title: Pierre Bergé

text: On 26 September 2013, Bergé declared he was in favor of the removal of all Christian holidays in France.


title: Pierre Bergé

text: In March 2016, Bergé expressed his position on "modest fashion" in an interview with French Radio Station Europe 1, saying, "I am scandalized. Creators should have nothing to do with Islamic fashion. Designers are there to make women more beautiful, to give them their freedom, not to collaborate with this dictatorship which imposes this abominable thing by which we hide women and make them live a hidden life... In one way they are complicit, and all this to make money. Principles should come before money."


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: media franchise created by comic book writers Randy Stradley and Chris Warner. The series is a crossover between, and part of, the larger "Alien" and "Predator" franchises, depicting the two species as being in conflict with one another. It began as a comic book series in 1989, before being adapted into a video game series in the 1990s. Produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox, the film series began with "Alien vs. Predator" (2004), directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, and was followed by "" (2007), directed by the Brothers Strause, and the development of a third film has been delayed indefinitely. The series has led to numerous novels, comics, and video game spin-offs such as "Aliens vs. Predator" released in 2010.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: The "Alien vs. Predator" franchise depicts a series of deadly encounters between humanity and other extraterrestrial species: the Aliens, ferocious, endoparasitoid creatures; and the Predators, technologically advanced warriors that hunt for personal sport and honor. Predominantly transpiring in the present day of the 21st century, the series acts as a spin-off to both the "Alien" franchise and the "Predator" franchise, portraying humankind's encounters with alien species and how they helped shape the human civilization and weaponry such as the Colonel Marines, the United America, and those involved with the Weyland-Yutani Corporation that is seen in the "Alien" franchise of the future.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Throughout the series, audiences see the involvement of the forerunners of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation in the history of these alien creatures as Weyland Industries, headed by Charles Bishop Weyland (one of the many within the Weyland family), who seeks immortality and the advancement of the company, whereas the Yutani Corporation, headed by Ms. Yutani, seeks to study creatures from space and acquire their technology and weaponry for organized warfare. Amidst the actions of the two corporations, human characters are forced to survive infestations of Xenomorphs and clashes with Yautjas, eventually leading to the future merger between the two companies and the development of interstellar travel and eventually wars with other races from space and other advanced technologies.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: The first "Alien vs. Predator" story was published by Dark Horse Comics in "Dark Horse Presents" #34–36 (November 1989 – February 1990). In November 1990, "Predator 2" was released in theaters and included a scene depicting an Alien (Xenomorph) skull as one of the Predator's trophies. Over the coming years, Fox had been pursuing a cinematic adaptation of the concept to advance the "Alien" and "Predator" franchises further, and Peter Briggs was tasked with the job to write an early script for the project and eventually pitched an idea titled "The Hunt: Alien vs. Predator" in 1994, but the pitch was rejected and development of the film remained stuck in development hell for almost a decade before the first feature film was finally released in 2004 under the helm of Paul W. S. Anderson, titled "Alien vs. Predator", with a sequel by the Brothers Strause, titled "", eventually released in 2007. Ellen Ripley does not appear in this franchise, as it takes place more than a century prior to the events of the "Alien" series.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: The first actor to be cast for "Alien vs. Predator" was Lance Henriksen, who played the characters Bishop and Michael Bishop Weyland in "Aliens" and "Alien 3" (and ""). Although the "Alien" films are set 150 years in the future, Anderson wanted to keep continuity with the series by including a familiar actor. Henriksen plays billionaire and self-taught-engineer Charles Bishop Weyland, a character that ties in with the Weyland-Yutani Corporation as the original founder and CEO of Weyland Industries. Henriksen later returned to the franchise through the role of Karl Bishop Weyland, a descendant of Charles Weyland, in the 2010 video game "Aliens vs. Predator".


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: According to Anderson, Weyland becomes known for the discovery of the pyramid, and as a result the Weyland-Yutani Corporation models the Bishop android in the "Alien" films after him; "when the Bishop android is created in 150 years time, it's created with the face of the creator. It's kind of like Microsoft building an android in 100 years time that has the face of Bill Gates." The Brothers Strause further stated how the ending of their sequel built further upon establishing the future of the universe by having the Predator technology acquired by Yutani Corporation (and by extension Project Stargazer of the "Predator" films) act as the impetus for the development of advanced technologies such as FTL (faster-than-light travel) drives fitted aboard spaceships.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: The legacy of the shared universe has also shown itself in later films. In the 2010 film "Predators", when the group of main protagonists enters the Predators' camp, there is a brief view of an Alien skull on the ground (as well as the lower jaw of an Alien on the helmet of the Berserker Predator), referring to the similar moment from "Predator 2" when an Alien skull is seen in the trophy room of the Predator spaceship. Furthermore, the 2018 film titled "The Predator" featured several references to "Alien vs. Predator" such as the shurikens, mask designs, and Alexa's spear which the Predator named Scar made out of an Alien tail. An alternate ending for "The Predator" displaying a Weyland-Yutani Corp pod containing Ripley and Newt from "Aliens" (both played by Breanna Watkins) wearing a Weyland-Yutani breathing apparatus shaped like an Alien Facehugger was also intended to further connect to the "Alien" films.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: In 2004, a Predator mothership arrives in Earth orbit to draw humans to an ancient Predator training ground on Bouvetøya, an island about one thousand miles north of Antarctica. A buried pyramid giving off a "heat bloom" attracts a group of explorers led by billionaire and self-taught engineer Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen), the original founder and CEO of Weyland Industries, who unknowingly activates an Alien egg production line as a hibernating Alien Queen is awakened within the pyramid. Three Predators descend unto the planet and enter the structure, killing all humans in their way with the intention of hunting the newly formed Aliens, while the scattered explorers are captured alive by Aliens and implanted with embryos. Two Predators die in the ensuing battle with an Alien, while the third allies itself with the lone surviving human, Alexa "Lex" Woods (Sanaa Lathan), while making their way out of the pyramid as it is destroyed by the Predator's wrist bomb and eventually does battle with the escaped Alien Queen on the surface. The Queen is defeated by being dragged down by a water tower into the dark depths of the frozen sea, but not before she fatally wounds the last Predator. The orbiting Predator mothership uncloaks and the crew retrieves the fallen Predator. A Predator elder gives Lex a spear as a sign of respect, and then departs. Once in orbit it is revealed that an Alien Chestburster was present within the corpse, thus a Predalien hybrid is born.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Set immediately after the events of the previous film, the Predalien hybrid aboard the Predator scout ship, having just separated from the mothership shown in the previous film, has grown to full adult size and sets about killing the Predators aboard the ship, causing it to crash in the small town of Gunnison, Colorado. The last surviving Predator activates a distress beacon containing a video recording of the Predalien, which is received by a veteran Predator on the Predator homeworld, who sets off towards Earth to "clean up" the infestation. When it arrives, the Predator tracks the Aliens into a section of the sewer below the town. He removes evidence of their presence as he moves along using a corrosive blue liquid and uses a laser net to try to contain the creatures, but the Aliens still manage to escape into the town above. The Predator fashions a plasma pistol from its remaining plasma caster and hunts Aliens all across town, accidentally cutting the power to the town in the process. During a confrontation with human survivors, the Predator loses its plasma pistol. The Predator then fights the Predalien singlehandedly, and the two mortally wound one another just as the US air force drops a tactical nuclear bomb on the town, incinerating both combatants along with the Predalien's warriors and hive, as well as the few remaining humans in the town. The salvaged plasma pistol is then taken to a Ms. Yutani of the Yutani Corporation, foreshadowing an advancement in technology leading to the future events of the "Alien" films.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Colin and Greg Strause were adamant that they wanted to develop "Alien vs. Predator 3" during the production of "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem". They essentially sought to make an "AVP"-film in space and set in the future, but by the time they were hired, 20th Century Fox had already decided to go with Salerno's script set on Earth. They incorporated elements of their ideas into the second film, such as the Predator home planet. In 2008 "An anonymous source over at 20th Century Fox got in touch with us over the weekend to relay the news another "Aliens vs. Predator" sequel is a 'certainty' at this point. If you recall, the brothers Strause – who helmed the Christmas release "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" – stated Fox was going to take a 'wait-and-see' approach to a third chapter, furthermore, that the story would have to continue in space."


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: On October 28, 2010, io9 published an exclusive interview with the Brothers Strause in which they revealed that "Alien vs. Predator 3" would have led directly into "Alien". Greg Strause stated that, "The original ending for "AVPR", that we pitched them, ended up on the Alien homeward [sic], and actually going from the Predator gun, that you see at the end, it was going to transition from that gun to a logo of a Weyland-Yutani spaceship that was heading to an alien planet. And then we were actually going to cut down to the surface [of the alien planet] and you were going to see a hunt going on. It was going to be a whole tribe of predators going against this creature that we called "King Alien." It's this huge giant winged alien thing. And that was going to be the lead-in, to show that the fact that the Predator gun [at the end of "AVPR"] is the impetus of all the technological advancements that allowed humans to travel in space. Which leads up to the "Alien" timeline."


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: When asked about the ending sequence of "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem", that the Predator-weapon handed to Ms. Yutani would lead to us humans developing advanced space travel technology, Greg stated, "That was the idea. They never got any of the equipment from the first Predators. It's the first time they ever received any intact working technology left over. So they could take that and reverse engineer, figure out what the power source was – all of those things. And in theory, that would enable that company [Weyland-Yutani] to make massive advancements in technology and dominate the space industry. That was the whole idea, was to literally continue from Ms. Yutani getting the gun – and then cut to 50 years in the future, and there's spaceships now. We've made a quantum leap in space travel. That was going to set up the ending, which would then set up what "AVP" was going to be, which would take place 100 years in the future. That was kind of the plan."


