title: L7 (band)

text: L7 were formed by Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner in 1985. Both artists were active in the Art punk community of Echo Park and had met in 1984 through mutual contacts at the cultural hub of the "LA Weekly". Of their meeting and on hearing Gardner play a tape of her songs in progress, Sparks described it as "one of the happiest days of my life" with a clear synchronicity in the music they were each interested in creating. At the time, Gardner was also active as a poet. A year prior, Gardner had performed backing vocals on the college radio hit "Slip It In" by Black Flag. Gardner and Sparks began performing regularly in Los Angeles at punk and metal venues along with a revolving list of supporting musicians in the early years.


title: L7 (band)

text: The punk rock duo brought Jennifer Finch on board as bass guitarist and Roy Koutsky on drums. Finch, with the strongest Californian roots of the four, connected the band with an even wider network, including Brett Gurewitz of Epitaph Records where the band recorded their first demo. Their eponymous debut album, described as "intense, energetic" and "fast straightforward punk music" was released by Epitaph Records in 1987. L7 reported challenges in the early years with finding a suitable, stable drummer. Shortly after the release of "L7", Koutsky quit the band and was replaced by Anne Anderson. Subsequently, Anderson left at the end of the touring cycle for the "L7" record, and Demetra "Dee" Plakas was recruited by the band in late 1989 which completed the band's first stabilized lineup as an all-female band.


title: L7 (band)

text: The band released (“Shove”/“Packin’ a Rod”) in 1989 as the Sub Pop Single of the Month. L7 reportedly spent a short time in Seattle in the early 1990s. L7's next album, "Smell the Magic", was released in 1990 on Sub Pop and earned a four star review by "Rolling Stone" who stated "With Donita Sparks' and Suzi Gardner's twin lockstep guitars racing down the highway to hell, "Smell the Magic" was one of Sub Pop's finest hours." L7 traveled to England and opened for Nirvana on several dates in 1990.


title: L7 (band)

text: In August 1991, L7 performed at the International Pop Underground Convention (IPU) held in Olympia, Washington. The IPU was organized around a fiercely independent DIY ethic, with L7 the only band with major label representation, having recently signed with Slash Records (a subsidiary of London Records).


title: L7 (band)

text: In 1991, the band formed Rock for Choice, a pro-choice women's rights group and concert series that raised funds to cover legal expenses due to the prolonged Anti-abortion violence and women's clinic bombings of the 1980s and 1990s. The concept for Rock for Choice, generated by L7 and Sue Cummings, senior editor at the "LA Weekly", was loosely modeled on Bob Geldof's Live Aid. L7 performed along with Nirvana, Sister Double Happiness, and Hole at the inaugural event held at the Hollywood Palace on October 25, 1991. Thanks to a conversation between members of L7 and Dave Grohl at an afterparty following the first show, subsequent Rock for Choice posters were designed in a distinctive underground comix style by SoCal artist Jim Evans/TAZ collective.


title: L7 (band)

text: Rock for Choice founders L7 and Cummings, along with punk rock promoter and Cochella co-founder Rick Van Santen of Goldenvoice, laid the framework for the inaugural concert. The group created kits with information to empower activists to stage a Rock for Choice benefit in their own towns. The "New York Times" reported that within two years of launching Rock for Choice, there had already been 37 such concerts nationwide.


title: L7 (band)

text: L7 performed at the September 27, 1992 Rock for Choice benefit concert at the Hollywood Palladium along with Exene Cervenka, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Mudhoney. In October 1993, seven bands played a sold out Rock for Choice benefit including the beloved Los Angeles bands X and Firehose, and featuring the headliner Rage Against the Machine. L7 band members took to the stage, each in a guise of a beauty contestant wearing a sash listing a city where anti-abortion violence had erupted: Sparks as "Ms Bakersfield, CA," Plakas as "Ms. Lancaster, PA," Finch as "Ms. Peoria, IL," and Gardner as “Ms. Newport Beach, CA."


title: L7 (band)

text: Later Rock for Choice concerts included the Foo Fighters, Ween, Pearl Jam, and other prominent bands of the era. L7 returned their focus to their music, reducing their involvement with Rock for Choice, which continued on independently through 2001.


title: L7 (band)

text: Their 1992 third album "Bricks Are Heavy", produced by Butch Vig, was featured in "Rolling Stone" May 1999 list of 'Essential recordings of the 1990s', and was their most critically and commercially successful release. When Sparks reached out to Yoko Ono to request permission to sample her scream in the opening track "Wargasm," Ono reportedly replied that she had her fingers crossed for the group as it was time for their music to get popular. Their 1992 single "Pretend We're Dead" spent 13 weeks on the US Alternative Songs chart while peaking at the No. 8 position, and it had also peaked at No. 21 on the UK Singles Chart. The singles "Everglade" and "Monster" also made appearances on the UK Singles chart. In their listing of the top 50 grunge songs, "Paste" magazine included "Pretend We're Dead" as number 21. L7 went on a year long tour to promote "Bricks Are Heavy." "Variety" reported in 1992 that L7 had built a huge underground following all over the world due to repeatedly touring. The popularity of "Bricks Are Heavy" was also boosted by frequent video play on MTV. By June 2000, "Bricks Are Heavy" had sold 327,000 copies in the US.


title: L7 (band)

text: In a July 1993 article for "Spin" which featured L7 on the magazine's cover, Renée Crist described L7 as "four of the funniest, meanest, strongest, coolest, most pissed-off women I know" and as "wild, rambunctious, spontaneous" with a stage show that "is a wash of buddy love, crowd working, and acrobatics".


title: L7 (band)

text: L7's fourth album, "Hungry for Stink", was released in July 1994. The album peaked at No. 117 on the Billboard 200 chart, their highest position to date. "Andres" was the lead single off the album, which peaked at No. 20 on the US Alternative Songs and No. 34 on the UK Singles charts. The band continued to be regarded as a strong live act and performed on the main stage of the Lollapalooza tour in 1994, which also included The Smashing Pumpkins, the Beastie Boys, George Clinton, Nick Cave, A Tribe Called Quest, and The Breeders. In January 1995, L7 played a set of benefit concerts for Voters for Choice at Constitution Hall along with Neil Young, Lisa Germano, and Pearl Jam. Finch created a "slight fuss" after reportedly playing the final song of one show after removing her shirt.


title: L7 (band)

text: In 1995, L7 was one of four bands featured in the documentary film "Not Bad For a Girl". The film, which focused on several all female bands, was awarded Best Documentary at the New York Underground Film Festival in 1996.


title: L7 (band)

text: Finch left the band in 1996, during the recording of their fifth album,"". Sparks and Greta Brinkman played bass on the album, after which Gail Greenwood – formerly of the band Belly – became the band's full-time bassist. L7 performed at the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle, Washington in 1997.


title: L7 (band)

text: In 1998, the pseudo-documentary film "L7: The Beauty Process" was released, directed by Krist Novoselic. The film contains actual concert footage of L7's trials and travails of being a “punk-like band in a pop-like marketplace.”


title: L7 (band)

text: L7's sixth studio album, "Slap-Happy", was released on the band's own label Wax Tadpole Records in 1999. To promote the record, on July 17, 1999, L7 had a plane fly over the crowd at the Lilith Fair at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, with a banner that read, "Bored? Tired? Try L7." The following day, an airplane towed a banner over the crowd at the Warped Tour at the Stone Pony lot in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The banner read "Warped needs more beaver...love, L7." Greenwood later left the band and was replaced by Janis Tanaka, formerly of the San Francisco band, Stone Fox.


title: L7 (band)

text: Record sales continued to wane during the late 1990s, and the band grew increasingly low on funds. However, the band's live performances consistently garnered praise, including a September 1999 review by rock critic Greg Kot in the "Chicago Tribune" that stated "Gardner and Sparks favor low-end guitar chug, a sound that suggests the idling engine of a Harley-Davidson more than the high-end squeal of most lead guitarists. They intersect with bassist Janis Tanaka to create a thick, sludgy bottom that rumbles the floorboards and shoots right through the sternums of innocent passersby. Their secret weapon remains drummer Dee Plakas."


title: L7 (band)

text: By 2001, L7 were no longer touring. The band listed the following statement on their website, ""L7 are on an indefinite hiatus. We know that's vague, but that's just the way it is. The future of the band is a bit up in the air at the moment."" L7 appeared to be defunct for all practical purposes. From 2007 - 2012, Sparks pursued another project, along with Plakas on drums, in their band Donita Sparks and The Stellar Moments. Finch formed several projects including OtherStarPeople and her punk rock group The Shocker. Tanaka played bass for Pink and Greenwood played with Bif Naked and later, the reformed Belly.


title: L7 (band)

text: In 2012, Sparks started a Facebook page for the band, posting videos and archival images of L7, where their fan base quickly began to regroup.


title: L7 (band)

text: On December 10, 2014, L7 announced, on their official Facebook page, that they were reuniting, featuring Donita Sparks, Suzi Gardner, Jennifer Finch and Demetra Plakas. As part of the reunion, the band revamped their website and included a mailing list for fans.


title: L7 (band)

text: The reunited band kicked off a European tour at Rock am Ring in Germany on June 6, 2015 with shows in the Czech Republic, Austria, UK, France, and Spain. This was followed by North American dates in New York, Toronto, and at Riot Fest in both Denver and Chicago, and the Fun, Fun, Fun Festival in Austin, Texas. "Exclaim!" reviewed their Toronto show and stated that "Their subversive sense of humour and brash confidence provides feminism with some much-needed comic relief and audacity, and on this night, as 50-somethings in a 30-year-old band, they looked, acted and sounded every bit as brazen as they did 25 years back."


title: L7 (band)

text: On February 15, 2016, L7's original drummer Koutsky passed away at the age of 53. Later in 2016, the documentary film "L7: Pretend We're Dead", directed by Sarah Price, premiered in Los Angeles. The film, largely funded through Kickstarter, features original footage and interviews with the band members and eyewitness accounts of their development from Lydia Lunch, Shirley Manson, Krist Novoselic and Butch Vig. The film was nominated for a VO5 NME Award for Best Music Film.


title: L7 (band)

text: In 2016 L7 played a series of shows in the US, South Africa, the UK, and Australia. Chris Lane of "Houston Press" described the synergy of Sparks and Gardner's guitar playing and the strength of the band's live show stating "Their percussive styles seemed to be locked together, producing a glorious, unified wall of sound. Bass player Jennifer Finch bounced about the stage while propelling each song forward, and drummer Dee Plakas proved that she should be a lot more famous as a rock drummer with every fill."


