“Avengers: Infinity War” will follow up its record-breaking debut with another powerful weekend at the domestic box office. The Marvel title should nab between $100 million to $130 million in its second frame. After seven days of release, “Infinity War” has earned $305.9 million in North America, tying “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” as the fastest film to cross the $300 million mark. It launched domestically with $258 million, securing the biggest opening weekend of all time. Globally, it’s made $808.4 million. Mighty numbers, indeed. “Infinity Wars” was originally scheduled to open this coming weekend, though no other tentpole films replaced the comic book epic when its big screen debut was pushed up a week. A number of smaller releases will bow in its wake. MGM and Lionsgate-Pantelion’s “Overboard” is looking to make a splash with $10 million to $12 million from 1,600 screens. It’s a Latinoremake of the beloved (at least by TBS viewers) 1987 Goldie Hawn-Kurt Russell romantic comedy. That film featured Hawn as a spoiled heiress and Russell as a blue collar laborer. “Overboard” reverses the roles to feature Mexican star Eugenio Derbez as a rich playboy from Mexico. When he falls off his yacht and wakes up with amnesia, a working mother, played by Anna Faris, convinces him that she’s his wife. Rob Greenberg directed from a screenplay by Greenberg, Bob Fisher, and Leslie Dixon. Other new releases look bleak, with estimates projecting single-digit openings. “Tully,” directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, should make around $4 million from 1,300 locations. Charlize Theron plays a mother of three who bonds with her new night nanny, Tully (Mackenzie Davis.) Mark Duplass and Ron Livingston round out the cast. Meanwhile, Electric Entertainment’s “Bad Samaritan” expects to make around $2 million in 1,930 locations. Dean Devlin directed the horror film from a script by Brandon Boyce. The thriller, starring David Tennant, Robert Sheehan, and Kerry Condon, follows a poor restaurant valet (Sheehan), who burglarizes the houses of the clientele he services. One night, he breaks into a house and finds a woman being held captive. Rounding out the weekend is the limited release of Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media’s “RBG,” a documentary on the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, launching in 34 theaters. Directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, the biopic features appearances by the justice’s family members, as well as Gloria Steinem, Bill Clinton, and Nina Totenberg.

Netflix's Danish post-apocalyptic YA drama may have subtitles, but it's a lot like a post-apocalyptic YA drama you'd find on The CW or Freeform. Don't look now, "American First!" nationalists, but Netflix is waging an aggressive war in favor of globalism, inundating its streaming platform with dozens of weekly international offerings, many of which only announce their foreignness when you press play and the subtitles (or dubbing, if you're a bad viewer) begin. Genre TV represents one of the most powerful weapons in Netflix's fight, with shows like 3% or Dark hiding their Brazilian or German cultural specificity in familiar dystopic or time-traveling frameworks. Finding what's culturally specific in the new Netflix drama The Rain is a bit of a struggle. Still, the Danish post-apocalyptic series should have no trouble playing for an American audience, since it's basically a mid-tier CW or Freeform show. The execution is thin, but the premise is juicy and after watching three episodes sent to critics, I have enough curiosity to keep going. Created by Jannik Tai Mosholt (a head writer on Netflix's Rita), Esben Toft Jacobsen and Christian Potalivo, The Rain takes some time establishing itself. In the pilot, Simone (Alba August) is abruptly pulled out of high school as her frantic father rushes her family to a bunker out in the woods, ranting about the coming rain. We see the impact of the rain when Simone's mother gets caught in the drizzle and almost immediately goes feral. Simone and brother Rasmus (Lucas Lynggaard Tonnesen) are enclosed in the bunker for six years with no idea of what has occurred in the outside world. Six years later, running out of rations, Simone and Rasmus find themselves back above-ground learning about a virus, transmitted initially through the rain but now through any unpurified water, that wiped out much of the population and left the survivors scavenging for food and basic resources in a Scandinavian wasteland. How widespread was the virus? How did it kill? Are there safe areas? Is there a cure? Why is Rasmus special? How did Simone and Rasmus pass the time over six years without going crazy? Oh, do I have questions. Helping our heroes navigate the dystopia and also answer their questions is a small group of young, scruffy, militaristic survivors including Martin (Mikkel Folsgaard), Patrick (Lukas Lokken), Beatrice (Angela Bundalovic), Lea (Jessica Dinnage) and Jean (Sonny Lindberg). Early episodes of The Rain are brief and very focused. The first episode is 46 minutes long and introduces mostly Simone and Young Rasmus, before bringing in Hunky Teenage Rasmus at the end. The other two episodes I've seen are under 37 minutes and they start to give quick background sketches for the new group of survivors. The plots are very lean and need-based. The other survivors need food. Simone and Rasmus need answers and the possibility of hope for their missing father. Rain is bad. Water is bad. Other people are probably bad. Director Kenneth Kainz does a nice job developing the ominous threat of precipitation, sometimes with billowing black clouds on the horizon, sometimes with a sound design that pushes the concussive force of rain to the front of the mix, sometimes with a fun overhead effect tracing the course of a single drop. When unexpected rain can merely screw up a picnic, it's no big deal. When a fast downpour or even a light mist can cause death, or when stepping in a puddle causes a group freakout, it's much different. The early episodes feed off of basic 28 Days Later/Walking Dead-style zombie tropes in which any human entering the frame instantly is perceived as dangerous and the audience has no way of knowing if a limping, slouched figure is a weary, hungry person or an infected monster. There's no transformation that occurs, so The Rain saves a lot of money on makeup. So far, there's no gore and few overt horror beats, just mostly a lot of tension driven by characters doing dumb things, justified by a lack of familiarity with a changed world. The episodes go by fast enough that I had time to research if Denmark is a particularly rainy country, if the underpinnings of the story are likely to be Danish-specific in a meaningful way that American viewers might not otherwise understand. The answer? Probably not. Copenhagen is actually, statistically, one of the driest major cities in Europe, which doesn't sound like it helped Copenhagen here. Though there's the mentioned prospect of travel to Sweden via the Oresund Bridge, The Rain's combination of forests, abandoned roads and empty cities could have been shot in Vancouver and could stand in for any location. It's specific-but-universal. That carries over into the very basic themes of The Rain, which are also the basic themes of nearly every post-apocalyptic drama, namely that when the structures of society collapse, primal human virtues and faults rise to the surface (and look a lot like those normally imposed by institutions like the church, the military or our education system) and primal human appetites reign. I found that side of the story much less interesting than the questions of a brother and sister essentially raising each other in a bunker for six years with no other interaction. That can be as simple as how Simone, a nervous high schooler in the opening scenes, comes out of the bunker as a leader after having to mature and take charge of her empire of two. Or it can be as complicated as Rasmus, who entered the bunker as a grade schooler and emerges post-puberty, taking his first interest in the opposite sex, entirely unequipped with knowledge or experience in that department. (There's no insinuation that anything Blue Lagoon-y happened here. Yet.) These interesting character possibilities should feed performances on The Rain going forward, but the acting is only starting to register. August is strong as this young woman on the cusp of adulthood, and those with rudimentary knowledge of Danish film will be interested to know, or will be able to guess, that she's the daughter of Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror) and Pernilla August. That same demo will probably recognize Folsgaard from the Oscar-nominated historical drama A Royal Affair, and he's the standout from the new group of survivors. Three episodes of The Rain was probably the perfect number of episodes for Netflix to send to critics. Anything that feels like a gaping plot hole can be answered with, "Oh, that'll be addressed in the next five episodes" and any one-dimensional character can be excused with, "Wait until they get their focal episode." And there are a lot of things that feel like gaping plot holes and one-dimensional characters. I like the genre and this is recognizable and conventional stuff that I'll probably watch a few more episodes to see if the story gets expanded well, but I'm definitely not invested enough that I'd ever write a second, longer, more critical review if those weak spots don't improve. Cast: Alba August, Mikkel Boe Folsgaard, Lucas Lynggaard Tonnesen, Lars Simonsen, Iben Hjejle, Angela Bundalovic, Sonny Lindberg, Jessica Dinnage, Lukas Lokken, Johannes Bah Kuhnke Creators: Jannik Tai Mosholt, Esben Toft Jacobsen and Christian Potalivo Premieres: Friday (Netflix)

