   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S69Honda's Weird Briefcase Scooter Is Back and All-Electric   The future of electric scooters is here and it’s in the form of a briefcase. Honda’s recently announced Motocompacto is a throwback to a wild-looking ‘80s scooter that it’s reviving as an all-electric two-wheeler. Like its original design, Honda isn’t expecting the Motocompacto to be your main form of transportation. Instead, it’s meant to be your last-mile ride like after you get off your subway stop or if you’re running around the city and don’t want to constantly look for parking again.
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S38 Questions About Using AI Responsibly, Answered  Generative AI tools are poised to change the way every business operates. As your own organization begins strategizing which to use, and how, operational and ethical considerations are inevitable. This article delves into eight of them, including how your organization should prepare to introduce AI responsibly, how you can prevent harmful bias from proliferating in your systems, and how to avoid key privacy risks.
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S4AI Should Augment Human Intelligence, Not Replace It  Will smart machines really replace human workers? Probably not. People and AI both bring different abilities and strengths to the table. The real question is: how can human intelligence work with artificial intelligence to produce augmented intelligence. Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov offers some unique insight here. After losing to IBM’s Deep Blue, he began to experiment how a computer helper changed players’ competitive advantage in high-level chess games. What he discovered was that having the best players and the best program was less a predictor of success than having a really good process. Put simply, “Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.” As leaders look at how to incorporate AI into their organizations, they’ll have to manage expectations as AI is introduced, invest in bringing teams together and perfecting processes, and refine their own leadership abilities.
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S5Know Your Customers' "Jobs to Be Done"  Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors, product developers focus too much on building customer profiles and looking for correlations in data. To create offerings that people truly want to buy, firms instead need to home in on the job the customer is trying to get done.
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S6The companies sticking to fully remote work  The days of fully remote set-ups are past their peak for most employees. According to July 2023 LinkedIn data, seen by BBC Worklife, there has been a 50% year-over-year decrease in remote roles advertised on the platform in the US, and a 21.5% drop in the UK. Yet even as more firms issue hard-line return-to-office mandates and clamp down on employees working from home, there are some companies still steadfastly remaining – or even switching to – remote set-ups.
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S7Chile's 'ugly', edible sea-squirt  At first sight, the piure (also known as the pyura chilensis) is not the most appetising seafood. While served all along the coast of Chile, its strong, iodine taste paired with its "ugly" appearance can be unappealing to consumers, who tend to prefer the softer flavour of mussels, clams, scallops and the beloved loco, a Chilean sea snail that's typically eaten with mayonnaise. However, as more chefs creatively incorporate it into dishes, piure could very well become the next hero of Chilean cuisine. Found on the coasts of Peru and Chile, piure is a tunicate (also known as a sea-squirt) – a spineless marine animal that feeds by sucking in water through one syphon and expelling through the other – that looks like something out of this world. Appearing as a solid rocklike form, each chunk is made up of dozens of piures lumped together, all peppered with what resembles lumpy warts and strands of hair (algae).
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S8Fleur de courgette: The simple dish beloved in the South of France  No one knows for sure when or how locals in the South of France started eating fleurs de courgette (courgette flowers), but their simple philosophy endures: when life gives you courgettes, make stuffed courgette blossoms. Once an affordable, rural dish due to an abundance of produce, the trumpet-like bright yellow flowers have found their way onto tables at Michelin-star restaurants.Alain Llorca, chef and owner of his eponymous one-star restaurant, about 18km from Nice in La Colle-sur-Loup, is fond of the dish, which has become one of his signatures (see recipe below). Often stuffed with creamy ewe's milk cheese aged for months before being blended with ingredients like locally grown aubergine, basil and olives, he says that his stuffed courgette flowers "highlight other flavours from the South of France".
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S9Eight of the world's most stunning floating homes  There is something rebellious and individualistic about swapping a life lived within bricks and mortar for a simpler, less conventional existence on a houseboat. Boat-dwellers feel a sense of adventure and, if based in a remote, rural spot, are totally at one with nature.The cover of a new book, Making Waves: Floating Homes and Life on the Water by Portland Mitchell, captures the freedom many associate with water-borne homes. Viewed through a porthole, two swans glide by on a glassy lake. In the foreground is a less distinct glimpse of a houseboat interior. Boat-dwelling isn't always plain sailing, however. After all, houseboats are often buffeted by the elements, while truly remote ones can be completely off-grid, which can take getting used to.