title: L7 (band)

text: January 13, 2017, L7 released "Detroit (Live)" on record label Easy Action. The live album was originally recorded at a concert in the Motor city on September 1, 1990 and coincided with the group's initial release of "Smell the Magic" on Sub Pop records. Their performance at the established punk venue Clutch Cargo's in Detroit expressed the raw, kinetic energy of the era. L7 released "Fast and Frightening ("a collections of rarities, covers, and live performances) as a double album in 2016 with music critic Robert Christgau granting it an A minus in a 2018 review.


title: L7 (band)

text: On September 29, 2017, L7 released its first new song in 18 years, "Dispatch from Mar-a-Lago" on Don Giovanni Records. The title is a reference to the Mar-a-Lago resort owned by Donald J. Trump. A follow up single, "I Came Back to Bitch", was released in February 2018.


title: L7 (band)

text: L7 continued to tour heavily in the US, Canada, and Europe in 2018. April 2018 saw the band announce their plans to record a seventh studio album via PledgeMusic, scheduled for release in 2019.


title: L7 (band)

text: L7 released the first single from their first album in 20 years, "Burn Baby", on February 28, 2019. The full album, "Scatter the Rats", was released on May 3, 2019, through Joan Jett's record label Blackheart Records. The album received generally favorable reviews. "Hyperallergic" referred to the band's legacy as "feminist punks, metal snarlers, (and) grunge comedians" and stated of their return album that Sparks and Gardner "pound out one solid, catchy, immediately identifiable power riff after another, more punk-minimalist than in their molten grunge period".


title: L7 (band)

text: In April 2022, L7 announced a tour commemorating the 30th anniversary release of their third album, "Bricks Are Heavy". The band played the entire album, along with several other songs. The tour consisted of eighteen scheduled shows through the month of October. L7 also announced a deluxe reissue of "Bricks Are Heavy". Remastered by Howie Weinberg, the limited-edition release comes pressed on gold and black vinyl via Licorice Pizza, and pre-orders begun on September 30.


title: L7 (band)

text: Their songs have been featured on the soundtracks of numerous films, including "Natural Born Killers", "Point of No Return", and "Pet Sematary Two". "Shove" appears on the soundtrack of the movie "Tank Girl" and "Pretend We're Dead" appears on the soundtrack of the video game "", and can be heard on an , and on the music video game "Rock Band 2". "Andres" is available as downloadable content for the "Rock Band 4".


title: L7 (band)

text: L7 appeared on TV shows such as "Late Night with David Letterman", "The Jon Stewart Show", "The Word", "120 Minutes", and "Alternative Nation". The band played at the Reading Festival in 1992 having been chosen for the concert by Nirvana band leader Kurt Cobain, Glastonbury Festival in 1994, Lollapalloza in 1994, Finsbury Park in 1997, and on the Warped Tour in 1995 and 1999. They toured with and opened for artists including Bad Religion in 1988, GWAR in 1989, Nirvana and Alice in Chains in 1990, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith No More, Rollins Band and Beastie Boys in 1992, Pearl Jam in 1994, Marilyn Manson and The Offspring in 1997, and Ministry in 1999.


title: L7 (band)

text: The band, with Finch returning on bass, appeared in the 1999 cult video "Decoupage: Return of the Goddess", performing the Sonny and Cher song "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" with actress Karen Black, and being interviewed individually by Decoupage hostess Summer Caprice.


title: L7 (band)

text: The video for "Pretend We're Dead" was featured on an episode of "Beavis and Butthead". In a later episode, while discussing who would win in a battle between Tiffany, Wilson Phillips, and Debbie Gibson, the characters state their belief that "one chick from L7 could kick all their asses combined".


title: L7 (band)

text: Throughout the mid-2000s, the band's song "Shitlist" was used as the entrance music of professional wrestler Jon Moxley, who would later become widely known under the name Dean Ambrose upon joining WWE in 2011. The song was also used in ECW by Brian Pillman (under his loose cannon gimmick) in 1996, until his departure the following year.


title: L7 (band)

text: During their performance at the 1992 Reading Festival, the band experienced "technical difficulties with their audio equipment" and were forced to stall their set. The rowdy crowd grew restless and began throwing mud onto the stage, repeatedly pelting the band. In protest, lead vocalist Donita Sparks removed her tampon on-stage and threw it into the crowd yelling "Eat my used tampon, fuckers!" Sparks has remained unapologetic about the incident, and the tampon has been referred to as one of the "most unsanitary pieces of rock memorabilia in history."


title: L7 (band)

text: Later in 1992, Sparks caused controversy in the United Kingdom when she dropped her jeans and underwear on live television, appearing nude from the waist down, during an L7 performance on the late night UK programme "The Word". Of the incident, Sparks later commented that the Word show L7 appeared on had a number of chaotic aspects already underway including "a men’s bum contest" and a "hidden camera in Oliver Reed’s dressing room, showing him intoxicated with his shirt off, which was really fucked up. So I added my contribution to this craziness."


title: L7 (band)

text: In 2000, the band raffled a one-night stand with Demetra Plakas at a London gig. The winner got to spend the night on the tour bus. "Rolling Stone" reported that Plakas and her bandmates decided "We're not being hypocritical about rock & roll anymore. Rock & roll is prostitution."


title: L7 (band)

text: L7's sound has been described as "unique and unforgiving, mixing a punk rock attitude with heavy sludge metal." A 2019 article on L7 in "Alternative Press" stated that "In the early-'90s underground, L7 were positively bulletproof and larger than life. Not as come-hither nymphs or saucy rock star minxes bestowed with privilege but as a hard-rocking unit" that could not be messed with.


title: L7 (band)

text: Aesthetically, their style was subversive with a long-standing resistance to the expectation to be eye-candy. L7 called themselves "slob girls" with ratty hair and clothes and bassist Jennifer Finch frequently performed barefoot onstage. Sparks summarized "If we were gonna be looked at, we were gonna be thrashin."


title: L7 (band)

text: A reviewer in 1995 stated that "L7 plays slow-riffing hard rock, fast punk rock and bluesy, catchy midtempo songs: generic forms upgraded by smart lyrics and pure irreverence on stage."


title: L7 (band)

text: The Prodigy covered the "Hungry for Stink" track "Fuel My Fire" on their 1997 album "The Fat of the Land". In 2015, "Spin" listed "Bricks Are Heavy" as number 249 on their list of the top 300 Best Albums of the Past 30 Years (1985 - 2014). "Decibel" ranked the songs from L7's "Bricks Are Heavy" as part of their Hall of Fame Countdown in 2016. In 2017, "Metal Injection" ranked L7 at number 7 on their list of "10 Heaviest Grunge Bands".


title: L7 (band)

text: The band was listed by "Kerrang!" in 2019 as one of "Ten Bands No One Expected to be So Influential Today." The group was described as "one of rock’s most volatile and respected acts. Predictable on paper, anything but on stage".


title: Theogony

text: The Theogony (, , , i.e. "the genealogy or birth of the gods") is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 1022 lines.


title: Theogony

text: Hesiod's "Theogony" is a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first known Greek mythical cosmogony. The initial state of the universe is chaos, a dark indefinite void considered a divine primordial condition from which everything else appeared. Theogonies are a part of Greek mythology which embodies the desire to articulate reality as a whole; this universalizing impulse was fundamental for the first later projects of speculative theorizing.


title: Theogony

text: Further, in the "Kings and Singers" passage (80–103) Hesiod appropriates to himself the authority usually reserved to sacred kingship. The poet declares that it is he, where we might have expected some king instead, upon whom the Muses have bestowed the two gifts of a scepter and an authoritative voice (Hesiod, "Theogony" 30–3), which are the visible signs of kingship. It is not that this gesture is meant to make Hesiod a king. Rather, the point is that the authority of kingship now belongs to the poetic voice, the voice that is declaiming the "Theogony".


title: Theogony

text: Although it is often used as a sourcebook for Greek mythology, the "Theogony" is both more and less than that. In formal terms it is a hymn invoking Zeus and the Muses: parallel passages between it and the much shorter Homeric "Hymn to the Muses" make it clear that the "Theogony" developed out of a tradition of hymnic preludes with which an ancient Greek rhapsode would begin his performance at poetic competitions. It is necessary to see the "Theogony" not as the definitive source of Greek mythology, but rather as a snapshot of a dynamic tradition that happened to crystallize when Hesiod formulated the myths he knew—and to remember that the traditions have continued evolving since that time.


title: Theogony

text: The written form of the "Theogony" was established in the 6th century BC. Even some conservative editors have concluded that the Typhon episode (820–68) is an interpolation.


title: Theogony

text: Hesiod was probably influenced by some Near-Eastern traditions, such as the Babylonian Dynasty of Dunnum, which were mixed with local traditions, but they are more likely to be lingering traces from the Mycenaean tradition than the result of oriental contacts in Hesiod's own time.


title: Theogony

text: The decipherment of Hittite mythical texts, notably the "Kingship in Heaven" text first presented in 1946, with its castration mytheme, offers in the figure of Kumarbi an Anatolian parallel to Hesiod's Uranus–Cronus conflict.


title: Theogony

text: One of the principal components of the "Theogony" is the presentation of what is called the "Succession Myth", which tells how Cronus overthrew Uranus, and how in turn Zeus overthrew Cronus and his fellow Titans, and how Zeus was eventually established as the final and permanent ruler of the cosmos.


title: Theogony

text: Uranus (Sky) initially produced eighteen children with his mother Gaia (Earth): the twelve Titans, the three Cyclopes, and the three Hecatoncheires (Hundred-Handers), but hating them, he hid them away somewhere inside Gaia. Angry and in distress, Gaia fashioned a sickle made of adamant and urged her children to punish their father. Only her son Cronus, the youngest Titan, was willing to do so. So Gaia hid Cronus in "ambush" and gave him the adamantine sickle, and when Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus reached out and castrated his father. This enabled the Titans to be born and Cronus to assume supreme command of the cosmos.


title: Theogony

text: Cronus, having now taken over control of the cosmos from Uranus, wanted to ensure that he maintained control. Uranus and Gaia had prophesied to Cronus that one of Cronus' own children would overthrow him, so when Cronus married Rhea, he made sure to swallow each of the children she birthed: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus (in that order), to Rhea's great sorrow. However, when Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, Rhea begged her parents Gaia and Uranus to help her save Zeus. So they sent Rhea to Lyctus on Crete to bear Zeus, and Gaia took the newborn Zeus to raise, hiding him deep in a cave beneath Mount Aigaion. Meanwhile, Rhea gave Cronus a huge stone wrapped in baby's clothes which he swallowed thinking that it was another of Rhea's children.