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Liam O'Donnell, who worked as a visual effects consultant on "Requiem", wrote a script treatment for "AVP3" during the production of "Requiem" which was set in South Africa about fifty years in the future when global warming had melted the ice caps (and releasing the Alien Queen from Antarctica), featuring the merger and global rule of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation and their development of interstellar travel based on the recovered Predator technology from Gunnison.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: In 2015, having worked on the special effects of "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem", VFX make-up artist David Woodruff (the son of Tom Woodruff who worked on both the "Alien"- and "Terminator"-franchises) participated in an interview with TheTerminatorFans, and when asked about the situation of a third chapter in the "AVP"-trilogy, he stated, "I haven't heard anything about a 3rd installment, not even rumors. This Neill Blomkamp project is the first possibility I've seen or heard of another "Alien" film and I'm all about it. I know the guys at Amalgamated Dynamics are pushing for something like this too. It's time."


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: In 2015, during the London Film and Comic Con, Sigourney Weaver stated that she asked to have Ripley killed in "Alien 3" because she knew that Fox were moving forward with "Alien vs. Predator". Peter Briggs (writer of "The Hunt: Alien vs. Predator") responded by praising all films in the franchise and pointing out that the "AVP"-films were more successful than Weaver's last two "Alien"-films, and noting that "There's a terrific "Alien vs. Predator" movie still to be made by someone. It just hasn't happened yet."


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: In mid-2018, Shane Black, the director of "The Predator", tweeted his belief that a third "Alien vs. Predator" can still happen, indicating the studio's interest in both franchises. A ComicBookRumours.com article from July suggested Fox may attempt an ""AVP" Cinematic Universe" after Ridley Scott finishes making , after which Fox considered a "soft reboot" to the "Alien" series with new/original characters, a new setting, and new timeline, which the same article also suggested, if it were to happen, could potentially take place within the same continuity as the "Predator" films and "AVP" films. Noting "Predators" featured an Alien skull cameo (along with other references to "Aliens") and Lex Wood's Xenomorph tail spear from "Alien vs. Predator" make appearance in "The Predator". Alternate endings produced for "The Predator" displaying a Weyland-Yutani Corp pod containing Ripley and Newt (both played by Breanna Watkins) wearing a Weyland-Yutani breathing apparatus shaped like an Alien Facehugger was also intended to further connect to the "Alien" films. In 2020, Alex Litvak, the co-writer of "Predators" revealed the original script for the film's cancelled sequel, which would feature the Colonial Marines from "Aliens".


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: The "Alien vs. Predator" duology has received a negative critical response, with the primary source of criticism being the plot, lighting and editing.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: "Wach auf!" from German industrial metal group Oomph!'s appeared in the German version of "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" and was released as a single to tie-in with the film.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: There exists a great number of spin-offs in other media, including a large number of crossovers within the "Alien/Predator" fictional universe.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Dark Horse Comics published various lines based on the franchise, starring character of Machiko Noguchi. The "Fire and Stone" (2014–2015) and "Life and Death" (2016–2017) series crosses over the continuities of "Alien vs. Predator" and "Prometheus" with graphic novel sequels. Marvel Comics acquired the comic book rights to the "Alien vs. Predator" franchise in 2020, in addition to the rights to the "Alien" and "Predator" franchises at the request of Disney.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Other books expanding this fictional universe has been released through the years, and also such that depict the background to the films, including works by special effects company Amalgamated Dynamics Incorporated (ADI) which has worked with both the "Alien", "Predator", and "Alien vs. Predator" films.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: The 1993 SFC beat 'em up Alien vs. Predator was developed by Jorudan and Published by Activision (NA, PAL) and IGS (JP).


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: An "Alien vs. Predator" arcade beat 'em up game was released by Capcom in 1994. Two other "Alien vs Predator" games were also published by Activision for the SNES and Game Boy in 1993. There were also several "Alien vs. Predator" mobile games, and two cancelled titles for the Atari Lynx and Game Boy Advance.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: In 1994, Atari Corporation released the Rebellion Developments-developed first-person shooter "Alien vs Predator" for the Atari Jaguar, in which one could play as an Alien, Marine, or Predator. Rebellion then went on to develop the similarly themed 1999's "Aliens versus Predator" for the PC. This was followed by, among others, "Aliens versus Predator 2" and the expansion pack "". In 2010, Sega released a reboot, "Aliens vs. Predator", a multiplatform first-person shooter also made by Rebellion and tied into the timeline of the live-action films.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: In 2003 a real-time strategy game "" was made for the PS2 and Xbox featuring 3 campaign modes for both races as well as humans. It featured several variations of Predators and Aliens seen throughout the films and other forms of media including the famous Predalien.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Zen Studios developed and released a virtual pinball based upon the 1986 film "Aliens", the 2004 film "Alien vs. Predator", and the 2014 video game "Alien: Isolation" in the "Aliens vs. Pinball" collection, available as an add-on pack for "Zen Pinball 2", "Pinball FX 2" and "Pinball FX 3" on April 26, 2016. The three tables features 3-D animated figures of Ellen Ripley, Alexa Woods, Amanda Ripley, the Alien, and the Predator.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: During the 1980s and 1990s, Halcyon Models released seventeen "Alien" model kits, beginning in 1987, as well as a "Predator 2" model kit in 1994.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: In 1994, Kenner released a collection of action figures known as "Aliens vs. Predator". This followed the two initial series of "Aliens" that were based on an animated series, "Operation: Aliens", that was never broadcast. As such, the inclusion of Predator is often considered the 3rd and 4th series of the "Aliens" line. This collection includes several Aliens, many of which feature built-in attack features, and Predators, which include removable masks and battle weapons such as spears and missile launchers. The figures generally possess 5 points of articulation, and some include a mini Dark Horse comic book.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: While the collection as a whole is known as "Aliens vs. Predator", the two character types have their own card art that only features the character at hand. An exception would be the "Aliens vs. Predator" 2-pack. Since human space marines were included in the initial "Aliens" line, the Predator was marketed as an alternative enemy to the Aliens. A figure cardback reads: "The stage is set for the universe's two most ferocious enemies. It's the gruesome and evil Aliens against the big-game hunter Predator. Who will win... the beast or the hunter? Can the Predator stop the evil Aliens before the galaxy is destroyed?!?!?!"


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: In 1998, Kay Bee Toys released the Kenner produced "Aliens: Hive Wars" line featuring Aliens, Marines, and Predators. More figures, including a female Predator and an Alien/Predator/Smash Mason 3-pack, were designed for this series but never released as part of the line.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Six sets of Aliens and Predator Micro Machines were also planned by Galoob in 1995 but never released. This would have also included the LV-426/Outer World Station Action Fleet Playset. Thanks in part to the research of toy collectors, many photos of these unreleased toys and prototypes have shown up online in recent years.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: In December 2002, McFarlane Toys released a highly detailed "Alien vs. Predator" deluxe set. In 2004, they produced a series of figures based on the "Alien vs. Predator" film. Alongside the articulated figures, McFarlane also released statuesque display sets depicting scenes from the film.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: NECA has produced various lines of "Alien vs. Predator" figures for several years. In 2007, they released two series of "Requiem" figures.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Originally having produced figures based on the 2013 video game "Aliens: Colonial Marines", Hiya Toys has also released figures based on "Predator", "Predator 2", and "Alien: Covenant".


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Loot Crate and Titans Vinyl Figures have collaborated in producing several figures and other merchandise based on characters and creatures from the "Alien vs. Predator" universe.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: Eaglemoss Collections currently produces the ongoing "Alien & Predator" line of figures based on characters and creatures from the "Alien vs. Predator" universe.


title: Alien vs. Predator

text: On August 4, 2014, Universal Studios confirmed that there will be haunted mazes based on "Alien vs. Predator" for their Halloween Horror Nights events at both Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Studios Florida.


title: Neal Cassady

text: Neal Leon Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s.


title: Neal Cassady

text: He was prominently featured as himself in the "scroll" (first draft) version of Jack Kerouac<nowiki>'s</nowiki> novel "On the Road", and served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in the 1957 version of that book. In many of Kerouac's later books, Cassady is represented by the character Cody Pomeray. Cassady also appeared in Allen Ginsberg's poems, and in several other works of literature by other writers.


title: Neal Cassady

text: Cassady was born to Maude Jean (Scheuer) and Neal Marshall Cassady in Salt Lake City, Utah. His mother died when he was 10, and he was raised by his alcoholic father in Denver, Colorado. Cassady spent much of his youth either living on the streets of skid row, with his father, or in reform school.


title: Neal Cassady

text: As a youth, Cassady was repeatedly involved in petty crime. He was arrested for car theft when he was 14, for shoplifting and car theft when he was 15, and for car theft and fencing stolen property when he was 16.


title: Neal Cassady

text: In 1941, the 15-year-old Cassady met Justin W. Brierly, a prominent Denver educator. Brierly was well known as a mentor of promising young men and was impressed by Cassady's intelligence. Over the next few years, Brierly took an active role in Cassady's life. Brierly helped admit Cassady to East High School where he taught Cassady as a student, encouraged and supervised his reading, and found employment for him. Cassady continued his criminal activities, however, and was repeatedly arrested from 1942 to 1944; on at least one of these occasions, he was released by law enforcement into Brierly's safekeeping. In June 1944, Cassady was arrested for possession of stolen goods and served 11 months of a one-year prison sentence. Brierly and he actively exchanged letters during this period, even through Cassady's intermittent incarcerations; this correspondence represents Cassady's earliest surviving letters. Brierly is also believed to have been responsible for Cassady's first homosexual experience.


title: Neal Cassady

text: In October 1945, after being released from prison, Cassady married 16-year-old Lu Anne Henderson. In 1946, the couple traveled to New York City to visit their friend, Hal Chase, another protégé of Brierly's. While visiting Chase at Columbia University, Cassady met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Although Cassady did not attend Columbia, he soon became friends with them and their acquaintances, some of whom later became members of the Beat Generation. While in New York, Cassady persuaded Kerouac to teach him to write fiction. Cassady's second wife, Carolyn, has stated, "Neal, having been raised in the slums of Denver amongst the world's lost men, determined to make more of himself, to become somebody, to be worthy and respected. His genius mind absorbed every book he could find, whether literature, philosophy, or science. Jack had a formal education, which Neal envied, but intellectually he was more than a match for Jack, and they enjoyed long discussions on every subject."