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S10What Princess Diana's sheep jumper really means  An iconic piece of British royal history has just been auctioned – neither diamond tiara nor couture evening gown, it's a red novelty jumper featuring a whimsical sheep pattern by small brand Warm and Wonderful. The 19-year-old then Lady Diana Spencer wore the sweater in June 1981 to a polo match where she watched her fiancé Prince Charles compete. It was four months after the announcement of their engagement, and much has been made since then of this fashion moment, with commentators saying that the knitted pattern, featuring a single black sheep among many white ones, was "a cheeky nod from Diana about how she viewed herself within the Royal Family - the odd one out".But was this sartorial choice really an intentional manifestation of the teenage Diana's innermost fears and emotions? Was it a subtle signal – Lady Diana semaphoring to the world a sense of herself as a "black sheep" and an outsider? No, according to author, curator and fashion historian Eleri Lynn, who is also a Trustee at the Royal School of Needlework. "We're probably reading more into it in hindsight," Lynn tells BBC Culture. "I don't believe at that time she would have had a sense of the 'one black sheep' idea, or that she even had a sense of the impact of the fashion she wore. She was a very young woman who was developing her own sense of style. She was very much of her time in terms of fashion. She was dressing like her peers, and was very playful in what she wore. She was not yet at that stage of communicating through fashion."
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S11S12Grattan on Friday: Langton and Price fight with passion and gloves off for beliefs  Anthony Albanese cemented victory in the 2022 election by being mostly highly cautious and having Labor run, by and large, a tight campaign. If he loses the Voice referendum, which is looking very likely, his own overreach and the “yes” campaign’s ill-discipline will carry a good deal of blame. He could have put a more modest referendum proposition, albeit one that Indigenous leaders would have condemned as not going far enough. But he could not impose order on the “yes” campaign, because he’s only in charge of the government’s part of it.
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S13Why it's good to talk about women's health at work, according to research  In the past couple of years, women’s health and wellbeing in mid to later life has gone from being whispered about in the shadows to being the subject of documentaries, newspaper articles and breakfast TV discussions.This “celebrity endorsement” of menopause is normalising and destigmatising it through increased awareness. It means we’re talking about menopause more than ever before and it is also helping to reduce the taboo nature of menopause at work.
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S14Wealthy but worried: why the UK's top 10% are turning their backs on the rest of society  I feel fairly middle of the road and average, but objectively I know this is completely untrue. I am at the top of the income percentiles – though I also know I’m miles away from the very rich. Everything I earn goes at the end of the month: on school fees, holidays, and so on. I never feel cash-rich. (William, City firm director in his 50s)Recently, there seem to have been a lot of people like William, in privileged jobs and on six-figure salaries, complaining that they’re “struggling” – including to The Times, The Independent, the Mail and the Telegraph. Perhaps you recall the BBC Question Time audience member who, weeks before the 2019 general election, couldn’t believe that his salary of over £80,000 made him part of the top 5% of UK earners – despite the UK being a country where almost a third of children live in poverty.
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S15S16S17The complex chemistry behind America's spirit - how bourbon gets its distinctive taste and color  Few beverages have as rich a heritage and as complicated a chemistry as bourbon whiskey, often called “America’s spirit.” Known for its deep amber hue and robust flavors, bourbon has captured the hearts of enthusiasts across the country.But for a whiskey to be called a bourbon, it has to adhere to very specific rules. For one, it needs to be made in the U.S. or a U.S. territory – although almost all is made in Kentucky. The other rules have more to do with the steps to make it – how much corn is in the grain mixture, the aging process and the alcohol proof.