Based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, the film releases June 15. Natalie Portman wants audiences to consider a simple question: Where do our eggs, dairy, and meat come from? In the new trailer for Eating Animals, a documentary Portman produced, director Christopher Dillon Quinn (2006's God Grew Tired of Us) cobbles together interviews with local farmers about the rise of the factory industry and its impact on animals. The only solution, the film argues, is to return to a more localized agricultural food system. "There's no way you can love an animal that has been genetically engineered to die in six weeks," one interviewee says. The documentary takes its title from a 2009 book by Jonathan Safran Foer, who is also a friend of Portman's and who received a producer credit on the film. Sundance Selects will release Eating Animals on June 15.

A closeted high-school senior learns to stop worrying and love himself in Craig Johnson’s alternately raunchy and affecting comedy. We like to think we’re beyond the closet. But for every LGBT child who confidently proclaims their identity before puberty hits, there are innumerable others who keep themselves sequestered, be it out of shame, survival or some terrible mixture of both. Like this year’s theatrical hit Love, Simon, writer-director Craig Johnson’s Alex Strangelove, premiering on Netflix, tells a coming-out story that’s more on the gentle side. That softheartedness, however, proves to be a fairly adequate delivery mechanism for some tough and tender observations about modern queerness. Before the opening titles appear, we’re treated to a love story in miniature between high school senior Alex Truelove (Daniel Doheny), an adorably dorky zoologist in the making, and his best friend turned girlfriend Claire (Madeline Weinstein). They met in freshman year, when they began collaborating on a blithe series of online videos that equated their school’s student body with animal kingdom analogues (library geeks, for example, exhibit lemur-like behavior), and soon enough found their feelings went beyond the platonic. Yet though they’ve swapped spit plenty, Alex has so far refused to go all the way with Claire, to the point that it’s become a running gag between the couple, as well as with Alex’s best buds Dell (Daniel Zolghadri), Blake (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Fred Hechinger). But this is no joke. Alex is extremely closeted, though the inciting reasons why are not revealed until close to the film’s end. It's nonetheless clear that Alex, who lives in Nyack, New York, and dreams of attending Columbia University with Claire, has built a falsely jaunty world around himself. He’s long been able to defer the truth of his being by living an idealized existence akin — if in raunchier, 21st-century millennial form — to cinema-du-John-Hughes. (Sixteen Candles is referenced at one point, and not without some measure of knowing cheek.) But Alex’s well-bolstered defenses begin to crumble when he meets Elliott (Antonio Marziale), a one-year-older gay guy on the incline of the “It gets better” slope. New feelings come to the fore and complications of all kinds ensue. There’s plenty here that’s been done before, chiefly the sarcasm-prone high school dynamics, though it's arguable whether these aspects are inherent to Alex’s kookily cloistered fantasy life or illustrative of a certain derivativeness on the writer-director's part. Probably more the former than the latter: Johnson often appears to be setting up cliché scenarios only to tweak or knock them down, as in a lengthy set piece at a hotel in which Alex tries and fails to have sex with Claire. The outcome is clear from the get-go, but how the film gets there is believably fraught and much more risqué, verbally and visually, than a story of this sort typically dares. This aura of embarrassment could be partly attributed to producer Ben Stiller, whose influence is evident in the more vulgar/broadly farcical scenes, such as an interlude involving an exotic toad whose skin, when licked, acts as a hallucinogen. The unlucky tonguer witnesses everything from a yodeling garden hose (a genuinely hilarious sight-gag) to a temptingly talkative jar of Gummi Worms, which are soon after vomited up in a puke-tastic rainbow. But Alex Strangelove is much more affecting whenever Johnson steps out of genre comfort zones, as when Alex goes with Elliott to a Brooklyn concert and it’s as if he leaves the movie world entirely behind. There’s a tossed-off moment in this section that’s truly, heartbreakingly beautiful, as Alex catches sight of a slightly older gay couple who, to his eyes, look eerily like himself and Elliott, though entirely content and comfortable in their own skins. In a fleeting image, Johnson captures what it’s like to be on a sexual-emotional cusp, projecting your subconscious hopes and desires onto those around you. Whenever Alex Strangelove treads into these choppy waters (which is often enough), it feels radical, to the point that the finale’s inclusion of actual YouTube coming-out videos comes off as an honestly earned and inspirational gesture. Production companies: Mighty Engine, Red Hour Films, STX Entertainment Cast: Daniel Doheny, Madeline Weinstein, Antonio Marziale, Daniel Zolghadri, Annie Q., Nik Dodani, Fred Hechinger, Kathryn Erbe, Isabella Amara, Sophie Faulkenberry Director-writer: Craig Johnson Producers: Ben Stiller, Nicholas Weinstock, Jared Ian Goldman Director of photography: Hillary Spera Production designer: Wynn Thomas Editor: Jennifer Lee Costume designer: David Robinson Music: Nathan Larson Music supervisors: Maggie Phillips, Christine Greene Roe Casting: Richard Hicks, David Rubin 99 minutes

Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a ruthless Gestapo officer in Harald Zwart's World War II thriller based on real-life events. Little in Harald Zwart's filmography would have suggested that he would one day direct a gripping World War II thriller. The filmmaker's previous credits include such bland Hollywood fare as Agent Cody Banks, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and the 2010 Karate Kid remake, but his latest, far superior effort is clearly a labor of love for the Dutch filmmaker. Telling the real-life wartime story that was also the subject of Nine Lives, a 1957 Norwegian drama nominated for a best foreign film Oscar, The 12th Man is the sort of suspenseful, old-fashioned war movie that should particularly appealing to older viewers, provided they don't mind reading subtitles. Norwegian hip-hop performer Thomas Gullestad makes an impressive starring debut as Norwegian national hero Jan Baalsrud, one of 12 British-trained commandos who participated in a 1943 anti-Nazi mission in his home country. The mission failed spectacularly, with Baalsrud the only one who managed to escape as the other 11 men were either captured or killed. Suffering a gunshot wound to his toe in the process, Baalsrud swam through freezing waters to make his way across the wintry landscape. He was relentlessly pursued by Kurt Stage (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an Inspector Javert-like Gestapo officer determined to hunt him down. In the ensuing months of struggling for survival, Baalsrud relied on the efforts of numerous ordinary Norwegian citizens who risked their lives to help him travel to safety. The 12th Man relates this amazing tale of survival in harrowing detail, not stinting from depicting the effects of gangrene on Baalsrud's toe and his many other injuries. The stark beauty of the Arctic settings contrasts with the grittiness of the storyline and the frequently graphic violence on display. But there's a strong humanistic aspect as well, especially in the hero's warm interactions with the people, including his primary helper Marius (Mads Sjogard Petterson) and his younger sister Gudrun (Marie Blokhus), who facilitate his survival. It's hard to know whether some of the more outlandish plot elements are based in truth, one example being when Baalsrud takes to skis to elude his pursuer and literally bumps into him. An annoyed Stage helps him up, complaining, "I thought Norwegians knew how to ski." Some of screenwriter Alex Boe's dialogue is a bit ripe as well, such as when one of the Germans comments about their leader's obsessiveness, "They say no one has escaped him before." On the other hand, the film takes pains to reassure us with its opening graphic reading, "The most incredible events in this story are the ones that actually took place." Despite its occasional hokey moments, The 12th Man proves consistently engrossing and suspenseful, with its lead performances further enhancing its impact. Gullestad has charisma to spare as the beleaguered hero, handling his role's considerable physical and emotional demands with a skill that belies his acting inexperience. And Rhys Meyers, his face adorned with the sort of scar that instantly signals villainy, is hypnotically compelling as the Nazi who will do anything to capture his quarry. The actor's intense turn is all the more effective for being delivered entirely in German. Production companies: Nordisk Film Production AS, Zwart Arbeid Distributor: IFC Midnight Cast: Thomas Gullestad, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Marie Blokus, Mads Sjogard Pettersen, Martin Kiefer Director: Harald Zwart Screenwriter: Alex Boe Producers: Aage Aaberge, Veslemoy Ruud Zwart, Espen Horn, Harald Zwart Executive producers: Henrik Zein, Lone Korslund, Jetil Jensberg, Petter Skavian, Jonathan Rhys Meyers Director of photography: Geir Hartly Andreassen Production designer: Mikael Varhelyi Editor: Jens Christian Fodstad Composer: Christophe Beck Costume designer: Karen Fabritius Gram Casting: Petter S. Holmsen 131 minutes

XYZ Films will launch sales to foreign buyers for the latest feature from 'Without Name' director Lorcan Finnegan at Cannes. Jesse Eisenberg and Frank & Lola actress Imogen Poots have boarded the Irish sci-fi thriller Vivarium from director Lorcan Finnegan (Without Name), The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Eisenberg and Poots will play a couple who follow a mysterious real estate agent to a new housing development to find the perfect starter home, only to become trapped in a maze of identical homes and forced to raise an otherworldly child. XYZ Films has taken the world distribution rights for Vivarium, and will introduce the thriller to foreign buyers starting at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie, developed by Finnegan with the Irish Film Board and Film4, will start production in Ireland in July. Brendan McCarthy and John McDonnell of Fantastic Films and Frakas Productions in Belgium will produce Vivarium. Recent movie credits for Poots include the Canada-France drama Mobile Homes, where she played a young woman drifting from one motel to the next with her boyfriend and 8-year-old son. Best known for star turns in The Social Network and the Now You See Me franchise, Eisenberg also played Lex Luthor in Justice League and will reprise the role in the sequel, and is set to appear in Peter Webber's The Medusa.

Based on a true story, the film, which follows Red Sox catcher turned spy Moe Berg, is set to bow June 22. A few weeks before the debut of his Marvel superhero film Ant-Man and the Wasp, Paul Rudd goes indie to portray Boston Red Sox catcher turned U.S. spy Moe Berg in IFC’s The Catcher Was a Spy. The newly released trailer chronicles the true story of how the U.S. government recruited Berg, who graduated from Princeton and Columbia, for his intimate knowledge of Eastern European language and history during World War II. Outside of his MLB career, Berg spoke seven languages and had done successful circuits on numerous trivia quiz shows. As an intelligence operative, he interviewed physicists about the Nazi nuclear program and played an instrumental role in the U.S. effort to defeat Germany, later transferring to the CIA. Rudd stars in The Catcher Was a Spy alongside Jeff Daniels, Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti and Sienna Miller. The film from director Ben Lewin (The Sessions) is set to hit theaters June 22.

Emily Blunt is also starring in the adventure project. Paul Giamatti, who worked with Dwayne Johnson in the earthquake movie San Andreas, is reteaming with the box-office star for Disney’s Jungle Cruise. The Oscar nominee and multiple Golden Globe winner has closed a deal to join Johnson and Emily Blunt in the studio’s adventure movie that takes inspiration from its theme park ride. Jesse Plemons, Jack Whitehall and Edgar Ramirez are also on the call sheet. Jaume Collet-Serra, the filmmaker behind The Shallows and Liam Neeson films such as The Commuter and Non-Stop, will direct the project, which is set in the early 20th century and takes place in the Amazon jungle. Johnson will play a boat captain who takes his sister (Blunt) and her brother (Whitehall) on a mission to find a tree believed to possess healing powers. Wild animals and a competing German expedition figure into the proceedings. Giamatti will play a crusty harbormaster. The movie is heading toward a start later this month and will shoot through the summer. Beau Flynn, John Davis and John Fox are producing, as are Johnson, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia. Scott Sheldon is co-producing. Giamatti currently stars on Showtime’s Wall Street drama Billions, now in its third season, and recently appeared in the Reed Morano-helmed drama I Think We’re Alone Now.