title: Theogony

text: Zeus, now grown, forced Cronus (using some unspecified trickery of Gaia) to disgorge his other five children. Zeus then released his uncles the Cyclopes (apparently still imprisoned beneath the earth, along with the Hundred-Handers, where Uranus had originally confined them) who then provide Zeus with his great weapon, the thunderbolt, which had been hidden by Gaia. A great war was begun, the Titanomachy, between the new gods, Zeus and his siblings, and the old gods, Cronus and the Titans, for control of the cosmos. In the tenth year of that war, following Gaia's counsel, Zeus released the Hundred-Handers, who joined the war against the Titans, helping Zeus to gain the upper hand. Zeus cast the fury of his thunderbolt at the Titans, defeating them and throwing them into Tartarus.


title: Theogony

text: A final threat to Zeus' power was to come in the form of the monster Typhon, son of Gaia and Tartarus. Zeus with his thunderbolt was quickly victorious, and Typhon was also imprisoned in Tartarus.


title: Theogony

text: Zeus, by Gaia's advice, was elected king of the gods, and he apportioned various honors among the gods. Zeus then married his first wife Metis, but when he learned that Metis was fated to produce a son which might usurp his rule, by the advice of Gaia and Uranus, Zeus swallowed Metis (while still pregnant with Athena). And so Zeus managed to end the cycle of succession and secure his eternal rule over the cosmos.


title: Theogony

text: The world began with the spontaneous generation of four beings: first arose Chaos (Chasm); then came Gaia (Earth), "the ever-sure foundation of all"; "dim" Tartarus, in the depths of the Earth; and Eros (Desire) "fairest among the deathless gods".


title: Theogony

text: From Chaos came Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night). And Nyx "from union in love" with Erebus produced Aether (Brightness) and Hemera (Day). From Gaia came Uranus (Sky), the Ourea (Mountains), and Pontus (Sea).


title: Theogony

text: Uranus mated with Gaia, and she gave birth to the twelve Titans: Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys and Cronus; the Cyclopes: Brontes, Steropes and Arges; and the Hecatoncheires ("Hundred-Handers"): Cottus, Briareos, and Gyges.


title: Theogony

text: When Cronus castrated Uranus, from Uranus' blood which splattered onto the earth, came the Erinyes (Furies), the Giants, and the Meliai. Cronus threw the severed genitals into the sea, around which foam developed and transformed into the goddess Aphrodite.


title: Theogony

text: Meanwhile, Nyx (Night) alone produced children: Moros (Doom), Ker (Destiny), Thanatos (Death), Hypnos (Sleep), Oneiroi (Dreams), Momus (Blame), Oizys (Pain), Hesperides (Daughters of Night), Moirai (Fates), Keres (Destinies), Nemesis (Retribution), Apate (Deceit), Philotes (Love), Geras (Old Age), and Eris (Discord).


title: Theogony

text: And from Eris alone, came Ponos (Hardship), Lethe (Forgetfulness), Limos (Starvation), Algea (Pains), Hysminai (Battles), Makhai (Wars), Phonoi (Murders), Androktasiai (Manslaughters), Neikea (Quarrels), Pseudea (Lies), Logoi (Stories), Amphillogiai (Disputes), Dysnomia (Anarchy), Ate (Ruin), and Horkos (Oath).


title: Theogony

text: After Uranus's castration, Gaia mated with her son Pontus (Sea) producing a descendent line consisting primarily of sea deities, sea nymphs, and hybrid monsters. Their first child Nereus (Old Man of the Sea) married Doris, one of the Oceanid daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, and they produced the Nereids, fifty sea nymphs, which included Amphitrite, Thetis, and Psamathe. Their second child Thaumas, married Electra, another Oceanid, and their offspring were Iris (Rainbow) and the two Harpies: Aello and Ocypete.


title: Theogony

text: Gaia and Pontus' third and fourth children, Phorcys and Ceto, married each other and produced the two Graiae: Pemphredo and Enyo, and the three Gorgons: Sthenno, Euryale, and Medusa. Poseidon mated with Medusa and two offspring, the winged horse Pegasus and the warrior Chrysaor, were born when the hero Perseus cut off Medusa's head. Chrysaor married Callirhoe, another Oceanid, and they produced the three-headed Geryon. Next comes the half-nymph half-snake Echidna (her mother is unclear, probably Ceto, or possibly Callirhoe). The last offspring of Ceto and Phorcys was a serpent (unnamed in the "Theogony", later called Ladon, by Apollonius of Rhodes) who guards the golden apples.


title: Theogony

text: Gaia also mated with Tartarus to produce Typhon, whom Echidna married, producing several monstrous descendants. Their first three offspring were Orthus, Cerberus, and the Hydra. Next comes the Chimera (whose mother is unclear, either Echidna or the Hydra). Finally Orthus (his mate is unclear, either the Chimera or Echidna) produced two offspring: the Sphinx and the Nemean Lion.


title: Theogony

text: The Titans, Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, and Cronus married their sisters Tethys, Theia, Phoebe and Rhea, and Crius married his half-sister Eurybia, the daughter of Gaia and her son, Pontus. From Oceanus and Tethys came the three thousand river gods (including Nilus [Nile], Alpheus, and Scamander) and three thousand Oceanid nymphs (including Doris, Electra, Callirhoe, Styx, Clymene, Metis, Eurynome, Perseis, and Idyia). From Hyperion and Theia came Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon), and Eos (Dawn), and from Crius and Eurybia came Astraios, Pallas, and Perses. From Eos and Astraios came the winds: Zephyrus, Boreas and Notos, Eosphoros (Dawn-bringer, i.e. Venus, the Morning Star), and the Stars. From Pallas and the Oceanid Styx came Zelus (Envy), Nike (Victory), Kratos (Power), and Bia (Force).


title: Theogony

text: From Coeus and Phoebe came Leto and Asteria, who married Perses, producing Hekate, and from Cronus and his older sister, Rhea, came Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. The Titan Iapetos married the Oceanid Clymene and produced Atlas, Menoetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus.


title: Theogony

text: Zeus married seven wives. His first wife was the Oceanid Metis, whom he impregnated with Athena, then, on the advice of Gaia and Uranus, swallowed Metis so that no son of his by Metis would overthrow him, as had been foretold. Zeus' second wife was his aunt the Titan Themis, who bore the three Horae (Seasons): Eunomia (Order), Dikē (Justice), Eirene (Peace); and the three Moirai (Fates): Clotho (Spinner), Lachesis (Allotter), and Atropos (Unbending). Zeus then married his third wife, another Oceanid, Eurynome, who bore the three Charites (Graces): Aglaea (Splendor), whom Hephaestus married, Euphrosyne (Joy), and Thalia (Good Cheer).


title: Theogony

text: Zeus' fourth wife was his sister, Demeter, who bore Persephone. The fifth wife of Zeus was another aunt, the Titan Mnemosyne, from whom came the nine Muses: Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polymnia, Urania, and Calliope. His sixth wife was the Titan Leto, who gave birth to Apollo and Artemis. Zeus' seventh and final wife was his sister Hera, the mother by Zeus of Hebe, Ares, and Eileithyia.


title: Theogony

text: Zeus finally "gave birth" himself to Athena, from his head, which angered Hera so much that she produced, by herself, her own son Hephaestus, god of fire and blacksmiths.


title: Theogony

text: From Poseidon and the Nereid Amphitrite was born Triton, and from Ares and Aphrodite came Phobos (Fear), Deimos (Terror), and Harmonia (Harmony). Zeus, with Atlas's daughter Maia, produced Hermes, and with the mortal Alcmene, produced the hero Heracles, who married Hebe. Zeus and the mortal Semele, daughter of Harmonia and Cadmus, the founder and first king of Thebes, produced Dionysus, who married Ariadne, daughter of Minos, king of Crete. Helios and the Oceanid Perseis produced Circe, Aeetes, who became king of Colchis and married the Oceanid Idyia, producing Medea.


title: Theogony

text: The goddess Demeter joined with the mortal Iasion to produce Plutus. In addition to Semele, the goddess Harmonia and the mortal Cadmus also produced Ino, Agave, Autonoe and Polydorus. Eos (Dawn) with the mortal Tithonus, produced the hero Memnon, and Emathion, and with Cephalus, produced Phaethon. Medea with the mortal Jason, produced Medius, the Nereid Psamathe with the mortal Aeacus, produced the hero Phocus, the Nereid Thetis, with Peleus produced the great warrior Achilles, and the goddess Aphrodite with the mortal Anchises produced the Trojan hero Aeneas. With the hero Odysseus, Circe would give birth to Agrius, Latinus, and Telegonus, and Atlas' daughter Calypso would also bear Odysseus two sons, Nausithoos and Nausinous.


title: Theogony

text: The "Theogony", after listing the offspring of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene, as Atlas, Menoitios, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, and telling briefly what happened to each, tells the story of Prometheus. When the gods and men met at Mekone to decide how sacrifices should be distributed, Prometheus sought to trick Zeus. Slaughtering an ox, he took the valuable fat and meat, and covered it with the ox's stomach. Prometheus then took the bones and hid them with a thin glistening layer of fat. Prometheus asked Zeus' opinion on which offering pile he found more desirable, hoping to trick the god into selecting the less desirable portion. Though Zeus saw through the trick, he chose the fat covered bones, and so it was established that ever after men would burn the bones as sacrifice to the gods, keeping the choice meat and fat for themselves. But in punishment for this trick, an angry Zeus decided to deny mankind the use of fire. But Prometheus stole fire inside a fennel stalk, and gave it to humanity. Zeus then ordered the creation of the first woman Pandora as a new punishment for mankind. And Prometheus was chained to a cliff, where an eagle fed on his ever-regenerating liver every day, until eventually Zeus' son Heracles came to free him.


title: Theogony

text: The heritage of Greek mythology already embodied the desire to articulate reality as a whole, and this universalizing impulse was fundamental for the first projects of speculative theorizing. It appears that the order of being was first imaginatively visualized before it was abstractly thought. Hesiod, impressed by necessity governing the ordering of things, discloses a definite pattern in the genesis and appearance of the gods. These ideas made something like "cosmological" speculation possible. The earliest rhetoric of reflection all centers about two interrelated things: the experience of wonder as a living involvement with the divine order of things; and the absolute conviction that, beyond the totality of things, reality forms a beautiful and harmonious whole.


