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 S68The Very Best Classes in 'Baldur's Gate 3 '-- and How to Swap Mid-Game   After nearly three years in early access, Baldur’s Gate 3’s full version has finally launched, with plenty of tough choices for players to make. Like with any Dungeons & Dragons game, the first choice is which class you’re going to play. With twelve different classes to choose from — and each having subclasses — choosing one can be a daunting task. Below, we’ve put together some guidance on classes suitable for both beginners and more advanced players of Baldur’s Gate 3.
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S1The Power of Being a Heretic: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Critical Thinking, Emotional Imagination, and How to Rehumanize the World  Each month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.When the Inquisition persecuted Galileo for advancing the rude truth that Earth is not the center of the universe, the charge against him was heresy — the same charge on which Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for her crusade for political reform. We have had many words for heretics over the epochs — rebels, radicals, freethinkers — but they have always been the ones to dislodge humanity from the stagnation of the status quo, to illuminate our blind spots, dismantle our unexamined biases, and jolt us out of our herd mentality. Without those devoted to seeing reality more clearly and possibility more wildly, we would still live in a world haunted by superstition and governed by dogma.The power and dignity of this most courageous human mindset is what the pioneering classicist Jane Ellen Harrison (September 9, 1850–April 15, 1928), who brought the culture of Ancient Greece to the modern world, explores in her magnificent essay “Heresy and Humanity,” found in Alpha and Omega (public library) — the out-of-print essay collection that gave us Harrison on the art of growing older, published just as humanity was being dehumanized by its first World War.
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S2The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer's Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love  Each month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he contemplated the vital balance of intimacy and independence, urging lovers to “love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.” Rilke knew it when he reckoned with the difficult art of giving space in love, observing that “even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist.” In consequence, we move through love in a clumsy dance of approach and withdrawal, trying to negotiate the optimal distance for that elusive, ecstatic feeling of spacious togetherness.
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S3How Generative AI Will Change Sales  Sales teams have typically not been early adopters of technology, but generative AI may be an exception to that. Sales work typically requires administrative work, routine interactions with clients, and management attention to tasks such as forecasting. AI can help do these tasks more quickly, which is why Microsoft and Salesforce have already rolled out sales-focused versions of this powerful tool.
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S5Are You Frustrated with Your Team's Ability to Solve Problems?  Often when you feel like your team isn’t working together to effectively problem solve, it’s because you don’t understand various team member’s problem-solving styles. The author, who has studied how people make decisions for 30 years, has identified five archetypes she calls problem-solving profiles. Adventurers are optimistic, confident and tend to go with their gut reactions. Detectives like to follow the data. Listeners are more collaborative and want to solicit others’ input. Thinkers are cautious and like to identify multiple paths forward. Visionaries pride themselves on seeing pathways that other’s don’t. Understanding your team’s problem-solving profiles will help identify tensions you may be feeling, reduce friction and modify behavior to get your decision-making back on track.
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S66 Strategies for Leading Through Uncertainty  It seems that any given week provides ample reminders that leaders cannot control the degree of change, uncertainty, and complexity we face. The authors offer six strategies to improve a leader’s ability to learn, grow, and more effectively navigate the increasing complexity of our world. The first step is to embrace the discomfort as an expected and normal part of the learning process. As described by Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, leaders must shift from a “know it all” to “learn it all” mindset. This shift in mindset can, itself, help ease the discomfort by taking the pressure off of you to have all the answers.
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S7The Great Resignation is 'over'. What does that mean?  In the US, 47 million people quit in 2021, and 50 million more in 2022, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The continued exodus was so significant that in May 2021, Anthony Klotz, then-associate professor of management at Texas A&M University, coined the term ‘Great Resignation’ to put a name to the trend.The Great Resignation was unprecedented – and particularly striking against a backdrop of incredible global uncertainty. Now, however, economists say it’s over.
