prisoner, who discovers the "higher" reality beyond his cave, the world that awaits Neo is both desolate and horrifying.

Thousands of protesters are rallying across France as Yellow Vest demonstrations show no sign of abating on their 20th week despite authorities banning many locations. A heavy police presence can be seen throughout the country.


In Paris, protesters gathered in two locations, forming a joint column and marched towards towards Trocadéro square.


Several skirmishes broke out between protesters and police present in large quantities in riot gear. A thick plume of smoke was observed occasionally but it's not immediately clear what was its source.


At least 32 people have been detained in Paris, according to official figures from the city's police.

A reporter is accusing the managing editor of NBC News and MSNBC's political coverage of trying to "intimidate" him into spiking a story about the Democratic National Committee in a chilling phone conversation that he says had her acting as a political operative and not a fellow journalist.

Yashar Ali, a high-profile freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the Huffington Post and New York magazine, said he was so taken aback by his conversation with Dafna Linzer, who has held the key NBC position since October 2015, that he posted his synopsis of it in a series of tweets Friday. Linzer, he said, was trying to block him from publishing the dates of the 2020 Democratic Party primary debates - a move Ali suspects was made to benefit the DNC, not her employers.

Israelis, who get enrolled into their government's oppression of the Palestinian people are victims just like those they oppress, iconic Palestinian activist and former prisoner Ahed Tamimi told RT's Going Underground.

"I pity [the Israelis] because they are dehumanized. They are only filled with hatred. It is not about occupying the land, it is about occupying the minds," she said.

Tamimi, who got international fame after being arrested by Israel for slapping a soldier, made the argument about Israelis being victimized by the policies of their government after being released from an Israeli jail.

Not all of these transfers were voluntary - in some cases they were undertaken by local authorities or far-right organizations.

Interactive maps at several websites show that within three months there have been more than 500 voluntary transfers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate's (UOC-MP) parishes to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine recently created by Patriarch Bartholomew and president Poroshenko. The UOC-MP parishes total 12,000, so this is a significant value. However, according to the OHCHR Report on the human rights situation in Ukraine from 16 November 2018 to 15 February 2019, not all of these transfers were voluntary - in some cases they were undertaken by local authorities or far-right organizations, and those members of the UOC-MP who didn't want to join the OCU faced threats.

Though, the number of transfers vary. According to the official statistics of the UOC-MP, 36 parishes transferred voluntarily; 24 were seized, which will be challenged in court; and there were 200 failed attempts to seize a parish. Every interactive map shows a different number of transfers, most of them cannot be verified.

Medical expert Dr. Sherif el-Refee, who specializes in disorders of sexual development and hormonal problems, has suggested that athletes with biological irregularities should compete in separate "third sex" tournaments.

Dr. Sherif, a senior paediatric endocrinologist consultant at Imperial College London Diabetes Center in Abu Dhabi, backs the view of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) that high testosterone can help professional athletes to enhance their performance.

Talking to RT, Dr. Sherif explained the impact that testosterone has on female athletes, adding that the much-publicized case of South African runner Caster Semenya could trigger an influx of athletes who change their hormone levels to win female competitions.

"Disorder of sexual development or what used to be called intersex is very controversial," Dr. Sherif said.

A California man was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Friday for phoning a false hostage threat to police in Wichita, resulting in the death of an innocent man.

Tyler Rai Barriss, 26, of Los Angeles, pleaded guilty in November to 51 charges filed by prosecutors in Los Angeles, Kansas and Washington, D.C., according to the U.S. attorney's office in the Central District of California.

Prosecutors say police responded to the home of 28-year-old Andrew Finch on Dec. 28, 2017, after a caller falsely claimed to be inside with hostages and a gun - a style of prank known as "swatting." Finch, unaware of the false report, answered the door and was fatally shot on his porch by officers who had surrounded his home.

That call was later determined to have originated from Barriss, who was arrested several hours later in connection with Finch's death. He told authorities he had made the call at the request of Casey Viner, 19, who had gotten into a feud with Shane Gaskill, 20, while the two were playing "Call of Duty" online.

Two Japanese teenagers have been found dead in Australia's Lake McKenzie after being reported missing from a school tour.

The boys' bodies were discovered by police divers on Saturday morning.

Inspector Tony Clowes of the Queensland Police said authorities will be interviewing witnesses to determine what happened at the popular tourist destination, described by the mayor as "a calm lake in the middle of an island."

"This is a tragic event, there is no doubt about that," Clowes told reporters, adding that there is always a risk when entering waterways. He said he did not know if the 16-year-olds could swim.

I began teaching introductory U.S. history classes at the college level five years ago. These courses are always well-attended, as they fulfill a graduation requirement for other (presumably more worthwhile) majors. But the enrollment numbers are misleading: Across the United States, student interest in the Humanities is approaching all-time lows, with history, it seems, often faring the worst. In my classes, I frequently make the mistake of testing these trends, opening with surveys that ask students about history as a possible major. Excepting the occasional "LOL," the answer is always no. Administrative fiat, not student choice, explains why our seats are full.

Rock bottom usually carries with it some opportunity, however. As schools begin to take the justifiable and entirely predictable step of officially shuttering humanities classes (and even whole departments) in response to this decline in student interest, these introductory courses-long the bane of professors everywhere (one of the best parts of making tenure is that you no longer have to teach them)-have taken on an increased importance, as they represent our best opportunity to change students' minds about history; and, if the stars align, successfully recruit a new major to our field every once in a while. In fact, the survival or our departments may end up depending in large part on the success of these classes, the majority of which will be taught, if patterns hold, by younger professors and adjuncts such as myself, who also happen to be the least financially and vocationally secure members of their departments.

For my part, I was happy to be assigned these courses, and anxious to see if I could find a way to teach history better. And in my own way, I think I succeeded-even if, as explained below, I did so at the cost of compromising my value on the academic job market. Bruised by the "LOLs," and desperate to improve student experience in these classes, I adopted a potentially controversial way to approach teaching at the college level.

The economy of the 2020s will be more volatile, and recessions could be more extreme. The collision of automation in the workforce will trigger economic disruptions far more significant than what seen in agriculture to industry (1900 to 1940) when nearly 40% of the workforce was displaced.

In the next ten years, automation may eliminate 20% to 25% of current jobs, or about 40 million, crushing the bottom 90% of Americans the hardest.

Boston Dynamics is at the forefront of developing new automation technologies.

The Waltham, Mass.-based company has released a new video of its warehouse robot, a "mobile manipulation robot designed for logistics. Handle autonomously performs mixed SKU pallet building and depalletizing after initialization and localizing against the pallets."