'It is rare'

'The outcome of this election is not what we wanted'

'F*cking fascists'

'It's insanity'

'We have to listen to American voters'

'Both subjects succumbed to their injuries'

A vast collaboration of birding organizations has organized the largest citizen science project in the history of ornithology—a ‘Big Day’ with 201 countries participating. Documenting 7,800 species in a single day, (there are around 11,000 species known in the world) the October 12th Big Day succeeded in recruiting 748,000 birders for the job, and producing […] The post Birdwatchers in 201 Countries Break World Record Documenting 7,800 Species in a Single Big Day appeared first on Good News Network.

News Mission: Impossible The Eighth Mission: Impossible Movie Gets the Doomy Subtitle The Final Reckoning Tom Cruise wants you to trust him one last time By Molly Templeton | Published on November 11, 2024 Screenshot: Paramount Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Paramount Pictures Is this it for Ethan Hunt? Will Tom Cruise’s endless run through countless cities finally come to an end? The last Mission: Impossible film was subtitled Dead Reckoning Part One, which was an awkward mouthful, but suggested a Part Two to follow. Instead, installment eight is called The Final Reckoning, which may or may not mean this series is coming to a close. Or maybe it’s just the final moment for Ethan Hunt; there are plenty of other players who could take on the Mission: Impossible mantle. That said, The Hollywood Reporter notes that, “While Cruise has been open about wanting to keep making Mission: Impossible movies into his 80s, The Hollywood Reporter revealed earlier this month that Paramount wanted to promote the eighth film as the ‘final’ entry in the franchise, to boost audience interest.” Good old misleading marketing! Neat! At any rate, Ethan Hunt is back, and all his choices—naturally!—have led to this. What this is, well, it’s not quite clear just yet, except that the gang is still on the hunt for the terrifying rogue AI that’s going to destroy the world if the wrong people get their hands on it, or maybe just for funsies. There is a very elaborate key to the AI that reminds me very much of Vin Diesel’s special necklace in the Fast & Furious films, which is not distracting at all. Dead Reckoning Part One was, I am sorry to say, a bit of a letdown after Fallout, which was a perfect piece of action filmmaking by Christopher McQuarrie. (I’m not just saying this because of the poorly written death of [redacted], though that was certainly not my favorite choice.) The Final Reckoning is still so far off that it’s hard to even know what sort of expectations to have, and the trailer is very much a reminder of how we got here, not so much where we’re going. Except that of course there are outrageous stunts. Tom Cruise hanging off an airplane! Tom Cruise fighting in his underwear! Tom Cruise freezing to death underwater! And, as ever, Tom Cruise running very, very fast. Tom Cruise is joined by returning cast members Angela Bassett, Esai Morales, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Henry Czerny, Greg Tarzan Davis, Mariela Garriga, and Indira Varma. For this probably-not-so-final entry into the series, McQuarrie and team have brought on a frankly absurdly good lineup of new faces: Hannah Waddingham, Janet McTeer, Holt McCallany, Katy O’Brian, Nick Offerman, and Tramell Tillman. McQuarrie, Bruce Geller, and Erik Jendresen wrote the screenplay. Mission: Imposible—The Final Reckoning is in theaters May 23, 2025.[end-mark] The post The Eighth <i>Mission: Impossible</i> Movie Gets the Doomy Subtitle <i>The Final Reckoning</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Ancient Rome Five Thinly Veiled Versions of Rome in SF  For some science fiction authors, all roads really do lead to Rome. By James Davis Nicoll | Published on November 11, 2024 “Gallery of Views of Ancient Rome” by artist Giovanni Paolo Panini (1758) Comment 0 Share New Share “Gallery of Views of Ancient Rome” by artist Giovanni Paolo Panini (1758) If there is one lesson science fiction teaches us, it is that just as non-crab crustaceans will eventually evolve a crab-like body plan, so too will every state eventually transform into a thinly veiled version of Rome (Republic or Empire). This outcome seems almost inevitable regardless of the state’s original political structure, its technological base, or even whether it is confined to one world or spread across many planets. Don’t believe me? Why, consider these five works featuring Roman carcinization. Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov (1950) A scientific mishap propels Joseph Schwartz through space/time to a desolate world. What at first appears to be an alien planet is none other than Schwartz’ native Earth, transformed by time and atomic war. A once-verdant world is now a dying planet, its impoverished population reduced to a bare twenty million people. As Schwartz discovers, the Earth is now a province of the Galactic Empire. Empire and Earth enjoy the same cordial relationship that existed between Vespasian’s Rome and the Zealots’ Judea. Earth craves independence. As the Empire has one populated planet for every human living on Earth, the balance of power favors the Empire… thus the crime against humanity that certain Earth extremists are now plotting. Asimov was kind enough to record his formula for success in the form of a poem: So success is not a mystery, just brush up on your history, and borrow day by day.Take an Empire that was Roman and you’ll find it is at home in all the starry Milky Way.With a drive that’s hyperspatial, through the parsecs you will race, you’ll find that plotting is a breeze,With a tiny bit of cribbin’ from the works of Edward Gibbon and that Greek, Thucydides. This approach worked out quite well for Asimov. One could say it was the foundation on which his