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 S11Why dozens of North American bird species are getting new names: Every name tells a story   This winter, tens of thousands of birders will survey winter bird populations for the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, part of an international bird census, powered by volunteers, that has taken place every year since 1900.For many birders, participating in the count is a much-anticipated annual tradition. Tallying birds and compiling results with others connects birders to local, regional and even national birding communities. Comparing this year’s results with previous tallies links birders to past generations. And scientists use the data to assess whether bird populations are thriving or declining.
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S3Novelist Ken Follett on understanding the present through history  Before becoming one of the world's best-selling fiction authors, Ken Follett was a newspaper reporter in London. He began writing as a side job after work during weekends, while raising two children.His determination paid off: Follett quickly became a prolific storyteller. In 1978, he found immense success with his eleventh book, a World War Two-era spy thriller called Eye of the Needle. Since its release, the book has sold more than 10 million copies, and landed on BBC's list of the 100 Novels That Shaped Our World in 2019.
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S4The proactive fertility care industry is soaring. Is that a good thing?  A few years ago, Elizabeth King, a fertility coach and counsellor based in Los Angeles, noticed a change in the clientele contacting her for help. Previously, King had mostly supported women going through infertility and pregnancy loss, but she increasingly found people were reaching out for information about their fertility, long before they began trying to conceive."Many of these clients come in with concerns about their age, medical history and often the anecdotal experiences, or information they've gathered from various media," says King. "The common thread among them is the desire for reassurance and control over their reproductive choices."
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S5Mele fritte: A Roman Jewish fritter  Throughout Hanukkah, Jews around the world will fry everything from shredded potatoes to doughnuts to commemorate the miracle of the oil. That is, when the heroic Maccabees rededicated the temple in Jerusalem, long held by the Greek empire, by lightning the menorah with enough oil to last a day. But, as the story goes, it miraculously lasted for eight nights – forever binding fried foods with the celebration of Hanukkah. At Hanukkah, one dish stands out for Jewish cookbook author Leah Koenig, who recently published her eighth cookbook, Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome's Jewish Kitchen, which is a culinary time machine that spans the millennia of Roman Jewish cooking. That dish is mele fritte: crisp apple fritters served with vanilla sugar.
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S6Peeping Tom: The 1960 British flop that invented the slasher movie  The setting is unremarkable, most often an unassuming American suburbia. The villain is a blade-wielding, unapologetic killer, warped by past trauma into luring strangers to their (preferably bloody) deaths. The protagonists, typically young and horny, are all at risk, except perhaps for one: a "final girl" who may be resilient and morally pure enough to survive. Even only casual viewers of horror will recognise this as the common outline of a slasher movie. Cemented in hit "Golden Age" slashers like Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) (not to mention the many sequels to and imitators of each), the tropes of the slasher subgenre have been laid bare and then parodied and deconstructed in horror movies ever since Wes Craven's Scream (1996) kicked off its own self-aware slasher genre.More like this:- The film that caused a US moral panic- The terror of the Australian outback- The Italian 'maestro of murder'
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S7Unprecedented drought in the Amazon threatens to release huge stores of carbon - podcast  Biólogo e pesquisador titular (Departamento de Ecologia), Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA) As world leaders and their climate negotiators gathered at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in early December, on the other side of the world, Brazil was experiencing an unprecedented drought in the Amazon. Scientists fear it could release of billions of additional tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
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S8When research study materials don't speak their participants' language, data can get lost in translation  Language is a key barrier to participation, as even those with some English proficiency are less likely to participate in studies when recruitment materials aren’t in their native language. Language barriers also hinder a person’s ability to provide informed consent to participate.A translator is not a conduit of meaning, but both a reader of the original text and a writer of the translation. As such, translators have their own positioning in the world that comes with a set of conscious or unconscious values and knowledge that bias how they read and write. Translation is a process of interpretation regardless of how objective a translator aims to be.
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S9S10What does weight-inclusive health care mean? A dietitian explains what some providers are doing to end weight stigma  This includes practices such as eating for overall well-being rather than for the number of calories. It may also include prioritizing activities to reduce stress, avoiding smoking, drinking less alcohol and striving to be physically active in enjoyable ways.People with larger bodies often experience weight stigma as discrimination, prejudice, negative stereotypes and judgments from others – including their own doctors and other health care providers. More than 40% of U.S. adults across a range of body sizes report experiencing weight stigma in their day-to-day lives.