title: Neal Cassady

text: Carolyn Robinson met Cassady in 1947, while she was studying for her master's in theater arts at the University of Denver. Five weeks after Lu Anne's departure, Neal got an annulment from Lu Anne and married Carolyn, on April 1, 1948. Carolyn's book, "Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg" (1990), details her marriage to Cassady and recalls him as "the archetype of the American Man". Cassady's sexual relationship with Ginsberg lasted off and on for the next 20 years.


title: Neal Cassady

text: During this period, Cassady worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad and kept in touch with his "Beat" acquaintances, even as they became increasingly different philosophically.


title: Neal Cassady

text: The couple eventually had three children and settled down in a ranch house in Monte Sereno, California, 50 miles south of San Francisco, where Kerouac and Ginsberg sometimes visited. This home, built in 1954 with money from a settlement from Southern Pacific Railroad for a train-related accident, was demolished in August 1997.


title: Neal Cassady

text: In 1950, Cassady entered into a marriage with Diane Hansen, a young model who was pregnant with his child, Curtis Hansen.


title: Neal Cassady

text: Cassady traveled cross-country with both Kerouac and Ginsberg on multiple occasions, including the trips documented in Kerouac's "On the Road".


title: Neal Cassady

text: Following an arrest in 1958 for offering to share a small amount of marijuana with an undercover agent at a San Francisco nightclub, Cassady served a two-year sentence at California's San Quentin State Prison in Marin County. After his release in June 1960, he struggled to meet family obligations, and Carolyn divorced him when his parole period expired in 1963. Carolyn stated that she was looking to relieve Cassady of the burden of supporting a family, but "this was a mistake and removed the last pillar of his self-esteem".


title: Neal Cassady

text: After the divorce, in 1963, Cassady shared an apartment with Allen Ginsberg and Beat poet Charles Plymell, at 1403 Gough Street, San Francisco.


title: Neal Cassady

text: Cassady first met author Ken Kesey during the summer of 1962; he eventually became one of the Merry Pranksters, a group that formed around Kesey in 1964, who were vocal proponents of the use of psychedelic drugs.


title: Neal Cassady

text: During 1964, Cassady served as the main driver of the bus named "Furthur" on the iconic first half of the journey from San Francisco to New York, which was immortalized by Tom Wolfe's book, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" (1968). Cassady appears at length in a documentary film about the Merry Pranksters and their cross-country trip, "Magic Trip" (2011), directed by Alex Gibney.


title: Neal Cassady

text: In January 1967, Cassady traveled to Mexico with fellow prankster George "Barely Visible" Walker and Cassady's longtime girlfriend Anne Murphy. In a beachside house just south of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, they were joined by Barbara Wilson and Walter Cox. All-night storytelling, speed drives in Walker's Lotus Elan, and the use of LSD made for a classic Cassady performance — "like a trained bear," Carolyn Cassady once said. Cassady was beloved for his ability to inspire others to love life, yet at rare times he was known to express regret over his wild life, especially as it affected his family. At one point, Cassady took Cox, then 19, aside and told him: "[T]wenty years of fast living — there's just not much left, and my kids are all screwed up. Don't do what I have done."


title: Neal Cassady

text: During the next year, Cassady's life became less stable, and the pace of his travels more frenetic. He left Mexico in May, traveling to San Francisco, Denver, New York City, and points in between. Cassady then returned to Mexico in September and October (stopping in San Antonio, on the way to visit his oldest daughter, who had just given birth to his first grandchild), visited Ken Kesey's Oregon farm in December, and spent the New Year with Carolyn at a friend's house near San Francisco. Finally, in late January 1968, Cassady returned to Mexico once again.


title: Neal Cassady

text: On February 3, 1968, Cassady attended a wedding party in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. After the party, he went walking along a railroad track to reach the next town, but passed out in the cold and rainy night wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans. In the morning, he was found in a coma by the tracks, reportedly by Anton Black, later a professor at El Paso Community College, who carried Cassady over his shoulders to the local post office building. Cassady was then transported to the closest hospital, where he died a few hours later on February 4, four days short of his 42nd birthday.


title: Neal Cassady

text: The exact cause of Cassady's death remains uncertain. Those who attended the wedding party confirm that he took an unknown quantity of secobarbital, a powerful barbiturate sold under the brand name Seconal. The physician who performed the autopsy wrote simply, "general congestion in all systems." When interviewed later, the physician stated that he was unable to give an accurate report because Cassady was a foreigner and there were drugs involved. "Exposure" is commonly cited as his cause of death, although his widow believes he may have died of kidney failure.


title: Neal Cassady

text: Cassady has five known children: Robert William Hyatt Jr. (1945), Cathleen Joanne Cassady (1948), Jami Cassady Ratto (1949), Curtis W. Hansen (1950), and John Allen Cassady (1951). Robert, son of Neal Cassady and Maxine Beam, is an artist working in Arvada, Colorado. In February 2017, he was featured in "Westword" magazine. Cathleen, known as Cathy, is the mother of the only grandchild Neal met. Cathy, Jami, and John keep a website in memory of their parents and parents' "beat" friends.


title: Neal Cassady

text: Curt, born from a bigamous marriage with Diana Hansen, died April 30, 2014, aged 63. He was one of the co-founders of radio station WEBE 108, in Bridgeport, Connecticut.


title: Neal Cassady

text: Cassady is credited with helping Kerouac break with his Thomas Wolfe-influenced sentimental style, as seen in "The Town and the City" (1950). After reading Cassady's letters, Kerouac was inspired to write his story in Cassady's communication style: "...in a rush of mad ecstasy, without self-consciousness or mental hesitation".


title: Neal Cassady

text: This fluid writing style, reading more like a stream of consciousness or hypermanic rapid-fire conversation than written prose, is best demonstrated within Cassady's letters to family and friends. In a letter to Kerouac from 1953, Cassady begins with the following fervent sentence;


title: Neal Cassady

text: Well it's about time you wrote, I was fearing you farted out on top that mean mountain or slid under while pissing in Pismo, beach of flowers, food and foolishness, but I knew the fear was ill-founded for balancing it in my thoughts of you, much stronger and valid if you weren't dead, was a realization of the experiences you would be having down there, rail, home, and the most important, climate, by a remembrance of my own feelings and thoughts (former low, or more exactly, nostalgic and unreal; latter hi) as, for example, I too seemed to spend time looking out upper floor windows at sparse, especially night times, traffic in females—old or young.


title: Neal Cassady

text: "On the Road" became a sensation. By capturing Cassady's voice, Kerouac discovered a unique style of his own that he called "spontaneous prose," a stream of consciousness prose form.


title: Neal Cassady

text: Cassady's own written work was never formally published in his lifetime, and he left behind only a half-written manuscript and a number of personal letters. Cassady admitted to Kerouac in a letter from 1948, "My prose has no individual style as such, but is rather an unspoken and still unexpressed groping toward the personal. There is something there that wants to come out; something of my own that must be said. Yet, perhaps, words are not the way for me."


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: Lake Mungo is a 2008 Australian psychological horror film written and directed by Joel Anderson and starring Talia Zucker and Martin Sharpe. It employs mockumentary-style storytelling with found footage and docufiction elements, using actor "interviewees" to present the narrative of a family trying to come to terms with the drowning death of their daughter, and the potentially supernatural events they experience after it.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: "Lake Mungo" premiered at the Sydney Film Festival on 18 June 2008 and screened at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas, US, in March 2009.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: Sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer drowns while swimming with her family at a dam in Ararat, Australia. Her teenage brother Mathew sets up video cameras around the house to record what seem to be images of Alice's ghost. They consult psychic Ray Kemeny for insight on the apparent haunting, but he is unable to explain. It is revealed that Mathew actually set up the "sightings" of his dead sister to give the family reason to exhume her body and give his mother closure. However, on closer review, one of the hoax videos captures Alice's bedroom being searched by Brett, a neighbor for whom she had worked as a babysitter. After her own search of the bedroom, Alice's mother June finds a hidden videotape showing Alice in a sexual encounter with Brett and his wife.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: Ray admits that Alice met with him several months before her death and told him she was having dreams about drowning, being dead, and her mother being unable to see or help her. Alice's boyfriend comes forward with mobile phone footage of a school trip to Lake Mungo, where Alice is shown burying something at the base of a tree. The Palmers travel to Lake Mungo and find the tree, where they dig up her phone. The footage on the phone shows her walking along the lake's shore and encountering a ghostly, corpse-like doppelgänger of herself, with a bloated and disfigured face, appearing just as her body would later be found in the lake.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: The Palmers move out of their house, feeling that Alice wanted them to know who she really was and what she had seen. They now believe the haunting has ended and Alice's ghost has moved on. The film ends with a family photo of the Palmers on the front lawn of their house as the figure of Alice watches from the window. The credits are intercut with prior footage, revealing several sightings of Alice's ghost throughout the film that went unnoticed. After the credits, a figure that may be Alice or her doppelgänger stands at Lake Mungo, in the darkness, as lightning strikes.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: Writer/director Joel Anderson wrote the bulk of the film in 2005, but he was finding it difficult to acquire funding for another script he had written which required a much larger budget. After discussions with what would be future collaborators on "Lake Mungo", Anderson decided to write a fictional documentary-style story that he could film on a low budget. When asked about his main inspiration for creating the script, Anderson has said, "I don't think it's a supernatural thriller. I think it's meant to be an exploration of grief." He also cited a curiosity as to how "technology is used to record people's lives and sort of tracks memories, and how technology mediates a lot of our experiences". Initial funding was attained through private investors, after which the production team approached the Australian government film funding body Screen Australia and received further funding. During casting, low profile actors were sought in an effort to maintain an authentic documentary feel. The film was shot over a period of approximately five weeks using multiple film and video formats.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: There was no written dialogue in the script, only the outline of the story, so the actors were tasked with improvising their scenes. Anderson also served as the offscreen interviewer in the many documentary style interview scenes that compose the film, although his role was left uncredited.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: In March 2009, the film screened at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas, US. On 13 March 2009, the film was shown at the Travelling Film Festival in Wagga Wagga, Australia. On 17 March, the film screened in the United Kingdom at the Barbican London Australian Film Festival. On 21 January 2010, the film was shown at the After Dark Horrorfest in the US, distributed by Lionsgate and After Dark Films.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: On review aggregation Rotten Tomatoes, "Lake Mungo" has a 96% approval rating with an average rating of 7.70/10, based on reviews from 23 critics.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: Prior to the film's wide release, "Variety"s Russell Edwards called it an "ambitious, restrained and well-mounted mockumentary", and praised its musical score, but critiqued the film's lighting and apparent lack of scripted dialogue.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: Andrew L. Urban of "Urban Cinefile" wrote that "this superbly constructed and executed film gets everything right, to the smallest detail, as it draws us into the imagined scenario." Simon Miraudo of "Quickflix" called the film "a mournful, dreamlike examination of the hole left in the heart of a family after a death", and awarded it a score of five stars out of five.