reputation rested. The Day of Their Return by Poul Anderson (1973) Having reinvented Roman Imperial governance to end the chaos that followed the collapse of the Polesotechnic League, the Terran Empire faces the same dynastic instability that plagued the Roman Empire. Hugh McCormac’s recent attempted coup failed and McCormac fled. McCormac’s native world Aeneas has been occupied. Although the Terran Commissioner Chunderban Desai is surprisingly humane and competent for an Imperial official, Aeneas is a hotbed of discontent. It is an ideal planet on which Terra’s rival, the Roidhunate of Mersia1, can stir up trouble. And so, Mersia’s greatest agent, telepath Aycharaych, is dispatched to transform Aeneasian myth and legend into a weapon against the Empire. I bet you thought I’d use one of Anderson’s James-Bond-like Dominic Flandry novels2. I much prefer Aycharaych to Flandry and The Day of Their Return is as close as Anderson got to an Aycharaych novel. There is a very Bond-like element to this novel3: for some reason, Aycharaych goes undercover on Aeneas under his real name. The Myriad by R.M. Meluch (2005) 25th-century America prevails, much to the irritation of the League of Earth Nations. America’s only serious rival is the surprisingly Romanesque polity based on the former American colony Palatine. When Palatine requests American assistance with the alien Hive, the USS Merrimack is dispatched to aid the upstart colonists. AMERICA! Unless you’re from Palatine, in which case SENATUS POPULUSQUE ROMANUS. Investigating the Hive leads Merrimack to a globular cluster4, whose three inhabited worlds seemingly lack faster-than-light drives, yet clearly possess some superluminal means of transportation. The explanation to this paradox will put history itself in parallel. Palatine is surprisingly Romanesque because it is literally Roman. It seems some Romans spent 1800 years hiding amongst the post-Imperial barbarians until the opportunity arose to re-establish Rome. Surprisingly, that is not the most implausible element of the novel. With the Lightnings by David Drake (1998) Both Lt. Daniel Leary of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy and librarian Adele Mundy face professional challenges thanks to a common source. Having quarreled with his powerful father, Lt. Leary no longer benefits from his father’s influence. Adele’s family having quarreled with the senior Leary’s political faction, Adele is the sole survivor of the violent purge that eliminated the Mundys of Chatsworth. Despite the common cause of their problems, Daniel and Adele seem unlikely allies, let alone friends. Enter the wildly misleadingly named Alliance of Free Stars. The Alliance’s current project involves provoking discord on Republic ally Kostroma. Kostroma is the very world on which Adele is employed as a librarian. Kostroma is the very world Daniel is stationed. Bad luck for the Alliance. While most descriptions of the RCN series hammer the parallels with Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series (or if the reviewer has not heard of O’Brian, C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series), Cinnabar’s political culture appears to owe quite a lot to Rome. More specifically, there appear to be echoes of the Crisis of the Roman Republic, a terrible time to live but a wonderful time for adventures. But perhaps I read too much into Cinna and Cinnabar. First Citizen by Thomas T. Thomas (1987) Late 20th-century America’s bold repudiation of its debt and courageous amendment forbidding federal taxes transformed the economy, although perhaps not in the positive manner Americans would have preferred. Economic turmoil was accompanied by nuclear terrorism and a wave of presidential assassinations. At least Americans did not have to worry about being bored. Calamity for America is opportunity for James Corbin. Ambitious and amoral, Corbin uses military adventures and political gambits to claw his way up the American hierarchy. Of course, his ascendance makes Corbin a target… but that only means Corbin must strike first and far more ruthlessly than his rivals, something Corbin is willing and able to do. It’s no mistake that James Corbin and Julius Caesar share initials. Corbin’s career maps onto Caesar’s (although Corbin has more tactical nukes at his disposal than Caesar did). This suggests that Corbin is right to be optimistic about his odds of winning. But it also hints that his lifespan5 once he becomes First Citizen may be rather short…. There are hardly the only Roman reenactments SF has to offer. In fact, I hear Megalopolis owes something to Rome. The above may not be your favorite examples (Megalopolis does not seem to be anyone’s favorite example, although as I have not seen it, I cannot comment further). Feel free to mention your favorites in comments below.[end-mark] Mersia’s ambivalence towards Terra can be traced back to a particularly dickish ploy by star trader David Falkayn and company some centuries earlier, as described in 1967’s Day of Burning. Terran-Mersian rivalry eventually led to the death of billions and a millennia-long dark age, but at least Falkayn’s quarterly report looked good. ︎The first Dominic Flandry story pre-dated the first Bond story, so really James Bond is Dominic Flandry-esque. ︎The Day of Their Return also features a very Poul Andersonian element. The planet Aeneas is lovingly, extensively described. This, for a planet featured in a single short novel. As far as I know, Anderson never revisited this setting. ︎The globular cluster mostly contains metal-poor Population Two stars, but there are also three metal-rich Population One stars. Wandered in by accident? ︎Canadian Content laws compel me to suggest that people unfamiliar with Caesar’s career consult Wayne & Shuster’s “Rinse the Blood off My Toga.” ︎The post Five Thinly Veiled Versions of Rome in SF  appeared first on Reactor.