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S12How I identified a probable pen name of Louisa May Alcott  Before Louisa May Alcott published the bestselling “Little Women” in two volumes – the first in 1868, the second in 1869 – she wrote melodramatic thrillers, selling these short stories to magazines to bring in cash for her impoverished family.On a cold November day in 2021, I was rereading Madeleine B. Stern’s introduction to her 780-page edition of “Louisa May Alcott’s Collected Thrillers.”
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S13Biases behind transgender athlete bans are deeply rooted  In 2023, 24 states had laws or regulations in place prohibiting transgender students from participating on public school athletic teams consistent with their gender identity. These bans mean that a person whose sex assigned at birth was male but who identifies as a girl or woman cannot play on a girls or women’s athletic team at a public school in that state.The topic has spurred many debates about fairness, the science behind sports performance, civil rights and sports as a human right.
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S14S15Apartheid in Namibia: why human rights and women are celebrated on the same day  10 December is worldwide commemorated as Human Rights Day. It marks the anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted on that day in 1948. Many countries and organisations acknowledge this as a significant marker.It created a lasting, normative framework defining fundamental human rights. UN Member States, while in constant violation, have all ratified the principles. They remain a moral and ethical compass demanding recognition and respect.
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S164 east African countries are going for nuclear power - why this is a bad idea  University of Johannesburg provides support as an endorsing partner of The Conversation AFRICA.The east Africa region has the fastest growing population in Africa. Between 2013 and 2017, its growth rate was twice the African average. The region is also experiencing strong economic growth. It’s sub-Saharan share of GDP has risen from 14% in 2000 to 21% in 2022.
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S17Terror in Uganda: what's driving the Islamic State-linked rebels  I would like to thank journalist Adolph Basengezi for his comments on the situation in Congo's north-east, aiding my analysis on the current conflict.The Islamic State Central Africa Province recently attacked and killed two foreign tourists and a citizen in a Ugandan nature park. Located in the country’s west near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Queen Elizabeth National Park is about 400km from the Ugandan capital Kampala.
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S18Yule - a celebration of the return of light and warmth  Yule will be celebrated by Wiccans and many other Pagans in the Northern Hemisphere on Dec. 21, the day of the winter solstice. For Pagans, the shortest day of the year marks the end of the descent into darkness and the beginning of the return of the light as the days begin to get longer after the solstice. Like many other religious holidays, Yule is a celebration of light.As a sociologist who has been studying contemporary Pagans for more than 30 years, I know that Yule is also a time of reflection. The cold dark period of the year, many Wiccans feel, encourages us to not only spend more time at home, but also to become more reflective about our lives – and often about spirituality.
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S19The Peasants: this oil-painted film of Wladyslaw Reymont's novel is a visual masterpiece  The Peasants tells the story of a beautiful young Polish girl, Jagna (Kamila Urzędowska), who was sold into a marriage to the richest man in the village – an older widower named Boryna (Mirosław Baka). The price is high – six acres of Boryna’s best land – but then, as Jagna’s mother knows: “Love comes and goes but land stays.” The girl herself, of course, does not matter and has no say. Jagna’s story is based on Polish author Władysław Reymont’s novel, The Peasants, published in four volumes between 1904 and 1909. The Peasants focuses on the arduous life of the Polish peasant, but the story it tells is universally familiar. In 1924, Reymont received the Nobel prize in literature for his “great national epic”, which has been a classic of Polish literature ever since.
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S20S21Billions have been raised to restore forests, with little success. Here's the missing ingredient  Protecting and restoring forests is one of the cheapest and most effective options for mitigating the carbon emissions heating Earth. Since the third UN climate change summit, held in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, different mechanisms have been trialled to raise money and help countries reduce deforestation and restore degraded forests. First there was Koyoto’s clean development mechanism, then the UN-REDD programme initiated at COP13 in Bali in 2008. Voluntary carbon market schemes came into effect after COP21 in Paris in 2015, but all met with limited success.