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: Simon Foster of the Special Broadcasting Service declared "Lake Mungo" to be "one of the most impressive debut films from this country in many years" and further commented that "the young director has created a nerve-rattler unlike any film the Australian industry has produced." In her review of the film for "The Hollywood Reporter", Megan Lehmann echoed these sentiments, noting the film's "compelling slow build", "surreal atmospherics", and "restrained soundtrack that works on a primal level", that "cleaves close to reality". She heralded its fusion of supernatural elements with substantive themes on family and loss, concluding that "this ambitious exploration of death and its aftershocks will reward more discerning genre fans".


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: Conversely, a review published by Bloody Disgusting concluded that "the ultimate problem with "Lake Mungo" is that the filmmakers had too many good ideas crammed into one film and not enough time to tell all their tales."


title: Lake Mungo (film)

text: In 2020, Mike Sprague of Dread Central included the film on his list of "10 Awesome Underrated Horror Movies" to stream during the COVID-19 pandemic. Later that year, Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting also recommended the film, writing that "The scares come subtle, often lurking in the background for only the most observant to notice", and calling the film a "unique horror movie, a slow-burn mystery full of twists and one seriously unnerving jump scare for the ages."


title: Intellectual dark web

text: The intellectual dark web (IDW) is a label which has been applied to some commentators who oppose what they regard as the dominance of identity politics, political correctness, and cancel culture in higher education and the news media within Western countries.


title: Intellectual dark web

text: Individuals and publications associated with the term reject what they view as authoritarianism and ostracism within mainstream progressive movements in Western countries, especially within universities and the news media. This includes opposition to deplatforming, boycotts, and online shaming, which are seen as threats to freedom of speech. Those who have been labelled as being part of the IDW come from both the right and left of the political spectrum. The validity of the term is contested by some it has been applied to due to the range of beliefs it encompasses.


title: Intellectual dark web

text: Sources differ on the nature of the IDW, with some describing its members as "small-l liberals" and others as "reactionaries" and ideologically diverse. Shared beliefs include opposition to progressivism and political correctness, however focus areas vary. Those who have been linked to the IDW are generally critical of what they perceive as "conformist" liberals, and some have been associated with the alt-lite and the alt-right of the political spectrum. Writers for "Psychology Today" characterized it as "generally concerned about political tribalism and free speech", or as a rejection of "mainstream assumptions about what is true". Writers for "Salon" dubbed it a politically conservative movement united more over a rejection of American liberalism than over any mutually shared beliefs. Alternatively, Christian Alejandro Gonzalez, writing for the "National Review", posited that, despite comprising "all political persuasions", the IDW was united in a particular conservative-leaning conceptualization of injustice and inequality specifically.


title: Intellectual dark web

text: In his book "Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right", author and political commentator Michael Brooks lists a "devotion to affirming capitalism", a "shared obsession with campus and social media controversies" and an "intense interest in IQ and other innate justifications for systemic inequalities" as defining features of the group.


title: Intellectual dark web

text: Eric Weinstein, the director of Thiel Capital, stated that when he coined the term he was "half-joking". This occurred after Weinstein's brother, biologist Bret Weinstein, resigned in 2017 from his position as professor of biology at the Evergreen State College in response to protests against his criticism of a campus event that asked white students to stay off campus, as opposed to the previous annual tradition of black students voluntarily absenting themselves. The website Big Think has argued that other controversies, dating back to 2014, should also be viewed as antecedents to the IDW. These include a debate between Sam Harris and Ben Affleck on "Real Time with Bill Maher" in October 2014, the publication of "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" by James Damore in August 2017, and Cathy Newman's interview of Jordan Peterson on "Channel 4 News" in January 2018, each of which related to controversial topics such as Islamic extremism and workplace diversity policies.


title: Intellectual dark web

text: The term gained traction after a May 2018 opinion piece by then staff editor Bari Weiss in "The New York Times" titled "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web". Weiss characterized individuals she named as associated with the intellectual dark web as "iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities", who have been "purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought", and who have instead taken to social media, podcasting, public speaking, and other alternative venues outside "legacy media". Weiss stated "the Intellectual Dark Web [is] a term coined half-jokingly by Mr. Weinstein".


title: Intellectual dark web

text: Weiss's article sparked a number of critiques. Jonah Goldberg, writing in the "National Review", said the "label is a bit overwrought", writing that it struck him "as a marketing label – and not necessarily a good one. ... It seems to me this IDW thing isn't actually an intellectual movement. It's just a coalition of thinkers and journalists who happen to share a disdain for the keepers of the liberal orthodoxy." Henry Farrell, writing in "Vox", expressed disbelief that conservative commentator Ben Shapiro or neuroscientist Sam Harris, both claimed to be among the intellectual dark web by Weiss, could credibly be described as either purged or silenced. Weiss' fellow "New York Times" columnist Paul Krugman noted the irony of claiming popular intellectual oppression by the mainstream, while publishing in the "Times", among the most prominent newspapers in the nation, although Weiss did not herself claim to be part of the IDW and would depart "The Times" almost exactly one year later over the same issues central to figures in it. David French contended many of the critics were missing the point, and were instead inadvertently confirming "the need for a movement of intellectual free-thinkers."


title: Intellectual dark web

text: In 2019, a study from the Federal University of Minas Gerais found a pattern of migration of viewers who comment on YouTube videos, from commenting on clips associated with the IDW and the "alt-lite" to commenting on more algorithm-defined "right-wing and/or alt-right" videos. The study looked at over 331,000 videos that an algorithm had classified as right-wing, analyzed 79 million YouTube comments, and found a group that migrated from IDW channels to "alt-lite" channels, and then the alt-right channels. The subjects who left comments at an IDW channel were more likely to graduate after a few years to leaving significantly more comments on alt-right channels than the control group. The study's authors said they were not intending to "point fingers", but to draw attention to the effects of YouTube's recommendation algorithm, calling it an "almost totally algorithm-driven process."


title: Intellectual dark web

text: In a "New York Times" editorial, Bari Weiss listed individuals associated with the intellectual dark web, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, Heather Heying, Claire Lehmann, Douglas Murray, Maajid Nawaz, Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, Michael Shermer, Christina Hoff Sommers, Bret Weinstein, and Eric Weinstein.


title: Intellectual dark web

text: Although those associated with the IDW primarily criticize the political left, some describe themselves as liberal, but criticize what they perceive as the excesses and insouciance of the American left, while others lean to the right. Nick Fouriezos of "Ozy" magazine describes IDW as "a growing school of thought that includes a collection of mostly left-leaning professors, pundits and thinkers united in their criticism of the modern social justice movement as authoritarian and illogical." Liberals who have been labelled as being part of the IDW often credit the Enlightenment with vast improvements in human welfare since the 18th century, and see Enlightenment values such as freedom of speech and individual rights as threatened by both political correctness on the left, and Trumpism and religious conservatism on the right. Criticism of the IDW has come primarily from the left and support from the right. "The Guardian" characterized the IDW as "strange bedfellows" that comprise the "supposed thinking wing of the alt-right". The "Los Angeles Review of Books" described the members as identifying with both the left and the right, but united against "primary adversaries" including political correctness, progressives, left-wing politics, and "the neo-fascist alt-right".


title: Intellectual dark web

text: The characterization of it being an alt-right group (for example, in "The Guardian") has been rejected by members of the IDW.


title: Intellectual dark web

text: Regarding the organization of the IDW, Daniel W. Drezner observed that it is essentially leaderless, and may be individually beholden to their audiences, unable to progress a coherent agenda. Some writers, including Cathy Young, have expressed uncertainty over whether they belong in the intellectual dark web. For her part, historian of medicine and science Alice Dreger expressed surprise in being told she was a member of the IDW at all. After she was invited to be profiled in the "New York Times" article, she stated that she "had no idea who half the people in this special network were. The few Intellectual Dark Web folks I had met I didn't know very well. How could I be part of a powerful intellectual alliance when I didn't even know these people?"


title: Intellectual dark web

text: In November 2020, Harris distanced himself from the movement, saying that he was "turn[ing] in [his] imaginary membership card to this imaginary organization", because some unidentified members of the group were propagating President Donald Trump's claims that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen through massive voter fraud.


title: Keychain (software)

text: Keychain is the password management system in macOS, developed by Apple. It was introduced with Mac OS 8.6, and has been included in all subsequent versions of the operating system, now known as macOS. A Keychain can contain various types of data: passwords (for websites, FTP servers, SSH accounts, network shares, wireless networks, groupware applications, encrypted disk images), private keys, certificates, and secure notes.