Inflation has pulverized Americans’ finances over the last four years, and a new study shows that’s especially true for the nation’s seniors, whose retirement accounts have been walloped. The losses have been so severe that would-be retirees need to work an extra six years on average before they can hang up their work boots—and they can blame Washington for this financial disaster. Much of the damage to senior’s retirement accounts has been hidden by the stock market rally of the last several years. The S&P 500 increased 45% from the first quarter of 2021 through the third quarter of this year, but almost half of that was just inflation driving stock prices higher, not an increase in real value. The inflation-adjusted increase over that same period is 22%. Still, that’s not a bad rate of return. The problem is that people don’t put all their retirement savings into the stock market, especially as they get closer to retirement. They rely more on fixed income assets, like bonds, which have been decimated recently. The rapid rise in both inflation and interest rates has been a one-two punch to bond returns, which have had their worst four-year run in at least a century. Ironically, seniors who thought they were being responsible by shifting their retirement savings into bonds as they got older ended up taking the worst losses. Although positive stock returns have technically countered negative bond returns over the last three and a half years, that doesn’t factor in the lost purchasing power of retirement savings due to inflation. Because prices have increased roughly 20% in less than four years, everyone’s dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to. Now it’s only worth 80 cents. That’s forcing seniors to reevaluate their retirement plans or risk outliving their savings. If a person was planning on retiring with a net worth of $1 million, they now need to add almost $200,000 to their savings if they want the same standard of living they previously planned on enjoying. The typical senior nearing retirement will now have to work longer to rebuild the lost value in his or her nest egg. Sadly, many people aren’t aware of this problem because they confuse dollar amounts with fixed value. The worst inflation in four decades is a stark reminder that the dollar is not guaranteed to hold its value at all. For example, the average 401(k) balance has risen more than $11,000 over the last three and a half years, but it’s worth $12,000 less because of higher prices. People with pension plans are in no better shape. In fact, inflation is driving many funds to insolvency. Although total pension plan balances increased about $2.3 trillion over the last three and a half years, their inflation-adjusted value fell by $2.5 trillion, or more than 9%. Pension plans that pay out defined benefits to retirees with a cost-of-living adjustment are now shelling out more benefits than previously forecasted but have fewer assets. That’s the fast track to bankruptcy and the dissolution of the pension plan, leaving young people who paid into the fund nothing to show for it. It did not have to be this way, but reckless politicians in Washington created the perfect storm that sunk senior’s retirement savings. The big spenders in Congress and the Biden-Harris administration spent the better part of the last four years spending trillion of dollars the nation didn’t have, while the Federal Reserve created the money to cover all that excess spending. That devalued the dollar and spawned 40-year-high inflation, which in turn drove up interest rates—also at the fastest pace in 40 years. Until the profligate spending is reined up, people’s life savings will continue being pummeled by violent changes in prices and interest rates. Sadly, there’s no relief in sight right now as the Treasury just announced they anticipate borrowing more than $800 billion in the first three months of 2025 alone. Seniors should be furious that they’re having to work years longer to foot the bill for Washington’s financial dissipation. ©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. The post Seniors Are Getting Crushed by Washington’s Recklessness appeared first on The Daily Signal.