MoviePass Goes Back to Offering Movie-A-Day Monthly Plan MoviePass will once again allow customers to sign up for its popular movie-a-day monthly subscription package after briefly taking the offering off of its website, Variety has learned. Since April 13, MoviePass has only been offering a promotional $29.95 three-month plan. That only allowed users the freedom to see four movies a month, but it threw in a free trial of iHeartRadio’s All Access on-demand streaming package. The move set off alarm bells that MoviePass might be running out of money — fears that were amplified after an independent auditor publicly raised questions about the service’s ability to continue operating. “We never planned to abandon the flagship product that everybody loves,” said MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe in an interview. “Any time we’ve done a promotional package, we’ve taken the monthly plan off our site.” That seems to be a different position than the one Lowe espoused last week. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Lowe said he didn’t know if MoviePass would go back to offering a movie a day. But the MoviePass head said he didn’t want to limit interest in the iHeartRadio promotional package by tipping his hand. “It’s marketing 101,” he said. “We wanted to focus everybody on this partnership promotion. If people knew the [movie-a-day] plan was coming back, they might not be interested in the iHeartRadio deal.” MoviePass’ business model has left some scratching their heads. The company pays movie theaters full price for the tickets its customers buy, so it is essentially subsidizing their movie-going at a loss to its own bottom line. MoviePass claims that it will eventually be able to monetize its more than two million subscribers by running ads, partnering with theater chains, or figuring out a way to make a profit on the data it collects on its users. Despite the auditor’s negative report, Lowe said he isn’t worried and downplayed the conclusions. “That’s just really relative to how much cash we have at any one time in the bank,” Lowe said. “We have a constantly evolving business model. We’re getting more and more occasional moviegoers and cutting back on fraud and abuse. I feel very confident about our trend lines and I know we’re going to continue as a going concern and continue to be popular.” Lowe recently came back from CinemaCon, the annual exhibition industry trade show that took place last week in Las Vegas. When theater owners expressed skepticism about his ability to stay in business, he said he had a simple message for them: “See you in 2019.” The changing plans weren’t the only thing that upset some users. MoviePass announced this month that it will not allow users to see the same movie twice. Lowe said the company is changing its rules to prevent fraud. He said the company believes that some families are using one card among each family members, and speculated that some users are buying tickets to popular movies with their MoviePass cards and then turning around and scalping the tickets to make money. “A small percentage of people are abusing the system,” he said. “By doing this we can continue to provide a great service.”

Ariana Grande stopped by “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” Tuesday night to give the debut television performance of her new single “No Tears Left to Cry” and announce tracks from her upcoming fourth album titled “Sweetener.” Grande revealed the album title to the late-night talk show host and explained the meaning. “It’s kind of about bringing light to a situation or to someone’s life or somebody else who brings light to your life or sweetening the situation,” Grande said. She added that she is working with producers Pharrell Williams, Max Martin, Ilya, and Savan Kotecha on the record, which is due out this summer. The pop star wasn’t done giving her fans details about her new music. She confirmed the new album will feature a song called “R.E.M.” after tweeting lyrics from the track last week. “There is another song called ‘The Light Is Coming’ that I love a lot and then there’s one called ‘God Is A Woman’ that I love.” Grande said her grandmother, who she calls Nonna, has heard her new music and already enjoys “God Is A Woman.” Grande explained to Fallon that she will be “doing something special on every 20th” up until her album release, which she let slip will occur three times. Fans are expecting Grande to drop “Sweetener” on July 20. A song called “Raindrops,” which Grande said is a small part from a ‘50s song called “An Angel Cried,” will open the “Sweetener.” After recording the song, Grande discovered that her “grandfather’s best friend who I grew up hanging out with in Boca, Charlie Calello, wrote it with Bob Gaudio from The Four Seasons.” Grande’s “Tonight Show” appearance, her first major interview since the Manchester bombing, generated plenty of social media buzz. Nielsen Social tweeted, “@FallonTonight guest starring @arianaGrande drew nearly 3M interactions on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, topping #SocialTV series Tuesday.” https://twitter.com/NielsenSocial/st...56576276041729 It was the most-socialed episode of any late-night series this year by a wide margin, the closest being 2 million for “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Jan. 4, according to Nielsen Social. Those numbers and Grande’s recent single landing at No. 3 on the Billboard’s Hop 100 Chart prove that her fans certainly missed her. Watch Grande’s performance below and the full interview above.

When Microsoft announced that the Xbox One would play Xbox 360 games through backwards compatibility, some wondered how popular the feature might be. As it turns out, it's very popular. Microsoft announced today that Xbox One players have collectively logged almost 1 billion hours playing Original Xbox and Xbox 360 games on Xbox One. In June 2017, Microsoft announced that people had spent 508 million hours using backwards compatibility, so usage is only growing. According to Microsoft, around half of all Xbox One owners have used the feature. Some have questioned whether or not people actually use backwards compatibility, and of course they do. Microsoft adds more games to the backwards compatibility catalog on a semi-regular basis; just this week, Saints Row 2 was added. In addition to hundreds of Xbox 360 games, there are more than two-dozen Original Xbox games in the catalog. You can see a full rundown of all the backwards compatibility games here. In some cases, backwards compatibility games look markedly improved on Xbox One X. Red Dead Redemption, for example--a game that came out in 2010--looks stunning on Microsoft's newest console. In related news, as of this week, Gamerscore you unlock playing Xbox 360 games on Xbox One counts toward the monthly Xbox Live Gamerscore leaderboard. Microsoft's blog post today contained some other noteworthy Xbox datapoints, including: The number of Xbox Live players is up 13 percent year-over-year. Xbox One sales up 15 percent year-over-year. More than 600,000 "friendships" have been made using the Looking For Group feature. There are now more than 1.2 million Clubs on Xbox Live. There are now more than 200 games that are "enhanced" for Xbox One X. Players have collectively logged more than 4 billion hours of ID@Xbox games. Mixer now has more than 10 million active users.

"This is our biggest E3 yet." With just about a month to go before E3 2018 kicks off, Microsoft is continuing to tease what's in store for its briefing at the big-time gaming show. After suggesting that games from Japanese publishers will be on stage, Microsoft has now teased its showing even more. In a blog post today, Microsoft's Mike Nichols said the company has a "great briefing filled with new games" on tap. "We're hard at work on exciting plans for E3, from what will be a great briefing filled with new games to the fan experience at the Microsoft Theater," Nichols said. "This is our biggest E3 yet, and we look forward to a great week for gamers. Again, thank you to the amazing Xbox community." Microsoft's E3 2018 briefing takes place on Sunday, June 11, starting at 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET. Whereas last year we knew that Xbox One X (then Project Scorpio) would be a major highlight, we know relatively less about this year's show. In January, Spencer said that there would be some "positive changes" at E3 for Microsoft, which could have been a reference to the company's decision to hire out the nearby Microsoft Theatre. Microsoft will still have a presence on the E3 show floor, but it will be dedicated to Mixer exclusively, while the rest of the activities take place across the street in the Microsoft Theatre. One possible announcement from Microsoft this year is Halo 6, which has been discussed but not formally revealed. Microsoft is also said to be working on a PlayStation Now-like game-streaming service. Keep checking back with GameSpot for more on E3 2018 in the days and weeks ahead. In other E3 news, The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red has confirmed it will attend E3 this year. Intriguingly, the Polish studio might be talking about an unspecified RPG at the show.