title: Theogony

text: In the "Theogony", the origin ("arche") is "Chaos", a divine primordial condition, and there are the roots and the ends of the earth, sky, sea, and Tartarus. Pherecydes of Syros (6th century BC), believed that there were three pre-existent divine principles and called the water also Chaos. In the language of the archaic period (8th – 6th century BC), "arche" (or "archai") designates the source, origin, or root of things that exist. If a thing is to be well established or founded, its "arche" or static point must be secure, and the most secure foundations are those provided by the gods: the indestructible, immutable, and eternal ordering of things.


title: Theogony

text: In ancient Greek philosophy, "arche" is the element or first principle of all things, a permanent nature or substance which is conserved in the generation of the rest of it. From this, all things come to be, and into it they are resolved in a final state. It is the divine horizon of substance that encompasses and rules all things. Thales (7th – 6th century BC), the first Greek philosopher, claimed that the first principle of all things is water. Anaximander (6th century BC) was the first philosopher who used the term "arche" for that which writers from Aristotle on call the "substratum". Anaximander claimed that the beginning or first principle is an endless mass ("Apeiron") subject to neither age nor decay, from which all things are being born and then they are destroyed there. A fragment from Xenophanes (6th century BC) shows the transition from "Chaos" to "Apeiron": "The upper limit of earth borders on air. The lower limit of earth reaches down to the unlimited (i.e the Apeiron)."


title: Theogony

text: In the "Theogony" the initial state of the universe, or the origin (arche) is Chaos, a "gaping void" (abyss) considered as a divine primordial condition, from which appeared everything that exists. Then came Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (the cave-like space under the earth; the later-born Erebus is the darkness in this space), and Eros (representing sexual desire - the urge to reproduce - instead of the emotion of love as is the common misconception). Hesiod made an abstraction because his original "chaos" is something completely indefinite.


title: Theogony

text: By contrast, in the Orphic cosmogony the unaging Chronos produced Aether and Chaos and made a silvery egg in divine Aether. From it appeared the androgynous god Phanes, identified by the Orphics as Eros, who becomes the creator of the world.


title: Theogony

text: Some similar ideas appear in the Vedic and Hindu cosmologies. In the Vedic cosmology the universe is created from nothing by the great heat. Kāma (Desire) the primal seed of spirit, is the link which connected the existent with the non-existent In the Hindu cosmology, in the beginning there was nothing in the universe but only darkness and the divine essence who removed the darkness and created the primordial waters. His seed produced the "universal germ" (Hiranyagarbha), from which everything else appeared.


title: Theogony

text: In the Babylonian creation story "Enûma Eliš" the universe was in a formless state and is described as a watery "chaos". From it emerged two primary gods, the male Apsu and female Tiamat, and a third deity who is the "maker" Mummu and his power for the progression of cosmogonic births to begin.


title: Theogony

text: Norse mythology also describes Ginnungagap as the primordial abyss from which sprang the first living creatures, including the giant Ymir whose body eventually became the world, whose blood became the seas, and so on; another version describes the origin of the world as a result of the fiery and cold parts of Hel colliding.


title: Jungle music

text: Jungle is a genre of dance music that developed out of the UK rave scene and sound system culture in the 1990s. Emerging from breakbeat hardcore, the style is characterised by rapid breakbeats, heavily syncopated percussive loops, samples, and synthesised effects, combined with the deep basslines, melodies, and vocal samples found in dub, reggae and dancehall, as well as hip hop and funk. Many producers frequently sampled the "Amen break" or other breakbeats from funk and jazz recordings. Jungle was a direct precursor to the drum and bass genre which emerged in the mid-1990s.


title: Jungle music

text: The breakbeat hardcore scene of the early 1990s was beginning to fragment by 1992/1993, with different influences becoming less common together in tracks. The piano and uplifting vocal style that was prevalent in breakbeat hardcore started to lay down the foundations of 4-beat/happy hardcore, whilst tracks with dark-themed samples and industrial style stabs had emerged from late 1992 and named darkcore. Reggae samples and reggae influenced tracks had been a feature of many breakbeat hardcore tracks since 1990 particularly from producers such as Shut Up and Dance, however Ibiza Records, and the Rebel MC were arguably the first to bring the sound system influence solidly into releases. The track "We Are I.E." by Lennie De-Ice is often credited as being the track that laid down the foundations for jungle with its ragga bassline.


title: Jungle music

text: During 1992 and 1993, the phrases "jungle techno" and "hardcore jungle" proliferated to describe that shift of the music from breakbeat hardcore to jungle. The sound was championed at clubs such as A.W.O.L., Roast, and Telepathy, by DJs such as DJ Ron, DJ Hype, Mickey Finn, DJ Rap, DJ Dextrous, and Kenny Ken, record labels Moving Shadow, V Recordings, Suburban Base, and Renk, and on pirate radio stations such as Kool FM (regarded as being the most instrumental station in the development of jungle) but also Don FM, Rush, and Rude FM.


title: Jungle music

text: Tracks would span breakbeat styles, particularly with darkcore, with notable releases including "Darkage" by DJ Solo, "Valley of the Shadows" by Origin Unknown, "Set Me Free" by Potential Bad Boy, "28 Gun Bad Boy" by A Guy Called Gerald, "Crackman" by DJ Ron, "A London Sumtin" by Code 071, "Learning from My Brother" by Family of Intelligence, "Lion of Judah" by X Project, and "Be Free" by Noise Factory.


title: Jungle music

text: Techniques and styles could be traced to such a vast group of influencers, each adding their own little elements. According to Simon Reynolds, jungle was like: "Britain's very own equivalent to US hip-hop. That said, you could equally make the case that jungle is a raved-up, digitised offshoot of Jamaican reggae. Musically, Jungle's spatialised production, bass quake pressure and battery of extreme sonic effects, make it a sort of postmodern dub music on steroids." This is an example of the effects of the sonic diaspora and the wide influence musical genres have; Jungle is where these different Black Atlantic genres converge. Reynolds noted the audience of the genre evolved alongside the music itself; going from a "sweaty, shirtless white teenager, grinning and gurning" to a "head nodding, stylishly dressed black twenty something with hooded-eyes, holding a spliff in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other." Jungle also served as "a site for a battle between contesting notions of blackness".


title: Jungle music

text: Jungle reached the peak of its popularity in 1994/1995. At this stage, the genre was spawning a number of UK top 40 hits, most notably "Incredible" by M-Beat featuring General Levy, and spawned a series of CD compilations such as "Jungle Mania" and "Jungle Hits". A controversy raged over the success of "Incredible" when Levy reportedly made comments in the media that he was "running jungle at the moment". Although Levy always argued that his comments were misinterpreted, this did not fail to stop a boycott of the single amongst a group of DJs that were dubbed as the "Jungle Committee". Labels such as Ibiza, 3rd Party and Kemet were prolific in their releases.


title: Jungle music

text: Having previously been confined to pirate radio, legal stations woke up to jungle from 1994. London's Kiss 100 launched its "Givin' It Up" show in early 1994 and featured DJs such as Kenny Ken, Jumpin Jack Frost, DJ Rap, and Mickey Finn. A year later, the UK's nationwide broadcaster BBC Radio 1 finally gave jungle a platform on its "One in the Jungle" weekly show.


title: Jungle music

text: Major labels such as Sony and BMG were signing deals with artists including A Guy Called Gerald, Kemet, and DJ Ron. Of these, Roni Size and 4hero would achieve wider commercial success as drum and bass artists, but continued to release more underground jungle tracks - the latter adopting the alias Tom & Jerry to continue to release rare groove sampling dancefloor-oriented jungle. The underground classic "Burial" by Leviticus would see a major release on FFRR Records.


title: Jungle music

text: Jungle music, as a scene, was unable to decide whether it wanted to be recognised in the mainstream or if it wanted to avoid misrepresentation. This manifested in the cooperation of jungle artists and small record labels. Small record labels worked to provide more autonomy to the music artists in return for their business and jungle music was proliferated by pirate stations in underground networks and clubs. Whilst the media would in part feed off jungle music success, it also perpetuated negative stereotypes about the scene as being violent. The seminal 1994 documentary "A London Some 'Ting Dis", chronicled the growing jungle scene and interviewed producers, DJs, and ravers to counter this perception.


title: Jungle music

text: 1996 and 1997 saw a less reggae-influenced sound and a darker, grittier, and more sinister soundscape. Hip-hop and jazz-influenced tracks dominated the clubs in this period. Dillinja, Roni Size, Die, Hype, Zinc, Alex Reece and Krust were instrumental in the transition of the jungle sound to drum and bass. By the end of 1998, the genre's sound had changed forms significantly from the sound heard earlier in the decade.


title: Jungle music

text: Ragga jungle would become a major subgenre during 1994 and 1995, with popular tracks such as "Incredible" by M-Beat featuring General Levy, "Original Nuttah" by UK Apachi and Shy FX, "Sound Murderer / RIP" by Remarc, "Limb by Limb" by Hitman featuring Cutty Ranks, and "Code Red / Champion DJ" by Conquering Lion.


title: Jungle music

text: In 1995, jump-up would also become a popular subgenre which came out of hardstep, with influences of various kinds of sound experiments, most importantly the bass line. Popular tracks of this subgenre include "Dred Bass" by Dead Dred, "Super Sharp Shooter" by DJ Zinc, "This Style" by Shy FX, "R.I.P" (DJ Hype Remix) by Remarc and DJ Zinc's remix of the Fugees' "Ready or Not". The genre would later regain popularity in the early 2000s with new productions by artists such as Shimon & Andy C, Bad Company, DJ Hazard and Pendulum.


title: Jungle music

text: Jungle was a form of cultural expression for London's lower class urban youth. The post-Thatcherite United Kingdom of the early 1990s had left many young people disenfranchised and disillusioned with a seemingly crumbling societal structure. Jungle reflected these feelings; it was a notably more dark, less euphoric style of music than many of the other styles popular at raves. The music was much more popular with black British youths than other rave styles, such as techno, even though it was heavily influenced by these other rave styles, including those that emerged from the United States. Jungle was also seen as "England's answer to hip-hop", with the goal of breaking down racial boundaries and promoting unification through its multiculturalism—drawing from different cultures and attracting mixed crowds at raves. Jungle's rhythm-as-melody style overturned the dominance of melody-over-rhythm in the hierarchy of Western music, adding to its radical nature.


