All posts tagged: saga

The long, strange saga of Iran’s F-14 fighter jets : NPR

The long, strange saga of Iran’s F-14 fighter jets : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

The final catapult launch of the F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt on July 28, 2006. The U.S. military retired the plane that year. U.S. Navy/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption U.S. Navy/Getty Images Since the start of the Iran conflict, retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. Ward Carroll has been keeping a close eye on satellite photos and videos that appear to show Israeli airstrikes hitting Iranian F-14 fighter jets, the same type of aircraft that he flew for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Carroll thinks what he is seeing might represent the destruction of the last operational F-14s anywhere in the world. “While I understand the tactical necessity of taking them out … I’m also filled with sadness at their demise,” he says of the airplane that defined his military career. It’s unclear if Israeli strikes have in fact destroyed the last of Iran’s F-14s. Still, if confirmed, their loss would close the book on a decades-long saga that saw their unprecedented sale in the 1970s to a Middle Eastern ally …

‘Dragon Mama’ review: Part two of Sara Porkalob’s Filipina family saga

‘Dragon Mama’ review: Part two of Sara Porkalob’s Filipina family saga

Published by Sam Flores

In “Dragon Mama,” the second part of her Dragon Cycle, writer-performer Sara Porkalob fleshes out the story of her Filipina American family. The focus here is squarely on her mother, another survivor who inflicts her own share of damage along the way. “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Maria herself sings these words from “The Sound of Music” at the start of the play. It’s a question that will take a long time for the character to figure out — and with good reason. It’s a miracle she made it out of her childhood. Maria is 8 years old when the play begins, living in Honolulu with her mother, also named Maria, whose harrowing early story was told in “Dragon Lady,” the first installment of the trilogy presented at the Geffen Playhouse’s Gil Cates Theatre in 2024. That piece, more of a solo musical, was able to command the bigger stage. “Dragon Mama,” which opened Thursday at the Geffen Playhouse’s Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, affords Porkalob brief opportunities to showcase her captivating singing …

The Saga of NASA’s Space Station Evacuation Keeps Getting Stranger

The Saga of NASA’s Space Station Evacuation Keeps Getting Stranger

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech In early January, NASA unexpectedly announced it had been forced to delay a scheduled spacewalk involving two crewmates on board the International Space Station, citing a “medical situation” that “involved a single crew member who is stable.” Two days later, the agency announced the first-ever medical evacuation in the space station’s 25 years of continuous human occupation, a historic moment highlighting the possible severity of the situation. The affected crew members of the Crew-11 mission — NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov — safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California on January 15 and were promptly helicoptered to the nearby Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla near San Diego, leaving us with far more questions than answers. Now, seven weeks later, Fincke has voluntarily stepped forward, announcing in a NASA statement that it was he who had “experienced a medical event that required …

Discord’s Verification Saga Has Devolved Into a Complete Self-Inflicted Embarrassment

Discord’s Verification Saga Has Devolved Into a Complete Self-Inflicted Embarrassment

Published by José Betancourt

Messaging platform Discord’s efforts to roll out age verification software have been nothing short of a disaster. Back on February 9, the company announced that it was launching “enhanced teen safety features” that would require underage users across the world to have their faces scanned or upload a form of ID. The news led to a massive outcry, with privacy advocates arguing the effort could easily backfire, allowing extremely sensitive data to leak into the wrong hands. Case in point, Discord had already drawn plenty of criticism in October after admitting that a “third-party service provider” had leaked ID photos of around 70,000 users following a cyberattack. Users also heavily criticized the company’s brief partnership with Persona, a Peter Thiel-backed age verification provider. The enormous amount of backlash that ensued led Discord to wipe any mentions of the company’s name from its support page last week, as The Verge reported on Monday. Adding insult to injury, Discord was swept into the next controversy after nearly 2,500 files associated with Persona’s facial recognition checks were made …

The Epstein saga engulfs Les Wexner — and the Ohio he helped build

The Epstein saga engulfs Les Wexner — and the Ohio he helped build

Published by Sam Flores

NEW ALBANY, Ohio — Around the time he began taking financial advice from Jeffrey Epstein, Ohio’s richest man made a fateful investment. It was 1990, and Leslie Wexner, whose retail clothing empire included brands like Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria’s Secret, put $100,000 behind Republican George Voinovich’s successful campaign for governor. The contributions opened doors that Wexner had sometimes struggled to walk through while attempting to translate his philanthropy and success in business into civic and political power in his home state. Aided by his new friends in the Voinovich administration, Wexner developed this once-small town into an exurban enclave around his mansion. Helped along by a state-funded highway interchange, he built an upscale Columbus shopping mall anchored by his stores. “George used to say, ‘We need to do more with less,’” said a longtime Republican operative and Voinovich ally, recalling the late governor’s reputation for frugality. “We used to say that was a double entendre: ‘Do more for Les.’” Wexner’s relationship with Voinovich also planted the seeds for a coalition of CEOs that is …

Lost Lambs review: A wacky family saga that skewers modern anxieties

Lost Lambs review: A wacky family saga that skewers modern anxieties

Published by Sam Flores

Yet Cash defies the diaristic lit-girl trope with her delightfully wacky debut novel, Lost Lambs. Everything in the small-town world of the novel is made up, from the names of prescription drugs which various characters ingest to the town’s church, Our Lady of Suffering, which is suffering from a gnat infestation. In a bit of typographical experimentation, the text is blighted by gnats, too — exterminate is written as “extermignate”; natural as “gnatural”. Source link

Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe in 1930s Crime Saga

Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe in 1930s Crime Saga

Published by Daniella Wilson

An original saga with novelistic roots in Great Depression Americana and classic Westerns, Padraic McKinley’s first feature, The Weight, in theory has a lot going for it — a vivid evocation of the rugged Oregon wilderness in 1933, an atmospheric score, a pair of leads with the requisite gravitas in Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe, playing driven men on different sides of the law. The director also sticks some creditable influences on his mood board, William Friedkin’s Sorcerer being the most obvious of them. Aiming to emulate the introspective action-adventure survival thrillers of the 1970s is no bad place to start. But grit, rawness and dirty-realist poetry can be elusive elements to conjure, even in a production that cultivates those qualities with a rough-and-ready feel for the scrappy, sweaty storytelling of another era. Ironically, despite such juicy elements as gold, greed and survival, The Weight lacks weight. For a high-stakes drama that throws a small band of desperate, downtrodden men into an environment of ruthless thugs and crooks in authority positions, requiring considerable stamina and …

This animated mythology saga from Zack Snyder is the fantasy Netflix gem you missed

This animated mythology saga from Zack Snyder is the fantasy Netflix gem you missed

Published by skeptic

Among movie fans, Zack Snyder has a reputation for making hard-driving action spectacles that rock the faces off anyone who watches them. Think about the non-stop adrenaline rush of a movie like 300 or the grim sprawl of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. He likes slow motion, lens flares, and framing his characters like they’re powerful, unstoppable gods come to Earth. So why not make something about actual gods? Twilight of the Gods is (as yet) the only TV show Snyder has made, a one-season Netflix original that remixes elements of Norse mythology. And if you’re a fan of Snyder, action, or animation, it’s well worth a watch. Thor like you’ve never seen him before Norse myth meets rock and roll in Twilight of the Gods Twilight of the Gods starts with a typically violent setup: the human king Leif (Stuart Martin) and the warrior Sigrid (Sylvia Hoeks) fall in love in the heat of battle. They get married, but the Norse god Thor (Pilou Asbæk) crashes the party looking for the escaped god Loki (Paterson …