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S22North Korea: electoral reform prompts speculation that Kim Jong-un is grooming his daughter to succeed him  Reader in Asia Pacific Studies (with special reference to Korea), MA North Korean Studies Course Leader, Co-Director of the International Institute of Korean Studies, University of Central Lancashire This year, unusually, North Korea allowed more than one candidate on the ballot for the recent local elections. Under new laws introduced in August this year, voters are now asked to choose between two candidates for North Korea’s local and regional assemblies. Then in a second vote, they either approve or disapprove of the winning candidate by placing their ballot papers in either a green box (approve) or a red box (disapprove).
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S23The longstanding mystery of Mars' moons - and the mission that could solve it  The two small moons of Mars, Phobos (about 22km in diameter) and Deimos (about 13km in diameter), have been puzzling scientists for decades, with their origin remaining a matter of debate. Some have proposed that they may be made up of residual debris produced from a planet or large asteroid smashing into the surface of Mars (#TeamImpact). An opposing hypothesis (#TeamCapture), however, suggests the moons are asteroids that were captured by Mars’s gravitational pull and were trapped in orbit.
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S24Dear politicians: to solve our food bank crisis, curb corporate greed and implement a basic income  Have you noticed the line ups for the food banks in your city? (Or have you had to join one?) They are getting longer in a way we’ve never seen before. According to the stats, the number of people using food banks has doubled since last year and one in 10 people now rely on food banks in Toronto. Nationwide, the numbers using food banks have jumped by 32 percent from last year and 78 per cent since 2019. And there is no one type of person who relies on food banks: for example, many in line have full-time jobs.
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S25Ukraine recap: western divisions an ominous sign for Kyiv as the aid funding tap begins to dry up  For the past week or so it has felt as if Ukraine’s fate is more likely to be decided in Washington and Brussels than on the battlefield as US president Joe Biden struggles to get his US$111 billion (£88 billion) package of aid through the senate and EU members quibble over a €50 billion euro (£43 billion) lifeline for Kyiv.“History is going to judge harshly those who turn their back on freedom’s cause. We can’t let Putin win,” Biden said after a video meeting with G7 leaders. But with all 49 Republican senators voting against the aid package, it remains stalled. And the recent electoral triumph of far-right candidates in Slovakia and the Netherlands and the intransigence of Hungary means that European solidarity behind Ukraine appears to be beginning to crumble.
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S26S27S28There's no norovirus outbreak in the UK - so why is a sharp rise in patients being reported?  A sharp rise in the number of hospital beds occupied due to patients suffering with norovirus has been reported by the NHS this year. According to the latest NHS weekly report on hospital bed occupancy, around 351 people on average were admitted to hospital every day last week with symptoms of diarrhoea and vomiting. During the same period last year, only 126 people were admitted with these symptoms.But while the NHS is attributing these hospitalisations to norovirus, the numbers don’t suggest the UK is currently facing an outbreak. In fact, the latest data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) for the same period shows that cases of norovirus aren’t any higher than in previous years.
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S29New investment labels aim to help savers spot sustainable products - but won't always stop greenwashing  From the nutritional traffic light system displayed on a box of cereal, to the efficiency ratings we look at when buying a house, ratings and labels help us work out how to spend money responsibly. A new scheme from the UK’s financial regulator also aims to use them to help you invest responsibly.The Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) first sustainable investment labelling regime is part of a larger sustainability overhaul kickstarted by the UK government in 2021. This also includes the creation (still to be finalised) of a green taxonomy for UK companies – a set of thresholds and targets to gauge whether products or activities meet sustainable objectives.
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S30This 17th-century portrait was given plumper lips years after it was finished - an expert explains why  For the everyday visitor to a gallery or museum, alterations to artworks made years, sometimes decades, after their original creation are rarely obvious. After all, the skill of the modern art conservator is for their work to remain imperceptible at normal viewing distance, thus retaining the integrity of the original artwork. Modern-day art conservators tend to favour minimal interventions – avoiding both painting over original paint and changing the picture. The idea these days is that any interventions – such as cleaning varnish, mending tears, or in-painting (retouching) – should not interfere with the artist’s original intent.