An upcoming PS4 God of War update will offer an additional rage mode controller remap option, Sony Santa Monica has confirmed. In a blog post on the official God of War PlayStation site, the game’s development team detailed some of the upcoming changes to the latest God of War installment, including the recently announced Photo Mode and said additional controller remap option. “We wanted to take a moment to highlight things we’re planning to address in upcoming patches”, Sony Santa Monica writes. “We will be debuting Photo Mode and introducing a global increase to text size in all menus and subtitles. We’re also planning an additional controller option to remap Rage Mode.” The developer adds, “We are continuing to investigate an issue where selecting the “New Game” option from the main menu without closing down the application first may result in missing dialogue and possible progression blockers. To avoid this in the meantime, please close down the application before starting a new playthrough. In addition to the above, the team is also working to offers solutions for “some infrequent crashes and bugs to continue to stabilize the experience.” God of War is available globally now for PlayStation 4.

Official Steam Nintendo Switch Pro Controller support has been announced by Valve’s Steam controller team The feature is currently only available through the latest Steam client beta, but will likely make its way to a general release in the near future. “We’re pleased to announce that the latest Steam Client Beta adds support for the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller”, Valve’s Steam controller team writes. “We think it is a great device with a feature set that pairs nicely with your Steam catalog. The d-pad is ideal for fighting games and platformers and the gyro enhances aim in your action/FPS titles. If you’d like to test it out you will need to opt into the Steam Client Beta then follow the steps below. We hope you enjoy and, as always, we welcome your feedback.” Be sure to check out Valve’s official blog post for instructions on how to properly set up Switch Pro Controller support in the latest Steam Client beta.

GTA Online players will earn double the payout this week in Special Vehicle Circuit Races centered around air, land, and the wet stuff that keeps boats afloat. Special Vehicle Circuit Races in GTA Online this week are centered around the Imponte Deluxo, Ocelot Stromberg, and Mammoth Thruster. Here’s official word regarding the GTA Online event this week straight from Rockstar Games: Imponte Deluxo Races Stadium Flyover: The whole stadium is on its feet waiting for the all-American finale: a low-level flyover by levitating sports cars. Raton Race: Raton Canyon is the kind of rugged terrain that makes any red-blooded adrenaline junkie reach for their climbing boots— or the keys to their flying car. Cresting: Whether you’re driving, surfing the waves, soaring above the mountains, or doing all the above in your Deluxo – there’s nothing quite like the San Andreas coastline. Techno: This is no edible-fueled night in Los Santos – when your car takes off and starts flying, that’s every bit as real as the psychedelic tunnels and rings of fire. Ocelot Stromberg Races Spindrift: As an underwater labyrinth strewn with naval mines gradually reveals itself, try to remember that every moment of paralyzed terror is a moment off your lap time. The Kraken: Fair warning. If you’ve ever had bad calamari, this one is probably not for you. Plunge: Every pro racer knows to keep a finger on submersible mode when there’s suddenly no more track and you’re soaring into the stratosphere with only the ocean as your landing pad. Mammoth Thruster Races Vinewood Air Tours: Welcome to the high life— the neon glow of the city, the Vinewood sign shining from the hills, 1,000 pounds of thrust roaring at your back and the prospect of horrifying mid-air collisions. Chiliad Drop: One minute you’re soaring over the summit of Mount Chiliad, the next you’re strafing into a cliff with only some rocket fuel and the promise of bragging rights to cushion the blow. FlyLo Challenge: The survival rate in a Los Santos road tunnel at rush hour could only get lower if road-raging maniacs ditched their cars and used jetpacks instead. But that would never happen. Players will also earn double cash and RP through May 7 in all 30 Rockstar Special Vehicle Races, all 20 of the original Rockstar Special Vehicle Circuit Races. The latter includes the Blazer Aqua, Rocket Voltic, and Ruiner 2000. Double goodness is also available for all Special Vehicle Work Missions throughout the week. Of course there are nice discounts available this week in GTA Online as always, and those are posted below. The Premium Race this week is Downtown Loop and locked to Supers. The Time Trial is Fort Zancudo.

Another hacker was given two years of probation. South Korea passed a law near the end of 2016 criminalizing the creation and distribution of aimbots, wall hacks, and other software that isn't permitted by the terms of service of online games. Following a year-long investigation conducted by the Seoul Metropolitan Police that ran from January to December 2017, 13 Overwatch cheaters were arrested; two of them, according to a statement by Blizzard Korea (via Kotaku), have now been sentenced. The first offender was given two years of probation, with prison awaiting if he violates his terms. The second was hit with a fine of ₩10 million, which works out to about $9,300. It's a stiff punishment, but it could be worse. The maximum penalty allowed by law is $43,000, or five years of jail time. In a separate case in China, 15 people were recently fined $5.1 million for making and distributing cheats for PUBG, which works out to an average of $340,000 per person. Blizzard Korea said it is "committed to creating a fair game environment for its players, and will continue to strive to maintain a fair environment" for players. The remaining 11 cases are still under investigation.

Destiny 2 players will be able to jump into Warmind’s new Raid Lair during release weekend. Let’s hope the servers don’t catch fire. Warmind releases alongside Destiny 2 Season 3 next week, and so will the new Leviathan Raid Lair. In the past, players have sometimes had to wait a bit on a new raid releasing with new content. Not this time out. Bungie said Firesteams of six will be able to conquer the new Raid Lair come Friday, May 11 at 10am PT, 1pm ET, 6pm UK. The new Raid Lair was announced during Bungie’s Destiny 2: Warmind livestream last month. It’s the final part of the Leviathan Raid from Curse of Osiris. Called Spire of Stars, this Raid Lair will offer players “a great reward.” Details are rather non-existent as Bungie prefers players battle through and find out what awaits them – instead of spilling the beans early. Destiny 2: Warmind releases on May 8 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. We expect to to be made available for pre-load sometime before launch. Probably on or around May 6.

