Learn how to use the rendering power of Redshift to improve your motion graphics workflow. In this course, mograph artist Ryan McCauley introduces C4D artists to this powerful rendering engine that plugs right into any production pipeline. Learn the basics of biased GPU rendering and the node-based workflow in Redshift. Discover how to use the tools and options in the real-time Renderview, control geometry, work with particle systems, and create your own materials and textures. Find out how to place and manipulate lights and cameras in a scene and output a final render. Plus, get useful troubleshooting and workflow tips to help your Redshift rendering—and integration with Cinema 4D—run smoother.

They will critique your nachos.

Groundhog Day, Back to the Future, The Matrix, and more.

Ripped from the headlines, and inspired by this FPP, let's watch Contagion together on our own. It's widely available from US streaming services for under 5 US bucks. Youtube, Amazon (*not* on Prime Video), Google Play, Apple itunes, possibly available if you have Cinemax. We do not have the ability to share a stream.

. Fanfare
. IMDB
. Rotten Tomatoes
. Fact-Checking 'Contagion', npr

Thursday, March 19

Make popcorn, grab a beverage. Launch MeFi Chat, choose the LiveWatch tab (upper right), say hello. Please be ready to launch the film at 9.15 EDT; too early for the West Coast, too late for the East Coast, but whatevs. It will not be synchronized; we are resourceful. If you can't afford the movie, maybe I can screen share with 1 person? I'll watch my MeFi Mail, I have a gmail account in this name, also this page in case of issues. This is not a thing we've done before, but I've never had to avoid Covid-19 before, either. The unexpected is the new norm. This is only nominally hosted by MeFi, so if you want to complain, memail me, not the mods.

Thu March 19 at 6:00 PM,

Using the mighty combination of Discord and Steam, I will host a trial session where mefites can join my discord server, view my screen, and play Drawful 2.

Time: 8pm EST this Sunday, March 29. What: Drawful 2 -- https://store.steampowered.com/app/442070/Drawful_2/ How: Discord -- https://discordapp.com/ Where: The voice channel on my discord server -- https://discord.gg/MEcVs5S What you'll need: at the very least, a computer with a microphone, speakers, and connection to the Internet. Though if you wanted to connect without using audio, I think that should be fine too. A Discord account. Your very best drawing on a phone screen chops. A note on Drawful 2 -- it's designed for 3-8 players at a go, so depending on how many mefites show up, we may have to do some sharing. I'll be available on Mefi chat and on Discord from 7:30pm EST until the start time to assist with any technical or user set up issues. Discord can be confusing sometimes.

Sun March 29 at 8:00 PM,

People are getting out and biking more these days. Are you one of them, or do you want to be? I've been biking the streets of Portland for 7 years. I can look at Portland's bike maps with you and help you figure out the BEST route that will get you where you want to go.

time/date flexible

Mon May 11 at 8:00 PM,

Pollinators are in decline, but the right selection of plants can draw bees, butterflies, and humming birds to your yard in search of food and shelter

From upright and airy to short and mounding, these grasses form the backbone of a prairie garden

These tough, fuss-free perennials and grasses have adapted to North American climates and lend to the rustic prairie charm

A 1902 house's long-neglected porch regains its turn-of-the-century charm

Dog-friendly flooring needs to be durable, easy to clean, and attractive too. Here's what you need to know if you have four on the floor

Balaam's name appears over 60 times in the Bible. He is an interesting character with a somewhat tragic story but there are good and positive things we can learn about God and the choices we make.

Faith is essential in being saved. Do you have enough faith? Do you want more faith?

There are many stories in the Bible about how God saved people from the pit. The Pit is also a symbol of when we are lost in sin, overwhelmed by Passions, Possessions, and Positions.

What could be more important and more precious than hearing from God? How do we know when God is communicating with us?

Do you know how to engage in spiritual warfare? What weapons do you use on an enemy that you can't see?

There is a very real war going on around us at all times. A war that cannot be fought with guns and knives. A war where concerning us, we determine the outcome ...

It's a fact of life that people grapple with discouragement, despair, and depression. There are many causes of discouragement. How can we deal with it?

Angels are mentioned over 300 times in the Bible. They are God's 'ministering spirits' to guard, protect, and help us.

God became a man to save humanity. There are some things we cannot understand, like the mystery of the incarnation, but here are some points we can learn about this marvelous subject.