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S8Rava upma: warm and savoury semolina  For millions of Indians, a day can start or end with a plate of warm rava upma, savoury semolina grains cooked to a tender, fluffy consistency. A classic rava upma is made from semolina, salt, vegetables and a South Indian-style seasoning of mustard and black lentils, and served with yogurt, pickles or bananas as accompaniments. A drizzle of ghee simply elevates this dish to a whole other level. Given how easy it is to put together upma, it appears at the family table as a practical dish that suits the rhythm of work-life balance.It's also popular outside of the home. "One plate upma, one filter coffee without sugar, please!" is a typical breakfast and dinner order in restaurants and bustling tiffin houses across South India.
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S911 of the best TV shows to watch in August  This coming-of-age comedy about four friends on an Oklahoma reservation, made with an Indigenous cast and crew, has been acclaimed for its authenticity and its mix of wit and piercing realism. The third and final season picks up where the previous one ended, with Elora (Devery Jacobs), Bear (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) and Cheese (Lane Factor) in California, honouring their late friend Daniel's dream of visiting the state. They make their way back home, with their usual misadventures – they can steal with the best intentions – and the occasional encounter with a spirit. Sterlin Harjo, who created the show with Taika Waititi, told Variety earlier this year, "I wanted to make a show that was very culturally specific but could resonate with the world". He has accomplished that. His show joins Barry and Succession as another series whose creators chose to wrap up while it was still at its best.The endearing British series that became a global hit returns, picking up the blossoming romance between Charlie (Joe Locke) and his classmate Nick (Kit Connor), who came out as bisexual to his wonderfully supportive mother (Olivia Colman) at the end of the first season. Now Nick texts, with typical teenaged confusion, "Why is being out so complicated?" The new season promises to give us more about Charlie and Nick's friends, as well as a class trip to Paris. But the show, based on a webcomic and graphic novels by Alice Oseman, should retain its tone of matter-of-fact acceptance of its LGBTQ+ characters, as well as its warmth. The Guardian said the first season was "adorable", and Digital Spy, reviewing the second, called the series "the cosy comfort blanket of teen shows", adding "we don't mean that as a bad thing". In a television landscape where the troubled teens like those on Euphoria often dominate, who couldn't use a charming comfort blanket?
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S10Meg 2: The Trench review: Ben Wheatley's sequel is 'plain awful'  The sequel to the 2018 hit The Meg raises one of the timeless questions about cinema: when is a film so bad it's good – hilarious in its crumminess – and when is it just plain awful? Meg 2: The Trench definitely falls in the terrible category, and it didn't have to be that way. The Meg knew exactly what it was: a formulaic movie with Jason Statham as Jonas Taylor, a diver battling a megalodon, a giant prehistoric shark previously thought to be extinct. The movie had no more or less ambition than to be a slick commercial adventure, and while it wasn't great it fulfilled that goal well enough to have earned more than $530m (£420m) worldwide.More like this: - Oppenheimer is a flat-out masterpiece - 'Joyous' Barbie breaks the mould - A big disappointment from Wes Anderson
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S11S12Women's World Cup: how better sports diplomacy can help women's football grow  The 2023 Fifa Women’s World Cup is set to be the biggest yet. Co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, the event is projected to have over a million spectators and 2 billion television and digital viewers. Fifa plans to use the event to “unlock the commercial value” of women’s football. But there is a delicate balance to be struck between aims of economic growth, and the use of sports diplomacy to further gender equality, which is very important to a tournament such as the Women’s World Cup.
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S13S14S15S16S17S18Dismantling the myth that ancient slavery 'wasn't that bad'  Chance Bonar works at the Center for the Humanities at Tufts University, and is affiliated with their ongoing Slavery, Colonialism, and Their Legacies at Tufts University project.Most people in the United States or Europe in the 21st century are more knowledgeable about the transatlantic slave trade, and live in societies deeply shaped by it. People can see the effects of modern enslavement everywhere from mass incarceration and housing segregation to voting habits.
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S19S20US preterm birth and maternal mortality rates are alarmingly high, outpacing those in all other high-income countries  Every two minutes, in about the time it takes to read a page of your favorite book or brew a cup of coffee, a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth, according to a February 2023 report from the World Health Organization. The report reflects a shameful reality in which maternal deaths have either increased or plateaued worldwide between 2016 and 2020.On top of that, of every 10 babies born, one is preterm – and every 40 seconds, one of those babies dies. Globally, preterm birth is the leading cause of death in children under the age of 5, with complications from preterm birth resulting in the death of 1 million children under age 5 each year.
