title: Arjun Reddy

text: Arjun Reddy is a 2017 Indian Telugu-language romantic drama film written and directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga, and produced by his brother Pranay Reddy Vanga's company Bhadrakali Pictures. It stars Vijay Deverakonda and Shalini Pandey while Rahul Ramakrishna, Jia Sharma, Sanjay Swaroop, Gopinath Bhat, Kamal Kamaraju and Kanchana appear in supporting roles. The film tells the story of Arjun Reddy Deshmukh (Deverakonda), a high-functioning alcoholic surgeon who has anger management problems. Arjun is on a self-destructive path after the marriage of his girlfriend Preethi Shetty (Pandey); the film focuses on his downfall and subsequent resurgence.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: "Arjun Reddy" was partially inspired by Sandeep Vanga's life as a physiotherapy student. He worked on the script for two years and it took four to five years for the film to materialise. Principal photography commenced on 20 June 2016 at Hyderabad and took 86 working days to complete. Other filming locations include Mangalore, Dehradun and New Delhi, filming also took place in Italy. Radhan and Harshvardhan Rameshwar composed the soundtrack and score, respectively. Raj Thota was director of photography and Shashank Mali edited the film.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Made on a budget of 5–5.15 crore; the film was released worldwide on 25 August 2017. It received widespread critical acclaim for its direction, writing, cinematography and the cast performances—especially that of Deverakonda, but drew criticism for allegedly promoting substance abuse among young people and for its romantic scenes. The film was a box office success, grossing 51 crore globally, with a distributor share of 26 crore. It received six nominations at the 65th Filmfare Awards South, including Best Telugu Film and Best Telugu Director for Vanga; the film's only win was Best Telugu Actor for Deverakonda. The film was remade in Hindi as "Kabir Singh" (2019) and twice in Tamil: as "Adithya Varma" (2019) and "Varmaa" (2020).


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Arjun Reddy Deshmukh is a house surgeon at St. Mary's Medical College in Mangalore, India. Despite being a brilliant student, he has severe anger management problems that earn the wrath of the college dean. Arjun's aggressive nature also earns him a reputation among his juniors as a college bully. After a brawl alongside his friend Kamal against members of the opposing team during an inter-college football match the dean asks Arjun to either apologise or leave the college. Arjun initially chooses to leave the college, but stays back after meeting first-year student Preethi Shetty.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Arjun and his friend Shiva enter a third-year classroom and announce that Arjun is in love with Preethi and asserts that she is exclusive to him. Initially afraid, Preethi starts adjusting to Arjun's overbearing attitude. She eventually reciprocates his feelings and they develop an intimate relationship. Arjun graduates with an MBBS degree and leaves for Mussoorie to pursue a Master's degree in Orthopedic surgery. Over the course of three years, Arjun's and Preethi's relationship becomes stronger. Months later, Arjun visits Preethi's house, where her father sees them kissing and throws Arjun out.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Preethi's father opposes her and Arjun's relationship due to Arjun's brash behaviour and also because they belong to different castes. Arjun demands Preethi decide within six hours otherwise he will end their relationship. Following this incident, Preethi's parents seize her phone, preventing her from contacting Arjun. By the time she manages to visit Arjun's house, he is drunk, injects morphine into himself, and becomes unconscious for two days. Preethi is then forcibly married to someone from her caste. Arjun learns about the marriage from Shiva and goes to her house. He is assaulted and gets arrested for making a scene. Arjun's father throws him out of the family home for ruining his reputation.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: With Shiva's help, Arjun rents a flat and joins a private hospital as a surgeon. To cope with his emotions, he starts taking drugs, attempts one-night stands, buys a pet dog and names it after Preethi and drinks alcohol; all of which are unsuccessful. Within months, he becomes a successful surgeon and a high-functioning alcoholic who is feared by the hospital's staff members, one of the reasons being his high surgery count. Arjun's self-destructing behaviour and refusal to move on worries Shiva and Kamal. He persuades one of his patients, Jia Sharma, a leading film star, to have a no-strings relationship with him, which he ends when she falls in love with him.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: On a day off, Arjun unwillingly agrees to perform a life-saving surgery and collapses from dehydration. The hospital staff examines his blood samples, which show traces of alcohol and cocaine. The hospital chief files a case against Arjun, who accepts the truth on the grounds of violating his professional ethics during an in-house court hearing, despite Shiva making arrangements to bail him out. Arjun's medical license is cancelled for five years and he is evicted from the flat. The next morning, Shiva manages to reach Arjun to convey his grandmother's death; he meets his father, and they reconcile. Arjun gives up his self-destructive habits soon after.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: While leaving for a vacation, Arjun sees a pregnant Preethi sitting in a park. Convinced that she is unhappy with her marriage, Arjun meets her after returning from his vacation. Preethi reveals that she left her husband days after their marriage and continued to work in a clinic. She tells Arjun that he is the child's father, and they reunite. The pair marries, and Preethi's father apologises for misunderstanding their love for each other.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: After discontinuing his studies as a physiotherapist, Sandeep Vanga worked in the 2010 Telugu film "Kedi" as an assistant director. He worked on the script of "Arjun Reddy" for two years and for four to five years approached producers who were not willing to finance the project until Vanga's brother Pranay Reddy agreed to do so. Pranay and Vanga's father invested in the film equally. The project was made under the production banner of Bhadrakali Pictures.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: "Arjun Reddy" was partially inspired from Vanga's life as a physiotherapy student: "It is not my story but there are a lot of references from my life [...] Some of my medical college friends saw the film and said that Arjun reminds them of me." After working on a scene, he used to wait for a week as he believed that for a film with twists and turns, the narrative would have a chance to jump, thereby giving scope for cinematic liberties. For the same, whenever the idea for a plot twist came to him, Vanga used to work on it for three to four weeks.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: In a September 2017 interview with Sangeetha Devi Dundoo of "The Hindu", Vanga said he believed that Telugu cinema uses dialects spoken in Guntur and Vijayawada. Since he was unaware of the way of speaking in both the places, he wrote the dialogue in a Hyderabad Telangana accent. He made use of words that were rarely spoken in colloquial Telugu like "yaralu" (sister-in-law) to make Arjun look "real and rooted". Some of the dialogue was written in Tulu. With a dark mood prevailing for 100 minutes, Vanga wanted a happy ending for the film, with two or three options for the climax. He said he "didn't have the heart" to end the narrative on a sad note, considering the darkness Arjun was subjected to. The initial edit was 220 minutes long; this was reduced to 186 minutes.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Vanga initially approached Sharwanand to play the film's lead role. Sharwanand was at first apprehensive of Vanga handling the responsibilities of directing and producing the project but after reading the script, he changed his mind. He sent the script to many producers, who considered the project too risky to fund. After Sharwanand left the project, Vanga signed Vijay Deverakonda to play Arjun Reddy. Deverakonda's breakthrough film "Pelli Choopulu" (2016) had not yet been released, and many were against Vanga for casting him, citing it a risky move for a home production. In an interview with Indo-Asian News Service, Devarakonda called the portrayal of Arjun Reddy exhausting, noting that, "I had to be constantly probing into the darkest areas of my consciousness, digging out feelings and tapping into emotions I had never touched in myself". He did not have any cinematic references but watched films like "The Godfather" (1972), "Scarface" (1983) and "Goodfellas" (1990) to remain in an alpha male zone.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Arjun and Preethi had an age difference of four years, which Vanga wanted to showcase effectively. He chose Shalini Pandey to play Preethi; she was pursuing a career in theatre in Jabalpur. Pandey's father was apprehensive of her signing a film contract; the shoot delayed by five months. Pandey was firm in her decision, which strained her relationship with her father. Vanga wanted her to dub for her role, to which she agreed because it would help her own the character completely. Vanga conducted an eight-day acting workshop with Deverakonda and Pandey. Kanchana was cast as Arjun's grandmother in November 2016; "Arjun Reddy" marked her comeback to Telugu cinema after "Shri Datta Darshanam" (1985). The producers persuaded her to join the project after a series of long discussions.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Rahul Ramakrishna, who worked as a lyricist for "Pelli Choopulu", was cast as Arjun's friend Shiva. Ramakrishna's career as a journalist helped him understand several dialects, which in turn had a positive effect on his performance. He called Shiva's friendship with Arjun "loyal and unconditional", which gives them the liberty to deride each other at times. Amit Sharma was chosen after a three-hour audition; Vanga felt he "had the apt attitude and arrogance" for the role of Amit, Arjun's nemesis. Bhushan Kalyan played the role of the college's dean. Tulu actor Gopinath Bhat was cast as Preethi's father. Sanjay Swaroop, Kamal Kamaraju, Jia Sharma and Priyadarshi Pulikonda were cast in other important roles.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Nagesh Banell was initially the film's director of photography. He was replaced by Raj Thota later, who worked for 85% of the film. Deverakonda recommended him; he did the clash work for "Pelli Choopulu" whose cinematography was handled by Banell. Vanga worked on the film's sound design and worked with Sachin Hariharan of Sync Cinema. Harshavardhan Rameshwar composed the background score. Shashank Mali edited the film.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Principal photography commenced in Hyderabad on 20 June 2016. Kanchana joined the film's sets on 30 November 2016. The protagonists' college life portions were filmed at the three heritage buildings of the University college of Hampankatta, Mangalore. Other filming locations included Dehradun and Delhi in India and parts of Italy. According to Deverakonda, Vanga wanted to set the film in a coastal city and chose Mangalore—mirroring his student life in Dharwad—and stayed there for ten days to finalise the locations. In an interview with Idlebrain.com, Vanga said, "When you write a script, you think about a particular location. But, it scared me when we got worst of locations for some of the scenes. But it didn't matter because our attention would be on characters. I realised that when content is clear, locations doesn't matter most of the times."