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S18Heating and cooling space habitats isn't easy -- one engineering team is developing a lighter, more efficient solution  Once there, their eventual goal is to set up a base. But a successful base – along with the spacecraft that will carry people to it – must be habitable for humans. And a big part of creating a habitable base is making sure the heating and cooling systems work. That’s especially true because the ambient temperature of potential places for a base can vary widely. Lunar equatorial temperatures can range from minus 208 to 250 degrees Farenheit (minus 130 to 120 degrees Celsius) – and similarly, from minus 225 F to 70 F (minus 153 C to 20 C) on Mars.
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S19The importance of shining a light on hidden toxic histories  Indianapolis proudly claims Elvis’ last concert, Robert Kennedy’s speech in response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and the Indianapolis 500. There’s a 9/11 memorial, a Medal of Honor Memorial and a statue of former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning.What few locals know, let alone tourists, is that the city also houses one of the largest dry cleaning Superfund sites in the U.S.
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S20How Russia's theatre scene has been obliterated by Putin's culture war  Over the past decade, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s regime has introduced ideologically driven cultural policies intended to shape a new, virtuous Russian citizen for the future. For those – like Putin himself – old enough to remember the Soviet Union, the imposition of an authoritarian cultural policy in the name of ideology comes very naturally. In those days it was called “socialist realism”, and was intrinsic to the goals of the ruling Communist party.
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S21S22Kenya: Ongata Rongai boom town destroyed two vital rivers - new study flags a major health risk  Over the past 10 years, Ongata Rongai, a satellite town on the edge of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, has experienced uncontrolled development and exponential population growth. Because of its appealing location close to the city, it’s jumped from just under 40,000 residents in 2009 to a population of over 172,000 in 2019. The most recent census data showed a high annual population growth rate of 16%. The rapid increase in population, and accompanying development of residential buildings, has led to huge pressure on the environment, including its waterways.
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S23As climate change warms rivers, they are running out of breath - and so could the plants and animals they harbor  As climate change warms rivers, they are losing dissolved oxygen from their water. This process, which is called deoxygenation, was already known to be occurring in large bodies of water, like oceans and lakes. A study that colleagues and I just published in Nature Climate Change shows that it is happening in rivers as well. We documented this change using a type of artificial intelligence called a deep learning model – specifically, a long short-term memory model – to predict water temperature and oxygen levels. The data that we fed the model included past records of water temperature and oxygen concentrations in rivers, along with past weather data and the features of adjoining land – for example, whether it held cities, farms or forests.
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S24Proud Boys on trial: does remorse in court signal a change for this far right group? A psychologist reviews the research  When I watched the members of the US far-right group the Proud Boys from afar before and during the Capitol riots of January 6 2021, I thought their name was quite apt. They always seemed proud – arrogant, even – and entitled.For observers, the watershed moment in the development of their “pride” came in September 2020, in that now infamous line from then US president Donald Trump, delivered live on television: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” Some commentators felt that the Proud Boys seemed to view themselves as the “president’s army”.
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S25Climate change is set to make our holidays look very different - here's how  But this resurgence in travel is concerning. The tourism sector alone is responsible for an estimated 8%–10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And conditions at traditional holiday destinations in high summer are becoming increasingly unpleasant if not downright hazardous. During the past year, numerous climate records have been broken as heatwaves and wildfires ravaged large parts of Europe, Asia and North America. In July, both Sardinia and Sicily experienced temperatures in excess of 46°C, nearly breaking European records.
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S26Asymetrical bridges, timber towers and a repurposed gas platform: awards hail 2023's best structures  The 2023 Structural Awards, hosted by the Institution of Structural Engineers, has unveiled its shortlist of the world’s 35 most outstanding building projects. Aimed at highlighting technical innovation, the featured structures comprise seven bridges, two footbridges, three stadiums and one football stadium stand, redevelopments, new builds, malls, museums, community hubs, a college and a school. They also include a retired gas platform transformed into an art installation and Stufish Entertainment Architects’ Abba Arena, a venue custom-built in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, to house the Swedish band’s Voyage concert.