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S31Seven original 1970s skateparks that show why these urban treasures should be protected  Historic Environment Scotland – whose function to date has largely been confined to protecting standing stones, cairns and castles – is proposing to add to its roster the Livingston Skatepark near Edinburgh, signalling an interest in heritage of an altogether newer kind. Designed by local architect Ian Urquhart, the Livi, as it is known, put the small Scottish town on the skateboarding map, when it opened in 1981. Visits from luminaries including American superstar Tony Hawk and the Bones Brigade have nurtured a still-vibrant local skate scene.
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S32S33S34How bird feeders help small species fight infection  Every day, throughout the world, people put huge quantities of food out at feeding stations for birds and other wild animals. Winter can be tough for small birds. During cold winter nights, small birds reduce their body temperature by several degrees. While this would be lethal for a human, it saves lots of energy, helping birds to survive particularly cold nights. However, reducing body temperature is risky, and hypothermic birds are slow to wake and respond to a predator.
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S35S36S37Councils are opening the door to tiny houses as a quick, affordable and green solution  Soaring rents and home prices, increasing mortgage stress, record immigration and a growing population are fuelling a housing crisis and increasing homelessness. In the face of this pressing need, tiny houses offer an alternative housing option. Tiny houses have become popular in the United States. Their popularity is growing in other developed countries such as the UK and Canada. In Australia, however, planning and housing regulations present many barriers to using tiny houses as permanent homes.
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S38Friday essay: blind people are often exhausted by daily prejudice - but being blind is 'inherently creative'  Andrew Leland was in his thirties when he had to stop driving at night – and then stop driving at all. Next, he had to start using a cane in public. As the cycle of decreasing vision became familiar, each absent sliver of vision required more adjustment to how he navigated the world. He moves through the same steps in the same sequence each time, but each loss is unique, and uniquely stressful. And he can still see the disdain of sighted people, which makes him long to lose all his vision at once:
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S39We thought we'd find 200 species living in our house and yard. We were very wrong  There was nothing extraordinary about our 400 square metre block of land in Annerley, a suburb of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. Roughly half the block was occupied by a three-bedroom house.What was extraordinary was the number of species we discovered there. As revealed in our just-published study, starting on the first day of lockdown and continuing over the course of a year, we catalogued 1,150 species on our inner-city property.
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S40S41S42When 'rights' divide: Trans kids need supportive families  Protests in support of “parental rights” have taken place across Canada in recent months. Many taking part in these demonstrations have railed against “gender ideology” in school curricula and mixed bathrooms. Much of this rhetoric is based upon the transphobic fallacy that age-appropriate inclusive health education will somehow manufacture queer and trans children all over the place.
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S43How ChatGPT can help you do archival research -- but never replace archivists  Archivists assist users like historians, genealogists, students or citizens in locating, accessing and interpreting archives. Archival reference services have long been seen as services that mediate understanding and dialogue between archivists, users and archives to make documentary objects more accessible and usable.Recent years have seen the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) in heritage institutions like libraries, archives, museums and galleries.
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S44The sky's the limit: A brief history of in-flight entertainment  As the winter holidays draw near, many of us are already booking flights to see friends and family or vacation in warmer climates. Nowadays, air travel is synonymous with some form of in-flight entertainment, encompassing everything from the reception offered by the aircrew to the food choices and digital content.These services all add value to flying for customers. Passengers are now so familiar with in-flight entertainment that to travel without it is unthinkable.
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S45S46How to stay hopeful in a world seemingly beyond saving  As world leaders embark upon yet another COP climate conference, it can be easy to be cynical, afraid or overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the impacts that climate change is having (and will continue to have), upon our world. After all, the realities of rising sea levels and more frequent and severe storms are scary prospects.
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S47Could visiting a museum be the secret to a healthy life?  It’s Saturday morning. You are barely awake, with a cup of coffee in your hand, and your gaze wanders to the window. It’s raining. So you make up your mind. This afternoon, you will go to a museum.That’s the hypothesis put forward by the Association des Médecins francophones du Canada in 2018, when it launched the museum prescriptions program in partnership with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The project, now completed, has enabled thousands of patients to get a doctor’s prescription to visit a museum, either on their own or accompanied. The aim of the prescription was to promote the recovery and well-being of patients with chronic illnesses (hypertension, diabetes), neurological conditions, cognitive disorders or mental health problems. The decision to write the prescription was left to the discretion of the doctor.