title: Keychain (software)

text: In macOS, keychain files are stored in codice_1 (and subdirectories), codice_2, and codice_3, and the Keychain Access GUI application is located in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. It is free, open source software released under the terms of the APSL-2.0. The command line equivalent of Keychain Access is codice_4.


title: Keychain (software)

text: The keychain database is encrypted per-table and per-row with AES-256-GCM. The time which each credential is decrypted, how long it will remain decrypted, and whether the encrypted credential will be synced to iCloud varies depending on the type of data stored, and is documented on the Apple support website.


title: Keychain (software)

text: The default keychain file is the codice_5 keychain, typically unlocked on login by the user's login password, although the password for this keychain can instead be different from a user's login password, adding security at the expense of some convenience. The Keychain Access application does not permit setting an empty password on a keychain.


title: Keychain (software)

text: The keychain may be set to be automatically "locked" if the computer has been idle for a time, and can be locked manually from the Keychain Access application. When locked, the password has to be re-entered next time the keychain is accessed, to unlock it. Overwriting the file in codice_1 with a new one (e.g. as part of a restore operation) also causes the keychain to lock and a password is required at next access.


title: Keychain (software)

text: If the login keychain is protected by the login password, then the keychain's password will be changed whenever the login password is changed from within a logged in session on macOS. On a shared Mac/non-Mac network, it is possible for the login keychain's password to lose synchronization if the user's login password is changed from a non-Mac system. Also, if the password is changed from a directory service like Active Directory or Open Directory, or if the password is changed from another admin account e.g. using the System Preferences. Some network administrators react to this by deleting the keychain file on logout, so that a new one will be created next time the user logs in. This means keychain passwords will not be remembered from one session to the next, even if the login password has not been changed. If this happens, the user can restore the keychain file in codice_1 from a backup, but doing so will lock the keychain which will then need to be unlocked at next use.


title: Keychain (software)

text: Keychains were initially developed for Apple's e-mail system, PowerTalk, in the early 1990s. Among its many features, PowerTalk used plug-ins that allowed mail to be retrieved from a wide variety of mail servers and online services. The keychain concept naturally "fell out" of this code, and was used in PowerTalk to manage all of a user's various login credentials for the various e-mail systems PowerTalk could connect to.


title: Keychain (software)

text: The passwords were not easily retrievable due to the encryption, yet the simplicity of the interface allowed the user to select a different password for every system without fear of forgetting them, as a single password would open the file and return them all. At the time, implementations of this concept were not available on other platforms. Keychain was one of the few parts of PowerTalk that was obviously useful "on its own", which suggested it should be promoted to become a part of the basic Mac OS. But due to internal politics, it was kept inside the PowerTalk system and, therefore, available to very few Mac users.


title: Keychain (software)

text: It was not until the return of Steve Jobs in 1997 that Keychain concept was revived from the now-discontinued PowerTalk. By this point in time the concept was no longer so unusual, but it was still rare to see a keychain system that was not associated with a particular piece of application software, typically a web browser. Keychain was later made a standard part of Mac OS 9, and was included in Mac OS X in the first commercial versions.


title: Keychain (software)

text: Keychain is distributed with both iOS and macOS. The iOS version is simpler because applications that run on mobile devices typically need only very basic Keychain features. For example, features such as ACLs (Access Control Lists) and sharing Keychain items between different apps are not present. Thus, iOS Keychain items are only accessible to the app that created them.


title: Keychain (software)

text: As Mac users’ default storage for sensitive information, Keychain is a prime target for security attacks.


title: Keychain (software)

text: In 2019, 18-year-old German security researcher Linus Henze demonstrated his hack, dubbed KeySteal, that grabs passwords from the Keychain. Initially he withheld details of the hack, demanding Apple set up a bug bounty for macOS. Apple had however not done so when Henze subsequently revealed the hack. It utilized Safari's access to security services, disguised as a utility in macOS that enables IT administrators to manipulate keychains.


title: Miss Sloane

text: Miss Sloane is a 2016 political thriller film directed by John Madden and written by Jonathan Perera. The film stars Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alison Pill, Jake Lacy, John Lithgow, and Sam Waterston. The film follows Elizabeth Sloane, a fierce lobbyist, who fights in an attempt to pass gun control legislation.


title: Miss Sloane

text: The film had its world premiere on November 11, 2016, at the AFI Fest, and began a limited theatrical release in the United States on November 25, 2016, by EuropaCorp, before expanding wide on December 9, 2016. It was released in France on March 8, 2017. It received generally positive reviews, with Chastain's performance being particularly praised. It was a box office disappointment, grossing only $9 million against its $13–18 million budget.


title: Miss Sloane

text: Elizabeth Sloane is a workaholic cutthroat lobbyist who has been called before a congressional hearing led by Senator Ronald Sperling to answer questions about possible violations of Senate ethics rules during her tenure at Washington D.C. lobbying firm Cole Kravitz & Waterman.


title: Miss Sloane

text: Three months and one week earlier, Sloane's firm is approached by gun manufacturing representative Bill Sanford to lead the opposition to the proposed Heaton-Harris bill that would expand background checks on gun purchases, specifically by targeting female voters. Sloane ridicules Sanford's idea and is later approached by Rodolfo Schmidt, the head of rival lobbying firm Peterson Wyatt, to instead lead the effort in support of the bill. Sloane agrees and takes most of her staff along with her, though her closest associate Jane Molloy refuses to leave.


title: Miss Sloane

text: At Peterson Wyatt, Sloane selects Esme Manucharian to conduct the majority of the firm's media appearances, and they begin to make significant progress in garnering votes for the bill. Sloane confronts Esme with knowledge of her background as having survived a school shooting. Even though Esme does not want to disclose the information, Sloane reveals Esme's secret during a live television debate. Later, Esme is held up at gunpoint while leaving her office, but her attacker is shot dead by another civilian who is legally carrying a gun. Gun rights supporters capitalize on this event, which causes the Heaton-Harris bill to lose support in the Senate. This is compounded by the news of the Senate inquiry into Sloane's lobbying practices.


title: Miss Sloane

text: Returning to the congressional hearing, Senator Sperling produces a form requesting approval of overseas travel for a Senator. It was filed by a non-profit organization but completed in Sloane's handwriting, indicating she violated Senate ethics rules with her involvement, as a lobbyist, in arranging the travel. In answer to other questions, Sloane swears under oath that she has never practiced illegal wiretapping.


title: Miss Sloane

text: In her final statement at the hearing, Sloane admits she anticipated the opposition might attack her personally if Peterson Wyatt made too much progress with the Heaton-Harris bill. She reveals that she had someone (Molloy, her former assistant) secretly working for her, and that she did use a wiretap – which recorded Senator Sperling accepting bribes from her former boss George Dupont.


title: Miss Sloane

text: Ten months later, Sloane is visited by her lawyer in prison. The bill passed, Dupont and Sperling are under investigation and he has petitioned for her early release. He asks if it was worth career suicide, she answers: better than suicide by career.


title: Miss Sloane

text: The film was written by Jonathan Perera, a laywer and first time screenwriter. Perera was inspired after watching an interview with lobbyist Jack Abramoff.


title: Miss Sloane

text: In September 2015, it was announced that Jessica Chastain had been set to star in the film, with John Madden directing. Ben Browning produced, under his FilmNation Entertainment banner, and Patrick Chu executive produced, while EuropaCorp produced and financed the film, and handles worldwide distribution. In January 2016, it was announced that Alison Pill, Jake Lacy, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw had joined the cast. In February 2016, Douglas Smith, Mark Strong, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sam Waterston, John Lithgow, and Enis Esmer also joined, and in March 2016, Meghann Fahy joined the cast of the film as well. Max Richter composed the film's score.


title: Miss Sloane

text: To prepare for her role, Chastain read books by Jack Abramoff and met women lobbyists in Washington, DC to get a sense of what they do. Perera used his own mother as the basis of the Sloane character.


title: Miss Sloane

text: Principal photography began on February 12, 2016, in Toronto. Production in Toronto wrapped on March 30, 2016. In April 2016, additional shooting took place in Washington, D.C. Principal photography concluded on April 6, 2016.


title: Miss Sloane

text: In August 2016, two images of Chastain were released. The film had its world premiere at the AFI Fest on November 11, 2016, and also screened at the Napa Valley Film Festival on November 13, 2016. The film was originally scheduled to be released on December 9, 2016, and was later moved up to November 25.


title: Miss Sloane

text: "Miss Sloane" grossed $3.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $5.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $9.1 million.


title: Miss Sloane

text: The film began its wide release alongside the openings "Office Christmas Party" and "The Bounce Back", and the wide expansion of "Nocturnal Animals". The film was projected to gross $2–4 million in its wide opening weekend, but ended up making only $1.8 million, finishing 11th at the box office. "Miss Sloane" is ranked number 75 by per-theater average on Box Office Mojo's list of "Worst Opening Weekend" films released since 1982.


title: Miss Sloane

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 76% based on 191 reviews, with an average rating of 6.53/10. The website's critical consensus reads: ""Miss Sloane" sits squarely on the shoulders of Jessica Chastain's performance – and she responds with awards-worthy work that single-handedly elevates the film." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Miss Sloane

text: "Variety" Peter Debruge wrote: ""Miss Sloane" is a talky, tense political thriller, full of verbal sparring and fiery monologues, undone by a really dumb ending. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t smart for most of its running time."


title: Miss Sloane

text: Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote "So intriguing are the driven, smart and compromised characters, and so infinite are the dramatic possibilities at the intersection of big business and politics, that a vastly expanded small-screen take built around these characters, and others like them, would be quite welcome."


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Hamnet Shakespeare (baptised 2 February 1585 – buried 11 August 1596) was the only son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, and the fraternal twin of Judith Shakespeare. He died at the age of 11. Some Shakespearean scholars speculate on the relationship between Hamnet and his father's later play "Hamlet", as well as on possible connections between Hamnet's death and the writing of "King John", "Romeo and Juliet", "Julius Caesar", and "Twelfth Night".