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S21S22S23How the Bank of England's interest rate hikes are filtering through to your finances  The Bank of England has increased interest rates to 5.25%, a level not seen since April 2008 and markedly higher than the all-time lows of 0.1% seen less than two years ago.In fact, interest rates hovered between 0.1% and 0.75% for the 13 years to May 2022. We are now in a new era in which the Bank of England – similar to other central banks – is using rate hikes (this is the 14th consecutive increase) to try to bring price inflation down from currently just under 8% towards its target of 2%.
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S24Rock Follies review: powerful new musical brings 1970s feminist TV sensation to the stage  Rock Follies was a groundbreaking television series about an all-female rock band that originally aired for two seasons in 1976 and 1977. It wove fantastical, trippy and campy rock-musical numbers together with the often less glamorous realities of show business. The television show also led to two soundtrack albums, Rock Follies and Rock Follies of ’77, that charted in the UK.Now, nearly 50 years after it first aired, the show has been reimagined as a stage musical with a new book by Chloë Moss that showcases the TV show’s original music from Howard Schuman and Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay.
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S25S26S27South Africa's new vaping tax won't deter young smokers  Throughout the world, governments impose excise taxes on products like alcohol and tobacco to reduce their demand. The South African government has implemented a tax on vaping products for the same reason. Reducing demand is necessary as there is growing evidence that vaping products are not harmless. The new vaping tax has enraged vaping lobby groups and vaping manufacturers. The vaping industry argues that e-cigarettes are less harmful than traditional cigarettes. It also claims that the tax will spawn an illicit industry, that people will go back to smoking traditional cigarettes, and the tax will not dissuade the youth from starting vaping.
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S28Dinosaur tracksite in Lesotho: how a wrong turn led to an exciting find  I am a poor navigator. This is not an easy thing for a field geologist to admit. We need to be able to find our planned area of interest in good time and make our way back to our potentially hidden and distant vehicles at the end of the day. It’s especially true that I am a poor navigator when I need to use nondescript bushes, the distant hill shape, and the odd fallen boulder as reference points. So it was no surprise when I led my MSc student Loyce Mpangala and our PhD candidate field assistant Akhil Rampersadh astray in Lesotho’s Roma Valley. We were walking back to our car after looking at a dinosaur tracksite that I’d visited before. The tracksite, which is marked on Google Maps as an attraction, was on the other side of a sparsely populated hill with numerous informal walkways, overlooking the National University of Lesotho.
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S29S30Niger coup: west African union has pledged to intervene - but some members support the plotters  When the Nigerian president, Bola Tinubu, was elected as chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) on July 10, he asserted that the organisation would no longer be a “toothless bulldog”. Tinubu insisted that Ecowas would work collectively to combat terrorism and promote democracy in west Africa, explaining:We must stand firm on democracy. There is no governance, freedom and rule of law without democracy. We will not accept coup after coup in west Africa again. Democracy is very difficult to manage but it is the best form of government.
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S31S32Six must-see summer exhibitions - reviewed by our experts  Looking for something to do this Summer? Our experts have gone to some of the best exhibitions around the UK and given us their take on it. From retrospectives of painter Peter Howson’s work in Edinburgh and filmmaker Brian Desmond Hurst’s work in Belfast to a groundbreaking photography exhibition in London and a huge inflatable sculpture installation in Manchester. Peter Howson’s story is about seeking dignity in human suffering and violence, and finding redemption. It is also uniquely Scottish.
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S33Net zero: direct costs of climate policies aren't a major barrier to public support, research reveals  Amid headlines of wildfires raging across Europe and Africa and flooding in China, the UK government took the bewildering choice to expand fossil fuel extraction.Prime minister Rishi Sunak declared that more than 100 new oil and gas drilling licences would be granted for the North Sea in 2023, sparking widespread criticism and incredulity from climate experts, business leaders and some within his own party. The latest announcement follows other indications that the UK government is reviewing its climate commitments, spurred by a byelection victory that was won in part by opposing London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez).