title: Jungle music

text: Moreover, the greater accessibility to sampling technology allowed young people to inform music with their own sampling and experiences. Sampling technology was much more inexpensive and accessible allowing young people to work on their music in their homes rather than needing a grand recording studio. Gangsta Jungle reflects how young people were able to inform their own music. Gangsta Jungle reflects the reality of violence young Black Britons were facing. Gangsta Jungle served as an escape and as a revolutionary symbol for young Black Britains coming of age story.


title: Jungle music

text: Characterised by the breakbeats and multi-tiered rhythms, Jungle drew support from British b-boys who got swept up into the rave scene, but also from reggae, dancehall, electro and rap fans alike. Reynolds described it as causing fear and "for many ravers, too funky to dance" yet the club scene enjoyed every second.


title: Jungle music

text: The origin of the word jungle is one of discussion. Rebel MC is often noted for having popularised the term, and in Simon Reynolds' book "Energy Flash", MC Navigator is quoted as attributing the word to him. Others such as MC Five-O attribute it to MC Moose, whilst Rob Playford (of Moving Shadow) attributes it to MC Mad P (of Top Buzz). Some thought of this term as empowering, an assertion of the blackness of the music and its subculture, inverting the racist history of the term "jungle music".


title: Jungle music

text: Notable releases include: "Burial" by Leviticus, "Dangerous" by DJ Ron, "Lover to Lover / Maximum Style" by Tom & Jerry, "Original Nuttah" by Shy FX, "All the Crew Big Up" by Roni Size & DJ Die, "Incredible / Sweet Love" by M-Beat, "The Helicopter Tune" by Deep Blue, "Super Sharp Shooter" by DJ Zinc, "Sovereign Melody / Lion Heart" by Dillinja, "Everyman" by Kenny Ken, "The Victory / Lovable" by DJ Dextrous, "Bad Ass" by Aphrodite, "The Lighter" by DJ SS, and "Tiger Style" by DJ Hype.


title: Jungle music

text: The term "jungle" is often used as a synonym for drum and bass, particularly in the United States. More commonly, jungle is viewed as the originating point for drum and bass, with the progressive changes brought by artists in the late 1990s serving as the point of diversion (some examples being Trace & Ed Rush, LTJ Bukem, Photek, Jack Smooth, Digital, Total Science, Goldie and Optical).


title: Jungle music

text: A thriving underground movement producing and developing tracks in the style of the 1990s and some original (though mostly mainstream drum and bass) jungle producers have noticed this new enthusiasm for the original sound. Shy FX, for example, launched the Digital Soundboy label in 2005 to put out more jungle.


title: Jungle music

text: The early to mid-2000s saw a jungle revival in the emerging drum-funk subgenre, with labels such as Scientific Wax, Bassbin Records and Paradox Music pushing for a more breaks orientated sound. Technicality and Bassbin events in London were spearheading this return to more traditional elements of jungle music.


title: Jungle music

text: The UK is still the spiritual home and nucleus of jungle to this day. An event called Rupture gained popularity between 2007 and the present for hosting and promoting more traditional styled jungle/drum & bass music and artists. The event and subsequent label have promoted new producers such as Forest Drive West, Tim Reaper, Dead Man's Chest and Sully, and the scene is very much thriving. As well as old heads and artists coming out of retirement, modern jungle is enjoyed by the younger generations who missed jungle the first time around.


title: Jungle music

text: One of the scenes originators, Congo Natty, continued to release jungle music throughout the 2000s, culminating in the 2013 album "Jungle Revolution".


title: Jungle music

text: In 2018, Chase & Status capitalised on the current trend of jungle with their album "RTRN II JUNGLE". The album was not however jungle in its pure form, and catered more towards pop music fans.


title: Jack Nance

text: Marvin John Nance (December 21, 1943 – December 30, 1996), known professionally as Jack Nance, was an American actor. A longtime collaborator of filmmaker David Lynch, Nance portrayed the lead in Lynch's directorial film debut "Eraserhead" (1977). He continued to work with Lynch throughout his career, including as a series regular on the ABC mystery drama "Twin Peaks" (1990–1991).


title: Jack Nance

text: Nance was born in Boston, Massachusetts and was raised in Dallas, Texas. He graduated from South Oak Cliff High School. Nance worked for some time with the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. In the 1970s, Nance met David Lynch, who cast him as the lead in "Eraserhead".


title: Jack Nance

text: After "Eraserhead", he remained on good terms with Lynch, who cast him in nearly all of his projects:


title: Jack Nance

text: Nance guest-starred on a 1995 episode of "My So-Called Life" entitled "Weekend", in which he played an innkeeper. He appeared with actress Mary Woronov in Suicidal Tendencies' 1983 "Institutionalized" music video.


title: Jack Nance

text: Nance married Catherine E. Coulson in 1968. They divorced in 1976. In May 1991, he married Kelly Jean Van Dyke, who worked in the adult film industry under the name Nancee Kelly. Van Dyke was the daughter of Jerry Van Dyke (briefly making Nance his son-in-law) and niece of Dick Van Dyke.


title: Jack Nance

text: Van Dyke died by suicide on November 17, 1991. According to her younger brother Ronald, Nance, who was in Bass Lake, California, filming "Meatballs 4" at the time, attempted to console her on the phone as she threatened suicide. After a lightning storm knocked out the phones in Bass Lake, Nance and the director, Bobby Logan, found a deputy sheriff who contacted Los Angeles police and the apartment manager. They broke in and found that she had hanged herself.


title: Jack Nance

text: On December 29, 1996, Nance lunched with friends Leo Bulgarini and Catherine Case. Nance had a visible "crescent shaped bruise" under his eye; and, when asked about it, he related to them the story about a brawl outside a Winchell's Donuts store that morning. He described the incident as, "I guess I got what I deserved." He went home, complaining of a headache.


title: Jack Nance

text: The injuries he sustained caused a subdural hematoma, resulting in his death the following morning. His body was discovered on the bathroom floor of his South Pasadena, California apartment by Bulgarini, on December 30, 1996. An autopsy revealed that the actor's blood alcohol level was 0.24% at the time of his death.


title: Jack Nance

text: The song "I Gotta Move" by Frank Black and the Catholics, from their 1997 eponymous debut album, refers to the circumstances of Nance's death, as well as the murder of Peter Ivers, who composed and performed the song "In Heaven, Everything is Fine" from "Eraserhead".


title: AlphaZero

text: AlphaZero is a computer program developed by artificial intelligence research company DeepMind to master the games of chess, shogi and go. This algorithm uses an approach similar to AlphaGo Zero.


title: AlphaZero

text: On December 5, 2017, the DeepMind team released a preprint introducing AlphaZero, which within 24 hours of training achieved a superhuman level of play in these three games by defeating world-champion programs Stockfish, elmo, and the three-day version of AlphaGo Zero. In each case it made use of custom tensor processing units (TPUs) that the Google programs were optimized to use. AlphaZero was trained solely via self-play using 5,000 first-generation TPUs to generate the games and 64 second-generation TPUs to train the neural networks, all in parallel, with no access to opening books or endgame tables. After four hours of training, DeepMind estimated AlphaZero was playing chess at a higher Elo rating than Stockfish 8; after nine hours of training, the algorithm defeated Stockfish 8 in a time-controlled 100-game tournament (28 wins, 0 losses, and 72 draws). The trained algorithm played on a single machine with four TPUs.


title: AlphaZero

text: DeepMind's paper on AlphaZero was published in the journal "Science" on 7 December 2018. However, the AlphaZero program itself has not been made available to the public. In 2019 DeepMind published a new paper detailing MuZero, a new algorithm able to generalise AlphaZero's work, playing both Atari and board games without knowledge of the rules or representations of the game.


title: AlphaZero

text: AlphaZero (AZ) is a more generalized variant of the AlphaGo Zero (AGZ) algorithm, and is able to play shogi and chess as well as Go. Differences between AZ and AGZ include:


title: AlphaZero

text: Comparing Monte Carlo tree search searches, AlphaZero searches just 80,000 positions per second in chess and 40,000 in shogi, compared to 70 million for Stockfish and 35 million for elmo. AlphaZero compensates for the lower number of evaluations by using its deep neural network to focus much more selectively on the most promising variation.


title: AlphaZero

text: AlphaZero was trained solely via self-play, using 5,000 first-generation TPUs to generate the games and 64 second-generation TPUs to train the neural networks. In parallel, the in-training AlphaZero was periodically matched against its benchmark (Stockfish, elmo, or AlphaGo Zero) in brief one-second-per-move games to determine how well the training was progressing. DeepMind judged that AlphaZero's performance exceeded the benchmark after around four hours of training for Stockfish, two hours for elmo, and eight hours for AlphaGo Zero.


title: AlphaZero

text: In AlphaZero's chess match against Stockfish 8 (2016 TCEC world champion), each program was given one minute per move. Stockfish was allocated 64 threads and a hash size of 1 GB, a setting that Stockfish's Tord Romstad later criticized as suboptimal. AlphaZero was trained on chess for a total of nine hours before the match. During the match, AlphaZero ran on a single machine with four application-specific TPUs. In 100 games from the normal starting position, AlphaZero won 25 games as White, won 3 as Black, and drew the remaining 72. In a series of twelve, 100-game matches (of unspecified time or resource constraints) against Stockfish starting from the 12 most popular human openings, AlphaZero won 290, drew 886 and lost 24.


title: AlphaZero

text: AlphaZero was trained on shogi for a total of two hours before the tournament. In 100 shogi games against elmo (World Computer Shogi Championship 27 summer 2017 tournament version with YaneuraOu 4.73 search), AlphaZero won 90 times, lost 8 times and drew twice. As in the chess games, each program got one minute per move, and elmo was given 64 threads and a hash size of 1 GB.


title: AlphaZero

text: DeepMind stated in its preprint, "The game of chess represented the pinnacle of AI research over several decades. State-of-the-art programs are based on powerful engines that search many millions of positions, leveraging handcrafted domain expertise and sophisticated domain adaptations. AlphaZero is a generic reinforcement learning algorithm originally devised for the game of go that achieved superior results within a few hours, searching a thousand times fewer positions, given no domain knowledge except the rules." DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, a chess player himself, called AlphaZero's play style "alien": It sometimes wins by offering counterintuitive sacrifices, like offering up a queen and bishop to exploit a positional advantage. "It's like chess from another dimension."