We all have a name but the Bible tells us there is a name above every name. When you become a Christian you take on the name of Christ.

How much are you willing to endure to see your King? How far are you willing to go?

As Christians we need to have both a practical and a biblical perspective on what is going on in the world. Most importantly, God does not want us to live in fear. We have an unprecedented opportunity to show people where to find peace and the Prince of Peace.

God is our safe shelter in the last days. We don't have to be afraid. God loves us and He will welcome us and protect us.

Wir zeigen euch anhand von Opta-Daten die bisherige Top-Elf der Bundesliga. Neben den üblichen Verdächtigen gibt es auch die eine oder andere Überraschung in der Aufstellung.

Nach dem neuen Starttermin der Bundesliga beantwortet DFL-Boss Christian Seifert weitere Fragen. Der DFB-Pokal soll ausgespielt werden und Relegationsspiele soll es ebenfalls geben.

Nach fast zwei Monaten Pause bekam die DFL nun das Go von der Bundesregierung, die Saison wieder zu starten. TSG-Geschäftsführer Dr. Peter Görlich bedankt sich für das Vertrauen.

Jetzt ist es offiziell: In der 1. und 2. Bundesliga wird der Ball wieder am 16. Mai rollen. Dies verkündete DFL-Geschäftsführer Christian Seifert auf einer Pressekonferenz.

"Iron Mike" lässt wieder die Fäuste fliegen, bisher nur im Training. Nach Berichten könnte es aber ein Box-Comeback von Mike Tyson gegen Rugby-Spieler Sonny Bill Williams geben.

25 Spieltage werden in der Bundesliga absolviert, bevor der Spielbetrieb wegen des Coronavirus unterbrochen werden muss. Bis dahin wird aber bereits so mancher Rekord gebrochen.

DFL-Geschäftsführer Christian Seifert bedankt sich bei allen Beteiligten, dass die Bundesliga am 16. Mai starten kann. Zudem zeigen andere Ligen Interesse am erstellten Konzept.

Brasilien leidet schwer unter der Corona-Pandemie. Die Zahl der Infizierten steigt nach wie vor stark. Beim Topklub Flamengo, Meister und Copa-Libertadores-Sieger, gib es nun besorgniserregend viele Fälle.

Welchen Einfluss haben Fans auf das Ergebnis? Der Neustart der Bundesliga bedeutet einen Wettlauf zwischen Buchmachern und Profitippern. Bis die Quoten angepasst werden, profitiert der ganz normale „Bauch-Tipper“.

Heung-min Son nutzte die Corona-Zwangspause der Premier League, um sich in Südkorea militärisch ausbilden zu lassen. Tottenham Hotspurs Stürmer tat sich in den Gefechtsübungen hervor. Das machte Eindruck bei seinen Vorgesetzten.

Die Bundesliga darf wieder spielen – das ist besonders für den wirtschaftlich angeschlagenen FC Schalke 04 überlebenswichtig. Dessen Spieler beziehen jetzt ein Quarantäne-Trainingslager. Auf sie werde aber kein Druck ausgeübt, sagt Sportvorstand Jochen Schneider.

Seit seinem Wechsel von Eintracht Frankfurt zu Real Madrid ging es für Luka Jovic bergab. Der Stürmer steht vor einem Wechsel. Nun zog er sich eine schwere Verletzung zu. In den eigenen vier Wänden.

Am nächsten Wochenende setzt die Fußball-Bundesliga ihre Mitte März unterbrochene Saison fort. Für den Torjubel und auch andere Abläufe im und vor dem Spiel gibt es von der Deutschen Fußball Liga exakte Vorschriften.

Bei Olympia 2016 avancierte Schwimmerin Yusra Mardini zum Gesicht des Flüchtlingsteams. Die junge Syrerin war übers Mittelmeer geflüchtet – ihre neue Heimat damals: Berlin. Wie sie nach dem Krieg die Krise erlebt.