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S48As the temperature rises, so do rates of domestic violence  Large parts of Australia are currently in the grip of a heatwave, and climate change means we’re in for more frequent and intense heat events into the future.Our team analysed close to one million reported incidents of domestic, non-domestic and sexual assaults over a 13 year period (2006-2018) in New South Wales. We examined trends related to season, temperature, and where the incidents occurred (inside or outside).
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S49S50Fire ants are on the march. Here's what happens when they sting  Red imported fire ants are a particularly nasty type of ant because they are aggressive, and inflict painful stings that may be life threatening. That’s in addition to being a serious threat to agriculture and biosecurity. In recent weeks, we heard these ants had spread from Queensland, south into northern New South Wales.
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S51Taken together, the NDIS review and the royal commission recommendations could transform disability housing  Dr Di Winkler is the CEO and Founder of the Summer Foundation. Summer Foundation is an industry partner on a La Trobe University led ARC Linkage Grant about measuring the outcomes of tenants who move to new SDA. Dr Winkler is also a volunteer director of a not for profit Specialist Disability Accommodation provider called Liverty Housing (formerly known as Summer Housing)A home – in the physical and emotional sense – is foundational to living an ordinary life with a feeling of inclusion. National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participants with the highest support needs require housing and living services. Disability can make living in mainstream housing impossible for some people, or they may need housing where support can be efficiently and safely provided.
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S52S53Few Films Make Ideas Exciting, but "Origin" Succeeds  Hollywood movies have a problem with intellectual endeavor; just look at the thinly imagined inner lives of the titular protagonists of "Oppenheimer" and "Maestro." But Ava DuVernay's new movie, "Origin," a bio-pic about the journalist and historian Isabel Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), has no such problem. It's hard to recall a movie made for general audiences that takes ideas so seriously, that makes the pursuit of them appear so thrilling, or that is so replete with the intellectual substance of the protagonist's endeavors. Even good movies about writers often downplay the hard partâtheir work. DuVernay embraces Wilkerson's work wholeheartedly and rises to the artistic challenge with one of the most unusual and ingenious of recent screenplays. The film is based on Wilkerson's 2020 book "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," and DuVernay's approachâturning a work of historical and sociological nonfiction into a dramatized story centering on its authorâis audacious. The narrative framework is capacious enough to give free rein to Wilkerson's intellectual curiosity, to pursue the subjects of her attention far, and to parse their details clearly; and within this framework, DuVernay establishes a wellspring of narrative tension that makes the activities of research, contemplation, and writing dramatically captivating onscreen.The stakes of the drama, and of Wilkerson's subjects of study, are heralded by the movie's opening scene, which depicts not Wilkerson (or, rather, let's call the character Isabel) but, instead, a young man who buys snacks from a convenience store, puts up his hoodie against the inclement weather, and realizes, as he walks home, that someone is following him. The young man is Trayvon Martin (Myles Frost), and he would soon be confronted and killed by George Zimmerman, who wrongly assumed that he was up to no good. Meanwhile, Isabel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Times who's on hiatus from the paper, is in Germany, delivering a lecture about a German resister to the Nazi regime. There, she runs into a Times editor, Amari Selvan (Blair Underwood), who wants her to write about the Trayvon Martin case. She hesitates, but listens to the 911 tapes of the incident that he forwards. (It's illustrative of DuVernay's method that, as Isabel listens, the events that the tapes refer to unfold onscreen.) Isabel begins to speculate that the case involves something more than just racism, and that the term isn't sufficient to describe the injustices borne by Black Americans.