'Are You Sleeping,' which was in development at the tech giant, is based on Kathleen Barber's book and has scored a 10-episode order. Octavia Spencer is officially headed to Apple. The tech giant on Wednesday handed out a 10-episode series order to Are You Sleeping, the drama starring Oscar winner Spencer (Hidden Figures, The Shape of Water) and produced by Reese Witherspoon. The news comes four months after the iPhone maker put the drama based on Kathleen Barber's true-crime novel in development. Are You Sleeping offers a glimpse into America's obsession with true crime podcasts. It challenges viewers to consider the consequences when the pursuit of justice is put on a public stage. Nichelle Tramble Spellman (The Good Wife, Justified) created the project, penned the script and will serve as showrunner. Witherspoon will exec produce alongside her Hello Sunshine partner Lauren Neustadter, with Chernin Entertainment's Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping and Kristen Campo overseeing for the recently launched Chernin/Endeavor Content banner. Spencer and Tramble will also exec produce. Sarah Koenig (Serial) was a consultant on the project during its development but is no longer attached to the series. All told, this is Witherspoon's third series at Apple, joining the morning show drama in which she stars opposite Jennifer Aniston and the Kristen Wiig comedy series. The prolific producer also is an EP and stars in season two of HBO's Big Little Lies and has Little Fires Everywhere set at Hulu. In addition to exec producing the latter, Witherspoon will also star opposite Kerry Washington in the limited series that landed at Hulu following a multiple-network bidding war. Are You Sleeping joins an Apple roster that also includes Amazing Stories, a Ron Moore space drama, See, a Damien Chazelle drama and more. For her part, Spellman is also set to co-write HBO's controversial drama Confederate alongside her husband, Malcolm Spellman, and Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

The Lee Daniels and Danny Strong drama joins a returning slate that also includes '911,' 'The Gifted,' 'The Orville' and 'The Simpsons.' Fox finally got the ball rolling on its 2018-19 renewals. The network on Wednesday handed out a fifth season renewal for Lee Daniels and Danny Strong drama Empire. The hip-hop series starring Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard is Fox's first veteran drama to earn a renewal for the 2018-19 season. It joins 911, The Gifted, The Orville and The Simpsons on the network's schedule for next season. In keeping with its recent tradition, all of the early renewals are for series produced by studio sibling 20th Century Fox Television. That means that the network will continue to own the bulk of its lineup until regulators approve Disney's $52.4 billion deal to acquire Fox assets, which includes the studio. Once the deal is cleared — which is expected to happen — all of the above shows would become Disney properties. While not the lightning rod it once was, Empire is Fox's second-most-watched drama behind Ryan Murphy's 911 in the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demographic (2.9 with seven days of DVR). The renewal comes as Daniels has become increasingly important to 20th TV following Ryan Murphy's upcoming move to Netflix. Daniels' overall with the studio expires in June, with the prolific showrunner currently in the midst of negotiating a new pact. The series, produced by Imagine Television's Brian Grazer, Francie Calfo, also counts Ilene Chaiken, Sanaa Hamri, Brett Mahoney and Dennis Hammer among its exec producers. This season, Chaiken stepped back as showrunner to focus on development — she has a drama starring Katie Holmes in contention at Fox — with Mahoney taking over day-to-day leadership of the series. "Empire is as compelling, emotional and unpredictable as it ever was,” said Michael Thorn, Fox entertainment president. "We are so proud of our amazing cast, led by Terrence and Taraji, who deliver powerful performances week after week. We’d also like to thank our tremendous creative team — Lee, Danny, Brett, Ilene, Sanaa, Brian and Francie — whose inspired storytelling continues to create the unforgettable, jaw-dropping OMG moments that have always been signature to Empire." Still to be determined is the fate of Empire sister series Star, which is considered likely to return as part of Fox's Wednesday night block. On the pilot side, Strong has a legal drama pilot starring Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men) in contention and Daniels has his first comedy pilot in Beth Behrs vehicle Culture Clash both in contention at Fox and under their respective overall deals.

The film will focus on the president's rise to power. Donald Trump is getting the big-screen movie treatment in a film called The Apprentice that will dramatize his rise to power, focusing on his early influences like attorney Roy Cohn. Gabriel Sherman, special correspondent to Vanity Fair, who authored the book about the late Fox News founder Roger Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room, has been tapped to write the original screenplay for Amy Baer, who is producing the film through her Gidden Media. "As a journalist, I've reported on Donald Trump for more than fifteen years," said Sherman in a statement. "I've long been fascinated by his origin story as a young builder coming up in the gritty world of 1970s and '80s New York. This formative period tells us so much about the man who today occupies the Oval Office." Sherman already has some Hollywood credentials as his Ailes biography is getting the adapted for television. Showtime and Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Television are developing the project with Oscar-winning writer/director Tom McCarthy executive producing. Baer founded Gidden in 2012 and the company is currently readying Mary Shelley, a biopic of the author behind Frankenstein starring Elle Fanning, for a May 25 release by IFC Films. “Gabe is an extraordinary storyteller as well as an impeccable journalist. The timeliness of this subject, combined with Gabe’s professional pedigree and integrity, makes this a rare alignment of talent and subject,” said Baer in a statement.

Nick Stoller, the writer-director behind films including 'The Muppets' and 'Neighbors,' wrote the live-action feature. Isabela Moner will soon be saying "Vamos!" for Paramount. The Transformers: The Last Knight actress has been tapped to play Dora the Explorer for the studio's live-action feature based on the character from the popular Nickelodeon TV series. The Dora the Explorer movie will follow a teenage Dora – accompanied by her best friend, the monkey Boots and her cousin Diego – on (you guessed it) an adventure. James Bobin will direct from a screenplay by Nick Stoller, the writer-director behind films including The Muppets and Neighbors, andDanielle Sanchez-Witzel. The movie hails from Paramount's new Paramount Players division. "We are thrilled to have found our Dora in Isabela,” said Brian Robbins, president of Paramount Players. “Dora has long been a celebrated, strong heroine in animated television, and like Dora, Isabela has an incredible spirit and is an advocate for positive values. With our partners at Nickelodeon, we look forward to continuing Dora’s story for generations to come.” Added Moner: “I’m honored and excited to bring Dora to life. I grew up watching the show, and for me, especially as a Latina, Dora was an amazing role model – she is a strong, adventurous and fun-loving girl. I can’t wait to put on the backpack and begin her next adventure!” Dora the Explorer will shoot in Queensland, Australia and is scheduled for release Aug. 2, 2019. Moner, who is repped by CAA and Peikoff Mahan, will star in the studio's upcoming family comedy Instant Family, starringalongside Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne.