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Little is known about Hamnet. Hamnet and his twin sister Judith were born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 2 February 1585 in Holy Trinity Church by Richard Barton of Coventry. The twins were probably named after Hamnet Sadler, a baker, who witnessed Shakespeare's will, and his wife, Judith; "Hamnet" was not an uncommon personal name in medieval and early modern England. According to the record of his baptism in the Register of Solihull, he was christened "Hamlette Sadler". (See "Connection to "Hamlet" and other plays" below for a discussion about Hamnet's potential relationship to his father's tragedy, "Hamlet".)


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Hamnet Shakespeare was probably raised principally by his mother Anne in the Henley Street house belonging to his grandfather.


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: By the time Hamnet was four, his father was already a London playwright and, as his popularity grew, he was probably not regularly at home in Stratford with his family. Honan believes that Hamnet may have completed Lower School, which would have been normal, before his death at the age of eleven. He was buried in Stratford on 11 August 1596. At that time in England about a third of all children died before age 10.


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Scholars have long speculated about the influence – if any – of Hamnet's death upon William Shakespeare's writing. Unlike his contemporary Ben Jonson, who wrote a lengthy piece on the death of his own son, Shakespeare, if he wrote anything in response, did so more subtly. At the time his son died, Shakespeare was writing primarily comedies, and that writing continued until a few years after Hamnet's death when his major tragedies were written. It is possible that his tragedies gained depth from his experience.


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Biographical readings, in which critics would try to connect passages in the plays and sonnets to specific events in Shakespeare's life, are at least as old as the Romantic period. Many famous writers, scholars, and critics from the 18th to the early 20th century pondered the connection between Hamnet's death and Shakespeare's plays. These scholars and critics included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Dowden, and Dover Wilson, among others. In 1931, C. J. Sisson stated that such interpretations had "gone too far". In 1934, Shakespeare scholar R. W. Chambers agreed, saying that Shakespeare's most cheerful work was written after his son's death, making a connection doubtful. In the mid-to-late 20th century, it became increasingly unpopular for critics to connect events in authors' lives with their work, not just for Shakespeare, but for all writing. More recently, however, as the ideas of the New Criticism have lost prominence, biographical interpretations of Hamnet's relationship to his father's work have begun to re-emerge.


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Some theories about Hamnet's influence on his father's plays are centred on the tragedy "Hamlet", composed between 1599 and 1601. The traditional view, that grief over his only son's death may have spurred Shakespeare to write the play, is in all likelihood incorrect. Although the names "Hamlet" and "Hamnet" were considered virtually interchangeable, and Shakespeare's own will spelled Hamnet Sadler's first name as "Hamlett", critics often assume that the name of the character in the play has an entirely different derivation, and so do not comment on the similarity.


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: John Dover Wilson, one of the few editors of "Hamlet" to comment directly, remarks, “It is perhaps an accident that the name [Hamlet] was current in Warwickshire and that Shakespeare’s own son Hamnet (born 1585) was christened Hamnet, a variant of it.” However Eric Sams points out that it seems to be the author of the "Ur-Hamlet" who first put an “H” in front of the character’s name, and argues that this might be significant: “It was no mere Englishing; he could readily have been called Amleth here too. He had been deliberately rebaptised by his new creator." Sams describes the Christian name Hamlet as “otherwise unrecorded in any archive ever researched” outside Tudor Stratford, and argues that this name-change was probably Shakespeare’s work, because “Only Shakespeare among known dramatists had any known links with the name Hamlet, and his could hardly have been more intimate or intense.”


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Despite this, Prince Hamlet's name is more often seen as related to the Amleth character in Saxo Grammaticus' "Vita Amlethi", an old Scandinavian legend that is very similar to Shakespeare's story. More recent scholarship has argued that, while "Hamlet" has a Scandinavian origin and may have been selected as a play subject for commercial reasons, Shakespeare's grief over the loss of his only son may lie at the heart of the tragedy.


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Speculation over Hamnet's influence on Shakespeare's works is not limited to "Hamlet". Richard Wheeler theorises that Hamnet's death influenced the writing of "Twelfth Night", which centres on a girl who believes that her twin brother has died. In the end, she finds that her brother never died, and is alive and well. Wheeler also posits the idea that the women who disguise themselves as men in "The Merchant of Venice", "As You Like It", and "Twelfth Night" are a representation of William Shakespeare's seeing his son's hope in his daughters after Hamnet's death. Bill Bryson argues that Constance's speech from the third act of "King John" (written mid-1590s) was inspired by Hamnet's death. In the speech, she laments the loss of her son, Arthur. It is possible, though, that Hamnet was still alive when Constance's lament was written. Many other plays of Shakespeare's have theories surrounding Hamnet. These include questions as to whether a scene in "Julius Caesar" in which Caesar adopts Mark Antony as a replacement for his dead son is related to Hamnet's death, or whether "Romeo and Juliet" is a tragic reflection of the loss of a son, or Alonso's guilt over his son's death in "The Tempest" is related. Sonnet 37 may have also been written in response to Hamnet's death. Shakespeare says in it, "As a decrepit father takes delight / To see his active child do deeds of youth / So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spight / Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth." Still, if this is an allusion to Hamnet, it is a vague one. The grief can echo also in one of the most painful passages Shakespeare ever wrote, in the end of "King Lear" where the ruined monarch recognizes his daughter is dead: "No, no, no life! / Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, / And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, / Never, never, never, never, never!"


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Michael Wood suggests that sonnet 33 might have nothing to do with the so-called "Fair Youth" sonnets, but that instead it alludes to Hamnet's death and there is an implied pun on "sun" and "son": "Even so my sun one early morn did shine / With all triumphant splendour on my brow; / But out, alack, he was but one hour mine, / The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now".


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Juan Daniel Millán suggests that not only sonnet 33 alludes to Hamnet's death, but that all of the sonnets were dedicated to Hamnet and that the sonnets were Shakespeare's way of dealing with the loss. He also suggests that Hamnet is the so-called "Fair Youth".


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Hamnet appears in one of Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" comics, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," in which he is seen accompanying his father and playing the role of the changeling boy.


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: He also appears as a character in the 2018 film "All Is True", written by Ben Elton. The largely fictionalised plot revolves around William Shakespeare coming to terms with Hamnet's death and his relationship with his family.


title: Hamnet Shakespeare

text: Hamnet Shakespeare is a character in the BBC comedy drama series "Upstart Crow", about the life of William Shakespeare in London and Stratford-upon-Avon. Hamnet's death occurs in the final episode of series 3.


Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia (; 13 June 1918) was the youngest son and fifth child of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and youngest brother of Nicholas II.


title: Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia

text: At the time of his birth, his paternal grandfather Alexander II was still the reigning Emperor of All the Russias. Michael was fourth-in-line to the throne after his father and elder brothers Nicholas and George. After the assassination of his grandfather in 1881, he became third-in-line and, in 1894, after the death of his father, second-in-line. George died in 1899, leaving Michael as heir presumptive to Tsar Nicholas II.


text: The birth of Nicholas's son Alexei in 1904 moved Michael back to second-in-line, but Alexei was gravely ill with hemophilia and Michael suspected the boy would die, leaving him as heir. Michael caused a commotion at the imperial court when he took Natalia Sergeyevna Wulfert, a married woman, as a lover. Nicholas sent Michael to Orel to avoid scandal but this did not deter Michael, who travelled frequently to see his mistress. After the couple's only child, George, was born in 1910, Michael brought Natalia to St. Petersburg where she was shunned by society. In 1912, Michael shocked Nicholas by marrying Natalia in the hope that he would be removed from the line of succession. Michael and Natalia left Russia to live in exile abroad in France, Switzerland and England.


text: After the outbreak of World War I, Michael returned to Russia, assuming command of a cavalry regiment. When Nicholas abdicated on , Michael was named as his successor instead of Alexei. Michael, however, deferred acceptance of the throne until ratification by an elected assembly. He was never confirmed as emperor and, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he was imprisoned and murdered.


text: Michael was born at Anichkov Palace on Nevsky Prospekt in Saint Petersburg as the youngest son and penultimate child of Tsesarevich Alexander of Russia and his wife, Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark). His maternal grandparents were King Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Kassel. His paternal grandmother Maria Alexandrovna (Marie of Hesse) died before his second birthday. His paternal grandfather, Emperor Alexander II of Russia, was assassinated on 1 March 1881 and, as a result, Michael's parents became Emperor and Empress of All the Russias before his third birthday. After the assassination, the new Tsar Alexander III moved his family, including Michael, to the greater safety of Gatchina Palace, which was 29 miles southwest of Saint Petersburg and surrounded by a moat.


text: Michael was raised in the company of his younger sister, Olga, who nicknamed him "Floppy" because he "flopped" into chairs; his elder siblings and parents called him "Misha". Conditions in the nursery were modest, even spartan. The children slept on hard camp beds, rose at dawn, washed in cold water and ate a simple porridge for breakfast. Michael, like his siblings, was taught by private tutors and was cared for by an English nanny, Mrs Elizabeth Franklin.


text: Michael and Olga frequently went on hikes in the forests around Gatchina with their father, who took the opportunity to teach them woodsmanship. Physical activities such as equestrianism were also taught at an early age, as was religious observance. Though Christmas and Easter were times of celebration and extravagance, Lent was strictly observed—meat, dairy products and any form of entertainment were avoided. Family holidays were taken in the summer at Peterhof Palace and with Michael's grandparents in Denmark.


text: Michael was almost 16 when his father fell fatally ill; the annual trip to Denmark was cancelled. On 1 November 1894, Alexander III died at the untimely age of 49. Michael's eldest brother, Nicholas, became Tsar, and Michael's childhood was effectively over.