title: Arjun Reddy

text: The principal photography was completed in 86 working days, and was made on a budget of 5–5.15 crore. Vanga preferred long, uninterrupted takes; the pre-Intermission sequence was seven minutes long. According to Deverakonda, if filmed in conventional style, Vanga would have finished the film in 200 working days. For a few scenes, Thota used a hand-held camera weighing , which adversely affected his hands. The classroom fight scene featuring Deverakonda, Pandey and Sharma was filmed in a single take; Sharma wanted Deverakonda to actually hit him to make the scene look natural. He said their experience in theatre helped their performances. The crew wanted to film the intermission scene, in which Arjun urinates in his pants, authentically but a delay in the shoot led to the insertion of a medical hosepipe in Deverakonda's trousers.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: The soundtrack of "Arjun Reddy" consists of seven songs, all of which were composed by Radhan. Ananta Sriram, Rambabu Gosala and Shreshta wrote the lyrics of two songs each while Mandela Pedaswamy was the lyricist of "Mari Mari". Shreshta wrote the lyrics for "Madhurame" and "Gundelona"; she composed the latter's tune, which lacked instrumental support. "Gundelona" is the debut of Sowjanya as a playback singer.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: As a part of the film's marketing, the first single from the soundtrack, titled "Mangaluru – Mussorie" (later known as "Dhooram") was released on 23 April 2017. Three more singles— "The Breakup Song" (later known as "Teliseney Na Nuvvey"), "Emitemito" and "Madhurame"—were released on 19 June 10 and 31 July 2017, respectively. Srivathsan Nadadhur, writing for "The Hindu", said "The Breakup song", along with "Break-Up" from "Rarandoi Veduka Chudham" (2017) and "Badulu Cheppave" from "Ninnu Kori" (2017) is an instance in which Telugu cinema "continued in Kolaveri mode too intermittently" in the first half of 2017. The film's soundtrack was marketed by Aditya Music and was released at an audio-release promotional event in Hyderabad on 21 August 2017.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: The film's music received a positive response from critics. Sangeetha Devi Dundoo of "The Hindu" wrote that Radhan's music, which varies from "classical strains to more trippy beats", was one of the factors, along with the cinematography, that brought "Arjun Reddy" to life. Neeshita Nyayapati writing for "The Times of India" said the songs "deserve a special mention" and that Radhan did a "brilliant job". Namrata Suri of "The News Minute" wrote that "Arjun Reddy" has one of the "most original soundtracks composed by Radhan", and that "Madhurame" and "The Breakup song" are the memorable songs from the film. In December 2017, Nadadhur commented; "For a film so brutally raw and honest, Arjun Reddy got its aura from its music as much as the swag of Vijay Deverakonda". He added that the heavy metal undertone matched up to the "extremities and mood swings of its lead character". Nadadhur also praised the use of semi-classical and jazzy touches in the soundtrack.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: "Arjun Reddy" was given an 'A' (adult) certificate by the Central Board of Film Certification due to the abundance of expletives and innuendoes. Vanga complained that the board took his creative struggle for granted. He considered writing a letter to the board asking what was taken into consideration before certification. The board complained that the producers of the film had not submitted their promotional material for censoring before using it. Asian Cinemas and KFC Entertainments acquired the film's distribution rights for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Nirvana Cinemas distributed the film in overseas markets. The teaser of the film was released on 27 February 2017, and the trailer was released on 12 August 2017.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Days before the film's release, Indian National Congress party's Rajya Sabha member V. Hanumantha Rao tore promotional posters featuring the lead pair kissing each other that had been pasted on TSRTC buses. He found them objectionable and said they adversely affected the minds of young people. It led the film's promoters to remove such posters across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: "Arjun Reddy" was released worldwide on 25 August 2017, notably clashing with Indian films "Vivegam" and "A Gentleman". In Hyderabad, 55 paid premieres were held a day before the release, surpassing the record set by "" which had 33 premiere shows. The film's digital rights were acquired by Amazon Prime, which made it available online on the 50th day of theatrical release. Star Maa purchased the satellite rights for 3.5 crore. The film had its global television premiere on 21 January 2018, with a TRP rating of 13.6. The film was substantially edited for in its television premiere, drawing criticism from its audience.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: "Arjun Reddy" opened to a 100% occupancy in some areas of India, including districts of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. At the United States box office, the film debuted with earnings of US$194,051 from its premieres and of US$709,347 in two days. By the end of its first weekend, it grossed US$954,677 in the US, and A$111,521 in Australia. "Arjun Reddy" grossed 19 crore globally, with a distributor share of 10.42 crore in its first weekend. The film was declared commercially successful as it earned a profit of 73.66% for its distributors. "Arjun Reddy" earnings exceeded US$1 million on its fourth day of theatrical release in the US, becoming the 32nd Indian Telugu-language film to do so.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: By the end of its first week, the film grossed 34.3 crore and a distributor share of 18.5 crore, providing a return of nearly 200% to its distributors. After earning US$1,681,996 in 17 days in the US, "Arjun Reddy" became the fourth highest grossing Telugu film of the year in that country. By then, it had grossed a worldwide total of 45 crore and a distributor share of 25 crore. In its complete global theatrical run, "Arjun Reddy" grossed a total of 51 crore and earned a distributor share of 26 crore.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: "Arjun Reddy" received positive reviews from critics. Writing for Film Companion, Baradwaj Rangan said that while the pre-interval sequences were generic, the "prickly" latter portions justified both the film's title and the running time. Rangan called "Arjun Reddy" a film that "digs deep [and] rings true" and said it "really comes into its own" in the second half. S. Shiva Kumar of "The Hindu" wrote that Vanga's storytelling had a "conviction and confidence probably only a debutante will have". He found the performances, especially those of Deverakonda and Kanchana, "pitch perfect". Sangeetha Devi Dundoo said the film is "too raw and real to be absolutely fictional" and commented: "Hours after watching "Arjun Reddy", it’s hard to shake off its effect. It’s like a hangover, albeit in a good way."


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Indo-Asian News Service gave the film five stars out of five, called it the "most original, experimental and daring work to come out Telugu cinema in a long time", and said the protagonist's "rise, fall and rise ... is nothing short of poetic and heart wrenching". Neeshita Nyayapati gave the film four stars out of five and commented: "With "Arjun Reddy", Sandeep Vanga has managed to tell a story that is seldom told, without sleaze or cheesy lines or [over the top] drama". Srivatsan of "India Today" also gave the film four stars out of five and wrote: "Lo and behold, "Arjun Reddy"—the film and Vijay Deverakonda, is something that the Telugu industry deserved in the first place", and praised the "brutal and honest" filmmaking. Suresh Kavirayani of "Deccan Chronicle" also gave the film four stars out of five and commended the performances and the filmmaking but was apprehensive of the second half's pace. "The Times of India", also gave four stars stating "Arjun Reddy is the dawn of a new era of films for the Telugu film industry."


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Hemanth Kumar, in his review for "Firstpost" gave 3.75 stars out of five and praised the storytelling in particular, saying: "There are no gimmicks, no surprises, no twists. And in doing so, we are forced to absorb the film at a more personal and subconscious level." Latha Srinivasan, in her review for NewsX, wrote that the protagonist is "unconventional, free-spirited and tries to break the shackles of traditional societal norms". She said the romance is "rooted in deep emotions" and gave the film 3.5 stars out of five. Giving three stars out of five, K. Naresh Kumar of "The Hans India" was critical of the film's pace and a few subplots in the second half. He wrote: "As a tale of a love-struck man, who falters and finally figures out what is best for him, the experiment that the director undertakes is tedious, stretching out time and again". Murali Krishna CH, in his review for the "Cinema Express", praised the unpredictability of the first half but was apprehensive of some emotional scenes in the second half; he found them a "serious flaw" after the intermission.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: The film has also drawn criticism for its misogyny and glorification of toxic masculinity. Sowmya Rajendran, in her review for "The News Minute", panned its "utterly colourless" female characters and validation of abusive behaviour, writing: "The film treats women as property, to be under the protection and control of men ... [it] will have us believe that women have no opinions about anything that happens to them or around them." Malini Raghu of "Deccan Herald" concurred, stating: "portraying [Reddy] as just a wounded and short-tempered but affectionate boy is not acceptable to many [...] The female lead's gullibility is annoying, especially to women. All she does is keep mum and boost her man's ego." Vishnupriya Bhandaram of "Firstpost" found the film's depiction of misbehavior as an alpha male attribute to be "deeply problematic", while Sify's Ashley Tellis classified it as "part of the culture of misogyny that has always existed in Telugu (and Tamil and all Indian film cultures)." Speaking to "The Asian Age", Neelima Menon opined that "it's problematic when you add celebratory background score to an act of verbally abusing a woman with sexually coloured remarks, or beating her up, or decide to make these acts sound heroic." Writing for "Mashable", Pramit Chatterjee summed up the film as "the flag-bearer of 21st-century toxic masculinity".


title: Arjun Reddy

text: In 2019, actress Parvathy criticised "Arjun Reddy" at a roundtable organised by "Film Companion" for glorifying misogyny, abuse and toxic masculinity in the films at International Film Festival of India (IFFI). Her comments against "Arjun Reddy" were met with widespread appreciation and many noted that she was brave enough to address the issue in front of Deverakonda. Later, Deverakonda criticised social media trollers during an interview for blowing the issue out of proportion while simultaneously emphasising on how much he respected Parvathy and her work.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: Post-release, Hanumantha Rao lodged a complaint against the film, stating that it promoted sexual abuse in colleges and substance abuse in hospitals. He also asked K. Chandrashekar Rao, the chief minister of Telangana, to stop the film's screening across the state. A week after the film's release, D. Nagaraju from Khammam accused the film's makers of plagiarising his script and demanded compensation of 2 crore. In Vijayawada, women's organisations held a protest against the film, complaining of its "objectionable" content that could have a negative impact on young people.


title: Arjun Reddy

text: "Arjun Reddy" was remade in Hindi by Vanga himself as "Kabir Singh", which was released on 21 June 2019. The film was first remade in Tamil by Bala as "Varmaa"; however in early 2019 the production company E4 Entertainment shelved the film's release due to creative differences with Bala, and relaunched the film as "Adithya Varma" with Gireesaaya directing, which was released on 21 November 2019. Despite initially being shelved, "Varmaa" was released on 6 October 2020. In June 2019, producer S. Narayan bought the Kannada remake rights of the film. E4 Entertainment also holds the rights to make a Malayalam version. In 2021, Yuva Films, a Nepali film production company was reported to be producing a Nepali version of "Arjun Reddy".