Beijing sent the first messaging salvo ahead of the Steven Mnuchin-led delegation to China (which will engage in trade talks over May 3-4) overnight when the PBOC fixed the yuan sharply lower than many expected. The signal was clear: push us hard enough, and we may just launch another devaluation. Or worse. A little while later, Beijing did its best attempt at managing expectations, when it said that it’s "unrealistic" to expect to solve all issues between the U.S. and China at a single meeting, given the economic sizes of the two countries and their complex economic and trade relationship, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying says at daily briefing. While Hua tried his best to pay the diplomatic "good cop", saying it was in the mutual interest of both countries to solve trade issues through consultation, just a few hours later, China's foreign minister Wang Yi was the bad cop, who warned that whereas China would welcome a successful outcome from upcoming trade talks with the United States, it is "fully prepared for all outcomes and will not negotiate on core interests." Then the "worst cop" emerged in the form of yet another, unnamed official who according to Reuters said that talks must be held as equals and be mutually beneficial, echoing EU president Jean-Claude Juncker, saying that Beijing would not yield to any trade threats from Washington or accept any preconditions for talks. He then uttered the most explicit warning yet: "In the event of a trade war, we have a much greater ability to endure (the consequences) than the U.S.," the official said. As a reminder, the United States has asked China to reduce its bilateral trade surplus by $100 billion and as reported last night, targeted Beijing's "Made in China 2025" initiative, which aims to upgrade the domestic manufacturing base with more advanced products. China - which last year had a record trade surplus of $375 billion with the United States - responded that Beijing would not accept talks with any preconditions. * * * Then, just moments ago, the WSJ reported that in response to this latest escalation, the US is considering executive action that would restrict some Chinese companies’ ability to sell telecommunications equipment in the U.S., based on national-security concerns. As the WSJ points out, this move "would represent a significant escalation of a growing feud between the U.S. and China over tech and telecommunications." The affected firms likely would include Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. , two of the world’s leading telecommunications equipment makers. They have found themselves increasingly in an international crossfire. Pentagon officials said this week that they are moving to halt the sale of phones made by the two companies on U.S. military bases around the world. U.S. officials are concerned that Beijing could order manufacturers to hack into products they make to spy or disable communications. Huawei and ZTE have said that would never happen. This latest salvo could come in the form of a Trump executive order, possibly in the next few weeks. One possibility under consideration has been curbing the ability of companies doing business with the U.S. government from using network equipment made by companies that could pose a national-security risk. * * * While for now the escalating back-and-forth is nothing more than verbal foreplay, it will last at most three more weeks because the Treasury faces a May 21 deadline to report on restrictions on Chinese investment in the US, as part of the response to the recent Section 301 intellectual property investigation. And, as Goldman writes this morning, enhanced investment restrictions have fairly broad support in Congress as well, raising the probability that restrictions will be implemented this year. Goldman's conclusion: don't expect any good news until the 11th hour, and if anything, another batch of bad news may be next: Unlike the NAFTA and steel issues, some additional market-disruptive policy moves regarding US-China trade seem likely. The most immediate focus will be the delegation of Administration officials set to meet with Chinese officials starting May 3 in Beijing. We believe a substantial breakthrough at this meeting is unlikely as the issues the US has raised—intellectual property policies, technology transfer, and the “Made in China 2025” strategy, in particular—are not the type of technical trade issues that can be resolved quickly. For now, with neither China nor the US willing to back down and compromise, expect the war of words to escalate dramatically over the next 3 weeks as we reach the May 21 deadline.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Wednesday that US troops will remain on the peninsula even if a peace agreement with the North is reached, saying their presence has “nothing to do with signing peace treaties.” “US troops stationed in South Korea are an issue regarding the alliance between South Korea and the United States. It has nothing to do with signing peace treaties,” Moon’s spokesperson Kim Eui-kyeom said at a press conference. The statement came in response to a Foreign Affairs magazine article written by presidential adviser, Moon Cung-in, in which he stated that it would be “difficult to justify [US forces] continuing presence in South Korea,” if peace is concluded with the North. The spokesperson warned the adviser “not to cause any more confusion” with such comments. The discussion regarding US troops in Korea follows Friday’s historic meeting between Moon and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, which resulted in the two signing an agreement in favor of the Korean peninsula’s “complete denuclearization.” The summit marked the first time leaders of the divided nation have met in 11 years, and the first time a North Korean leader has entered the South since 1953. North Korea previously signaled its readiness to denuclearize at a meeting between Kim and Chinese President Xi Jinping last month, noting that it would require a “security guarantee,” according to a report by the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. What the guarantee implied remains unclear, as North Korea reportedly dropped its long-held demand for US troop withdrawal, at least according to Moon’s public statement in late April. The US has already expressed its intention to make North Korea take “irreversible” steps towards denuclearization, without guaranteeing any concession in relation to its military presence. CIA Director and newly appointed US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo identified the Trump administration’s “objective” with regard to North Korea as “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization” in an ABC News interview. In a separate interview with Fox News, US National Security Advisor John Bolton stated that the 2003 agreement to eliminate Libya’s weapons of mass destruction program could serve as a model for the North Korea negotiations. “We have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004. There are obviously differences. The Libyan program was much smaller, but that was basically the agreement that we made,” Bolton said. Former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi agreed to dismantle the country’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of imposed Western sanctions. In 2011, he was killed by a NATO-led bombing of the country, which led to a civil war and Islamist terrorism groups rising in the region. At the historic Korean summit, Kim and Moon agreed to establish a direct telephone line between their executive offices, through which they will “hold frequent and candid discussions on issues vital to the nation,” according to the declaration they signed. President Moon is also set to visit Pyongyang this fall, months after US President Donald Trump’s anticipated meeting with Kim in the coming weeks.