While Kelly Lytle Hernández was growing up in San Diego near the U.S.-Mexico border in the late 1980s and early '90s, she watched as people from her community, friends and neighbors, disappeared: Black youths disappeared into the prison system; Mexican immigrants disappeared through deportations. These experiences affected her deeply. "It was growing up in that environment that forced me to want to understand what was happening to us and why it seemed legitimate," Lytle Hernández tells All Things Considered . "And I wanted to disrupt that legitimacy." For answers to those questions, Lytle Hernández turned to the past. A historian and expert on immigration, race and mass incarceration, she is now a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is one of this year's 26 MacArthur Fellows . "History is a narrative of the past. It is based upon the sources that we regard as relevant or that we can find," she says. And so her work includes tracking down records that reflect

The nearly four-minute campaign ad begins with scenery of a small town sheriff's race in the South. A camouflage fishing boat winds down a picturesque waterway. The talk from a front porch rocking chair is of hunting, Christian values and guns. Then, more than halfway through the video, Craig Stivender, a Republican candidate for sheriff in Colleton County, S.C., reveals a picture of himself in blackface with his arm around an African American woman. "To those of you who may be upset, I understand your disappointment," he says in the video. Stivender, who is currently a fireman in the rural community just west of Charleston, goes on to explain the photograph was taken at a Halloween party for law enforcement nearly a decade ago. He says he released the picture to begin his campaign with full transparency. The election is in November 2020. "Basically if I'm going to run on honesty and integrity, I'm willing to put out things bad about me," he said in a telephone interview. Stivender

A white police officer fired through the window of a black woman's home early Saturday and killed her after responding to a call that a neighbor placed about an open front door, authorities in Fort Worth, Texas, say. Around 2:25 a.m., officers responded to an "open structure call" made by a neighbor to the police department's nonemergency number. Inside the home, Atatiana Jefferson, 28, and her 8-year-old nephew were playing video games. Body camera footage released by the police shows the officer outside the home, looking into Jefferson's bedroom window and shouting, "Put your hands up! Show me your hands!" before firing a single bullet that killed Jefferson. Kyev Tatum, a pastor and community activist who was on the scene shortly after the shooting, told NPR that the neighbor who called the police was worried about the welfare of Jefferson. He said Jefferson may have had her front door open for a reason. "This was probably one of the first days that we had cool weather in Fort Worth.

Like a lot of young women her age, 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson had a date Friday night — but unlike many of her peers, Jefferson's date was with her 8-year-old nephew. They were enjoying a heated video game that went into the early hours of Saturday when police arrived at the house Jefferson shared with her mother. Officers were responding to a nonemergency call from James Smith, a neighbor who knew Jefferson's mother was not well. (Jefferson, a pre-med graduate of Xavier University, had moved home to care for her ailing parent, who was in the hospital recovering from unspecified injuries.) Smith was worried when he saw doors to the Jefferson home wide open late at night. Despite the nonemergency nature of the call, two police officers crept up to the house unannounced, their flashlights sweeping the yard. Then one spotted Jefferson peering out of a window. In body camera footage released by the Fort Worth Police Department, an officer can be heard shouting, " Put your hands up!

Updated at 8:11 p.m. ET The interim chief of the Fort Worth Police Department apologized on Tuesday to the family of Atatiana Jefferson in the aftermath of her fatal shooting by a police officer while she was in her home. "This incident has eroded the trust that we have built with our community and we must now work even harder to ensure that trust is restored," said Interim Police Chief Ed Kraus. Aaron Dean, the officer who shot Jefferson, resigned from the department and has been charged with murder . Kraus said that there is "absolutely no excuse" for the incident and that Dean will be held responsible for his actions. He asked the Fort Worth community to not allow the incident to reflect poorly on the entire police department. "The officers are hurting," he said. "They try hard every day to try to make this city better." Jefferson's family is calling for an independent investigation so that the Fort Worth Police Department is not investigating itself. The mayor told NPR she

Water and wildlife in the nation's public forests are slowly being poisoned by insecticides and other chemicals used in illegal marijuana operations, say forest police and researchers. They warn that the potential environmental damage could last generations. Many of the grows are the work of highly organized drug cartels that take advantage of the forests' thick canopy to help hide their operations. Some sites go undetected for years. "The true crime here is the fact that they're killing off basically America's public lands, killing off the wildlife, killing off our water," says Kevin Mayer, a U.S. Forest Service law enforcement assistant special agent in charge. "This is stuff that, you know, it's not gonna repair itself." Now, an unlikely coalition in California — including environmentalists, law enforcement agents, politicians, wildlife ecologists and representatives of the legal cannabis industry — have joined forces to try to reduce these illegal operations and the environmental