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S27The cross-Africa dance company bringing new life to Pina Bausch's Rite of Spring  At its premiere in 1913, Igor Stravinsky and Vaslav Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring shocked audiences and divided critics. The ballet centred around a straightforward yet brutal narrative – a community selects a sacrificial victim, a virgin who will be martyred to their fertility god to secure a good harvest. The plot, however, was not what scandalised Parisian theatregoers. Every aspect of the performance transgressed western classical traditions. Stravinsky’s score re-imagined Russian folk music through a complex web of harmonies and constantly changing tempo. Nijinsky’s choreography abandoned ballet technique – his dancers had turned-in feet, curved spines and performed percussive stomps. And Nikolai Roerich’s set and costume designs were influenced by the folk art of Central Asia.
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S28S29Christmas shopping starts earlier every year - here's why, and how to shop smart  Schools have only just gone back and, in many parts of the UK, warm temperatures are still on the forecast. Yet British retailers are already looking ahead to Christmas, previewing products and launching advent calendars and seasonal drinks.Argos has already opened its online storefront for Christmas gifts. Waitrose beat other retailers, offering a preview of Christmas food (from the traditional mince pies to the new “cinnamon bunettone” and vegan offerings) since July.
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S30Should you send your child to an academy or a council-run school? Why Ofsted results don't mean much  Helping your child choose a new school is a daunting process. You have to take into account catchment areas, how your child will travel to school, and where their friends are going. You may be looking at Ofsted results, exam performance or even the universities that pupils from particular schools go to. What’s more, there are different types of state school – and you might be wondering if your child would be better off at an academy or a locally controlled, council-run comprehensive school.
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S31Fashion industry's environmental impact is largely unknown - here's why  How do the clothes you buy wear out the natural world? To take stock of the damage you have to account for the materials, water and energy that went into making a garment, and the greenhouse gas emissions, chemical pollutants and other byproducts associated with its disposal. For example polyester, a kind of plastic widely used in T-shirts, is made from oil – a fossil fuel. If you throw it out it degrades slowly, and chemicals from its dyes and surface treatments leach into the soil.
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S32Ukraine war: US and allies may supply longer-range missiles - how this would change the conflict  Noises from Washington indicate that US president Joe Biden may be about to overcome his reluctance to supply Ukraine with the longer-range missiles it desperately needs.According to a report from CNN on September 11, which quoted “an official familiar with the discussions”, a final decision about the supply of army tactical missile systems (ATACMS) to Ukraine had not yet been made. But, according to CNN’s source, there is “a much greater possibility of it happening now than before … Much greater. I just don’t know when.”
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S33Ukraine recap: Kim Jong-un visits Putin for arms-for-tech talks while Kyiv urges west for longer-range missiles to aid counteroffensive  Vladimir Putin spent a few pleasant hours this week with one of his friends and allies – an increasingly exclusive club these days. Putin met up with North Korea’s supreme leader, Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un, who rode his armoured train 20 hours to the Vostochny space centre in the remote Amur region in to talk weapons programmes with the Russian president.Kim confirmed that Putin had his full support for Russia’s “sacred fight” against the west: “We will always stand with Russia on the anti-imperialist front”, he said as the pair posed for a joint statement after a trip to the cosmodome and a two-hour meeting. Details of what the pair spoke about have not been disclosed but issues are thought to have included North Korea supplying Russia with arms and ammunition in return for advanced satellite and nuclear-powered submarine technology.
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S34South Africa's court system has been abused by powerful people: five ways to stop it  After a battle of about four years to secure the removal of South Africa’s public protector, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, the country’s parliament finally delivered the coup de grace in early September. Parliamentarians voted to impeach her just a month before her term was due to end. President Cyril Ramaphosa subsequently removed her from office. Some of the public protector’s troubles landed up in court, with numerous judgments going against her.
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S35Hunter Biden is the latest presidential child to stain a White House reputation - but others have shined it up  Hunter Biden, the surviving son of President Joe Biden, was indicted on Sept. 14, 2023, on gun-related charges – facing a possible criminal trial while his father is campaigning for reelection. The charges relate to Hunter Biden’s alleged lying about his drug use when he purchased a gun in 2018. And a conviction could mean prison time of 10 years or more. As Hunter Biden’s legal peril rises, with all its ensuing political complications, people have rediscovered the likes of Ulysses Grant Jr., Alice Roosevelt and Neil Bush, as if the best way to make sense of Hunter Biden is found in a rogues’ gallery of difficult presidential relatives.
