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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

WHISPER

SUBMIT A 
WHISPER

By Frank Virzi
©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/27/20

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

01/27/20

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Monday, January 27, 2020

ACROSS
1 Tibetan monks
6 Rise up against 
authority
11 U.S. interstate, 
e.g.
14 Grind, as teeth
15 Amazon Echo 
Dot’s voice 
service
16 West end?
17 *Mystery/soap 
(1956-’84) 
that ultimately 
dropped “The” 
from its title
19 Pilot-licensing org.
20 “Grrr!” is one
21 Understood by a 
select few
23 Garden shed tool
24 Smidge
26 Give in
27 Light-circling 
insects
29 Send out
32 “Got it”
33 Start, as of 
symptoms
34 John Brown’s 
eulogist Stephen 
Vincent __
36 “If only __ 
listened”
37 *One of the four 
Seven Sisters 
magazines that 
are still in print
40 H.S. equivalency 
test
43 Hopscotch
44 Sonnet line 
quintet
48 Chrysler Building 
architect William 
Van ___
50 Campus official
51 Longest river in 
France
52 As found
54 Cartoon frame
56 Prefix with gender
57 Christmas saint
60 Quarterfinalists’ 
count
62 Suffix with alp
63 *Televised 
panelist shown 
from the 
shoulders up
66 Opposite of oui
67 Under-the-roof 
room
68 Prefix for sun
69 Clock-setting std.
70 Sierra __, Africa
71 Prom attendees

DOWN
1 Tee size: Abbr.
2 “... et cetera”
3 Fridge stickers
4 On the briny
5 *Infielder 
typically 
between second 
and third
6 Campaigned
7 Nobelist Wiesel
8 Pleads
9 Urged strongly
10 Barista’s 
creation
11 Browser update 
button
12 New employee
13 Passed, as a bill
18 Miami’s st.
22 Yale student
23 Med. care plan
25 Campaign 
face-off
28 Use an axe on
30 High-IQ group
31 Simpatico 
(like Justin 
Timberlake’s 
band?)
35 Rear warning 
lamp, and what 
can go with the 
end of each 
answer to a 
starred clue

38 Soften, as one’s 
voice level
39 Ex-NBA star Ming
40 Opposite 
of losing, 
weightwise
41 Weather-
changing 
currents
42 Climber’s 
downward 
journey
45 “Glee” star 
Lea __

46 Great __: 
London’s island
47 French 
possessive
49 Medical research 
org.
53 Bottom line
55 Dusk, in poetry
58 Choral part
59 Organ that may 
itch
61 Indian butter
64 __ cream soda
65 Spanish two

CLASSIFIEDS

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HELP WANTED

Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle/
skin-care/health product brand 
Goop has long been the target 
of jokes skewering its willful 
inaccessibility (see: jade egg 
lawsuit, shockingly overpriced 
products and most recently, this 
candle debacle). The newest 
Goop project, a six-episode 
docuseries on Netflix continues 
the company’s failed attempts 
to induct consumers into the 
carefully manicured, pseudo-
spiritual brand of capitalism.
“The 
Goop 
Lab” 
follows 
the titular brand’s employees 
jet-setting across the globe 
to try the latest in alternative 
medicines 
and 
treatments. 
Intercut 
with 
footage 
of 
these firsthand experiences, 
Paltrow 
and 
Goop’s 
Chief 
Content Officer, Elise Loehnen, 
interview 
hand-selected 
experts on each episode’s main 
theme. Testimonials of non-
Goop affiliated people also 
attempt 
to 
lend 
credibility 
to the methods using their 
personal accounts of unbridled 
success.
Topics 
range 
from 
the 
psychotherapeutic 
benefits 

of magic mushrooms to the 
quest to bring female pleasure 
into the mainstream to the 
healing power of cold water 
and breathing. That last one 
was 
particularly 
Goop-y. 
Apparently, 
snowga 
— 
the 
practice of doing yoga in the 
snow while wearing only a 
swimsuit — might be the next 
trend to sweep the nation.

On the surface, “The Goop 
Lab” doesn’t seem to have bad 
intentions. A genuine interest 
in bringing unconventional yet 
helpful treatment techniques 
into 
Western 
medicine 
is 
not 
inherently 
negative. 
Unfortunately, 
for 
Goop, 
authenticity does not appear 
to be a pressing concern. Goop 

itself does not advertise any 
of its own products or directly 
attempt to profit from selling 
the show’s featured methods 
to consumers. However, the 
underlying 
assumption 
that 
Goop is in any way affiliated 
with the success of alternative 
medicine calls the program’s 
integrity into question.
While 
Goop 
definitely 
pats itself on the back for 
showcasing how open-minded 
it is as a company, ironically, 
the 
emphasis 
on 
showing 
Goop 
employees 
trying 
hallucinogenic mushroom tea 
or taking part in genital show-
and-tell sessions become part 
of what makes “The Goop 
Lab” questionable. In order 
to show how effective these 
‘East-meets-West’ 
treatments 
are, 
the 
interviewees 
must 
speak at length about personal 
traumas 
or 
obstacles 
they 
hope the techniques can help 
them overcome. By equating 
complete recovery of mental 
and 
physical 
illnesses 
to 
practices not entirely accepted 
by modern science, “The Goop 
Lab” uses these testimonials as 
rhetorical devices rather than 
truly sensitive issues.