title: Tiamat

text: In Mesopotamian religion, Tiamat ( or , ) is a primordial goddess of the sea, mating with Abzû, the god of the groundwater, to produce younger gods. She is the symbol of the chaos of primordial creation. She is referred to as a woman and described as "the glistening one". It is suggested that there are two parts to the Tiamat mythos. In the first, she is a creator goddess, through a sacred marriage between different waters, peacefully creating the cosmos through successive generations. In the second Chaoskampf Tiamat is considered the monstrous embodiment of primordial chaos. Some sources identify her with images of a sea serpent or dragon.


title: Tiamat

text: In the "Enûma Elish", the Babylonian epic of creation, Tiamat bears the first generation of deities; her husband, Apsu, correctly assuming that they are planning to kill him and usurp his throne, later makes war upon them and is killed. Enraged, she also wars upon her husband's murderers, bringing forth multitudes of monsters as offspring. She is then slain by Enki's son, the storm-god Marduk, but not before she had brought forth the monsters of the Mesopotamian pantheon, including the first dragons, whose bodies she filled with "poison instead of blood". Marduk then integrates elements of her body into the heavens and the earth.


title: Tiamat

text: Thorkild Jacobsen and Walter Burkert both argue for a connection with the Akkadian word for sea, "tâmtu"(), following an early form, "ti'amtum". Burkert continues by making a linguistic connection to Tethys. The later form , which appears in the Hellenistic Babylonian writer Berossus' first volume of universal history, is clearly related to Greek , an Eastern variant of . It is thought that the proper name ti'amat, which is the vocative or construct form, was dropped in secondary translations of the original texts because some Akkadian copyists of "Enûma Elish" substituted the ordinary word "tāmtu" ("sea") for Tiamat, the two names having become essentially the same due to association. "Tiamat" also has been claimed to be cognate with Northwest Semitic "tehom" (תְּהוֹם) ("the deeps, abyss"), in the Book of Genesis 1:2.


title: Tiamat

text: The Babylonian epic "Enuma Elish" is named for its incipit: "When above" the heavens did not yet exist nor the earth below, Apsu the subterranean ocean was there, "the first, the begetter", and Tiamat, the overground sea, "she who bore them all"; they were "mixing their waters". It is thought that female deities are older than male ones in Mesopotamia and Tiamat may have begun as part of the cult of Nammu, a female principle of a watery creative force, with equally strong connections to the underworld, which predates the appearance of Ea-Enki.


title: Tiamat

text: Harriet Crawford finds this "mixing of the waters" to be a natural feature of the middle Persian Gulf, where fresh waters from the Arabian aquifer mix and mingle with the salt waters of the sea. This characteristic is especially true of the region of Bahrain, whose name in Arabic means "two seas", and which is thought to be the site of Dilmun, the original site of the Sumerian creation beliefs. The difference in density of salt and fresh water drives a perceptible separation.


title: Tiamat

text: In the "Enûma Elish" her physical description includes a tail, a thigh, "lower parts" (which shake together), a belly, an udder, ribs, a neck, a head, a skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and lips. She has insides (possibly "entrails"), a heart, arteries, and blood.


title: Tiamat

text: Tiamat is usually described as a sea serpent or dragon, although Assyriologist Alexander Heidel disagreed with this identification and argued that "dragon form can not be imputed to Tiamat with certainty". Other scholars have disregarded Heidel's argument: Joseph Fontenrose in particular found it "not convincing" and concluded that "there is reason to believe that Tiamat was sometimes, not necessarily always, conceived as a dragoness". The "Enûma Elish" states that Tiamat gave birth to dragons, serpents, scorpion men, merfolk and other monsters, but does not identify her form.


title: Tiamat

text: Abzu (or Apsû) fathered upon Tiamat the elder deities Lahmu and Lahamu (masc. the "hairy"), a title given to the gatekeepers at Enki's Abzu/E'engurra-temple in Eridu. Lahmu and Lahamu, in turn, were the parents of the 'ends' of the heavens (Anshar, from "an-šar" = heaven-totality/end) and the earth (Kishar); Anshar and Kishar were considered to meet at the horizon, becoming, thereby, the parents of Anu (Heaven) and Ki (Earth).


title: Tiamat

text: Tiamat was the "shining" personification of the sea who roared and smote in the chaos of original creation. She and Apsu filled the cosmic abyss with the primeval waters. She is "Ummu-Hubur who formed all things".


title: Tiamat

text: In the myth recorded on cuneiform tablets, the deity Enki (later Ea) believed correctly that Apsu was planning to murder the younger deities, upset with the noisy tumult they created, and so captured him and held him prisoner beneath his temple, the E-Abzu ("temple of Abzu"). This angered Kingu, their son, who reported the event to Tiamat, whereupon she fashioned eleven monsters to battle the deities in order to avenge Apsu's death. These were her own offspring: Bašmu (“Venomous Snake”), Ušumgallu (“Great Dragon”), Mušmaḫḫū (“Exalted Serpent”), Mušḫuššu (“Furious Snake”), Laḫmu (the “Hairy One”), Ugallu (the “Big Weather-Beast”), Uridimmu (“Mad Lion”), Girtablullû (“Scorpion-Man"), Umū dabrūtu (“Violent Storms"), Kulullû (“Fish-Man") and Kusarikku (“Bull-Man”).


title: Tiamat

text: Tiamat possessed the Tablet of Destinies and in the primordial battle she gave them to Kingu, the deity she had chosen as her lover and the leader of her host, and who was also one of her children. The terrified deities were rescued by Anu, who secured their promise to revere him as "king of the gods". He fought Tiamat with the arrows of the winds, a net, a club, and an invincible spear. Anu was later replaced by Enlil and, in the late version that has survived after the First Dynasty of Babylon, by Marduk, the son of Ea.


title: Tiamat

text: Slicing Tiamat in half, he made from her ribs the vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, her tail became the Milky Way. With the approval of the elder deities, he took from Kingu the Tablet of Destinies, installing himself as the head of the Babylonian pantheon. Kingu was captured and later was slain: his red blood mixed with the red clay of the Earth would make the body of humankind, created to act as the servant of the younger Igigi deities.


title: Tiamat

text: The principal theme of the epic is the rightful elevation of Marduk to command over all the deities. "It has long been realized that the Marduk epic, for all its local coloring and probable elaboration by the Babylonian theologians, reflects in substance older Sumerian material," American Assyriologist E. A. Speiser remarked in 1942 adding "The exact Sumerian prototype, however, has not turned up so far." This surmise that the Babylonian version of the story is based upon a modified version of an older epic, in which Enlil, not Marduk, was the god who slew Tiamat, is more recently dismissed as "distinctly improbable".


title: Tiamat

text: The Tiamat myth is one of the earliest recorded versions of the Chaoskampf, the battle between a culture hero and a chthonic or aquatic monster, serpent or dragon. "Chaoskampf" motifs in other mythologies linked directly or indirectly to the Tiamat myth include


title: Tiamat

text: the Hittite Illuyanka myth, and in Greek tradition Apollo's killing of the Python as a necessary action to take over the Delphic Oracle.


title: Tiamat

text: Robert Graves considered Tiamat's death by Marduk as evidence for his hypothesis of an ancient shift in power from a matriarchal society to a patriarchy. The theory suggests Tiamat and other ancient monster figures were depictions of former supreme deities of peaceful, woman-centered religions that turned into monsters when violent. Their defeat at the hands of a male hero corresponded to the overthrow of these matristic religions and societies by male-dominated ones. This theory is rejected by academic authors such as Lotte Motz, Cynthia Eller and others.


title: Tiamat

text: The depiction of Tiamat as a multi-headed dragon was popularized in the 1970s as a fixture of the "Dungeons & Dragons" roleplaying game inspired by earlier sources associating Tiamat with later mythological characters such as Lotan (Leviathan).


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: Grace Avery VanderWaal (born January 15, 2004) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She is known for her distinctive vocals and has often accompanied herself on the ukulele.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: VanderWaal began her musical career by posting videos of her original songs and covers on YouTube and performing at open mic nights near her home in Suffern, New York. In September 2016, at age 12, she won the eleventh season of the NBC competition show "America's Got Talent" ("AGT"), performing her original songs. In December 2016, with Columbia Records and Syco Music, she released her debut EP "Perfectly Imperfect", which became the best selling EP that year. Her first full-length studio album, "Just the Beginning" (2017), debuted at number 22 on the U.S "Billboard" 200. She released a second EP, "Letters Vol. 1", in 2019.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: She has performed at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Madison Square Garden, the opening and closing of the 2017 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Austria, various benefit concerts, the Austin City Limits Music Festival and on various television talk shows. VanderWaal conducted her first concert tour in 2017 in support of "Just the Beginning". She next toured in mid-2018 with Imagine Dragons in their Evolve World Tour, and in 2019, after opening in a tour for Florence and the Machine, she headlined her own Ur So Beautiful tour. She made her acting debut in 2020, starring as Susan "Stargirl" Caraway in the Disney+ musical drama film "Stargirl", followed by its 2022 sequel "Hollywood Stargirl".