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S54The Fight for a Free Press in the Muscogee Nation  In November, 2018, the legislative body of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation—a self-governed tribe in Okmulgee, Oklahoma—called an emergency session to repeal a three-year-old law that guaranteed a free press. Of the five hundred and seventy-four federally recognized Native American tribes, only five have codified press freedom. “This isn’t personal against the newspaper staff, but there’s just too much negativity in the newspaper,” one council member said at the time. “There just needs to be more positive coverage.” Overnight, Mvskoke Media, the nation’s only press outlet—with print, radio, and television coverage—became subject to the tribal government’s censorship. After the vote, tribal leaders ordered that a report on the repeal be removed.The filmmakers Joe Peeler and Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, who is a member of the Muscogee Nation and the former editor of Mvskoke Media, captured all that came next. Their new documentary, “Bad Press,” follows Mvskoke Media during a three-year struggle to secure a constitutional amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press in the Muscogee Nation. In addition to the typical media problems of staff attrition and low pay, the journalists in the film face intimidation from tribal leaders and suspicion from members of their audience, many of whom instinctively distrust reporters who wade into tribal politics. If feature films like “All the President’s Men” and “The Post” have romanticized the press’s place in civic life, “Bad Press” succeeds in conveying what modern journalism is often like: a pretty bleak profession populated by smart, funny people chasing pockets of hope and juicy stories.
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S55The Capital Has a Bad Case of Year-End Panic .jpg) Sometimes Washington needs to scare itself silly to get anything done. This year’s repeated threats of government shutdown are classic examples, even if the crisis has not been permanently averted but merely deferred to early 2024. The current panic is over U.S. assistance to Ukraine, which is set to run out at a moment when Russia has successfully stalled Ukraine’s counter-offensive and the onset of winter has brought a new round of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure.For President Biden, who has repeatedly promised Ukraine that America would be there “as long as it takes,” basic credibility is on the line. For weeks, he and his Democratic allies in the Senate have tried and failed to pry a deal from their G.O.P. colleagues, who have set increased border funding and stricter immigration reforms as the price for unlocking Biden’s proposed sixty billion dollars for Kyiv. With prospects fading for an agreement, Democrats have spent the past few days warning of geopolitical catastrophe. “I just don’t think there’s any question that we are about to abandon Ukraine,” Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, who has been one of the lead negotiators, told reporters. “When Vladimir Putin marches into Kyiv and into Europe, Republicans will have to live with the fact that our sons and daughters will be over fighting when Vladimir Putin marches into a NATO country.”
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S56What Would Sandra Day O'Connor Have Thought About Affirmative Action for Men?  Last week, Sandra Day O'Connor died, just months after the Supreme Court effectively overruled one of her most important decisions, Grutter v. Bollinger, which had upheld race-conscious affirmative action in university admissions. President Ronald Reagan nominated O'Connor in 1981 after having promised to appoint, as the first female Justice, "the most qualified woman that I could possibly find." Perhaps the explicitly gender-conscious consideration leading to her historic appointment influenced O'Connor's approval, in Grutter, in 2003, of using affirmative action to achieve student-body diversity. But her famous expectation at the time, "that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary," inspires some pointed contemporary questions about gender in admissions.When O'Connor graduated from college and law school, at Stanford in the nineteen-fifties, it was perfectly legal for law firms to refuse to hire her as a lawyer because she was a woman. It took until 1964 for Congress to prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of race or sex, in the Civil Rights Act. But, in the area of education, the statute did not address sex. The oldest colleges and universities, including Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, had excluded women for centuries. Some universities that were founded in the late nineteenth century, including Stanford, accepted both men and women, but soon found that women were performing too well, provoking anxiety that women would overrun or feminize the institutions. That led schools to place quotas on female enrollment, to insure that women would remain a minority of the class. Ivy League schools began admitting women in the late nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies, on the rationale that the presence of female students on campus was needed to attract the best male students. Those institutions, too, strictly capped female enrollment or instituted higher admissions standards for women, for example, by requiring women to have higher SAT scores than men to be admitted.
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S57How To Fry The Perfect Latke (According To Science)  “Potato pancake” can mean something different depending on who you ask, but as Joshua Resnick, lead chef at the Institute of Culinary Education, sees it, there are generally two categories. “The first one is a flaky potato starch that’s almost a mashed potato that gets seared into a pan,” he tells Inverse.The second popular type of potato pancake, Resnick says, resembles a hashbrown. The hashbrown is often finely shredded and crispy on the outside — it presents “more of the look of a latke” — but it’s missing onion, which is one of the prime ingredients that qualifies a latke as a latke.