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S36How climate assemblies can help Canada tackle the climate crisis  Canada’s ongoing and record-breaking wildfire season and the recent heat waves around the world have galvanized Western public attention to the climate crisis like never before. If we fail to rein in global warming below the 1.5 C threshold, impacts on humans and the natural environment are poised to worsen as extreme weather events overlap with increased frequency. What is needed, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is an urgent, integrated effort to reduce carbon emissions while adapting to the impacts of climate change.
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S37Navigating the complexities of caregiving for dementia in South Asian communities  In 2020, an estimated 597,000 individuals were living with dementia in Canada. By 2030, that number is expected to increase to almost one million, and by 2050, almost 1.7 million. Dementia is a global struggle affecting many around the world. In South Asian communities, an intricate tapestry of cultures, languages and traditions engenders a caregiving dynamic for those living with dementia. Dementia care in South Asian households is nuanced and complex and is shaped by cultural, familial and societal forces.
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S38Seaweed is taking over coral reefs. But there's a gardening solution -  Since then, this pattern has been observed on reefs around the world: as corals die, seaweed takes over.Once seaweed gets a foothold, it’s hard for coral to compete. These large, fleshy algae can quickly come to dominate. As the oceans heat up and reefs degrade, the trend is expected to accelerate. Former coral reefs will become dominated by seaweed instead, with cascading damage to reef ecosystems.
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S39S40S41S42Friday essay: homesick for ourselves - the hidden grief of ageing  Anyone parenting young children will be familiar with the phrase “there’ll be tears before bedtime”. But in a quieter, more private way, the expression seems perfectly pitched to describe the largely hidden grief of ageing. Not the sharp grief that follows a bereavement (though bereavements do accumulate with the years), but a more elusive emotion. One that is, perhaps, closest to the bone-gnawing sorrow of homesickness.
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S43Are we about to see a rare green comet light up the sky? An expert on what to expect from Nishimura  Of all the objects in the Solar System, perhaps the most spectacular are the great comets that occasionally grace our skies. If you’ve been on social media in the past few days, you’ve probably seen articles proclaiming we have such a comet in our skies right now: C/2023 P1 (Nishimura).As I write this, comet Nishimura is swinging past on its first visit in more than 400 years. Japanese astronomer Hideo Nishimura discovered the comet on August 12. Soon after, pre-discovery images of the comet dating back to January were found, allowing astronomers to determine its path.
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S44Tim Flannery's message to all: rise up and become a climate leader - be the change we need so desperately  Tim Flannery is Ambassador for RegenAqua, which uses seaweed and river grass to clean up wastewater before it flows out to sea and on to the Great Barrier Reef. He consults for the not-for-profit environmental charity, Odonata.He is Chief Councillor and Founding Member of the Climate Council, Governor at WWF-Australia and Member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.As humanity hurtles towards a climate catastrophe, the debate has shifted – from the science to solutions. We know we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. But progress has been painfully slow.
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S45Drop the talk about 'mum and dad' landlords. It lets property investors off the hook  Peter Mares is a a fellow at the Centre for Policy Development, an independent policy institute. https://cpd.org.au/ He has just accepted an invitation to join an unpaid advisory committee to the Centre for Equitable Housing https://centreforequitablehousing.org.au/ Hardly a day passes without talk of “mum and dad” property investors. It’s media shorthand for a rental market dominated by small operators rather than big institutions.
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S46S47Ontario needs to remove barriers to child-care subsidies for low-income families  In September, a major turnover in child care occurs, as preschoolers graduate to kindergarten and a new wave of preschoolers enters into early learning and care systems. This year, the pressures on the child-care sector have increased dramatically as governments are radically decreasing the costs of child care for families as they implement Canada-wide early learning and child care (CWELCC) agreements.
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S48Our planet is burning in unexpected  People have been using fire for millennia. It is a vital part of many ecosystems and cultures. Yet human activities in the current era, sometimes called the “Anthropocene”, are reshaping patterns of fire across the planet.Our international team found strong evidence fires are burning in unexpected places, at unusual times and in rarely observed ways. These changes in fire patterns are threatening human lives and modifying ecosystems.