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: VanderWaal has received 2 Radio Disney Music Awards (including a Best New Artist award), a Teen Choice Award, the 2017 "Billboard" Women In Music Rising Star Award, and the 2018 MTV Europe Music Award for Best Push Act. She has been named to "Billboard" magazine's "21 Under 21" list of fast-rising young music stars five times (2016–2019 and 2021) and is the youngest person ever included in the "Forbes" 30 Under 30 music list.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: VanderWaal was born near Kansas City, Kansas, to Tina and David VanderWaal, who lived in Lenexa at the time. Her father is of Dutch descent. When he became a vice president of marketing at LG Electronics in 2007, the family moved to Suffern, New York. VanderWaal later moved to South Carolina. She has an older brother and sister. After winning "America's Got Talent" in 2016, VanderWaal was home-schooled and enrolled in online courses for 7th grade but later attended public school part of the time.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: VanderWaal began singing and making up songs at the age of three. As a preteen, she found songwriting inspiration by watching movies and trying to imagine what a character was feeling, and "what it would be like if I were them, and wrote a song." She decided to learn the ukulele after watching a Brazilian au pair play and seeing a Twenty One Pilots video on YouTube. She asked for one for her 11th birthday but her mother refused, thinking she would never learn to play it. Then she bought one herself, using money she received for her 11th birthday, and watched more videos to teach herself how to play. She also played the saxophone in her school's marching band.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: In 2015, VanderWaal began to record song covers and original songs, accompanying herself on ukulele, and to post them on her YouTube channel. She includes among her musical influences such artists as Jason Mraz, Twenty One Pilots and Katy Perry. She also began to perform during open mic events at small venues near her home and to study music theory. In July 2016, after her audition on "AGT", she performed at the Lafayette Theatre in Suffern and then at the Ramapo Summer Concert Series at Palisades Credit Union Park.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: On June 7, 2016, VanderWaal auditioned for the eleventh season of NBC's talent competition show "AGT", singing her original song about identity, "I Don't Know My Name". She was selected by one of the show's judges, Howie Mandel, as his "golden buzzer" act to skip the next round and perform in the live quarterfinal round. Simon Cowell called VanderWaal "the next Taylor Swift." Brittany Spanos in "Rolling Stone" magazine termed the song an "emotional, catchy, quirky tune". VanderWaal continued to perform her original songs on the show; for her next performance at the quarterfinals on August 23, 2016, she sang "Beautiful Thing", a song that she wrote for her sister. For the semifinals on August 30, she performed "Light the Sky", and for the September 13 finals, she sang "Clay", a song about dealing with bullies. "AGT"s video of VanderWaal's audition has drawn more than 100 million views, and was ranked the No. 5 trending YouTube video of 2016.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: VanderWaal again performed "I Don't Know My Name" at the September 14 finale results episode, then introduced a performance by Stevie Nicks, who compared her own style with VanderWaal's. At the end of the broadcast, VanderWaal was announced as the season 11 winner. She was the second female winner and the second child winner in the show's history.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: VanderWaal planned to use part of her "AGT" winnings to make a donation to charity and to buy two tree houses, built by the team from "Treehouse Masters", for herself and her sister. VanderWaal was a guest on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in September 2016, and she headlined four sold-out concerts in the PH Showroom at the Las Vegas Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in October, performing with other "AGT" finalists. She also headlined the "America's Got Talent Holiday Spectacular" in December on NBC, where she performed her arrangement of "Frosty the Snowman".


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: VanderWaal signed a recording deal with Columbia Records in September 2016 and released her debut EP, "Perfectly Imperfect", on December 2, 2016. The five songs on the EP include all four of VanderWaal's original songs from "AGT" and another original, "Gossip Girl", all produced by Greg Wells. A Walmart version featured one additional song, "Missing You (Coffeehouse Version)". The EP debuted on the "Billboard" 200 albums chart at No. 9 and was the best selling EP of 2016. The lead single, "I Don't Know My Name", debuted on "Billboard"s Digital Song Sales chart at No. 37 and on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart at No. 24. Another song on the EP, "Light the Sky", was featured as background music in Google's "Year in Search 2016" video.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: VanderWaal promoted the EP with a series of appearances and performances. In November 2016, she performed "Light the Sky" and "Riptide" at halftime during a New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden in New York City, and "I Don't Know My Name" in the 2016 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, on NBC's "Today" show and at the Christmas tree lighting at South Street Seaport, in New York City, where she also sang "Light the Sky". In December, she sang "I Don't Know My Name" on "The Wendy Williams Show", at Cyndi Lauper's annual holiday fundraiser at the Beacon Theatre (where she also duetted with Lauper on "True Colors"), on CBS's "The Talk", and at Z100's Jingle Ball Tour 2016 stop at Madison Square Garden. In reviewing the last event, Jon Caramanica of "The New York Times" commented: "One of the loudest receptions of the night was for Grace VanderWaal, a precociously thoughtful 12-year-old singer-songwriter-ukulele player". Later that month, VanderWaal returned to NBC's "Today Show" to sing "Light the Sky".


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: In January 2017, VanderWaal sang "I Don't Know My Name" on "Live with Kelly". She performed atop the Empire State Building for engaged couples at the building's Valentine's Day lighting event in February. In March 2017, she performed at We Day Illinois at Allstate Arena to celebrate young people's action on social issues. She also sang "Light the Sky" at the annual benefit gala "One Night for One Drop", organized by Cirque du Soleil at the New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The same month, VanderWaal appeared twice at the 2017 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Austria, duetting with Jason Mraz on two of his songs at the opening ceremony and performing her own songs at the closing ceremony. In April, she performed at WE Day charity events in Seattle, and Los Angeles, and she appeared at the 2017 Radio Disney Music Awards. Her May appearances included a fundraiser at Ramapo High School in New Jersey for The Valley Hospital's children's programs. In June 2017, VanderWaal launched "Perfectly Imperfect" in Japan, performing and meeting with fans there. She donated funds to help establish an elementary school show choir in the East Ramapo Central School District, sponsored scholarships for graduating seniors from each of Ramapo and Spring Valley High Schools pursuing music and another show choir at Chestnut Ridge Middle School.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: By early 2017, VanderWaal began working on a full-length album, eventually titled "Just the Beginning", that she called "more produced ... really the same sound ... [but] less acoustic" than her debut EP. She told an interviewer for "Rookie" magazine about how her process changed for the album, writing songs "on demand" with a collaborator: "I've never done this before; it's kind of weird to go into a room with usually a 30-year-old man and just be like 'Oh, let me open up about my life to you and write a super personal song!'" In June, she participated in VidCon's opening show, "YouTube OnStage", in The Arena at Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, where she premiered the first single from the upcoming album, "Moonlight". She later released additional singles from the album. In July, she performed at the Starkey Gala in St. Paul, Minnesota, to support hearing charities. In August, she returned to "AGT" as a guest performer, singing "Moonlight". The same month, Windex used VanderWaal's "Beautiful Thing" as the soundtrack to an advertisement, Honda used her cover of "Over the Rainbow" for a Japanese ad, and SheKnows Media ranked "I Don't Know My Name" as one of the 16 most empowering songs for women so far in 2017. In September, VanderWaal performed on "Live with Kelly and Ryan". The same month, she appeared on "Treehouse Masters" in an episode about the tree houses that VanderWaal had planned since her appearance on "AGT", and modeled at New York Fashion Week for Marc Jacobs.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: VanderWaal promoted "Just the Beginning" with performances in September on "Ellen" and in October at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, where she was "[o]ne of the fest's biggest breakout acts ... whose soaring voice and sweet pop songs charmed large ... crowds." She performed at more WE Day events in Vancouver, British Columbia, in October and St. Paul, Minnesota, in November. VanderWaal released "Just the Beginning" on November 3, 2017. She sang "Moonlight" on "Megyn Kelly Today" on the release date. The album debuted on the "Billboard" 200 albums chart at No. 22. She began her first solo concert tour, the Just the Beginning Tour, on November 5, 2017, which ran through February 2018. By September 2017, the tour had sold out. VanderWaal returned to Japan in late November to promote the album. In December, she appeared on the "Today" show.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: In March 2018, VanderWaal travelled to Kenya with the Starkey Hearing Foundation to help hearing-impaired youth there. In April, she performed on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert". She was the opening act for Imagine Dragons in the North American leg of their Evolve World Tour from June to August 2018. During the tour, she also performed on "The Late Late Show with James Corden" and at the 2018 LoveLoud Festival. In December 2018, she returned to "Live with Kelly and Ryan" together with Ingrid Michaelson to perform their duet from "Songs for the Season" of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree".


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: In early 2019, VanderWaal recorded her first soundtrack song, "Hideaway", for the animated film "Wonder Park". She made several tour stops in the southeastern US with Florence and the Machine in June 2019 and conducted her own North American tour, titled "Ur So Beautiful", in August and September 2019, with an additional performance in November. Later in the year she performed at The Trevor Project gala to prevent suicide among LGBT youth. VanderWaal released several songs in 2019 and released an EP, "Letters Vol. 1", in November 2019. "Music Week" describes it as "spiky, futuristic, diverse".


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: In 2020, VanderWaal starred in her acting debut as Susan "Stargirl" Caraway in Disney+'s "Stargirl", based on the 2000 novel of the same name. Both the film and VanderWaal's performance received positive reviews. Courtney Howard, in "Variety," commented: "She ropes us into the mystery of her character reveal with heaping amounts of magnetism and grounded authenticity. It's no surprise that the music-driven scenes really showcase her power". In 2021 and 2022, she continued to release songs.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: VanderWaal reprised the role of Stargirl in the 2022 sequel, "Hollywood Stargirl". The film was released on June 3, 2022, on Disney+. Courtney Howard wrote in "Variety" that "VanderWaal is once again a magnetic presence". She has been cast in an upcoming film, "Megalopolis", written and to be directed by Francis Ford Coppola; production is set to begin later in 2022.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: In 2016, a review of 15 of VanderWaal's song covers that she posted on her YouTube channel, praised her arrangements, vocal delivery, musical taste and "the combination of sass, attitude and confidence she brings to every cover". In another 2016 assessment, "USA Today" characterized VanderWaal's voice as "endearingly croaky". Others called it "raspy" or "timelessly soulful". Lindsay Peoples wrote for "New York Magazine": "The songs [VanderWaal] wrote and performed on "AGT" were not only catchy but emotional and unique to her own sound, a mix of raw and folk". "Billboard" magazine praised VanderWaal's vocals on her debut EP, "Perfectly Imperfect", finding them "reminiscent of a Taylor Swift-Regina Spektor hybrid". "Rolling Stone" agreed. Brianna Wiest of "Teen Vogue" wrote: "The EP takes you through Grace's range, touching on issues that are all-too-well-known for young people, as well as soul-stokingly beautiful medleys that almost anyone could relate to. ... [W]e see ... her ability to master both a softer, vowel-breaking folk tone as well as push through a serious power-ballad by the end. It's rare that you see both at once, but that's part of the magic of Grace's sound: it's at once completely new, and totally unexpected."