Updated Nov. 12, 5:25 p.m. ET While the number of reported hate crimes dipped slightly in 2018, violence against individuals rose to a 16-year high, according to numbers released Tuesday by the FBI. The FBI's annual tally counted 7,120 hate crimes reported last year, 55 fewer than the year before. The main concern for extremism trackers, however, is the rising level of violence — the report showed an increase in the number of "crimes against persons," such as intimidation, assault and homicide. "We're seeing a leaner and meaner type of hate crime going on," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino. "Homicides were up and crimes against persons were up and that's an important thing to look at." Hate crimes targeting people accounted for 61% of all hate crimes in 2018, according to Levin, who is co-author of a report released Tuesday that analyzes law enforcement data. The FBI recorded 24 murders classified

A days-long tense standoff between protesters and police is grinding on at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The numbers of protesters barricaded inside the school has dwindled to about 100, and their food supplies are rapidly depleting after police surrounded the campus on Sunday. The situation is growing so desperate for the remaining protesters that several of them unsuccessfully attempted to escape the police siege by climbing through sewer drains, according to local media . Police say they've arrested about 1,100 people in the past day. At a Tuesday news conference , officers accused the protesters of crimes such as taking part in riots and possessing dangerous weapons. Authorities have threatened to use live ammunition against the demonstrators, though they say that level of force is a last resort. Protesters are pleading for help. A video posted by protest leader Joshua Wong features a message from a masked woman who is identified as a student at Polytechnic University. "We have

Updated at 11:35 a.m. ET on Saturday A pair of armed robbers and two others, including the driver of a hijacked UPS truck, were killed in an exchange of gunfire with South Florida police officers after the suspects led authorities on a high-speed chase. The robbers held up a jewelry store on Thursday before commandeering the UPS truck and holding its driver hostage, according to Coral Gables Police . After fleeing the scene and evading police for dozens of miles, the truck stopped in the middle of rush-hour traffic as armed officers surrounded it. "There was exchanged fire between law enforcement and the suspects, and unfortunately, the suspects are now deceased," George Piro, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami office, said . "But two additional innocent civilians were also deceased." Former Department of Housing and Urban Development official Brandon Friedman described the shootout as "appalling." He said the police department should be held accountable for "choosing to

St. Louis' first black prosecutor, Kim Gardner, has sued the city, its police union and five others for what she calls a racist effort to block her reform agenda. "Gardner was elected in 2016 on a promise to redress the scourge of historical inequality and rebuild trust in the criminal justice system among communities of color," reads the lawsuit filed Monday in federal court. "Unfortunately, entrenched interests in St. Louis ... have mobilized to thwart these efforts through a broad campaign of collusive conduct" to protect the status quo and remove Gardner from office. Jacob Long, a spokesman for Mayor Lyda Krewson, said the city "vehemently denied what it considers to be meritless allegations levied against it" and expected to be "fully vindicated." Jeff Roorda, a police union official named in the suit, called it "the last act of a desperate woman." The suit has its roots in the 2018 prosecution of then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens. Gardner hired an outside investigator to look into

Cybercrime is booming, and victims are often at a loss about where to get help. In theory, Americans should report the crimes to the FBI, via its Internet Crime Complaint Center . In practice, the feds get hundreds of thousands of complaints a year, and have to focus on the biggest cases. But the other option, calling the police, can seem even less promising. "They didn't even respond," says Gregg Bennett, whose loss of 100 Bitcoin was described in an earlier NPR story about SIM-swap scams . He says he called his city's police department soon after discovering the theft, but concluded it was a dead end. "They have no ability to look up something like this," Bennett says. "It certainly is not local — this is not a local issue." It's conventional wisdom that cybercrime is too technical and too international for local police to handle. But as daily life becomes more digital, so does everyday crime, and some police say they can no longer avoid wading into the world of phone spoofers,

U.S. authorities have seized the domain name of a website that allegedly sold access to billions of usernames, email addresses, passwords and other sensitive information stolen in data breaches. Now, visitors to the not-so-subtle website – weleakinfo.com — are greeted with a homepage that reads, "This Domain Has Been Seized." The Justice Department and the FBI took control of the site as part of a "comprehensive law enforcement action" involving authorities in Germany, Northern Ireland, the U.K. and the Netherlands. Two men in Europe have been arrested so far in connection with the site. WeLeakInfo billed itself as a "search engine" that subscribers could use to pore over data illegally obtained from more than 10,000 data breaches, U.S. authorities said in a statement . In all, the Justice Department said the site was offering access to more than 12 billion indexed records. "The website sold subscriptions so that any user could access the results of these data breaches, with