title: AlphaZero

text: Given the difficulty in chess of forcing a win against a strong opponent, the +28 –0 =72 result is a significant margin of victory. However, some grandmasters, such as Hikaru Nakamura and Komodo developer Larry Kaufman, downplayed AlphaZero's victory, arguing that the match would have been closer if the programs had access to an opening database (since Stockfish was optimized for that scenario). Romstad additionally pointed out that Stockfish is not optimized for rigidly fixed-time moves and the version used was a year old.


title: AlphaZero

text: Similarly, some shogi observers argued that the elmo hash size was too low, that the resignation settings and the "EnteringKingRule" settings (cf. shogi § Entering King) may have been inappropriate, and that elmo is already obsolete compared with newer programs.


title: AlphaZero

text: Papers headlined that the chess training took only four hours: "It was managed in little more than the time between breakfast and lunch." "Wired" described AlphaZero as "the first multi-skilled AI board-game champ". AI expert Joanna Bryson noted that Google's "knack for good publicity" was putting it in a strong position against challengers. "It's not only about hiring the best programmers. It's also very political, as it helps make Google as strong as possible when negotiating with governments and regulators looking at the AI sector."


title: AlphaZero

text: Human chess grandmasters generally expressed excitement about AlphaZero. Danish grandmaster Peter Heine Nielsen likened AlphaZero's play to that of a superior alien species. Norwegian grandmaster Jon Ludvig Hammer characterized AlphaZero's play as "insane attacking chess" with profound positional understanding. Former champion Garry Kasparov said "It's a remarkable achievement, even if we should have expected it after AlphaGo."


title: AlphaZero

text: Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura was less impressed, and stated "I don't necessarily put a lot of credibility in the results simply because my understanding is that AlphaZero is basically using the Google supercomputer and Stockfish doesn't run on that hardware; Stockfish was basically running on what would be my laptop. If you wanna have a match that's comparable you have to have Stockfish running on a supercomputer as well."


title: AlphaZero

text: Top US correspondence chess player Wolff Morrow was also unimpressed, claiming that AlphaZero would probably not make the semifinals of a fair competition such as TCEC where all engines play on equal hardware. Morrow further stated that although he might not be able to beat AlphaZero if AlphaZero played drawish openings such as the Petroff Defence, AlphaZero would not be able to beat him in a correspondence chess game either.


title: AlphaZero

text: Motohiro Isozaki, the author of YaneuraOu, noted that although AlphaZero did comprehensively beat elmo, the rating of AlphaZero in shogi stopped growing at a point which is at most 100~200 higher than elmo. This gap is not that high, and elmo and other shogi software should be able to catch up in 1–2 years.


title: AlphaZero

text: DeepMind addressed many of the criticisms in their final version of the paper, published in December 2018 in "Science". They further clarified that AlphaZero was not running on a supercomputer; it was trained using 5,000 tensor processing units (TPUs), but only ran on four TPUs and a 44-core CPU in its matches.


title: AlphaZero

text: In the final results, Stockfish version 8 ran under the same conditions as in the TCEC superfinal: 44 CPU cores, Syzygy endgame tablebases, and a 32GB hash size. Instead of a fixed time control of one move per minute, both engines were given 3 hours plus 15 seconds per move to finish the game. In a 1000-game match, AlphaZero won with a score of 155 wins, 6 losses, and 839 draws. DeepMind also played a series of games using the TCEC opening positions; AlphaZero also won convincingly. Stockfish needed 10-to-1 time odds to match AlphaZero.


title: AlphaZero

text: Similar to Stockfish, Elmo ran under the same conditions as in the 2017 CSA championship. The version of Elmo used was WCSC27 in combination with YaneuraOu 2017 Early KPPT 4.79 64AVX2 TOURNAMENT. Elmo operated on the same hardware as Stockfish: 44 CPU cores and a 32GB hash size. AlphaZero won 98.2% of games when playing sente (i.e. having the first move) and 91.2% overall.


title: AlphaZero

text: Human grandmasters were generally impressed with AlphaZero's games against Stockfish. Former world champion Garry Kasparov said it was a pleasure to watch AlphaZero play, especially since its style was open and dynamic like his own.


title: AlphaZero

text: In the computer chess community, Komodo developer Mark Lefler called it a "pretty amazing achievement", but also pointed out that the data was old, since Stockfish had gained a lot of strength since January 2018 (when Stockfish 8 was released). Fellow developer Larry Kaufman said AlphaZero would probably lose a match against the latest version of Stockfish, Stockfish 10, under Top Chess Engine Championship (TCEC) conditions. Kaufman argued that the only advantage of neural network–based engines was that they used a GPU, so if there was no regard for power consumption (e.g. in an equal-hardware contest where both engines had access to the same CPU and GPU) then anything the GPU achieved was "free". Based on this, he stated that the strongest engine was likely to be a hybrid with neural networks and standard alpha–beta search.


title: AlphaZero

text: AlphaZero inspired the computer chess community to develop Leela Chess Zero, using the same techniques as AlphaZero. Leela contested several championships against Stockfish, where it showed roughly similar strength to Stockfish, although Stockfish has since pulled away.


title: AlphaZero

text: In 2019 DeepMind published MuZero, a unified system that played excellent chess, shogi, and go, as well as games in the Atari Learning Environment, without being pre-programmed with their rules.


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 is an American television sitcom created by Nahnatchka Khan and starring Krysten Ritter that aired on ABC for two seasons from April 11, 2012 to January 15, 2013 and July 19 to September 6, 2014. Originally airing as a midseason replacement, ABC renewed the series for a second season with some episodes from its first season aired as part of its second, without regard for continuity. The series starred Ritter as Chloe, an irresponsible party girl who searches for roommates by asking for rent up front and then behaving outrageously until they leave. Her latest roommate, June Colburn (Dreama Walker), however, proves to be harder to drive away, and the women end up forming an unlikely friendship. James Van Der Beek co-starred as a fictionalized version of himself, one of Chloe's friends who is desperate to revive his withering acting career. Liza Lapira, Michael Blaiklock, Eric André, and Ray Ford led the supporting cast.


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: The series follows June Colburn as she moves from Indiana to New York City to pursue her dream job—until she finds out that it no longer exists. She ends up moving in with a bon vivant party girl named Chloe. Chloe keeps her apartment by inviting roommates to move in, asking for rent up front, and then behaving outrageously until they leave. June proves more difficult to dislodge than expected, and when June reverses Chloe's latest attempt to eject her in an unexpected fashion, they end up forming an unlikely friendship.


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: The series was originally titled "Don't Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23" and was developed at Fox as a 2009 fall contender, but was eventually passed on. In January 2011, ABC green-lit the production of a pilot episode. In February and March 2011, Dreama Walker, Krysten Ritter, and James Van Der Beek were cast as the three leads. On May 13, 2011, ABC picked up the project to series under the shortened title "Apartment 23". A few days later, ABC announced that the show would most likely debut in the 2011–12 mid-season.


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: On October 11, 2011, ABC again renamed the show, this time to a bowdlerized version of its original name, censoring the word "Bitch" and replaced with "B----".


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: The first two episodes were made available on iTunes, Hulu, ABC.com, and on Xfinity in the United States before the premiere on April 11, 2012. In Canada, the first episodes were made available on Rogers on Demand and on Citytv.com, also before the April 11, 2012 premiere. On May 11, 2012, "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23" was renewed for a second season, with the remaining six episodes of season one airing as a part of it. The second season premiered on October 23, 2012.


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: On May 11, 2012, ABC renewed "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23" for a second season. The remaining six episodes of season one (with production codes beginning 1A in the table) aired as part of season two bringing the total to 19 episodes for the season. ABC elected to air these episodes out of order, interspersing first and second-season episodes without regard to continuity. As a result, some multi-episode plot arcs (particularly James' appearance on "Dancing with the Stars" and June's travails at a new job outside the coffee shop) are almost incomprehensibly jumbled in the original broadcast order.


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: Ray Ford, who plays Luther, was promoted to a series regular for season two. Liza Lapira was originally announced as having been demoted to a recurring role; ultimately she appeared in only one episode ("Dating Games...") that was produced for the second season.


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: ABC announced on January 22, 2013, that it was removing "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23" from its schedule immediately. The next day, the cast of the show confirmed its cancellation. On April 18, 2013, ABC announced that the remaining eight unaired episodes would be streamed online beginning May 17 and ending June 2.


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: Although series star Krysten Ritter originally stated in February 2013 that ABC was committed to airing the eight unaired episodes in the summer of 2013, she later confirmed that the show would not return to ABC's schedule, but that all eight episodes would be made available on ABC.com, iTunes and Hulu starting May 17, 2013. The additional episodes have since been removed from Hulu, without announcement. It was later announced that the episodes would air on Logo TV Network in July 2014.


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: In July 2014, it was announced that Logo TV had acquired the full run of the series—including the eight episodes that were previously unaired in the United States—and would air it in the correct order beginning July 19.


title: Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

text: In June 2011, "Apartment 23", as it was called at the time, was one of eight honorees in the "Most Exciting New Series" category at the Critics' Choice Television Awards, voted by journalists who had seen the pilots. The series received positive reviews from critics, with many critics praising Ritter for her performance in what could be called her first "leading role". The first season received a score of 71 on Metacritic based on 29 critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds a 88% and the second season has a score of 83%. The site's consensus states: "An odd couple sitcom with a modern twist, "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23" is sleeker and smarter than expected, thanks to strong acting and snappy dialogue." Due to popularity of the show after its cancellation, attempts to revive the show for another season have been petitioned by fans on petition sites. In 2016, an Android title developed by Butterfly called "Miss Mint" paid homage to the television series and Krysten Ritter by naming the main character of the video game Kris-10 and her spaceship Ridder-23 respectively.


title: Birth rate

text: The birth rate for a given period is the total number of live human births per 1,000 population divided by the length of the period in years. The number of live births is normally taken from a universal registration system for births; population counts from a census, and estimation through specialized demographic techniques. The birth rate (along with mortality and migration rates) is used to calculate population growth. The estimated average population may be taken as the mid-year population.


title: Birth rate

text: When the crude death rate is subtracted from the crude birth rate (CBR), the result is the rate of natural increase (RNI). This is equal to the rate of population change (excluding migration).


title: Birth rate

text: The total (crude) birth rate (which includes all births)—typically indicated as births per 1,000 population—is distinguished from a set of age-specific rates (the number of births per 1,000 persons, or more usually 1,000 females, in each age group). The first known use of the term "birth rate" in English was in 1859.


title: Birth rate

text: The average global birth rate was 18.1 births per 1,000 total population in 2021. The death rate was 7.7 per 1,000. The RNI was thus 1.6 percent.