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: A review of VanderWaal's album "Just the Beginning" in "USA Today" stated: "VanderWaal's big-throated performance on 'A Better Life' channels Florence Welch and Miley Cyrus. There's a certain chirp in VanderWaal's voice that's reminiscent of Swift, but otherwise, her vocals align much more closely to Sia's in her full-voiced belting and nonchalant pronunciations. ... VanderWaal sounds like a 13-year-old in her songs, in the best possible way. In a voice that sounds refreshingly green, she launches herself at huge choruses with a total lack of restraint." A reviewer for "The Buffalo News" wrote that the "vast diversity in her songwriting ... makes her stand out as a truly unique and exquisite artist." Selina Fragassi of the "Chicago Sun-Times" commented that, on the album, VanderWaal's "raspy-sweet-peculiar vocals recall Elle King, Regina Spektor and Katy Perry ... [and] proves herself a modern-day Mozart". Critics writing in the "Houston Chronicle" similarly praised VanderWaal's "smart pop songs that beautifully showcase her persona and wonderfully peculiar rasp of a voice." A reviewer for the "Dallas Observer" opined that VanderWaal's lyrics tackle "complicated issues with aplomb as her raspy, warbling voice undulates around each syllable."


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: A reviewer called VanderWaal's Seattle concert in February 2018 "a well balanced set of ballads and full energy songs. ... [H]er stage and style are a boho chic age appropriate complement to her teenage themed, yet old-soul-mind works. ... Her set was full of sweet commentary and incredible vocals". Abby Jones of "Billboard" wrote that her performance of her single "Clearly" on "The Late Show" in 2018 was "moving ... stunningly bold ... mature, powerful". A reviewer for "Mass Live" said of her performance on tour in June 2018 that she "was a pleasant surprise ... holding her own in the arena rock milieu. [She] won over the crowd". Later that month, a tour reviewer noted, in "Argus Leader", "her whimsical flower crown, carefree attitude and incredible voice. ... VanderWaal captivated the audience". Another wrote in "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" that "VanderWaal is one of the youngest performers at Summerfest [2018]. She's also one of the most talented, bringing a honeyed, slightly frayed rasp to assured pop songs".


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: A reviewer in "Vanity Fair" called VanderWaal's 2019 single, "Stray", "contemplative, haunting ... ["Stray" and "Hideaway" are] mature and grounded – a progression from her previous work". A "Rolling Stone" critic found her 2019 single "Waste My Time" "a major departure for the teen. ... The more mature track is dream-pop bliss". MTV's critic called the 2019 music video for her song "I Don't Like You" "a sharp portrait [that] ... represents the chaos, confusion, and anger we often feel in relationships. ... In a style reminiscent of Sia's best videos ... with such deep-cutting lyrics ... and sharp visuals". "V" magazine called her 2022 song "Lion's Den" "relatable and poignant ... a resounding cry for her generation. ... It's a powerful, unfiltered story of someone coming into their own, told with unflinching honesty and candidness."


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: "Billboard" magazine named VanderWaal to its "21 Under 21" list of "music's hottest young stars" in four consecutive years, 2016–2019. "Variety" listed her in its "Young Hollywood Impact Report 2017". She was a finalist in the Best Female Artist category at the International Acoustic Music Awards in 2017, the youngest finalist in the awards' history. VanderWaal won the 2017 Radio Disney Music Award for Best New Artist and a 2017 Teen Choice Award. "Refinery29" included her on its 2017 list of 29 young actors, singers and activists "on the verge of superstardom." VanderWaal is credited with helping to boost the popularity of the ukulele, and in 2017, Fender named her as its youngest Signature Series artist ever and its first collaboration with a ukulele player; the instrument line was released in 2018. VanderWaal received "Billboard"s 2017 Women in Music Rising Star Award and the 2018 MTV Europe Music Award for Best Push Artist. She is the youngest person ever included in the "Forbes" 30 Under 30 music list. In 2019 the New York State Senate awarded her its Women of Distinction honor for her efforts to expand musical education in the East Ramapo Central School District.


title: Grace VanderWaal

text: By 2018, VanderWaal had accumulated eight million followers on social media. As of 2022, her Instagram account has more than five million followers, her YouTube channel has more than three million subscribers, and her Facebook page more than one million followers. "Billboard" again named her to its "21 Under 21" list in 2021.


title: H3h3Productions

text: h3h3Productions is a YouTube channel hosted by Ethan Klein and Hila Klein, an Israeli-American husband-and-wife duo. The majority of their content consists of reaction videos and sketch comedy in which they satirize internet culture. The H3 Podcast is their podcast channel that has been running since 2017.


title: H3h3Productions

text: h3h3Productions is a YouTube channel which was launched in 2011 by Ethan and Hila Klein, an American and Israeli husband and wife duo. The primary format of videos uploaded to the channel involves the Kleins providing critique and commentary in reaction videos, consisting of clips of a source video intermixed with commentary and absurd sketches, a style which has been described as a cross between the works of comedy duo Tim & Eric and the comedic series "Mystery Science Theater 3000".


title: H3h3Productions

text: The channel has gained a reputation for critiquing internet trends and a range of online personalities as well as several YouTube policies. The pair have reacted to several online controversies, many of which concern poorly received prank videos posted to the site. The Kleins have been noted for criticizing YouTube channels that entice young viewers to participate in online gambling related to the video game "", mainly by trading skins for real-world currency. The Kleins have not uploaded a video to their h3h3Productions YouTube channel since 2020 and have said on their podcasts that they are unlikely to regularly make h3h3Productions-style videos again.


title: H3h3Productions

text: The Kleins created a podcast titled "H3 Podcast" which was originally streamed on Twitch before being moved to YouTube in April 2017. Its first episode was uploaded to the "H3 Podcast" YouTube channel on April 7, 2017, featuring Justin Roiland, co-creator of Rick and Morty. The podcast began with conversational interviews with notable internet personalities such as PewDiePie, Post Malone and Jake Paul. Also in 2017 the Kleins created the channel "H3 Podcast Highlights" which posts edited sections of podcast episodes.


title: H3h3Productions

text: The channel has since launched several new podcasts called "H3 After Dark", "H3TV" and "Off The Rails", all of which currently have new episodes being uploaded on a weekly basis. Furthermore, Ethan Klein has co-hosted "Frenemies", "Families" and "Leftovers" - the first two of which have since ended. The current cast of the podcast consists of Ethan and Hila Klein and several crew members.


title: H3h3Productions

text: "Frenemies" was a podcast discussing internet drama, co-hosted by YouTube personality, Trisha Paytas, before they quit. On the set of "Frenemies", Ethan and Paytas' relationship was initially rocky, marked by several large clashes, but they began reconciling their differences in episodes with Dr. Drew. Several "Frenemies" episodes focused on sexual assault allegations surrounding David Dobrik and The Vlog Squad. Totaling 42 episodes, "Frenemies" ended in June 2021 after Paytas voiced their disagreements with Ethan and the podcast's production. While the podcast received praise for its openness regarding mental illness and was credited for helping break down the social stigma surrounding it, Paytas' comments on Judaism and the Holocaust in particular have been criticized as ignorant and offensive.


title: H3h3Productions

text: The "Families" podcast was created in response to Paytas unexpectedly quitting "Frenemies." "Families", which also discussed internet drama as well as focused on Ethan's relationship with his parents, was co-hosted by his mother, Donna Klein and featured his father, Gary Klein.


title: H3h3Productions

text: In September 2021, "Leftovers", a left-leaning political podcast co-hosted by Hasan Piker and Ethan, was launched. "Tubefilter" reported that the first episode reached 1 million views a day after being published.


title: H3h3Productions

text: The "H3 Podcast" has been one of the United States' highest ranking podcasts since late 2020. "Radio Online" noted a surge in listenership in early 2021, presumably in large part due to attention the public disputes between Ethan and Paytas garnered surrounding "Frenemies". Media Monitors ranked the podcast 12th for the second quarter of 2021. In the third quarter of 2021, the podcast was ranked 21st by audience size and 27th by reach in the United States by Edison Research.


title: H3h3Productions

text: h3h3Productions, alongside several other channels, supported YouTube personality PewDiePie amid a 2017 controversy over from January. On February 14, "The Wall Street Journal" ran a story about PewDiePie's previous references to Adolf Hitler, which brought nine other videos into the debate and elicited frequent discussions on whether media took them out of context. When YouTube subsequently released tools to allow advertisers to avoid offensive videos, Ethan claimed that the tools were overly broad and negatively affected unrelated content, including his own channel.


title: H3h3Productions

text: One of the authors of the "Wall Street Journal" piece, Jack Nicas, wrote another article on March 24 claiming YouTube did not go far enough to prevent advertising from displaying on videos that might contain racist content. Ethan accused the report of being written selectively to maximize outrage. The article showed a Coca-Cola advert playing on a video of the white supremacist country song "Alabama Nigger" by American singer Johnny Rebel. Upon seeing that the video was not contributing to the uploader's income, Ethan alleged that Nicas had used an altered screenshot. Hours later, he was informed that the video was indeed monetized, but on behalf of a copyright claim rather than at the choice or to the benefit of the uploader. He withdrew his accusation in response, and "The Wall Street Journal" released a statement that it stood by the authenticity of the screenshots.


title: H3h3Productions

text: In April 2016, Matt Hosseinzadeh, an American YouTube personality who goes by "MattHossZone" and "Bold Guy", filed a civil action against the Kleins for copyright infringement in a video on the h3h3Productions channel. Hosseinzadeh claims that he initially contacted the Kleins "to politely ask them to remove [his] content from their video" but that they refused. His lawyer claimed that the video used more than 70% of his work "while contributing nothing substantive to it".


title: H3h3Productions

text: After a video on this was released by h3h3Productions the following month, fellow YouTuber Philip DeFranco started a fundraiser on GoFundMe to help raise money for the Kleins' legal fees, citing the need to protect fair use on YouTube. On May 26, 2016, the Kleins announced that the $130,000 raised will go into an escrow account called the "Fair Use Protection Account" (FUPA), overseen by law firm Morrison & Lee LLP and to be used to help people defend fair use.


title: H3h3Productions

text: The Kleins won the lawsuit, with U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest ruling that their commentary video constituted "fair use as a matter of law" and describing it as "quintessential comment and criticism". The case is the first of its kind to receive a judgment; while not legally binding across the United States, it provided a significant and persuasive argument to be cited in future cases relating to fair use on YouTube.