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S5810 Years Ago, Hayao Miyazaki's Most Underrated Movie Kickstarted a Hollywood Trend  Jiro Horikoshi dreams of planes. They zip and soar through his mind, the images projecting on top of his head like a translucent, holographic vision. It’s a childhood dream that leads the young man to become Japan’s leading aircraft designer of the 1940s, and to become the protagonist of Hayao Miyazaki’s most personal film.Released in 2013, The Wind Rises was advertised as Miyazaki’s final film, an epic and ambitious culmination of his entire career. Which is why many were surprised, and perhaps a little deflated, when he released a fairly straightforward biopic. The movie follows Jiro Horikoshi, the chief engineer of the Mitsubishi Zero, the fighter plane infamously used for kamikaze attacks in World War II.
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S595 Years Ago, Nintendo's Biggest Franchise Knocked Out the Competition -- Once and For All  Over the years, countless games have tried to reproduce the wild success of Super Smash Brothers. For the most part, they always fail. Smash Bros. has proved to be a phenomenon over the years. To this day, there’s still a vibrant competitive scene for Super Smash Bros. Melee, which came out in 2001 for the GameCube, and teasers for new Smash Ultimate characters have served as major announcements at events like The Game Awards. But five years ago, Nintendo decisively proved that no one will ever be able to reach its heights. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is still a staggering success, a game with such vibrant vision and ambition it manages to succeed at everything it does. A raucous multiplayer experience, it’s hard to believe the amount of content and quality crammed into every corner of Smash Ultimate. It’s a celebration of decades of video game history and quite simply the best party game ever created.
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S60'The Boy in the Heron' Reveals Miyazaki's Most Pervasive Idea  Fantasy and reality have always collided in Miyazaki movies, but The Boy and the Heron makes the choice between them explicit.Splattered with bird feces, the family at the center of The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki’s new animated masterpiece, can’t contain their joy once they return to 1940s Japan after getting lost in a fantastical, timeless realm somewhere between life and death.
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S61Zack Snyder's 'Rebel Moon' Is Coming to Netflix Sooner Than You Think  Get ready to experience the rebellion just a bit earlier than expected. Netflix is set to unleash the first half of Zack Snyder’s two-part sci-fi epic, Rebel Moon, this December, and the streamer’s rolling out the red carpet. In efforts to “eventize” its release, Netflix has nudged Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire out of its December 22 premiere and into a prime time slot. The film will now be available to stream a few hours earlier, hitting Netflix on December 21 at 7:00 p.m. PST (or 10:00 p.m. EST). Netflix Geeked broke the news with a new teaser, offering a closer look at the sprawling cast that Snyder assembled for his epic. Sofia Boutella stars as Kora, a retired soldier whose peaceful life on a remote moon is suddenly threatened by occupational forces. A Child of Fire follows Kora as she traverses the galaxy in search of warriors that will help her defend her home, but audiences will have to wait a few months to see the epic battle realized in Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver.
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S62Max Teases 'House of the Dragon' Season 2 and a Return to Genre Television  Max, the streamer formerly known as HBO Max, has always claimed to be “the one to watch,” and for fans of genre storytelling, this has been more or less true. After a big launch tied to the heavily anticipated Snyder Cut of The Justice League, Max did everything it could to claim the genre throne.But Max’s focus shifted over time. Its merger with the Discovery+ streaming service seemed to put a new emphasis on reality show sludge, especially since sci-fi hits like Westworld were removed from the service entirely. A bombastic 2024-25 slate could, however, signal a return to form. A teaser for the coming year has given us a look at the return of House of the Dragon, two movie spinoffs, and a spooky detective drama.
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S63This Repurposed Drug May Allow Type 1 Diabetics to Make Insulin Again  Baricitinib works by blocking protein receptors that trigger an overactive immune response.Out of the 50 hormones identified in the human body, insulin arguably ranks among the top dogs. This hormone acts like a key, opening your cells up to glucose from your food. Without it, your cells can’t get the energy they need, and for some living with diabetes, the health consequences can be devastatingly fatal.
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S64The Cybertruck's "Wade Mode" Is Made For Plowing Through Potentially Treacherous Water  For as big of a release as the Cybertruck was, we’re still uncovering random features from the fans and not Tesla itself. The latest feature we’re getting insight into is “Wade Mode” which was discovered in the settings for the Cybertruck’s Off-Road Baja menu by X user @niccruzpatane.As you can see in the image, Tesla made the Cybertruck capable of adjusting ride height to protect the battery when you’re driving through water.