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S49S50What does Kim Jong Un stand to gain from his meeting with Vladimir Putin?  North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has reportedly offered his “full and unconditional support” to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit to eastern Russia this week. Analysts speculate this could mean ammunition for Russia’s war in Ukraine, given North Korea is believed to have large quantities of ammunition compatible with Russian artillery. It may be of limited help to Russia, though, given North Korean ammunition has low reliability and accuracy and the fact Russia still needs to transfer it thousands of miles to the front.
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S51S52Another day, another roadblock: how should NZ law deal with disruptive climate protests?  The most recent protest by the Restore Passenger Rail climate protest group, in which a Wellington car dealership was defaced with red paint, is not just the latest in a local movement – it’s part of a global trend.Airline bosses have been hit with cream pies, Just Stop Oil protesters have glued themselves to iconic pieces of art in famous galleries, school students are skipping school to march for climate justice, and airport runways have been invaded. Everywhere, including in New Zealand, roads and highways have been blocked.
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S53S54iPhone switching to USB-C is a win for consumers and the environment - but to what extent?  This week, technology news has been abuzz as Apple introduced its latest iPhones into the market. Among the usual new feature announcements, one stunning change has stood out in particular. The long-standing rumours are true – the new iPhone 15 series has USB-C standard charging ports.The ditching of Apple’s proprietary Lightning port, which was first introduced in 2012, means iPhone users will finally be able to recharge their phones with the same chargers they use for other devices.
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S55We are poised to pass 1.5  Jonathan Symons sits on the advisory board for RePlanet NGO and is a member of The Australian Institute of International Affairs (NSW) Council.For three decades, the goal of international climate negotiations has been to avoid “dangerous” warming above 1.5℃. With warming to date standing at around 1.2℃, we haven’t quite reached the zone we labelled dangerous and pledged to avoid.
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S56S57Jamais vu: the science behind eerie opposite of d  Repetition has a strange relationship with the mind. Take the experience of déjà vu, when we wrongly believe have experienced a novel situation in the past – leaving you with an spooky sense of pastness. But we have discovered that déjà vu is actually a window into the workings of our memory system.Jamais vu may involve looking at a familiar face and finding it suddenly unusual or unknown. Musicians have it momentarily – losing their way in a very familiar passage of music. You may have had it going to a familiar place and becoming disorientated or seeing it with “new eyes”.
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S58As Sarah Burton leaves Alexander McQueen, an expert explores her legacy through five iconic designs  Sarah Burton, the creative director for Alexander McQueen, has announced that she is leaving the fashion house after two decades. The spring/summer 2024 collection, launching at Paris Fashion Week on September 30, will be her last. Burton, born in Macclesfield, initially joined McQueen in 1996 as a placement student, while studying at Central Saint Martins in London. Following her graduation, Burton took up a permanent post, becoming head of womenswear design in 2000. After Lee Alexander McQueen’s tragic death in 2010, Burton became his successor as creative director.
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S59The 2023 National Book Awards Longlist: Nonfiction  This week, The New Yorker is announcing the longlists for the 2023 National Book Awards. So far, we’ve presented the lists for Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, and Poetry. Check back tomorrow morning for Fiction.Some thirty years ago, the writer Cristina Rivera Garza’s sister Liliana was killed in Mexico City by an ex-boyfriend who was never brought to justice. In “Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice,” Rivera Garza uses police reports, notebooks, handwritten letters, and interviews to reconstruct the events surrounding her sister’s murder. The book begins in Mexico City, where Rivera Garza has travelled to reclaim the unresolved case file. “There is something obscene about the beauty of the city—its boutiques, gazebos, poplars—and something frightening in Rivera Garza’s ability to narrate this beauty in light of her terrible quest,” Merve Emre writes, in an essay on Rivera Garza’s work. “When she finally finds the file and opens it, voices rise from its pages—the voices of Liliana, her parents, her friends, and the friends of her murderer. They are testimonies not to Liliana’s death but to her life.”