title: H3h3Productions

text: In May 2021, Triller's event company filed an updated lawsuit to the US District Court for the Central District of California against the "H3 Podcast" and the Kleins, seeking $50 million in damages. The lawsuit alleged copyright infringement in the podcast episode titled "Jake Paul Fight Was a Disaster", which aired five days after the Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren fight and featured knockout footage along with Ethan's commentary on the event.


title: H3h3Productions

text: In May 2022, the H3 podcast channel was suspended when Ethan said "someone should bomb" an NRA convention. In October 2022, the same channel received a strike and one week suspension following comments directed at Jewish conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro, in which Ethan stated he hoped Shapiro would be the first to be "gassed" in the event of a second Holocaust. In his podcast Ethan said, “If there’s another Holocaust and people start rounding up the Jews again I hope Ben gets gassed first. Or last”. In a statement, a YouTube spokesperson said that the channel was given a strike for "violating the platform’s harassment policy". Ethan responded later that "[a] few white supremacists successfully lobbied YouTube to suspend me, a Jewish dual citizen of Israel & USA, for anti-semitism."


title: H3h3Productions

text: In November 2022, Ethan Klein's Twitter account received a permanent suspension for violating Twitter Terms of Service after impersonating Elon Musk. Klein changed his username to "Elon Musk" and his profile picture to a depiction of him, although noted on his title and header it was a parody account. Twitter's policy on parody, commentary, and fan accounts at the time stated that such accounts are required to clearly distinguish themselves both in the account name and the bio, and that the "account name should clearly indicate that the account is not affiliated with the subject portrayed in the profile." Ethan's was one of several accounts impersonating Musk that received Twitter suspension at the time.


title: H3h3Productions

text: Ethan, an American, and Hila, an Israeli, first met at the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Israel in 2007; Ethan was on his Birthright Israel trip, while Hila was serving in the Israel Defense Forces. They married in 2012. During the early years of their YouTube career, they lived together in Israel. They have two sons, Theodore, who was born in June 2019, and Bruce, who was born in February 2022.


title: H3h3Productions

text: In April 2020, the Kleins hosted a 100-day, $100,000 monetary giveaway, to help out during the pandemic.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: Gran Turismo 7 is a racing simulation video game developed by Polyphony Digital and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game is the eighth mainline installment in the "Gran Turismo" series. The game was announced on June 11, 2020 at the PlayStation 5 reveal event and was released on March 4, 2022 for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, making it the first multi-console installment in the series.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: "Gran Turismo 7" received generally favorable reviews from critics, with praise for its graphics and gameplay. Player reception was negative due to its use of microtransactions and excessive grinding.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: "Gran Turismo 7" features the return of the single player campaign, GT Simulation Mode. Other returning features is the return of traditional racing tracks and vehicles, Special Events, Championships, Driving School, Tuning Parts Shop, Used Cars dealership, and GT Auto while still retaining the new GT Sport Mode, Brand Central, and Discover that were introduced in "Gran Turismo Sport". The player needs to progress through tasks ("Menu Books") from the GT Cafe to unlock features like multiplayer, and all tracks and cars.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: The game also features the return of dynamic time and weather effects, which previously appeared in "Gran Turismo 5" and "Gran Turismo 6". Despite the game including a single player campaign, like with "Gran Turismo Sport", the game requires a constant internet connection in order for players to be able to save their progress. The series creator Kazunori Yamauchi explains that this decision was made to prevent hacking and cheating. Arcade mode, however, is fully playable offline.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: For the PlayStation 5 version, the game takes advantage of the console's increased processing power, dedicated ray-tracing hardware, custom solid-state drive storage, Tempest Engine, and DualSense controller to support features such as advanced haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, real-time ray tracing effects, 3D spatial audio, and reduced loading times. The PlayStation 5 version of "Gran Turismo 7" also runs at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second with support for high dynamic range.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: In addition, drivers from "Gran Turismo"s eSports competition, the Gran Turismo World Series (previously the FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships utilizing "Gran Turismo Sport"), appear as AI opponents and License Test coaches.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: In a July 2019 interview with GTPlanet, a fan website dedicated to the "Gran Turismo" series, Yamauchi stated that the next "Gran Turismo" title is in active development. Yamauchi confirmed that there will be a focus on fine tuning the classic GT experience, adding: "I think the next title that we’re going to create will be a combination of the past, present and future – a complete form of "Gran Turismo"."


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: "Gran Turismo 7" was revealed at Sony's PlayStation 5 reveal stream on June 11, 2020. The game is being developed by Polyphony Digital and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5. tri-Crescendo contributed to development by assisting with background models. The game was initially scheduled for a release in 2021. It was later delayed to 2022 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the video game industry affecting game development. The game was released for PS4 and PS5 consoles on March 4, 2022. Seven time F1 world driver's champion, Lewis Hamilton, reprises his role as the "maestro" of the series from "Gran Turismo Sport".


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: On the day of the game's release, "Gran Turismo 7" was removed from sale in Russia, although Sony had not made a formal decision at the time. On March 9, four days after its release, PlayStation announced that it would halt sales of its games, including "Gran Turismo 7", in Russia in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: On March 7, Columbia Records and Sony Interactive Entertainment released a soundtrack album titled "Find Your Line (Official Music from Gran Turismo 7)". The album features songs inspired by the game recorded by a lineup of artists, including GoldLink, Bring Me the Horizon, Nothing but Thieves, Idris Elba, Major Lazer, Rosalía, Lil Tjay, and Jawsh 685.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: In June, the FIA announced it had chosen Assetto Corsa Competizione as its platform for the 2022 Motorsport Games, scheduled for October. Previously, FIA had an exclusive relationship with Polyphony since Gran Turismo Sport released in 2017. Speaking to Motorsport.com, Frederic Bertrand, the FIA’s director of Formula E and Innovative Sport Activities Department, said that FIA and Polyphony have mutually agreed to temporarily suspend their partnership until the game become more stable. Both sides are hoping to continue their partnership in the future.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: While disliking the monetization, "Ars Technica" praised the implementation of license tests, "Polyphony has struck a good balance here. The threshold for achieving a bronze finish in each test is relatively easy to reach, but getting all golds might be a time-consuming and frustrating experience, depending on your skill".


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: "The Verge" liked the title's DualSense features, writing "it's the best showcase for the DualSense I’ve yet to see. The vibrations in the controller do a convincing job of simulating various surfaces, conditions, and degrees of traction... You can even feel the pressure release in anti-lock brake systems". "Eurogamer" enjoyed the GT Cafe, singling out the characters as a memorable part of it, "Of all the many twists and turns... the visual novel might well be the most surprising yet. What's perhaps more surprising is "Gran Turismo 7" lands it remarkably well, giving its campaign an oddball character all of its own".


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: "Polygon" felt the visuals were "cutting edge", but criticized how long it took to unlock cars, "The rate at which you earn credits feels slow, with many desirable cars remaining out of reach long into the game... Just keeping up with the entry requirements of events can necessitate going off-piste to grind for credits". "Destructoid" liked the amount of ways that were available to tackle courses, feeling it added more variety to the game, "You can do a classic reverse racing situation, as well as dabble in parts of the track... take on time trials, free play lobbies (where you can just drive around and chill), arcade mode, and events".


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: "Game Informer" praised the feel of driving, especially the handling of terrain, "elevation changes, weather, driving surface, road bank, vehicle downforce, and countless other factors seamlessly contribute to whether you successfully carry your momentum into a turn or spin out into the grass". "GamesRadar+" enjoyed the amount of content available, calling it "an absolutely gargantuan game", but criticized the performance, noting hitches and occasional crashes. "IGN" felt "Gran Turismo 7" recreated the spirit of prior entries, but felt the car selection was comparatively limited compared to competitors like "Forza": "With a few exceptions, most manufacturers’ ranges tend to top out at around 2017. If you're expecting to see quite a few high-profile cars from the last two or three years here, like the latest McLarens or any Tesla built since 2012, you may be disappointed".


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: "Gran Turismo 7" was the subject of review bombing on Metacritic two weeks after release, following changes made to the game through updates. It received the lowest Metacritic user rating for a game published by Sony. Criticism focused on its "aggressive" use of microtransactions and the focus on grinding to unlock in-game currency and content. Players noted that updates to the game increased the time needed to grind, as well as reducing the amount of rewards gained, feeling it encouraged spending real-world money on microtransactions. The pricing of items were labelled by some as being too expensive, noting certain cars could cost as much as US$200. The game's 1.07 version update led to an outage that lasted 30 hours as a result of server maintenance; the always-online requirement meant players were limited to the game's offline modes.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: During the first month of release, Polyphony president Kazunori Yamauchi wrote that while he wished for players to enjoy content without microtransactions, he felt it important that cars reflected the prices of their real-world counterparts to "convey their value and rarity." His statement drew some criticism. Several days later, Yamauchi apologized for the outage and the changes made to the in-game economy, and announced Polyphony would implement a series of updates from April 2022 to make progression fairer. As compensation, all players who had bought the game before March 25 would receive one million credits—the equivalent of US$10—of in-game currency, available until the following month.


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: In Japan, it launched with 139,964 physical units sold in its first week, making it the best-selling game of the week. It sold over 190,000 physical units in Japan during its launch month, making it the second best-selling game of the month in the country (below "Kirby and the Forgotten Land").