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S65Star Wars Theory Reveals R2-D2's Surprising Secret Role  The Star Wars franchise hasn’t always boasted a consistent narrative, but one particular plot hole has become something of a sticking point within the fandom. It all hinges on R2-D2, of all characters: the beeping droid is one of the most prevalent in the Skywalker saga, appearing across nine films and crossing paths with nearly every major player. He’s observed a lot of history, and unlike his companion C-3PO, he’s managed to record and retain an intimate account of the Skywalker clan in his memory banks. That’s what made his role in Star Wars’ original trilogy so confusing, at least in hindsight. R2 worked closely alongside Anakin and his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, throughout the Clone Wars, right up until Anakin fell to the dark side and became Darth Vader. But when he encounters Obi-Wan 19 years later on Tatooine, the erstwhile Jedi Master pretends not to recognize R2. Later, when Obi-Wan tells Luke Skywalker the story of his father, R2 doesn’t say a thing, even though Obi-Wan’s story is a blatant lie.
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S66Here's Everything We Know About the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra So Far  And with the expected upcoming release of the Galaxy S24 models, several leaks have been making the rounds as we get closer to a likely debut in early 2024. While smartphone generations tend to lean toward the iterative side, we have some rumors about the upcoming Galaxy’s titanium design, specs, and the potential for generative AI that could make for a notable update. Here are all the leaks you need to know about Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S24 models.
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S67How To Watch the Game Awards 2023, the Biggest Night of the Year for Gaming  Don’t miss out on all the awards and announcements from Geoff Keighley’s end-of-year gaming celebration.The Game Awards 2023 is nearly here. Invariably one of the biggest shows in gaming, The Game Awards enjoys a stature previously enjoyed only by E3. Even compared to the many E3 replacements that have appeared in the past few years, The Game Awards is an unmatched spectacle packed with announcements, awards, trailers, and appearances from developers and celebrities alike.
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S68'Big Walk': 'Untitled Goose Game' Dev Reveals Absurd Multiplayer Puzzle Game at The Game Awards 2023  Just minutes into The Game Awards 2023 (if we’re not counting the pre-show), we already got confirmation of free DLC for God of Wår: Ragnarok, but for fans of cute, weirdo indie games, it may have immediately been eclipsed. House House, the developer of Untitled Goose Game, revealed its first game after the avian nonsense simulation, and somehow it looks even cuter (and weirder).Details were sparse on House House’s Big Walk, but it does seem to have a much larger scope than Untitled Goose Game, which was mostly confined to a few backyards. This time, you’ll have a vast wilderness area to explore, and you won’t be alone.
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S69'Alan Wake 2' Wins Best Narrative at the Game Awards 2023  This was a year dominated by great stories in games, but only one can take home the coveted Best Narrative trophy from the Game Awards 2023. Each game in contention this year was lauded for its storytelling — on top of being some of the most popular games of 2023 overall — so there was no clear frontrunner before the show. From the open-ended narrative of Baldur’s Gate 3 to the gripping occult mystery of Alan Wake 2, the nominees represent not only some of the best stories of the year, but the many different ways games have of telling them.While every game on the list made a strong case for itself this year, only one can come out ahead. With the show underway, Alan Wake 2 has now been crowned the winner of Best Narrative at the 2023 Game Awards.
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S70Game Awards 2023: 'God of War Ragnar  Despite saying we shouldn’t expect as many world premieres at this year's Game Awards, Geoff Keighley sure has already had a lot of World Premieres at the 2023 awards show. One of the first big reveals early in the show was the announcement from Sony Santa Monica that 2022’s God of War Ragnarok is getting free DLC - and it's coming much sooner than you might expect. However, it might not be the story-focused expansion many fans are hoping for. Here’s what to know.It’s been a little over a year since God of War Ragnarök released and there have been plenty of rumors and theories about possible DLC. Now we have some actual info. The new DLC is called God of War Ragnarök Valhalla and will follow Kratos in the aftermath of the base game’s story, which ended with him and Atreus parting ways on amicable terms after facing off with the All-Father, Odin.
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