title: Birth rate

text: In 2012 the average global birth rate was 19.611 according to the World Bank and 19.15 births per 1,000 total population according to the CIA, compared to 20.09 per 1,000 total population in 2007.


title: Birth rate

text: The 2021 average of 18.1 births per 1,000 total population equates to approximately 4.3 births per second or about 259 births per minute for the world.


title: Birth rate

text: The birth rate is an issue of concern and policy for national governments. Some (including those of Italy and Malaysia) seek to increase the birth rate with financial incentives or provision of support services to new mothers. Conversely, other countries have policies to reduce the birth rate (for example, China's one-child policy which was in effect from 1978 to 2015). Policies to increase the crude birth rate are known as pro-natalist policies, and policies to reduce the crude birth rate are known as anti-natalist policies. Non-coercive measures such as improved information on birth control and its availability have achieved good results in countries such as Iran and Bangladesh.


title: Birth rate

text: There has also been discussion on whether bringing women into the forefront of development initiatives will lead to a decline in birth rates. In some countries, government policies have focused on reducing birth rates by improving women's rights, sexual and reproductive health. Typically, high birth rates are associated with health problems, low life expectancy, low living standards, low social status for women and low educational levels. Demographic transition theory postulates that as a country undergoes economic development and social change its population growth declines, with birth rates serving as an indicator.


title: Birth rate

text: At the 1974 World Population Conference in Bucharest, Romania, women's issues gained considerable attention. Family programs were discussed, and 137 countries drafted a World Population Plan of Action. As part of the discussion, many countries accepted modern birth control methods such as the birth control pill and the condom while opposing abortion. Population concerns, as well as the desire to include women in the discourse, were discussed; it was agreed that improvements in women's status and initiatives in defense of reproductive health and freedom, the environment, and sustainable socioeconomic development were needed.


title: Birth rate

text: Birth rates ranging from 10 to 20 births per 1,000 are considered low, while rates from 40 to 50 births per 1,000 are considered high. There are problems associated with high birth rates, and there may be problems associated with low birth rates. High birth rates may contribute to malnutrition and starvation, stress government welfare and family programs, and more importantly store up overpopulation for the future, and increase human damage to other species and habitats, and environmental degradation. Additional problems faced by a country with a high birth rate include educating a growing number of children, creating jobs for these children when they enter the workforce, and dealing with the environmental impact of a large population. Low birth rates may stress the government to provide adequate senior welfare systems and stress families who must support the elders themselves. There will be fewer younger able-bodied people who may be needed to support an ageing population, if a high proportion of older people become disabled and unable to care for themselves.


title: Birth rate

text: In the 20th century, several authoritarian governments sought either to increase or to decrease the birth rates, sometimes through forceful intervention. One of the most notorious natalist policies was that in communist Romania in 1967–1990, during the time of communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, who adopted a very aggressive natalist policy which included outlawing abortion and contraception, routine pregnancy tests for women, taxes on childlessness, and legal discrimination against childless people. This policy has been depicted in movies and documentaries (such as "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days", and "Children of the Decree"). These policies temporarily increased birth rates for a few years, but this was followed by a decline due to the increased use of illegal abortion. Ceaușescu's policy resulted in over 9,000 deaths of women due to illegal abortions, large numbers of children put into Romanian orphanages by parents who could not cope with raising them, street children in the 1990s (when many orphanages were closed and the children ended on the streets), and overcrowding in homes and schools. Ultimately, this aggressive natalist policy led to a generation who eventually led the Romanian Revolution which overthrew and executed him.


title: Birth rate

text: In stark contrast to Ceaușescu's natalist policy was China's one child policy, in effect from 1978 to 2015, which included abuses such as forced abortions. This policy has also been deemed responsible for the common practice of sex selective abortion which led to an imbalanced sex ratio in the country. Given strict family size limitations and a preference for sons, girls became unwanted in China because they were considered as depriving the parents of the chance of having a son. With the progress of prenatal sex-determination technologies and induced abortion, the one-child policy gradually turned into a one-son policy.


title: Birth rate

text: In many countries, the steady decline in birth rates over the past decades can largely be attributed to the significant gains in women's freedoms, such as tackling forced marriage and child marriage, access to contraception, equal access to education, and increased socioeconomic opportunities. Women of all economic, social, religious and educational persuasions are choosing to have fewer children as they are gaining more control over their own reproductive rights. Apart from more children living into their adult years, women are often more ambitious to take up education and paid work outside the home, and to live their own lives rather than just a life of reproduction and unpaid domestic work. Birth rates have fallen due to the introduction of family planning clinics and other access to contraception.


title: Birth rate

text: In Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, women are less likely to have two children (or more) than they were before 1999, according to Australian demographer Jack Caldwell. Bangladeshi women eagerly took up contraceptives, such as condoms and the pill, according to a study in 1994 by the World Bank. The study proved that family planning could be carried out and accepted practically anywhere. Caldwell also believes that agricultural improvements led to the need for less labour. Children not needed to plough the fields would be of surplus and require some education, so in turn, families become smaller and women are able to work and have greater ambitions. Other examples of non-coercive family planning policies are Ethiopia, Thailand and Indonesia.


title: Birth rate

text: Myanmar was controlled until 2011 by an austere military junta, intent on controlling every aspect of people's lives. The generals wanted the country's population doubled. In their view, women's job was to produce babies to power the country's labour force, so family planning was vehemently opposed. The women of Burma opposed this policy, and Peter McDonald of the Australian National University argues that this gave rise to a black market trade in contraceptives, smuggled in from neighbouring Thailand.


title: Birth rate

text: In 1990, five years after the Iraq-Iran war ended, Iran saw the fastest recorded fall in fertility in world history. Revolution gave way to consumerism and westernization. With TVs and cars came condoms and birth control pills. A generation of women had been expected to produce soldiers to fight Iraq, but the next generation of women could choose to enjoy some newfound luxuries. During the war, the women of Iran averaged about 8 children each, a ratio the hard-line Islamic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to revive. As of 2010, the birth rate of Iran is 1.7 babies per woman. Some observers claim this to be a triumph of Western values of freedom for women against states with Islamic values.


title: Birth rate

text: Islamic clerics are also having less influence over women in other Muslim countries. In the past 30 years Turkey's fertility rate of children per woman has dropped from 4.07 to 2.08. Tunisia has dropped from 4.82 to 2.14 and Morocco from 5.4 to 2.52 children per woman.


title: Birth rate

text: Latin America, of predominately Catholic faith, has seen the same trends of falling fertility rates. Brazilian women are having half the children compared to 25 years ago: a rate of 1.7 children per woman. The Vatican now has less influence over women in other hard-line Catholic countries. Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru have all seen significant drops in fertility in the same period, all going from over six to less than three children per woman. Forty percent of married Brazilian women are choosing to get sterilised after having children, but this may be because it only requires confession on one occasion. Some observers claim this to be a triumph of Western values of freedom for women against states with Catholic values.


title: Birth rate

text: According to the CIA's "The World Factbook", who presumably get their figures from the World Health Organization, the country with the highest birth rate is Niger at 6.49 children born per woman and the country with the lowest birth rate is Taiwan, at 1.13 children born per woman. However, despite not having any official records, it can be presumed for obvious reasons (only men are allowed to be Catholic priests) that the Holy See has the lowest birth rate of any sovereign state.


title: Birth rate

text: Compared with the 1950s (when the birth rate was 36 per thousand), as of 2011, the world birth rate has declined by 16 per thousand.


title: Birth rate

text: While in Japan there are 126 million people and in Niger 21 million, both countries had around 1 million babies born in 2016.


title: Birth rate

text: The region of Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest birth rate in the world. As of 2016, Niger, Mali, Uganda, Zambia, and Burundi have the highest birth rates in the world. This is part of the fertility-income paradox, as these countries are very poor, and it may seem counter-intuitive for families there to have so many children. The inverse relationship between income and fertility has been termed a "demographic-economic "paradox"" by the notion that greater means would enable the production of more offspring as suggested by the influential Thomas Malthus.


title: Birth rate

text: Afghanistan has the 11th highest birth rate in the world, and also the highest birth rate of any non-African country (as of 2016). The rapid population growth of Afghanistan is considered a problem by preventing population stabilization, and affecting maternal and infant health. Reasons for large families include tradition, religion, the low status of women and the cultural desire to have several sons.


title: Birth rate

text: Historically, Australia has had a relatively low fertility rate, reaching a high of 3.14 births per woman in 1960. This was followed by a decline which continued until the mid-2000, when a one off cash incentive was introduced to reverse the decline. In 2004, the then Howard government introduced a non-means tested 'Maternity Payment' to parents of every newborn as a substitute to maternity leave. The payment known as the 'Baby Bonus' was A$3000 per child. This rose to A$5000 which was paid in 13 installments.


title: Birth rate

text: At a time when Australia's unemployment was at a 28-year low of 5.2%, the then Treasurer Peter Costello stated there was opportunity to go lower. With a good economic outlook for Australia, Costello held the view that now was a good time to expand the population, with his famous quote that every family should have three children "one for mum, one for dad and one for the country". Australia's fertility rate reached a peak of 1.95 children per woman in 2010, a 30-year high, although still below replacement rate.


title: Birth rate

text: Phil Ruthven of the business information firm IBISWorld believes the spike in fertility was more about timing and less about monetary incentives. Generation X was now aged 25 to 45 years old. With numerous women putting pregnancies off for a few years for the sake of a career, many felt the years closing in and their biological clocks ticking.


title: Birth rate

text: On 1 March 2014, the baby bonus was replaced with Family Tax Benefit A. By then the baby bonus had left its legacy on Australia.


title: Birth rate

text: France has been successful in increasing fertility rates from the low levels seen in the late 1980s, after a continuous fall in the birth rate. In 1994, the total fertility rate was as low as 1.66, but perhaps due to the active family policy of the government in the mid-1990s, it has increased, and maintained an average of 2.0 from 2008 until 2015.


title: Birth rate

text: France has embarked on a strong incentive policy based on two key measures to restore the birth rate: family benefits ("les allocations familiales") and a family-coefficient of income tax ("le quotient familial"). Since the end of World War II, early family policy in France has been based on a family tradition that requires children to support multi-child family, so that a third child enables a multi-child family to benefit from family allowances and income tax exemptions. This is intended to allow families with three children to enjoy the same living standards as households without children.


title: Birth rate

text: In particular, the French income taxation system is structured so that families with children receive tax breaks greater than single adults without children. This income tax imposition system is known as the family coefficient of income tax. A characteristic of the family factor is that households with a large number of children, even if they are at the same standard of living, can receive more tax exemption benefits.