More self-indulgence from
Paltrow with ‘Goop Lab’

TV REVIEW
TV REVIEW

NETFLIX

The internet is a vast place. 
Not only are there fun memes 
and puppy videos to grace our 
feeds every morning, there is 
the entire dark web, too.
I don’t know much about the 
latter — I am a theater major 
who vehemently resents social 
media, 
instant 
messaging 
and 
ad-polluted 
shopping 
sites. Veering off the beaten 
path has never been on my 
radar, but playwright Javaad 
Alipoor is an encyclopedia of 
knowledge on how the internet 
is undermining democracy and 
instantaneously reshaping the 
world.
The central storyline in 
Alipoor’s 
new 
play, 
“The 
Believers Are But Brothers,” 
follows 
two 
Muslim 
men 
residing in different parts of 
England and their experience 
of getting recruited by ISIS. 
I’ve 
found 
that 
trying 
to 
explain the complexities of 
their recruitment gives away 
the show and is far better 
depicted by Alipoor, so my best 
bet is just to implore you to 
go see it at the Arthur Miller 
Theater.
The show dumped a ton 
of information related to the 
world of the dark web on 
the viewer without slowing 
down to hold anyone’s hand, 
so it’s no surprise that “The 
Believers are but Brothers” 
was rewarded with the largest 
retention of people for any 
Q&A I have seen at my four 
years at the University.
While I sat in the theater, I 
could not shake the feeling that 
what Alipoor was doing was 
dangerous. He spoke so much 
truth about ISIS’ successful 
recruitment of young Muslims 
in the Western world while 
simultaneously 
depicting 
a 

young, white supremacist who 
never 
leaves 
his 
computer 
screen. In doing so, he allowed 
the audience to realize how 
much damage comes from 
each side. Spoiler: both do an 
astounding amount of rallying 
for their respective causes 
online.
Therefore, as Alipoor dished 
out fact after fact in a state that 
swung red in the last election, 
I was frightened that maybe 
someone who did not agree 
with him could be inspired to 
protest or even incite violence.
Maybe that’s part of the 
show. If we are constantly 
attached to these devices and 
mediums of communication 
that have the potential to ensue 
such violence and hate, what 
is the difference? According 
to this show, the alt-right is 
far more advanced in digital 
manipulation 
that 
prompts 
the banding together of white 
supremacy 
groups,online 
hate speech and controlling 
elections. The left is far behind 
in the advancement of that sort 
of asset, if you can call it that. 
During the Q&A, American 
culture 
professor 
Lisa 
Nakamura said she believes the 
left underestimates the value 
of spectacle online that the alt-
right has come to master. 
I 
don’t 
think 
we 
are 
supposed to be overstimulated 
this much. There is a part in 
the show near the end where 
Alipoor is playing Call of Duty 
while the whole rest of the 
stage is lit up in all sorts of 
media for a couple of minutes. 
I couldn’t help thinking about 
how monstrous it all is. 
Scenes 
jumped 
between 
direct address to the audience, 
Skype, 
Youtube 
and 
even 
WhatsApp. In each medium, 
the audience acted as an avid 
participant. At the beginning, 
Alipoor shared memes with us 
that any person under 30 would 
recognize like Pepe the Frog or 

Doge. By the conclusion of the 
play, however, these memes 
were boiled down to the basic 
ideologies that fuel the world’s 
most violent groups, like white 
supremacists and ISIS.
Memes to terrorism is a 
big jump, I know. I still have 
a plethora of questions that I 
want answered, but just like 
going down the internet rabbit 
hole, finding answers leads to 
more questions. Alipoor’s play 
feels a bit like going down the 
internet rabbit hole. At times, 
this made it hard to follow 
what train of thought he was 
going down.
The panel afterwards was led 
by Alipoor, Nakamura (known 
for her gender videogame class) 
and Alexandra Stern (author 
of “Proud Boys and the White 
Ethnostate: 
How 
the 
Alt-
Right is warping the American 
Imagination”) and School of 
Information professor Clifford 
Lampe. All four had fascinating 
insights into how the internet 
is shaping humanity. 
When asked if we are just 
looking too closely at the 
internet by blaming it for the 
evils of the world, the panel 
acknowledged the sentiment, 
but Alipoor restated that there 
are worlds being destroyed 
because of the technology. 
“There is a way that we 
as humans, for better or for 
worse, are able to communicate 
that we haven’t even begun 
to 
scratch 
the 
surface 
of 
yet,”Alipoor said.
It’s exciting and frightening 
to think of what happens 
past the internet. We have 
the history of mankind at 
our fingertips, the ability to 
overthrow 
governments 
or 
create blackweb armies that 
can be just a few clicks away, 
so what happens next? 
Now, if you’ll excuse me, 
I’m going to go scroll through 
Facebook to shake off all this 
internet anxiety. 

UMS show depicts paths 
to radicalization online

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

ANYA SOLLER
Daily Arts Writer

NATALIE KASTNER
Daily Arts Writer

The Goop Lab

Season 1, Ep. 1-3

Netflix

Now Streaming

6A — Monday, January 27, 2019

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