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S34Ukraine recap: counter-offensive gathers pace while Wagner Group takes on new role  Reports from the front lines of the various conflict zones reveal daily just how difficult Ukraine is finding its summer counter-offensive. Russia has had months to build defensive fortifications and Ukrainian troops are having to fight their way through territory which – according to Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s security council – is liberally seeded with landmines. “The number of mines on the territory that our troops have retaken is utterly mad,” he told Ukrainian television this week. “On average, there are three, four, five mines per square metre.”
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S35Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assumes a new role -- single dad, just like his own father  The unexpected announcement in mid-summer of the separation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau places the prime minister in a new role. In Canada, unlike in the United States, being married has never been an unwritten requirement to hold the highest political post. However, as Donald Trump illustrated and Ronald Reagan before him, being divorced once or twice, remarrying and then running for president is seemingly fine by Americans.
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S36S37S38S39S40S4120% of young people who forwarded nudes say they had permission - but only 8% gave it. Why the gap?  The sending and receiving of intimate images and videos is increasingly becoming a part of people’s sexual relationships – particularly for teenagers and young adults. Image-based “sexting” has steadily increased over the past few years. Aggregated data from population-representative studies in the United States, which included 110,380 teenage participants, found about one in five teenagers had either sent or received nudes online. Australian studies report similar rates.
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S42Why a Toronto high school principal's death is wrongly linked to anti-racist training  Nicole Bernhardt has previously received payment for equity and anti-racism training from government, non-profit, and private institutions. She has never worked with, or received payment from, the KOJO Institute. She has also received an Ontario Grant Scholarship and the Abella Scholarship for Studies in Equity.Last month, a former Toronto school principal, Richard Bilkszto, died by suicide. Although the reasons for suicide are complex, his family and lawyer released a statement linking his death to an anti-racism workshop he had attended.
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S43Reducing eco-anxiety is a critical step in achieving any climate action  We all have times when we feel anxious about our future; perhaps this is more acute for many people this summer, as we experience unprecedented wildfires and heat waves due to the warming climate. General anxiety intensifies climate or “eco”-anxiety.This can spur some people to climate action, while for others it can lead to a state of paralysis and inactivity. Our recent Canadian study looked at how values and action around climate change vary with an individual’s personality traits. We found that the higher a person’s general anxiety trait and the more they valued nature, the more likely they would engage in climate action.
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S44The U.S. at a crossroads: How Donald Trump is criminalizing American politics  Chaired professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University Donald Trump has made history again. He is the first president of the United States charged with attempting to overturn a presidential election, violating the rights of citizens to have their votes counted, tampering with a witness and obstructing an official proceeding, among other criminal offences.
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S45The 'Gulf Stream' will not collapse in 2025: What the alarmist headlines got wrong  Those following the latest developments in climate science would have been stunned by the jaw-dropping headlines last week proclaiming the “Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025, study suggests” — which responded to a recent publication in Nature Communications.“Be very worried: Gulf Stream collapse could spark global chaos by 2025” announced the New York Post. “A crucial system of ocean currents is heading for a collapse that ‘would affect every person on the planet” noted CNN in the U.S. and repeated CTV News here in Canada.
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S46S47'City killers' and half-giraffes: how many scary asteroids really go past Earth every year?  Asteroids are chunks of rock left over from the formation of our Solar System. Approximately half a billion asteroids with sizes greater than four metres in diameter orbit the Sun, travelling through our Solar System at speeds up to about 30 kilometres per second – about the same speed as Earth.Asteroids are certainly good at capturing the public imagination. This follows many Hollywood movies imagining the destruction they could cause if a big one hits Earth.
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S48S49Australia will soon have its first Islamic bank. What does this mean, and what are the challenges?  Islamic banks have become an integral part of the financial system in many Muslim-majority countries, as well as in nations with sizeable Muslim minorities such as the United Kingdom, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Thailand.Australia is poised to join them. From mid-2024,Islamic Bank Australia is set to offer Australia’s 813,000 Muslims a banking service aligned with their religion’s strictures against profiting from interest or investing in harmful industries such as alcohol or gambling.