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: In the United States, it set a franchise record with the highest-grossing launch month sales for a "Gran Turismo" title, despite ranking number two in its debut month (second only to "Elden Ring").


title: Gran Turismo 7

text: In the United Kingdom, "Gran Turismo 7" was the best-selling game in its first week of release, and remained number one the following week. In Germany, more than 200,000 copies of the game had been sold by the end of March 2022.


title: Ascension Island

text: Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the Equator in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is about from the coast of Africa and from the coast of South America. It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, of which the main island, Saint Helena, is around to the southeast. The territory also includes the sparsely populated Tristan da Cunha archipelago, to the south, about halfway to the Antarctic Circle.


title: Ascension Island

text: Named after the day of its recorded discovery, Ascension of Jesus, Ascension Island was an important safe haven as a coaling station to mariners and a refueling stop for commercial airliners back in the days of international air travel by flying boats. Ascension Island was garrisoned by the British Admiralty from 22 October 1815 to 1922. During World War II, it was an important naval and air station, especially providing antisubmarine warfare bases in the Battle of the Atlantic.


title: Ascension Island

text: The island is the location of RAF Ascension Island, which is a Royal Air Force station, a European Space Agency rocket tracking station, a British-American signals intelligence facility and the BBC World Service Atlantic Relay Station. The island was used extensively as a staging point by the British military during the Falklands War. Ascension Island hosts one of four ground antennas that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system (the others are on Kwajalein Island, Diego Garcia, and Cape Canaveral). NASA operates a Meter Class Autonomous Telescope (MCAT) on Ascension Island for tracking orbital debris, which is potentially hazardous to operating spacecraft and astronauts, at a facility called the John Africano NASA/AFRL Orbital Debris Observatory.


title: Ascension Island

text: On March 25, 1501, the Portuguese navigator João da Nova sighted the island on Ascension Day (which fell on 21 May that year) and named it "Ilha da Ascensão" after this feast day. Dry and barren, the island had little appeal for passing ships except for collecting fresh meat, and was not claimed for the Portuguese Crown. Mariners could hunt for the numerous seabirds and the enormous female green turtles that laid their eggs on the sandy beaches. The Portuguese also introduced goats as a potential source of meat for future mariners.


title: Ascension Island

text: In February 1701, HMS "Roebuck", commanded by William Dampier, sank in the common anchoring spot in Clarence Bay to the northwest of the island. Sixty men survived for two months until they were rescued. Almost certainly, after a few days they found the strong water spring in the high interior of the island, in what is now called Breakneck Valley (there is a much smaller water source, lower on the mountain, which was named Dampier's Drip by people who probably misinterpreted Dampier's story).


title: Ascension Island

text: It is possible, but disputed, that the island was sometimes used as an open prison for criminal mariners, although there is only one documented case of such an exile, a Dutch ship's officer, Leendert Hasenbosch, set ashore at Clarence Bay as a punishment for sodomy in May 1725. British mariners found the Dutchman's tent, belongings and diary in January 1726; the man's remains were not found. His diary was published in translation in London later that same year, under the title "Sodomy Punish'd".


title: Ascension Island

text: Organised settlement of Ascension Island began in 1815, when the British garrisoned it as a precaution after imprisoning Napoleon on Saint Helena to the southeast. On 22 October the s and claimed the island for King George III. The Royal Navy designated the island as a stone frigate, HMS "Ascension", with the classification of "Sloop of War of the smaller class".


title: Ascension Island

text: The location of the island made it a useful stopping-point for ships and communications. The Royal Navy used the island as a victualling station for ships, particularly those of the West Africa Squadron working against the slave trade. A garrison of Royal Marines was based at Ascension from 1823 and Colonel Edward Nicolls became the first commandant.


title: Ascension Island

text: In 1836 the second "Beagle" voyage visited Ascension. Charles Darwin described it as an arid treeless island, with nothing growing near the coast. Sparse vegetation inland supported "about six hundred sheep, many goats, a few cows & horses," large numbers of guineafowl imported from the Cape Verde islands, rats, mice, and land crabs; he agreed with the saying attributed to the people of St Helena that "We know we live on a rock, but the poor people at Ascension live on a cinder." He noted the care taken to sustain "houses, gardens & fields placed near the summit of the central mountain," and cisterns at roadsides to provide drinking water. The springs were carefully managed, "so that a single drop of water may not be lost: indeed the whole island may be compared to a huge ship kept in first-rate order." In commenting on this, he noted René Primevère Lesson's remark "that the English nation alone would have thought of making the island of Ascension a productive spot; any other people would have held it as a mere fortress in the ocean."


title: Ascension Island

text: In 1843, botanist and explorer Joseph Hooker visited the island. Four years later, Hooker, with much encouragement from Darwin, advised the Royal Navy that with the help of Kew Gardens, they should institute a long-term plan of shipping trees to Ascension. The planted trees would capture more rain and improve the soil, allowing the barren island to become a garden. So, from 1850 and continuing year on year, ships came with an assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Argentina, Europe and South Africa. By the late 1870s Norfolk pines, eucalyptus, bamboo, and banana trees grew in profusion at the highest point of the island, Green Mountain, creating a tropical cloud forest.


title: Ascension Island

text: Beginning in July 1877, the astronomer Sir David Gill and his wife Isobel spent six months on Ascension Island. This was to take advantage of the near approach of Mars occurring that year. Based on Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion, Gill conceived that in pioneering the use of a heliometer he would be able to accurately measure the position of Mars while in opposition on his own, rather than in combination with many observers simultaneously recording the position of the planet as had been the technique during the time. This is because a heliometer is a telescope that uses a split image to measure the angular separation of celestial bodies. In observing this from near the equator a greater observable distance would be visible, hence a temporary observatory being decided upon for Ascension.


title: Ascension Island

text: Although originally based in Georgetown, the pair found the evenings to be too cloudy to make observations of the night sky due to Georgetown being located downwind of orographic cloud emanating from Green Mountain. Isobel quickly endeavoured to find an area less affected by the evening cloud and trekked several miles over lava fields to find a new location. Having found an area on the south west of the island seemingly less affected, they then had to determine how to move 20 tons of delicate observational equipment to the new location. Fortunately a small clear beach was located nearby which was used for landing the equipment by sea. This was later named Mars Bay, a name which it carries to this day and which has since been designated a Nature Reserve. The couple then spent several months camped out at the bay making their observations, assisted by a krooman and a marine.


title: Ascension Island

text: All of the effort was ultimately a success producing a solar distance of 93.08 ± 0.16 million miles, not far off the modern day measurement of 92.9558. As a result of his work on the solar parallax David Gill went on to be appointed Royal Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope.


title: Ascension Island

text: Between 1872 and 1889, the population of the island was listed as HMS "Flora" (Tender), under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, Cape of Good Hope, estimated to number just 150 in 1888. "HMS Flora (1844)" had been the guardship at Ascension from 1865 to 1872 before being ordered south to become the Simonstown depot ship. Five ratings died while on a recreational boat trip in 1879.


title: Ascension Island

text: In 1899, as part of the British effort in the Second Boer War, the Eastern Telegraph Company (later Cable & Wireless plc) installed the first submarine communications cable from the island, connecting the UK with its colonies in South Africa. In 1922, letters patent made Ascension a dependency of Saint Helena, with control being officially handed over to the Eastern Telegraph Company from the Admiralty on 20 October 1922. The island was managed by the head of the Eastern Telegraph Company on the island until 1964 when the British Government appointed an Administrator to represent the Governor of Saint Helena in Ascension.


title: Ascension Island

text: During World War II, to supply and augment extensive amphibious aircraft antisubmarine patrol operations ongoing from the early days of the war, the United States built an airbase on Ascension Island, known as "Wideawake", after a nearby colony of sooty terns (locally called 'wideawake' birds because of their loud, distinctive constant (day-and-night) cawing chatter). The airbase, which was under construction by the 38th Combat Engineer Battalion of the Army Corps of Engineers, was unexpectedly visited by two British Fairey Swordfish torpedo planes on 15 June 1942. According to one of the pilots, Peter Jinks, the planes were fired upon before being recognised as allies. The Swordfish had to land on the unfinished airstrip, thus becoming the first aircraft to land on Ascension Island proper, which had long served as an anti-submarine warfare base for Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats. The event was commemorated with a postage stamp 15 June 1982.


title: Ascension Island

text: The airfield was used by the US military as a stopping point for American aircraft crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the way to theatres of operation in Europe and Africa. American bombers based at Wideawake were engaged in the "Laconia" incident.


title: Ascension Island

text: The only local military action during World War II occurred on 9 December 1941. At around mid-day, the approached Georgetown on the surface with the intention of sinking any ships at anchor or shelling the cable station. Fort Bedford, a two-gun shore battery at Cross Hill, above Georgetown, fired on the submarine. The guns scored no hits but the U-boat submerged and retreated. The battery remains largely intact, together with its guns, BL 5.5 inch Mark I naval guns removed from during a refit in Malta in 1938.


title: Ascension Island

text: With the Space Race and the Cold War, the Americans returned in 1956. Wideawake Airfield expanded in the mid-1960s. The runway, with its strange hump, was extended, widened, and improved to allow its use by large aircraft, and later to act as an emergency runway for the Space Shuttle, although the Shuttle never had to use it. At the time, it was the world's longest airport runway. The United States Space Force uses the island as part of its Eastern Range. NASA established a tracking station on the island in 1967, which it operated for more than 20 years before closing it down in 1990.


title: Ascension Island

text: Ascension was the shore terminal for the furthest down range installation of the Atlantic Missile Impact Location System (MILS), an acoustic system for locating splashdown of test nose cones. The MILS hydrophones that were located in the SOFAR channel for broad area coverage have played a significant role in long range acoustic transmission studies and incidents. The island's location makes it a first point of Atlantic reception for acoustics from the other oceans. As an example the Ascension hydrophones received and the site processed signals generated near Heard Island in the Indian Ocean some from the Ascension arrays and passing around Africa. The Ascension array was one of those involved in the Vela incident acoustic signal in which there were correlated acoustic arrivals with the time and estimated location of the double flash detected by the Vela satellite.


title: Ascension Island

text: A joint Government Communications Headquarters and National Security Agency signals intercept station was also established on Ascension during the Cold War. The island retains a role in space exploration: the European Space Agency now operates an Ariane monitoring facility there. The BBC Atlantic Relay Station was installed in 1966 for short-wave broadcasts to Africa and South America and because of the BBC's considerable resources, eventually BBC External Services began sourcing requirements generally for the Island through BBC Engineering Purchasing Department based in 4 Cavendish Square, London; items were requisitioned and ordered from suppliers, delivered to export packers, Evan Cook and shipped to Ascension on RMS St. Helena.