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S60Theatre Kids Find Their Place in "Theater Camp"  Theatre kids are a strange breed. I know, because I was one. For a good chunk of my teen-age years, I spent Saturday nights listening to a radio program called "A Night on the Town," which played Broadway show tunes and discussed productions. If someone had asked me why I was so obsessed, I wouldn't have had a coherent answer. I just found the stage endlessly fascinating; it was a place where you could be anything and go anywhere. And when songs like Stephen Sondheim's witheringly witty "The Little Things You Do Together," from "Company," or Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's soul-stirring "I Don't Know How to Love Him," from "Jesus Christ Superstar," came across the airwaves, the experience became transcendent.The teens in the film "Theater Camp"âwhich was released in cinemas in July and is still playing in select theatres, and has just begun streaming on Huluâare similarly entranced. They love theatre so much, in fact, that they spend their summer at a camp called AdirondACTS, where they take classes in acting, dance, and stage design. Its founder is the beloved Joan Rubinsky (Amy Sedaris, with chutzpah), whom we meet alongside the camp's manager, Rita Cohen (Caroline Aaron), as they trawl a middle-school production of "Bye Bye Birdie" for talent like a pair of football scouts. (They're introduced with title cards, part of a mockumentary device that frames the film.) A strobe light in the show gives Joan a seizure, putting her in the hospital and largely out of the picture.
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S61The Rage of the Toddler Caucus on Capitol Hill  If there is any lesson to take from the past few years of American politics, it is that things can always get worse. This is worth remembering as Washington begins another fall of self-made and yet painfully real crises—the political prologue to a 2024 campaign season unlike any other, as the ex-President turned criminal defendant Donald Trump threatens to return to the White House after challenging core tenets of our democracy. The word “unprecedented” is no longer sufficient. We’ve run out of synonyms, analogies, and time to escape the mess.The questions now are of a different sort, about the exact details of what we will face and when. To wit, as Congress returned from its protracted summer recess, the Trumpified, radicalized House Republican Conference was preparing to shut down the federal government when funding runs out at the end of this month and to impeach President Biden, both for no apparent reason. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has a majority so slim that he’s effectively a prisoner of his party’s most reckless extremists. On Tuesday, he sought, in effect, to make a bargain—to buy their acquiescence to measures for keeping the government open, the Speaker agreed to their demand for a dubious impeachment inquiry into Biden and his son Hunter’s overseas financial dealings. But, by Thursday, having failed entirely to placate his tormentors, McCarthy was reduced to throwing F-bombs at them, daring them to follow through on their threats to file a motion to oust him. “If you think you scare me,” he reportedly fumed, in a closed-door meeting of his caucus, “move the fucking motion.”
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S62S63"A Haunting in Venice" Has the Charm of Ridiculous Excess  Published in 1969, Agatha Christie's "Hallowe'en Party" is largely set in the fictional town of Woodleigh Common, "an ordinary sort of place," thirty or forty miles from London. Thanks to the director Kenneth Branagh and his screenwriter, Michael Green, the book has become a new film, "A Haunting in Venice," and the action has shifted to Italy in 1947. Now, that's an adaptationâa bolder metamorphosis than anything essayed by Branagh and Green in "Murder on the Orient Express" (2017) or "Death on the Nile" (2022). I'm already looking forward to their next reworking of Christie: "The Body in the Library," perhaps, relocated to the freezer aisle of a Walmart.Branagh returns as Hercule Poirot, who has retired to a Venetian fastness. There, ignoring the pleas of the importunate, who bug him with their private mysteries, he tends his garden, inspecting his plants through a magnifying glass as if to expose any guilty aphids. A local heavy named Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio), who sounds like a stockbroker but is actually an ex-cop, functions as a gatekeeper. The one outsider to whom he allows entry is Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a crime novelist on the make. She urges the sleuth to accompany her to a séance, where a celebrated medium, Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), will make contact with the beyond. Ariadne's plan is that Poirot, as an arch-rationalist, will debunk the claims of the paranormal. And Branagh's plan, as a guileful filmmaker, is to rebunk them to the hilt.