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S50S51Why ASEAN nations need to jointly fund their fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing  This article is part of the ‘Blue Security’ project led by La Trobe Asia, University of Western Australia Defence and Security Institute, Griffith Asia Institute, UNSW Canberra and the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue (AP4D). Views expressed are solely of its author/s and not representative of the Maritime Exchange, the Australian Government, or any collaboration partner country governmentIn maritime Southeast Asia, where more than ten million fishers earn their living, the impact of illegal fishing practices is particularly relevant.
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S52S53NZ's first national security strategy signals a 'turning point' and the end of old certainties  When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz proclaimed a “Zeitenwende”, or historical turning point. It resulted in Germany’s first ever official national security strategy.The equivalent wake-up call in New Zealand was the 2019 Christchurch terror attack. This hammered home, in the most horrific way, that geographic distance and small size no longer protected the country in ways they might have once.
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S54Many Senior Republicans Are Still Reluctant to Break with Trump  As Donald Trump arrives in Washington, D.C., to be arraigned on criminal charges arising from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he has already scored a significant political victory. The indictment—Trump’s third—was handed down on Tuesday, charging the former President with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, as well as conspiracy to defraud the United States and to violate the right to vote. Since then, much of the Republican leadership, some of Trump’s rivals in the G.O.P. primary, and many of the Party’s media backers have adopted his framing of the Justice Department’s case against him.House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the most powerful elected Republican in the country, was characteristically quick to disseminate the Trump line. In a post on the social-media site formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday evening, McCarthy described the latest indictment as “an attempt to distract” from the recent news about President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, whose former business partner testified before a congressional committee on Monday. “House Republicans will continue to uncover the truth about Biden Inc. and the two-tiered system of justice,” McCarthy wrote.
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S55A Former Federal Prosecutor Explains the Latest Trump Indictment  On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump was indicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The charges, brought by Jack Smith, a special counsel for the Department of Justice, specifically accuse Trump of conspiring to obstruct a government proceeding, defraud the United States, and deprive people of their right to have their votes counted. (A fourth count also pertains to the obstruction of a government proceeding.) To talk about the indictment, I spoke by phone with Mary McCord, the executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University and a former acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Trump might try to fight the case against him, whether the prosecutors need to prove that Trump knew his claims about the election were false, and why the Department of Justice took almost three years on this case.What interests you about these charges? And, moreover, do you understand why it was such a contested and debated question whether the former President’s behavior, however objectionable, broke the law?
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S56T.F.G. Shows Up Again for Hammer Time  Follow @newyorkercartoons on Instagram and sign up for the Daily Humor newsletter for more funny stuff.By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
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S57The Enticing Mysteries of U.F.O. Photography  In the corner of the social-media universe that calls itself #ufotwitter, there’s always some new piece of visual evidence to discuss. Did a police body cam catch an otherworldly craft crash-landing in Vegas this week? And that kid nearby who called 911 to report an eight-foot-tall alien in his back yard—is he for real? What about this video of a saucer losing its tractor-beam grip on a cow and sending it winging over the treetops? Is this connected to the recent spate of cattle mutilations? What do you make of this blurry splotch? Does this light look weird?Of course, it’s hard to believe anything we see nowadays, and forecasts of an A.I.-fuelled disinformation apocalypse suggest that’s only going to get worse. But, in the world of U.F.O. hunters, the lack of high-quality photographic proof has always been a vexing problem. “Considering the notorious camera-mindedness of Americans,” Carl Jung wrote presciently in his 1958 book “Flying Saucers,” “it is surprising how few ‘authentic’ photographs of UFOs seem to exist, especially as many of them are said to have been observed for several hours at relatively close quarters.” Now with high-definition photographic tools held perpetually in the palms of billions of people across the globe, this problem should give us even more pause. Does this relative shortage of visuals amount to evidence that the U.F.O. phenomenon is pure bunkum, as many skeptics would have us believe? Or is it, as Jung himself famously supposed, because “UFOs are somehow not photogenic”? Or perhaps the truth is already out there, squirrelled away in some Pentagon vault or floating around the Internet, camouflaged amid the dross?