title: Ascension Island

text: In 1982 the British task force used Ascension Island as a staging post during the Falklands War. After strengthening and improving the structure, the Royal Air Force deployed a fleet of Avro Vulcan bombers and Handley Page Victor tankers at the airfield. Vulcans launched the opening shots of the British offensive from Ascension in Operation Black Buck. The RAF also used the base to supply the task force. Because of the increase in air traffic during the war, Wideawake, with up to 400 movements of all types each day, was one of the busiest airfields in the world for a short period. The Royal Navy's fleet stopped at Ascension for refuelling on the way. Following the war, the British retained an increased presence on the island, establishing RAF Ascension Island, and providing a refuelling stop for the regular airlink between RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, and RAF Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands.


title: Ascension Island

text: , it was reported that the Composite Signals Organisation, an arm of GCHQ, continued to operate a signals interception facility at Cat Hill on Ascension. NASA continued to list Ascension Island as a "downrange site" used for range safety instrumentation. In particular, the Post-Detect Telemetry System used to acquire launch vehicle telemetry includes a station on Ascension.


title: Ascension Island

text: In 2008 British diplomats at the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UN CLCS), requested sovereignty over of submarine territory around the island. This would enable exploration into new reserves of oil, gas and minerals, though none are thought to exist.


title: Ascension Island

text: The 2009 Constitution order ended Ascension's status as a dependency of St Helena and provided for one Governor of the combined Overseas Territory of St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.


title: Ascension Island

text: In 2016, the United States Department of Energy started operating a mobile climate research facility on the island. It is operated by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility (ARM) near the South East Crater, south of the Green Mountain summit. The field campaign requires the mobile facility to be operational for about 17 months until October 2017.


title: Ascension Island

text: The island hosts one of four dedicated ground antennas that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation system (the others are on Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territory), Kwajalein (Marshall Islands), and at Cape Canaveral, Florida (US)). NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory operate a Meter-Class Autonomous Telescope (MCAT) on Ascension as part of the deep space surveillance system for tracking orbital debris, which can be a hazard to spacecraft and astronauts.


title: Ascension Island

text: The main island has an area of approximately . A volcanic peak rising from west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, much of the island is a wasteland of lava flows and cinder cones; forty-four distinct dormant craters have been identified.


title: Ascension Island

text: Ascension is a geologically young formation, the tip of an undersea volcano which rose above the waves only a million years ago. Although volcanic activity is mainly associated with the Mid-Atlantic Ridge plate boundary 80 km to the west, Ascension also displays some features which are commonly attributed to "hotspot" volcanism. Such volcanism is typically assumed to arise from a deep mantle thermal plume from the core-mantle boundary. Alternatively it may result from minor deformations of the oceanic crust that cause extension and permit magma to rise passively up from the asthenosphere. Ascension last erupted about 500 years ago. Due to the low rainfall and geologically recent eruptions, its soil consists mostly of clinker.


title: Ascension Island

text: The island consists of a wide range of alkaline rocks atypical for oceanic islands, ranging from basalt through trachyandesite and trachyte to rhyolite.


title: Ascension Island

text: Ascension has a hot desert climate ("BWh", according to the Köppen climate classification). The temperatures at the coast average from , and about 5 to 6 °C (9 to 11 °F) cooler at the highest point. Rain showers may occur at any time during the year, but tend to be heavier between June and September. Although the island is in the tropical zone, average annual rainfall is very low. The cause of this might be the relatively low temperature of the ocean water, as the Benguela Current and South Equatorial Current flow northward west of Africa. These currents bring cooling effects around the eastern South Atlantic Ocean. Tropical cyclones also occur only rarely in the South Atlantic Ocean which might be caused by the same phenomenon, and by strong vertical wind shear.


title: Ascension Island

text: The endemic flora includes plants like "Pteris adscensionis", "Asplenium ascensionis", "Euphorbia origanoides" as well as the extinct species "Oldenlandia adscensionis", "Sporobolus durus" and "Dryopteris ascensionis". "Anogramma ascensionis" (Ascension Island parsley fern) was thought to have become extinct due to habitat loss, until four plants were found on the island in 2010. Over 60 specimens were then successfully cultivated. Portuguese explorers released goats in the 1500s which ate many species to extinction. The later introduction of rabbits, sheep, rats and donkeys, and over 200 imported species further marginalised the original flora.


title: Ascension Island

text: By 1843 the island was barren with few plants. However, due to the introduction of species by the British, Ascension Island's Green Mountain is now one of the few large-scale planned forests, and is gradually growing with each year. Its highest point is at . Non-indigenous plants teem there, and the crown of Green Mountain is a lush halo of bamboo. Flanking one side is a large stand of tall Norfolk pine, trees planted by British mariners, which were to have been used as replacement masts for sailing ships. In June 2005 the first National Park on Ascension Island, the Green Mountain National Park, was opened.


title: Ascension Island

text: "Prosopis juliflora", a type of mesquite known as Mexican thorn, was introduced by BBC engineers to bind the dry top soil when they arrived in 1966 to construct a shortwave relay station. It has thrived on the barren lava of the island – an estimated 38,000 bushes existed by 2016. Its spread has been destructive to other species, and current encroachment on the edges of beaches threatens those that use this space, such as the green turtle. Its hardy taproots can extend to deep. Local authorities are considering means of controlling or eradicating it.


title: Ascension Island

text: A variety of mammals have been introduced: donkeys, sheep, cats and rats among others. Reptiles consist of two species of lizards. Endemic insect species include the minute, wingless Psocopteran "Troglotroctes ashmoleorum", that has been found in caves and between lava blocks. In summer, flies are known to be a problem. The largest native land animal is the land crab "Johngarthia lagostoma" (formerly "Gecarcinus lagostoma"). Offshore, there is a variety of open-ocean fish, including sharks, wahoo, tuna, bonito, barracuda, marlin, blackfish and sailfish. The protected green turtle is perhaps the most notable of the endemic fauna, coming ashore to lay their eggs on the beaches from November to May. Turtles were regularly harvested until 1930, when the practice was banned. By 1970 the turtle population had begun to rebound. From the 1970s, when records began, to 2014, green turtle nesting increased by 500%, resulting in some 24,000 nests being laid on the island's main beaches each year.


title: Ascension Island

text: On land are found such non-native birds such as canaries, francolins, mynas, sparrows, and waxbills. Sooty terns or "wideawake birds" nest in great seashore lava "fairs". Other seabirds include some types of boobies, petrels, and tropicbirds (named "boatswain", pronounced "BO-sun birds", by the inhabitants of the island), white tern, brown noddy, black noddy and Ascension frigatebird. The Ascension crake became extinct around the beginning of the nineteenth century.


title: Ascension Island

text: Off the east coast of Ascension is the islet of Boatswain Bird Island. It is a haven for sea birds providing refuge from the rats, cats and people that came to Ascension Island from Europe and Africa. Following a successful campaign headed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the main island was in 2006 declared free of feral cats, and sea birds are now once again nesting on Ascension Island.


title: Ascension Island

text: After cats were introduced to Ascension Island in 1815, large seabird breeding colonies were quickly wiped out everywhere except in small cat-inaccessible areas, such as on the offshore Boatswain Bird Island. Following a two-year campaign, feral cats were eradicated by 2004 and seabirds began to recolonise the main island.


title: Ascension Island

text: Ascension Island, including fourteen inshore stacks and marine habitat extending out for from the coastline, has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International as a breeding site for seabirds. Birds for which the IBA is significant include red-billed tropicbirds, Ascension frigatebirds (an endemic breeder), sooty terns and black noddies. The island was formerly home to the endemic Ascension crake, but the species has been extinct since the early nineteenth century.


title: Ascension Island

text: In January 2016 the UK Government announced that an area around Ascension Island was to become a huge marine reserve, to protect its varied and unique ecosystem, including some of the largest marlin in the world, large populations of green turtle, and the island's own species of frigate bird.


title: Ascension Island

text: On 22 August 2019 the Ascension Island Government announced the designation of 100% of Ascension's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as a Marine Protected Area (MPA). The EEZ covers an area of over , making it one of the largest in the world. Within the MPA it is proposed that commercial fishing and mineral extraction will be prohibited. Legislation is now being brought forward and development of a management plan is underway. These will be put into place subject to confirmation that the ongoing costs of management, monitoring and enforcement have been provided by the UK government.


title: Ascension Island

text: Ascension had formed part of a British overseas territory together with Saint Helena and Tristan da Cunha. and was governed by St Helena, until it achieved its own Constitution.


title: Ascension Island

text: Executive authority is vested in King Charles III, who is represented by the Governor of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. The Governor resides in Jamestown, Saint Helena, and an Administrator is appointed to represent the Governor on Ascension Island.


title: Ascension Island

text: As a result of changes in the constitutional arrangements for Ascension Island, a unicameral Legislative Council with advisory powers was introduced in 2002. The first Island Council of seven members was elected, and took office on 1 November 2002. This council was dissolved by order of the Governor of Saint Helena on 24 October 2005, and a new election was held on 16 November 2005. 697 electors chose among ten candidates contesting the seven seats.


title: Ascension Island

text: Six of the seven members resigned in January 2007 in the belief that they were "assisting to legitimise a democracy that doesn't really exist on Ascension Island". A memorandum sent by a group of Ascension Island residents suggests that the handling of economic development, taxation and representation led to the dispute and that all six councillors resigned (five of them at once). The memorandum states, "The elected Council has been used to legitimise an illegitimate system that has never been a true democracy and, it seems, was never intended to be." The counter-argument was that, as the island has no indigenous population whatsoever, it is in an unusual political position. Consequently, a general election was called, but by the close of nominations, there were only two candidates. The election was abandoned, and the governor suspended the Island Council for 12 months. It was stated that an election would take place in April 2008 but following consultations this was extended to October. Eventually, candidates were elected to form a new Island Council, which was sworn in on 27 October 2008.


title: Ascension Island

text: On 26 September 2019 a general election of the Island Council was held. This followed the dissolution of the previous Council on 1 September 2019, in accordance with the Island Government (Ascension) Ordinance 2008. Seven candidates ran for five available Councillor positions, with electors being permitted to cast up to five votes each. Of 518 registered electors 150 electors cast 498 votes. The five successful Councillors were sworn in on 26 September 2019.