text: Michael's mother, Dowager Empress Marie, moved back to Anichkov Palace with Michael and Olga. Like most male members of his family, Michael was enrolled in the military. He completed training at a gunnery school and joined the Horse Guards Artillery. In November 1898, he attained legal adulthood and, just eight months later, became heir presumptive to Nicholas as the middle brother, George, was killed in a motorcycle accident. George's death and the subsequent change in the line of succession highlighted that Nicholas lacked a son. As the succession was limited to males, his three daughters were ineligible. When Nicholas's wife, Alexandra, became pregnant in 1900 she hoped that the child would be male. She manoeuvred to get herself declared regent for her unborn child in the event of Nicholas's death, but the government disagreed and determined that Michael would succeed regardless of the unborn child's gender. She was delivered of a fourth daughter the following year.


text: Michael was perceived as unremarkable, quiet and good-natured. He performed the usual public duties expected of an heir to the throne. In 1901, he represented Russia at the funeral of Queen Victoria and was given the Order of the Bath. The following year he was made a Knight of the Garter in King Edward VII's coronation honours. In June 1902, Michael transferred to the Blue Cuirassier Regiment and moved to Gatchina, where the regiment was based. Since coming of age, Michael had assumed financial independence. His assets included the largest sugar refinery in the country, capital amounting to millions of roubles, a collection of motor vehicles, and country estates at Otrovo in Russian Poland and Brasovo near Orel.


text: Michael was heir presumptive until 12 August 1904, when the birth of Tsarevich Alexei to Nicholas and Alexandra provided an heir apparent. Michael again became second-in-line to the throne, but was named as co-regent for the boy, along with Alexandra, in the event of Nicholas's death.


text: In 1902, Michael met Princess Beatrice of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. They fell in love and began to correspond in her native English. Michael spoke both French and English fluently. At first it seemed they would marry; however, the Eastern Orthodox Church prohibited the marriage of first cousins, and Michael's father and Beatrice's mother were siblings. Nicholas refused to permit the marriage and, to Michael's and Beatrice's mutual dismay, their romance ended.


text: Michael's attention turned to Alexandra Kossikovskaya (September 1875, Orel region – 1923, Berlin), known affectionately as "Dina", who was his sister Olga's lady-in-waiting. Dina's father, Vladimir Kossikovsky, was a lawyer and Dina was a commoner. Michael rejected the notion, proposed by his friends, that he keep her as a mistress, and in July 1906, he wrote to Nicholas asking permission to marry her. Nicholas and Dowager Empress Marie were appalled. Both felt that royalty should marry royalty and, according to Russian house law, any children of a marriage between a royal and a commoner would be ineligible for the succession. Nicholas threatened to revoke Michael's army commission and exile him from Russia if he married without his permission. Marie had Dina dismissed as Olga's lady-in-waiting and took Michael to Denmark until mid-September.


text: Shortly after his return to Russia, three British newspapers announced on 24 September 1906 that Michael was to marry Princess Patricia of Connaught, but neither he nor Patricia knew anything about it. Buckingham Palace issued a denial. Nevertheless, two years later, in October 1908, Michael visited London, and he and Patricia were "paired" at social engagements. It seems likely that Michael's mother was plotting to get him married to a more suitable bride and the originator of the false report, Reuters correspondent Guy Beringer, read too much into the plans. Michael and Dina were planning to elope, but their plans were stymied as Dina was under surveillance by the Okhrana, Nicholas's secret police, and she was prevented from travelling. Under family pressure and unable to see Dina, by August 1907 Michael appeared to be losing interest. Dina went to live abroad. She never married and believed herself to be Michael's rightful fiancée, but their romance was over.


text: In early December 1907, Michael was introduced to Natalia Sergeyevna Wulfert, the wife of a fellow officer, and from 1908 they began a deep friendship. Natalia was a commoner who had a daughter from her first marriage. By August 1909, they were lovers, and, by November 1909, Natalia was living apart from her second husband in an apartment in Moscow paid for by Michael. In an attempt to prevent scandal, Nicholas transferred Michael to the Chernigov Hussars at Orel, 250 miles from Moscow, but Michael travelled from there several times a month to see Natalia. Their only child, George (named after Michael's dead brother) was born in July 1910, before her divorce from her second husband was finalised. To ensure that the child could be recognised as his, rather than Wulfert's, Michael had the date of the divorce back-dated. Nicholas issued a decree giving the boy the surname "Brasov", taken from Michael's estate at Brasovo, which was a tacit acknowledgement that Michael was the father.


text: In May 1911, Nicholas permitted Natalia to move from Moscow to Brasovo and granted her the surname "Brasova". In May 1912, Michael went to Copenhagen for the funeral of his uncle King Frederick VIII of Denmark, where he fell ill with a stomach ulcer that was to trouble him for years afterwards. After a holiday in France, where he and Natalia were trailed by the Okhrana, Michael was transferred back to Saint Petersburg to command the Chevalier Gardes. He took Natalia to the capital with him and set her up in an apartment, but she was shunned by society and, within a few months, he had moved her to a villa in Gatchina.


text: In September 1912, Michael and Natalia spent a holiday abroad and, as usual, they were trailed by the Okhrana. In Berlin, Michael announced that he and Natalia would drive to Cannes and instructed his staff to follow by train. The Okhrana was under instructions to follow by train rather than car, so Michael and Natalia would be unaccompanied on their journey south. Michael's journey was a deliberate ruse. On the way to Cannes, the couple diverted to Vienna, where they were married on 16 October 1912 by Father Misitsch at the Serbian Orthodox Church of Saint Sava. A few days later, after travelling through Venice and Milan, they arrived at Cannes, where George and Natalia's daughter from her first marriage joined them. Two weeks after the marriage, Michael wrote to his mother and brother to inform them. They were both horrified by Michael's action. His mother said it was "unspeakably awful in every way", and his brother was shocked that his brother had "broken his word ... that he would not marry her".


text: Nicholas was particularly upset because his heir, Alexei, was gravely ill with haemophilia, which Michael cited as one of his reasons for marrying Natalia. Michael feared that he would become heir presumptive again on Alexei's death and would never be able to marry Natalia. By marrying her beforehand, he would be removed from the line of succession early and preclude losing Natalia. In a series of decrees over December 1912 and January 1913, Nicholas relieved Michael of his command, banished him from Russia, froze all his assets in Russia, seized control of his estates and removed him from the Regency. Society in Russia was shocked at the severity of Nicholas's reprisal, but there was little sympathy for Natalia. She was not entitled to be known as Grand Duchess; she instead used the style "Madame or Countess Brasova".


text: For six months, they stayed in hotels in France and Switzerland without any decrease in their standard of living. They were visited by Michael's sister Grand Duchess Xenia and cousin Grand Duke Andrew. In July 1913, they saw Michael's mother in London, who told Natalia "a few home truths", according to Xenia's diary. After another trip to continental Europe, Michael took a one-year lease on Knebworth House, a staffed and furnished stately home 20 miles north of London. Michael's finances were stretched as he had to rely on remittances sent from Russia at Nicholas's command, and Nicholas still controlled all his estates and assets.


text: Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Michael telegraphed the Emperor, requesting permission to return to Russia to serve in the army - providing his wife and son could come too. Nicholas agreed, and Michael travelled back to Saint Petersburg via Newcastle upon Tyne, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Michael had already leased Paddockhurst in Sussex, an estate larger than Knebworth, and had planned to move there on the expiry of the Knebworth lease. He moved his furniture and furnishings there. The war was not expected to last long and the couple assumed they would be moving back to England at its conclusion. In the meantime, Michael offered its use to the British military. At Saint Petersburg, renamed Petrograd in , they moved into a villa at 24 Nikolaevskaya street, Gatchina, that Michael had bought for Natalia. Natalia was not permitted to live in any of the imperial palaces.


text: The Grand Duke, promoted from his previous rank of colonel to major-general, received command of a newly formed division: the Caucasian Native Cavalry, which became known as the "Savage Division". The appointment was perceived as a demotion because the division mostly comprised new Muslim recruits rather than the elite troops that Michael had commanded previously. The six regiments in the division were each composed of a different ethnic group: Chechens, Dagestanis, Kabardin, Tatars, Circassians and Ingush, commanded by ethnic Russian officers. The men were all volunteers, as conscription did not apply to the Caucasus. Although it was difficult to maintain discipline, they formed an effective fighting force. For his actions commanding his troops in the Carpathian mountains in January 1915 Michael earned the military's highest honour, the Order of St. George, 4th Class. Unlike his brother the Emperor, he proved a popular military leader.


text: By January 1915 the horrific nature of the war had become apparent. Michael felt "greatly embittered towards people in general and most of all towards those who are at the top, who hold power and allow all that horror to happen. If the question of war were decided by the people at large, I would not be so passionately averse to that great calamity." Michael confessed in a letter to his wife that he felt "ashamed to face the people, i.e. the soldiers and officers, particularly when visiting field hospitals, where so much suffering is to be seen, for they might think that one is also responsible, for one is placed so high and yet has failed to prevent all that from happening and protect one's country from this disaster."


text: At the start of the war, Michael wrote to Nicholas asking him to legitimise his son in order that the boy would be provided for in the event of Michael's death at the front. Eventually Nicholas agreed to make George legitimate and granted him the style of "Count Brasov" by decree on 26 March 1915.


text: By June 1915, the Russians were in retreat. When Grand Duke Constantine died that month, Michael was the only member of the imperial family absent from the funeral in Petrograd. Natalia chided him for his absence and Michael retorted that it was simply wrong for his relatives to abandon their units to attend Constantine's funeral at such a time. The American war correspondent, Stanley Washburn, reported that Michael wore "a simple uniform with nothing to indicate his rank but shoulder straps of the same material as his uniform". Michael was "unaffected and democratic" and "living so simply in a dirty village". Natalia was appalled that Michael eschewed fancy uniforms and decorations for life at the front, but he was convinced "that at such a difficult time I must serve Russia and serve here at the front".