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S58Trump's Subdued Courtroom Appearance  On Thursday afternoon, the third arraignment of former President Donald Trump took place in the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse, in Washington, D.C. This is the same courthouse in which the former Trump 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was arraigned in 2017, the former Trump associate Roger Stone was arraigned in 2019, and the former Trump aide Steve Bannon was found guilty of contempt of Congress in 2022. It's also the same courthouse in which dozens of people have been sentenced for crimes committed during the Capitol insurrection in 2021. When Trump, restored to D.C. on terms disagreeable to him, lurched from an annex at the rear of the courtroom to his seat, he was simply the latestâalbeit the highest-rankingâMAGA malefactor to cast his shadow on the sea-gray carpet.The arraignment was Trump's third stop on a months-long nationwide indictment tour. In April, he reported dutifully, if grudgingly, to a criminal court in Manhattan, where he pleaded not guilty to falsifying business documents, i.e., lying about the hush money he paid to an adult-film star. In June, he dragged himself to a Miami courtroom, where he pleaded not guilty to federal charges of, among other things, conspiring to obstruct justice, i.e., interfering with the government's efforts to reclaim classified national-security documents that he had taken to Mar-a-Lago from the White House, some of which he was storing in boxes in a shower. Thursday's arraignment continued the pattern. Trump stood accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, a violation that my colleague Susan B. Glasser has called "an offense against democracy itself." As expected, he pleaded not guilty. He awaits a likely fourth indictment out of Georgia on similar charges later this year.
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S59'Loki' Season 2 Trailer Easter Egg Reveals a Wild Villain You've Never Heard Of  The second season of Loki will see the God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) slip through time in a major way. His latest adventure will also bring him face to face again with the Big Bad of Marvel’s Multiverse Saga, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors). This time, though, he takes the form of Victor Timely, a 20th-century inventor who spent decades developing a sophisticated tech brand. Loki and TVA Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) will trek back to 1901 to investigate Timely’s enterprise, but a new Easter Egg may have just hinted at another very weird villain in the mix.So far, Loki Season 2 seems to be splitting its focus between several periods. Apart from the 1900s, Loki and Mobius will also visit the 1970s, which will introduce a character played by Blindspotting’s Rafael Casal. We don’t know much about him yet, but based on Loki’s latest trailer, he could be a major threat to time and space.
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S6030 Years Ago, an Epic Sci-Fi Franchise Almost Came to an End -- Instead, It Found New Life  When Godzilla was reborn for his Heisei era of films, the King of the Monsters had changed. The overall tone was darker than his wild and wooly ‘70s output, and the films’ plots often seemed concocted to reflect popular American blockbusters. In Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah there are elements of Terminator and Back to the Future, in vs. Mothra there are bits of Indiana Jones, and in vs. Destoroyah there’s a lot of aliens. Combined with an extended plotline featuring the telepathic Miki Saegusa as the closest the series has to a non-Godzilla leading character and you get a period that feels quite different from the classic Showa Era, even as it recycled old monsters to attract moviegoers.One of those monsters was Mechagodzilla, the cyborg that would likely receive the silver medal in a competition to determine Godzilla’s most notorious foe (King Ghidorah obviously takes first). The resulting film, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II, features both the best and the worst traits of the Heisei age. Its high points are spectacular, while its lows would recur throughout this collection of movies. As the last Godzilla film, it likely wouldn’t have seemed very fitting, but for a little while it was meant to be Godzilla’s final bow.
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S61'Warrior' Season 3's Most Important Episode is a Triumph for the Show -- And Its Writer  After decades of bit parts, Warrior star Hoon Lee has become more than that guy whose face you know.Like all great actors, Hoon Lee knows how to use his voice. Whether in film, television, or theater, the 50-year-old actor’s rich baritone helps him carve out a niche as a man of unspoken secrets and unsuspected power. And while Hollywood has finally started to recognize what it has in Lee these past few years — offering him roles in big-budget shows like See or DMZ — it was the one-two punch of Max’s Banshee and Warrior that helped make Lee the best television actor whose name you may not know.