title: Birth rate

text: Since the 1970s, the focus has been on supporting families who are vulnerable such as single parent families and the children of a poor family in order to ensure equality of opportunity. In addition, as many women began to participate in the labor market, the government introduced policies of financial support for childcare leave as well as childcare facilities. In 1994, the government expanded the parent education allowance ("l'allocation parentale d'éducation") for women with two children to ensure freedom of choice and reduce formal unemployment in order to promote family well-being and women's labor participation.


title: Birth rate

text: The birth rate in Germany is only 8.3 per thousand, lower than the UK and France (which have smaller populations).


title: Birth rate

text: In Europe as of July 2011, Ireland's birth rate was 16.5 per 1000 (3.5 percent higher than the next-ranked country, the UK).


title: Birth rate

text: As of 2016, Japan has the third lowest crude birth rate (i.e. not allowing for the population's age distribution) in the world, with only Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Monaco having lower crude birth rates. Japan has an unbalanced population with many elderly but few young people, and this is projected to be more extreme in the future, unless there are major changes. An increasing number of Japanese people are staying unmarried: between 1980 and 2010, the percentage of the population who had never married increased from 22% to almost 30%, even as the population continued to age, and by 2035 one in four people will not marry during their childbearing years. The Japanese sociologist Masahiro Yamada coined the term "parasite singles" for unmarried adults in their late 20s and 30s who continue to live with their parents.


title: Birth rate

text: In August 2011, Taiwan's government announced that its birth rate declined in the previous year, despite the fact that the government implemented approaches to encourage fertility.


title: Birth rate

text: In July 2011, the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced a 2.4 percent increase in live births in the UK in 2010. This is the highest birth rate in the UK in 40 years. However, the UK record year for births and birth rate remains 1920 (when the ONS reported over 957,000 births to a population of "around 40 million").


title: Birth rate

text: There has been a dramatic decline in birth rates in the U.S. between 2007 and 2020. The Great Recession appears to have contributed to the decline in the early period. A 2022 study did not identify any other economic, policy, or social factor that contributed to the decline. The decline may be due to shifting life priorities of recent cohorts that go through childbearing age, as there have been "changes in preferences for having children, aspirations for life, and parenting norms."


title: Birth rate

text: A Pew research center study found evidence of a correlation between economic difficulties and fertility decline by race and ethnicity. Hispanics (particularly affected by the recession) have experienced the largest fertility decline, particularly compared to Caucasians. In 2008–2009 the birth rate declined 5.9 percent for Hispanic women, 2.4 percent for African American women and 1.6 percent for white women. The relatively large birth rate declines among Hispanics mirror their relatively large economic declines, in terms of jobs and wealth. According to the statistics using the data from National Centre for Health Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau, from 2007 to 2008, the employment rate among Hispanics declined by 1.6 percentage points, compared with declines of 0.7 points for whites. The unemployment rate shows a similar pattern—unemployment among Hispanics increased 2.0 percentage points from 2007 to 2008, while for whites the increase was 0.9 percentage points. A recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center revealed that Hispanics have also been the biggest losers in terms of wealth since the beginning of the recession, with Hispanic households losing 66% of their median wealth from 2005 to 2009. In comparison, black households lost 53% of their median wealth and white households lost only 16%.


title: Birth rate

text: Other factors (such as women's labor-force participation, contraceptive technology and public policy) make it difficult to determine how much economic change affects fertility. Research suggests that much of the fertility decline during an economic downturn is a postponement of childbearing, not a decision to have fewer (or no) children; people plan to "catch up" to their plans of bearing children when economic conditions improve. Younger women are more likely than older women to postpone pregnancy due to economic factors, since they have more years of fertility remaining.


title: Birth rate

text: In July 2011, the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced that the adolescent birth rate continues to decline. In 2013, teenage birth rates in the U.S. were at the lowest level in U.S. history. Teen birth rates in the U.S. have decreased from 1991 through 2012 (except for an increase from 2005 to 2007). The other aberration from this otherwise-steady decline in teen birth rates is the six percent decrease in birth rates for 15- to 19-year-olds between 2008 and 2009. Despite the decrease, U.S. teen birth rates remain higher than those in other developed nations. Racial differences affect teen birth and pregnancy rates: American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic black teen pregnancy rates are more than double the non-Hispanic white teenage birth rate.


title: Birth rate

text: States strict in enforcing child support have up to 20 percent fewer unmarried births than states that are lax about getting unmarried dads to pay, the researchers found. Moreover, according to the results, if all 50 states in the United States had done at least as well in their enforcement efforts as the state ranked fifth from the top, that would have led to a 20 percent reduction in out-of-wedlock births.


title: Birth rate

text: The United States population growth is at a historical low level as the United States current birth rates are the lowest ever recorded. The low birth rates in the contemporary United States can possibly be ascribed to the recession, which led families to postpone having children and fewer immigrants coming to the US. The current US birth rates are not high enough to maintain the size of the U.S. population, according to The Economist.


title: Birth rate

text: Developed countries have a lower birth rate than underdeveloped countries (see Income and fertility). A parent's number of children strongly correlates with the number of children that each person in the next generation will eventually have. Factors generally associated with increased fertility include religiosity, intention to have children, and maternal support. Factors generally associated with decreased fertility include wealth, education, female labor participation, urban residence, intelligence, increased female age, women's rights, access to family planning services and (to a lesser degree) increased male age. Many of these factors however are not universal, and differ by region and social class. For instance, at a global level, religion is correlated with increased fertility.


title: Birth rate

text: Reproductive health can also affect the birth rate, as untreated infections can lead to fertility problems, as can be seen in the "infertility belt" - a region that stretches across central Africa from the United Republic of Tanzania in the east to Gabon in the west, and which has a lower fertility than other African regions.


title: Birth rate

text: Child custody laws, affecting fathers' parental rights over their children from birth until child custody ends at age 18, may have an effect on the birth rate. U.S. states strict in enforcing child support have up to 20 percent fewer unmarried births than states that are lax about getting unmarried fathers to pay, the researchers found. Moreover, according to the results, if all 50 states in the United States had done at least as well in their enforcement efforts as the state ranked fifth from the top, that would have led to a 20 percent reduction in out-of-wedlock births.


title: ThunderCats

text: ThunderCats is an American media franchise, featuring a fictional group of catlike humanoid aliens. The characters were created by Tobin "Ted" Wolf and originally featured in an animated television series named "ThunderCats", running from 1985 to 1989, which was animated by Japanese studio Pacific Animation Corporation, and co-produced by Rankin-Bass Animated Entertainment.


title: ThunderCats

text: Like its predecessor Masters of the Universe, the ThunderCats franchise simultaneously launched as a line of action figures produced by LJN and a syndicated after-school weekday cartoon.


title: ThunderCats

text: The original "ThunderCats" show was animated in Japan while being produced, written and voice acted in the United States.


title: ThunderCats

text: The series was originally distributed by Rankin-Bass Productions' then parent company Telepictures Corporation, which would later merge with Lorimar Productions in February 1986. In January 1989, Lorimar-Telepictures was purchased by and folded into Warner Bros., whose television syndication arm would eventually assume distribution of the show; Warner Bros. has owned the rights to the series (and all Lorimar Telepictures programming) from that point on.


title: ThunderCats

text: There were also several comic book series produced. A "ThunderCats" comic book series based on the animated series was originally published by Marvel Comics through its Star Comics imprint in 1985, lasting for three years and twenty-four issues. During this time, a new series was published by Marvel UK consisting of 129 issues and was also published for three years.


title: ThunderCats

text: Beginning in 2002, "ThunderCats" titles were published by Wildstorm Productions, an imprint of DC Comics (Warner Bros. corporate sibling), and included five non-canon miniseries and several one shots. In 2012, Panini Comics began publishing a new series in the United Kingdom to tie-in with the television series of 2011, titled "ThunderCats Magazine". The first issue featured a strip called "Safe Haven" which was written by Ferg Handley and drawn by Cosmo White.


title: ThunderCats

text: A side-scrolling video game based on the series, "ThunderCats: The Lost Eye of Thundera", was published in 1987.


title: ThunderCats

text: Items of clothing featuring the "ThunderCats" logo were available in the mid 1980s, and DVD boxsets releases of the original series helped new clothing products enjoy a resurgence in the mid to end of the 2000s, as nostalgia for the former children's favorite grew.


title: ThunderCats

text: A film adaptation of the series was announced in June 2007; Aurelio Jaro was to produce a CGI animated feature film of "ThunderCats", based on a script written by Paul Sopocy. Jerry O'Flaherty, veteran video game art director, had signed on to direct. The film was being produced by Spring Creek Productions.


title: ThunderCats

text: It was originally set for release in the summer of 2010, but the movie was never greenlit, and as of 2020, has yet to be produced. Concept art for the film has also been leaked online. In 2011, test footage in CGI was leaked onto YouTube. In 2017, during the promotion of "", Milla Jovovich expressed interest to portray Cheetara.


title: ThunderCats

text: In March 2021, it was announced that Warner Bros. was once more actively developing a live-action "ThunderCats" film with Adam Wingard set to direct the film, with a screenplay by Wingard and Simon Barrett, and Roy Lee and Dan Lin serving as producers.


title: ThunderCats

text: A second television series of the same name premiered in 2011. It was initially planned to have a fifty-two episode-long first season, but it was shortened down to 26, and cancelled shortly after season one finished airing. It later had reruns on Adult Swim's Toonami block, alongside "Sym-Bionic Titan".


title: ThunderCats

text: A third "ThunderCats" cartoon, "ThunderCats Roar", premiered on Cartoon Network in 2020. The show's developers are Victor Courtright and Marly Halpern-Graser. Courtright previously worked on "Pickle and Peanut" as a writer/storyboard artist and created the Cartoon Network Studios digital series "Get 'Em Tommy!". Halpern-Graser previously worked as a writer for various "DC Nation Shorts", and was co-creator of the show on Disney XD, "Right Now Kapow".


title: ThunderCats

text: "ThunderCats Roar" features an explicitly cartoonish art style with a more lighthearted, comedic tone than previous "ThunderCats" installments. The show's premise is similar to the original; the ThunderCats escape their dying homeworld Thundera, only to crash land on Third Earth, facing off against various villains and their evil overlord, Mumm-Ra.


title: ThunderCats

text: However, after airing for only one season, it received negative reception from viewers, and the show was cancelled.