text: In July 1915, Michael caught diphtheria but recovered. The war was going badly for Russia and the following month Nicholas appointed himself Supreme Commander of the Russian forces. The move was not welcomed. Nicholas's bad decisions included instructing Michael to authorise a payment to a friend of Rasputin, an army engineer called Bratolyubov, who claimed to have invented a devastating flame-thrower. The claim was bogus and Bratolyubov was arrested for fraud, but Rasputin intervened and he was released. Michael appeared gullible and naïve; a friend of Natalia's said he "trusted everybody ... Had his wife not watched over him constantly, he would have been deceived at every step."


text: In October 1915, Michael regained control of his estates and assets from Nicholas and, in February 1916, was given command of the 2nd Cavalry Corps, which included the Savage Division, a Cossack division and a Don Cossack division. The slights against him by the Tsar's retinue continued, though. When he was promoted to lieutenant-general in July 1916, unlike all other Grand Dukes who attained that rank, he was not appointed as an aide-de-camp to the Tsar with the rank of adjutant-general. Michael admitted that he "always despised Petrograd high society ... no people are more devious than they are; with a few exceptions, they are all scum." Michael made no public political statements, but it was assumed that he was a liberal, like his wife, and British consul Bruce Lockhart thought he "would have made an excellent constitutional monarch".


text: Throughout the summer of 1916, Michael's corps was involved in the Brusilov Offensive. The Guards Army suffered heavy losses under the incompetent leadership of Michael's uncle, Grand Duke Paul, who was removed from command. In contrast, Michael was awarded a second gallantry medal, the Order of St. Vladimir with Swords, for his part in actions against the enemy and was belatedly made an adjutant-general. The poor progress of the war and their almost constant separation depressed both Michael and Natalia. Michael was still suffering from stomach ulcers and, in October 1916, he was ordered to take leave in the Crimea.


text: Before leaving for his sister Xenia's estate at Ai-Todor, 12 miles from Yalta, he wrote a candid letter to his brother warning him that the political situation was tense:


text: Michael and other members of the imperial family, including Grand Dukes Alexander, George, Nicholas and Dmitri and Grand Duchess Elizabeth, warned of the growing public unrest, and of the perception that Nicholas was governed by his German-born wife Alexandra and the self-styled holy man Rasputin. Nicholas and Alexandra refused to listen. In December 1916, Dmitri and four of his friends killed Rasputin. Michael learned of the murder at Brasovo, where he was spending Christmas with his family. On 28 December, according to the French ambassador, there was a failed attempt to assassinate Alexandra; the lone assailant was caught and hanged the next day. The Duma President Mikhail Rodzianko, Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna and British ambassador Buchanan joined calls for Alexandra to be removed from influence, but Nicholas still refused to take their advice. Plots and gossip against Nicholas and Alexandra continued to build.


text: In January 1917, Michael returned to the front to hand over command of his corps; from 29 January he was Inspector-General of Cavalry stationed at Gatchina. General Aleksei Brusilov, Michael's commander on the south-eastern front, begged him to tell the Tsar of "the need for immediate and drastic reforms", but Michael warned him, "I have no influence ... My brother has time and time again had warnings and entreaties of this kind from every quarter." Brusilov recorded in his memoirs, "[Michael] was an absolutely honourable and upright man, taking no sides and lending himself to no intrigues ... he shunned every kind of gossip, whether connected with the services or with family matters. As a soldier, he was an excellent leader and an unassuming and conscientious worker."


text: Through February, Grand Duke Alexander, Duma President Rodzianko and Michael pressured Nicholas and Alexandra to yield to popular demands. Public unrest grew and, on 27 February, soldiers in Petrograd joined demonstrators, elements of the military mutinied and prisoners were freed. Nicholas, who was at army headquarters in Mogilev, prorogued the Duma, but the deputies refused to leave and instead set up their own rival government. After consulting Rodzianko at the Mariinsky Palace in Petrograd, Michael advised Nicholas to dismiss his ministers and set up a new government led by the leader of the majority party in the Duma, Georgy Lvov. His advice was supported by General Mikhail Alekseyev, Nicholas's chief of staff. Nicholas rejected the suggestion and issued futile orders for troops to move on Petrograd.


text: On the night of 27–28 February 1917, Michael attempted to return to Gatchina from Petrograd, where he had been in conference with Rodzianko and Nikolai Golitsyn and from where he had telegraphed the Tsar, but revolutionary patrols and sporadic fire prevented his progress. Revolutionaries patrolled the streets, rounding up people connected with the old regime. Michael managed to reach the Winter Palace, where he ordered the guards to withdraw to the Admiralty, because it afforded greater safety and a better tactical position, and because it was a less politically charged location. Michael himself took refuge in the apartment of an acquaintance, Princess Putyatina, on Millionnaya street. In the neighbouring apartments, the Tsar's Chamberlain Nikolai Stolypin and the Procurator of the Holy Synod were detained by revolutionaries and in the house next door General Baron Staekelberg was killed when his house was stormed by a mob.


text: On 1 March, Rodzianko sent guards to Putyatina's apartment to ensure Michael's safety, and Michael signed a document drawn up by Rodzianko and Grand Duke Paul proposing the creation of a constitutional monarchy. The newly formed Petrograd Soviet rejected the document, which became irrelevant. Calls for the Tsar's abdication had superseded it.


text: On the afternoon of , Emperor Nicholas II, under pressure from generals and Duma representatives, abdicated in favour of his son, Alexei, with Michael as Regent. Later that evening, though, he reconsidered his decision. Alexei was gravely ill with haemophilia and Nicholas feared that if Alexei was emperor, he would be separated from his parents. In a second abdication document, signed at 11.40 p.m. but marked as having been issued at 3.00 p.m., the time of the earlier one, Nicholas II declared:


text: By early morning, Michael was proclaimed as "Emperor Michael II" to Russian troops and in cities throughout Russia, but his accession was not universally welcomed. While some units cheered and swore allegiance to the new emperor, others remained indifferent. The newly formed Provisional Government had not agreed to Michael's succession. When Michael awoke that morning, he discovered not only that his brother had abdicated in his favour, as Nicholas had not informed him previously, but also that a delegation from the Duma would visit him at Putyatina's apartment in a few hours' time. The meeting with Duma President Rodzianko, the new Prime Minister Prince Lvov and other ministers, including Pavel Milyukov and Alexander Kerensky, lasted all morning. Putyatina laid on a lunch, and in the afternoon two lawyers (Baron Nolde and Vladimir Nabokov) were called to the apartment to draft a manifesto for Michael to sign. The legal position was complicated, as the legitimacy of the government, whether Nicholas had the right to remove his son from the succession, and whether Michael actually was emperor, were all open to question. After further discussion, and several drafts, the meeting settled on a declaration of conditional acceptance as an appropriate form of words. In it, Michael deferred to the will of the people and acknowledged the Provisional Government as the "de facto" executive, but neither abdicated nor refused to accept the throne. He wrote:


text: Commentators, ranging from Kerensky to French ambassador Maurice Paléologue, regarded Michael's action as noble and patriotic, but Nicholas was appalled that Michael had "kowtowed to the Constituent Assembly" and called the manifesto "rubbish".


text: The hopes of the monarchists that Michael might be able to assume the throne following the election of the Constituent Assembly were overtaken by events. His renunciation of the throne, though conditional, marked the end of the Tsarist regime in Russia. The Provisional Government had little effective power; real power was held by the Petrograd Soviet.


text: Michael returned to Gatchina and was not permitted to return to his unit or to travel beyond the Petrograd area. On 5 April 1917, he was discharged from military service. By July, Prince Lvov had resigned as Prime Minister to be replaced by Alexander Kerensky, who ordered ex-Emperor Nicholas removed from Petrograd to Tobolsk in the Urals because it was "some remote place, some quiet corner, where they would attract less attention". On the eve of Nicholas's departure, Kerensky gave permission for Michael to visit him. Kerensky remained present during the meeting and the brothers exchanged awkward pleasantries "fidgeting all the while, and sometimes one would take hold of the other's hand or the buttons of his uniform". It was the last time they saw each other.


text: On 21 August 1917, guards surrounded the villa on Nikolaevskaya street where Michael was living with Natalia. On the orders of Kerensky, they were both under house arrest, along with Nicholas Johnson, who had been Michael's secretary since December 1912. A week later, they were moved to an apartment in Petrograd. Michael's stomach problems worsened and, with the intervention of British ambassador Buchanan and foreign minister Mikhail Tereshchenko, they were moved back to Gatchina in the first week of September. Tereshchenko told Buchanan that the Dowager Empress would be allowed to leave the country, for Britain if she wished, and that Michael would follow in due course. The British, however, were not prepared to accept any Russian Grand Duke for fear it would provoke a negative public reaction in Britain, where there was little sympathy for the Romanovs.


text: On 1 September 1917, Kerensky declared Russia a republic. Michael wrote in his diary: "We woke up this morning to hear Russia declared a Republic. What does it matter which form the government will be as long as there is order and justice?" Two weeks later, Michael's house arrest was lifted. Kerensky had armed the Bolsheviks after a power struggle with the commander-in-chief and in October there was a second revolution as the Bolsheviks seized power from Kerensky. With a permit to travel issued by Peter Polotsov, a former colleague of Michael from the Savage Division who was now a commander in Petrograd, Michael planned to move his family to the greater safety of Finland. They packed valuables and prepared to move, but their preparations were seen by Bolshevik sympathisers and they were placed once more under house arrest. The last of Michael's cars were seized by the Bolsheviks.


text: The house arrest was lifted again in November, and the Constituent Assembly was elected and met in January 1918. Despite being the minority party, the Bolsheviks dissolved it. On 3 March 1918 (N.S.), the Bolshevik government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which effectively ceded vast areas of the former Russian Empire to the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. On 7 March 1918, Michael and his secretary Johnson were re-arrested on the orders of Moisei Uritsky, the Head of the Petrograd secret police, and imprisoned at the Bolshevik headquarters in the Smolny Institute.