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S6410 Years Ago, The Greatest Crime Series of the Century Cemented Its Legacy  A decade after it ended, Breaking Bad is remembered as one of the best TV shows ever made. Thanks to its impeccable writing, its experimental direction, and its towering central performances, the show has earned a legacy that has only grown thanks in large part to its time on Netflix. New viewers who find the show now can binge the entire thing, comfortable in the knowledge that everyone was happy with how things wrapped up.When “Ozymandias” first aired, though, no one knew where Breaking Bad was going. They didn’t know that Jesse would be imprisoned by Nazis, or that Walt would spend a full year holed up in a cabin. It was “Ozymandias,” an episode that felt like a culmination of everything that had come before it, that pivoted Breaking Bad toward its endgame, and ultimately cemented the show’s legacy.
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S65Bethesda Founder Reveals the Sci-Fi Game that Predates 'Starfield' by 29 Years  Bethesda Softworks’ latest video game (and its first original concept in a quarter of a century) is a massive open-world adventure boasting over 1,000 explorable planets in a future where humanity colonizes the Milky Way. But as Bethesda founder Christopher Weaver will tell you, Starfield isn’t the company’s first foray into space.“We created Delta V many, many years ago [29 years ago, to be exact] and it was a massive space game,” Weaver tells Inverse. “We had a great time flying our little ships around the massive mothership, trying to have these furious firefights and stay out of the way of other people. To me, Starfield is basically Delta V on steroids.”
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S66'Ahsoka' Episode 6 Runtime Reveals The New Star Wars Normal  Streaming TV wasn’t supposed to replace the prime-time television viewing experience, but Ahsoka is proving that it can compete. While most streaming releases arrive in the middle of the night, Ahsoka is experimenting with a prime-time window, putting its episodes out at 6 p.m. PST/9 p.m. EST. In an equally important decision, Ahsoka is repeating another old-fashioned TV tradition: 40ish-minute episode lengths, which is how long a traditional hour-long episode is after you deduct commercials. This trend is now continuing into Episode 6.
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S67David Fincher's Messy New Crime Thriller Fails to Subvert His Best Movies  Most people would agree that David Fincher’s protagonists aren’t exactly cool dudes. There’s the hapless, wonky-smiled Nick in Gone Girl, mega-nerd Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, and selfish divorcé Nicholas in The Game, to name a few. The link? All these characters are under the deluded impression that they are cool, or smart, or have their lives together, only for the plot developments to prove them wrong.It’s true, then, that the protagonist in The Killer — who presents as an A-grade assassin, but continually makes mistakes in favor of side-quests and futile revenge — doesn’t break that mold. But whereas those prior characters all felt meticulously and carefully coded (this is Fincher, after all) to have goals and principles that made sense in the context of the narrative, Michael Fassbender’s killer is a bag of contradictions who goes through no real moment of reckoning.
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S68'Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 Update Finally Feels Like the Game We Were Promised  Cyberpunk 2077 has come a long way since its rough launch at the end of 2020, but nothing comes close to the upcoming 2.0 update, which practically makes it feel like a different game entirely. CD Projekt Red has clearly put a lot of thought into making Cyberpunk more approachable, and that’s gone a long way to making an RPG that now feels much more satisfying to play than its original version. That also means now is the time to play Cyberpunk 2077.There’s a whole laundry list of changes coming in the 2.0 update, but by far the most influential are completely reworked Perk and Cyberware systems. By reworked I mean completely and utterly changed, integrally altering how you approach character builds, and in the process making the entire system much more streamlined.
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S70Marvel VFX Union Takes a Huge Step Forward That Could Change the MCU For the Better  The MCU and DCU became the blockbuster machines they are today due in no small part to the vast, groundbreaking special effects they contain. However, such effects are huge endeavors for studios, and they’ve taken their toll on workers. Exposés on the treatment of VFX workers employed by Marvel and other studios have been published at Inverse, Vulture, and IGN, describing grueling schedules and poor pay. Now this practice could finally be catching up with Marvel. Over 50 in-house VFX crew members at Marvel Studios have unanimously voted to unionize with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the union revealed in a press release. IATSE usually covers behind-the-scenes production workers like camera operators, hair and makeup teams, grips, and production design teams, so this is the first time a dedicated VFX unit has joined them.
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