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S62S63You Need to Play the Most Charming Indie Adventure on Xbox Game Pass ASAP  Chill games have exploded in popularity recently, as players have grown fond of experiences that prioritize relaxation over fisticuffs. These kinds of games aren’t necessarily new, but have become more abundant in recent years thanks to experiences such as Stardew Valley, Untitled Goose Game, and Donut County. One of the best of the bunch is A Short Hike, which has just become available on Xbox Game Pass. This laid-back experience is refreshing, charming, and respectful of the player’s time. Despite clocking in at just around 90 minutes of gameplay, A Short Hike feels just as meaningful as a large-scale AAA game.
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S64'Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom' Map Has a Real World Easter Egg Hiding in Plain Sight  The fantasy world of Hyrule is known for its lush fields, dozens of shrines, and enemies roaming the world for Link to defeat. It seems so divorced from reality that it’s shocking to discover that the most recent iterations of Hyrule, as seen in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel Tears of the Kingdom, are heavily inspired by a real-world location — Kyoto, Japan.This sneaky Easter egg came to be thanks to Hidemaro Fujibayashi, the director of both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. In an interview with The Verge in 2017, Fujibayashi that the open-world take on Hyrule took heavy inspiration from his hometown.
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S6511 Years Ago, Marvel Made a Sci-Fi Thriller That Puts 'Secret Invasion' to Shame  Secret Invasion is one of the biggest crossover events in Marvel history. Written by comics legend written Brian Michael Bendis, the story of an alien invasion carried out by shapeshifting enemies who quietly replace some of Earth’s mightiest heroes gripped readers with its paranoia-fueled mystery. So it’s no wonder fans were excited to see the Marvel Cinematic Universe adapt the story — with Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury as its leading man, no less.However, this excitement turned to anxiety when Secret Invasion director Ali Selim revealed he didn’t even read the comics. “I was told on the first day, don't even bother reading them,” Selim told Inverse ahead of the show’s premiere. “It has nothing to do with this series.”
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S66Yes, This Really Is a Portable Microwave You Can Wear Over Your Shoulder  Makita wants everyone to have access to a hot lunch, even if you’re nowhere near a power outlet. The Japanese company is known for its cordless devices like fans, power tools, and lights, but it has also ventured into cordless appliances for food and drinks.The portable microwave falls under Makita’s XGT product lineup of cordless power tools, but it serves an entirely different purpose. Still, it’s not the first time that Makita has ventured into this niche world of portable appliances, as we can see with its cordless coffee machine.
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S67The Biggest Original Sci-Fi Movie of the Year Steals a Trick From 'Blade Runner'  Even amid a sea of sequels and spin-offs, sci-fi is still the best place to craft an original story. Rogue One and Godzilla director Gareth Edwards is no stranger to time-worn IP, but with The Creator, he seems poised to remix familiar (and oddly prescient) ideas in a brand new world.The Creator is set in a future where humans and AI struggle to live in harmony. A rogue AI defies its programming and launches a nuclear attack against the humans that created it, in an incident strongly reminiscent of films like Terminator. This gives way to a contentious, decade-long war, one that Edwards’ hero, Joshua (John David Washington), hopes to end.
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S69Star Wars Just Quietly Changed Lightsaber Canon  After 40 years, we finally have an explanation of one of the most confusing weapon changes in Star Wars.Lightsabers are the iconic symbol of Star Wars. Not only do they provide glowing, humming combat scenes, but they also are an excellent symbol for the character who wields them. Take Ahsoka Tano. Over the course of her training, she started with a single green blade, then added a second to show her progression. When she leaves the Jedi Order, she leaves her sabers behind too, but Anakin later returns them after “some improvements,” turning them blue to emphasize their connection. Finally, she changed the color yet again to white to denote her departure from the Jedi faith.
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S70The 8 Best 'Warzone' Season 5 Meta Weapons Right Now  With the launch of Call of Duty: Warzone Season 5, comes a brand new meta, thanks to a series of weapon balancing changes. In general, many of the weapons from the previous season still work well, but their position within the meta list may have shifted around. Likewise, other weapons will perform better than before, giving players new options for various playstyles. While most guns in Warzone are viable, you’ll want to use a meta weapon to increase your chances of victory. Below is a list of the meta weapons for Warzone Season 5.
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