The status quo, in all its various forms, is dominated by incentives that strengthen the centralization of wealth and power. Capitalism As longtime readers know, my work aims to 1) explain why the status quo -- the socio-economic-political system we inhabit -- is unsustainable, divisive, and doomed to collapse under its own weight and 2) sketch out an alternative Mode of Production/way of living that is sustainable, consumes far less resources while providing for the needs of the human populace -- not just for our material daily bread but for positive social roles, purpose, hope, meaning and opportunity, needs that are by and large ignored or marginalized in the current system. One cognitive/emotional roadblock I encounter is the nearly universal assumption that there are only two systems: the State (government) or the Market (free trade/ free enterprise). This divide plays out politically as the Right (capitalism, favoring markets) and the Left (socialism, favoring the state). Everything from Communism to Libertarianism can be placed on this spectrum. But what if the State and the Market are the sources of our unsustainability?What if they are intrinsically incapable of fixing what’s broken? The roadblock here is adherents to one camp or the other are emotionally attached to their ideological choice, to the point that these ideological attachments have a quasi-religious character. Believers in the market as the solution to virtually any problem refuse to accept any limits on the market’s efficacy, and believers in greater state power/control refuse to accept any limits on the state’s efficacy. I often feel like I’ve been transported back to the 30 Years War between Catholics and Protestants in the 1600s. I’ve written numerous books that (in part) cover the inherent limits of markets and the state, so I’ll keep this brief. Markets are based on two premises: 1) profits are the key motivator of human activity and 2) whatever is scarce can be replaced by something that is abundant (for example, when we’ve wiped out all the wild Bluefin tuna, we can substitute farmed catfish.) But what about work that creates value but isn’t profitable? This simply doesn’t compute in the market mentality. Neither does the fact that wiping out the wild fisheries disrupts an ecosystem that is essentially impossible to value in terms that markets understand: in a market, the supply and the demand in this moment set the price and thus the value of everything. But ecosystems simply cannot be valued by the price set in the moment by current supply and demand. As for the state, its ontological imperative is to concentrate power, and since wealth is power, this means concentrating political and financial power. Once bureaucracies have concentrated power, insiders focus on securing budgets and benefits, and limiting transparency and accountability, as these endanger the insiders’ power, security and perquisites. Both of these systems share a single quasi-religious ideology: a belief that endless economic growth is an intrinsic good, for it is the ultimate foundation of all human prosperity. In other words, we can only prosper and become more secure if we’re consuming more of everything: resources, credit, energy, and so on. The second shared ideological faith is that centralizing wealth and power are not just inevitable but good. In other words, Left and Right share a single quasi-religious belief that centralization is not just inevitable but positive; the only difference is in who should hold the concentrated wealth/power, private owners or the state. This ideology assumes a winner take most structure of winners and losers,with the winnings being concentrated in the hands of a few at the top of the Winners. Thus rising inequality and divisiveness are assumed to be the natural state of any economy. This ideology underpins the entire status quo spectrum. The "growth at any cost is good" part of the single ideology underpinning the status quo is captured by the 1960 Soviet-era film Letter Never Sent; in its haunting, surreal final scene, a character envisions a grand wilderness untouched by human hands transformed into an industrial wasteland of belching chimneys and sprawling factories. This was not a nightmare--this was the Soviet dream, and indeed, the dream of the "growth at any cost is good" West. Simply put, the status quo of markets and states is incapable of DeGrowth, i.e. consuming less of everything, including credit, "money", profits, taxes—everything that fuels both the state and the market. As I have taken pains to explain, it doesn’t matter if a factory is owned by private owners or the state: the mandate of capital is to grow. If capital doesn’t grow, the resulting losses will sink the enterprise—including the state itself. What lies beyond "growth at any cost" capitalism and socialism? My answer is the self-funded community economy, a system that is self-funded (i.e. no need for a central bank or Treasury) with a digital currency that is created and distributed for the sole purpose of funding work that addresses scarcities in local communities. I outline this system in my book A Radiocally Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All. Rather than concentrate power in the hands of state insiders, this system distributes power to communities are participants. Rather than concentrate the power to create currency for the benefit of banks and the state, this system distributes the power to create currency for the sole benefit of those working on behalf of the community, on projects prioritized by the community. This community economy recognizes that some work is valuable but not profitable. The profit-driven market will never do this work, and the central state is (to use Peter Drucker’s term) the wrong unit size to ascertain each community’s needs and scarcities. Clearly, we need a socio-economic-political system that has the structure to not just grasp the necessity of DeGrowth and positive social roles (work benefiting the greater community) but to embrace these goals as its raison d’etre (reason to exist). Human activity is largely guided by incentives, both chemical incentives in our brains and incentives presented by the society/economy we inhabit. In the current system, concentrating power and wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many and wasting resources / destroying ecosystems are incentivized if the activity is profitable to some enterprise or deemed necessary by the state. In the current system, the state incentivizes protecting its wealth and power and the security/benefits of its insiders, and markets incentivize maximizing profits by any means available. As I have explained many times in the blog and my books, we inhabit a state-cartel economy: the most profitable form of enterprise is the quasi-monopoly or cartel that limits supply and competition in order to extract the maximum profit from its customers. Monopolies (or quasi-monopolies such as Google, which holds a majority share of global search revenues, excluding China) and cartels quickly amass profits which they then use to secure protection of their cartel from the state via lobbying, campaign contributions, etc. The elites controlling the state benefit from this arrangement, and so the system inevitably becomes a state-cartel system dominated by the state and private sector cartels and incentives that benefit the wealth and power of these institutions. Once we understand the inevitability of this marriage of state and cartel, we understand socialism and capitalism--the State and Markets--are the yin and yang of one system. Reformers may recognize some of the inherent limits of the state and the market, but they believe these problems can be solved by tweaking policies--in systems-speak, modifying the parameters of the existing subsystems of lawmaking, the judiciary, regulatory agencies, and so on. But as Donella Meadows explained in her classic paper, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System tweaking the parameters doesn’t actually change the system. For that, we must add a new feedback loop. The status quo, in all its various forms, is dominated by incentives that strengthen the centralization of wealth and power, increase inequality and divisiveness and the permanent expansion of consumption and credit. That this path leads to implosion / collapse does not compute because the status quo is constructed on the fundamental assumption that permanent growth/expansion of consumption, credit, wealth and state power is not just possible but necessary. As many of us have labored to show, the financial system has been pushed to unprecedented extremes to maintain the illusion that rapid growth of consumption and credit can be maintained essentially forever. We need an alternative system that’s built on sustainable incentives and feedback loops so we have a new blueprint to follow as the current arrangement unravels in the next decade or two. Security and prosperity are worthy goals, but the means to achieve them, as well as the definition of security / prosperity, must be reworked from the ground up. We need to include positive social roles and meaningful work as essential components of security/prosperity. My conception of a Third / Community Economy does not replace either the state or the free-enterprise market; rather, it does what neither of the existing structures can do. It adds opportunity, purpose, positive social roles and earned income for those left out of the state/cartel/market economy.

The Hong Kong Financial Services and Treasury (FSTB) released a report yesterday, April 30, on the status of money laundering (ML) and terrorism financing (TF). The report concluded that virtual currencies (VC), like Bitcoin (BTC), are not particularly involved in either type of financial crime. The FSTB notes that “although there is inherent ML/TF vulnerability related to VCs”: “There does not seem to be any visible impact affecting the overall risk in Hong Kong so far. The risk of VCs is assessed as medium-low.” The report does mention the use of cryptocurrencies in Ponzi schemes and cybercrimes – specifically mentioning the WannaCry attack – citing 167 Bitcoin (BTC) related police reports from 2013-2017. The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment Report also mentions that the FSTB, Hong Kong financial regulators, and law enforcement agencies are working together to look into risks associated with Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) and cryptocurrencies in general as well: “While we have not found substantial risks in these newly developing payment methods or commodities, this is a rapidly developing area requiring continued monitoring.” According to the report, cryptocurrencies are not considered legal tender in Hong Kong. The FTSB suggests that because Hong Kong “is one of the world’s freest economies with a vibrant foreign currency exchange market and no capital controls [...] VCs are therefore not as attractive as in economies where people may try to circumvent currency controls or seek refuge from a high inflation rate”: “The exchange of Bitcoin in person is not popular [...] Domestically, the use of Bitcoin remains at a negligible level.” The report writes that the Bitcoin ATMs in Hong Kong are also “not popularly used by people in Hong Kong.” As a comparison, in Venezuela – a country whose economy is currently experiencing hyperinflation – many citizens have begun to rely on Bitcoin as a more stable store of value as compared to their national currency. In February of this year, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) warned potential crypto investors that they would keep “policing” cryptocurrency and ICO markets. In mid-March, the SFC halted an ICO in Hong Kong and made the company return the money raised, on the grounds that it was an unregistered investment scheme. More recently, in mid-April, the SFC said that the type of fundraising done through ICOs is better suited to venture capital funds.