Stereo Solstice has added a photo to the pool:
A long exposure captures clouds sweeping above the rugged shoreline at King George Beach on Kangaroo Island, South Australia. Warm sunset light illuminates the sky and foreground rocks, while the extended exposure smooths the surrounding water.
Like the grisly Winnie-the-Pooh films, the latest in the Twisted Childhood Universe franchise offers feeble satire and shock-free ‘horror’
The so-called Twisted Childhood Universe, a bad-taste British slasher franchise, continues to get mileage out of turning beloved kids’ characters into sicko serial killers. After a pair of satanic Winnie the Pooh movies, we now get a cash-in of Pinocchio, directed again by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, and like the Pooh duo, it’s a nasty piece of work. Cheerfully nasty, in fact, as it goes for black comedy laughs by bumping off characters in grisly drop-a-dumbbell-on-your-face scenarios. But it’s not-so-nice nasty as well, by being smirking and unpleasant; the kind of film that makes a joke out of the overweight kid puffing on an inhaler.
The setting is a stately pile in the English countryside where inventor Geppetto (Richard Brake) lives with his preteen grandson James (Cameron Bell), whose parents were killed in an accident. James has also tragically lost a friend to childhood cancer. So Geppetto makes him Pinocchio, carved of out of wood and brought to life – a friend who will never die. Like Chucky in the Child’s Play movies, Pinocchio is a creepy doll with a malevolent little face and rictus grin – nicely in fact. Poor James is terrified when they meet, but the two become fast friends. And there are some juvenile gags as Pinocchio learns about real boys, noting in an encyclopedia that Geppetto has missed a vital bit of anatomy. One day, James sneaks Pinocchio into his school bag, and tells him not to move. But when James is picked on by bullies and mutters, “I wish they were all dead,” Pinocchio does not stick to instructions.
Continue reading...The US president has been complaining about Canada’s ‘filthy, polluted and unhealthy air’. Maybe he should put all that energy into tackling the climate crisis
Right, that’s it: we’ve got to do something about Canada. The country’s wildfires, which resulted in air quality alerts across more than 20 US states, ruined my weekend. On Friday the air in Philadelphia, where I live, was so unhealthy I couldn’t go outside without my eyes stinging. My kid’s preschool cancelled outdoor time, while the city suspended trash pickup and closed public pools.
You know who did not suspend their regularly scheduled programming because of a bit of toxic smoke? The plot monitoring committee at my allotment. Despite the apocalyptic conditions, they were still busy ensuring the gardening bylaws were strictly adhered to. I realised this on Saturday when I got an official violation for too many weeds. Yes, I’d got a bit carried away with “chaos gardening” (all the rage these days) and I’d meant to clean things up on Friday, until the smoke got in the way. So, thanks for that Canada.
Continue reading...He decried endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now he may be stuck in one of his own making
As Donald Trump launched a war of aggression against Iran nearly five months ago, he insisted Washington would achieve a decisive victory within weeks. Trump and his advisers scoffed at any suggestion that they were breaking repeated campaign promises not to start new conflicts, and to end America’s legacy of forever wars, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In early March, a week into the war, Trump declared he would only agree to “unconditional surrender” by Iran’s theocratic government. He vowed to destroy much of Tehran’s military, called for a popular uprising and touted the overthrow of the regime that rose to power after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. Of course, Trump’s grandiose promises turned out to be the latest chapter in a long history of American imperial hubris.
Continue reading...After a bigoted online backlash, led by Elon Musk, The Odyssey achieved a monster weekend – the latest example of a targeted takedown that didn’t work
Elon Musk was a man on a mission. Yes, he’s supposedly intent on colonizing Mars, or the moon, or maybe, if you give him some more time to move the goalposts, just a really, really tall mountain, but this spring, a more pressing task presented itself, a sequel to his early-2026 mission to post white supremacist rhetoric: take down Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which he decided was the latest of “woke Hollywood’s” attempts to spread racial animus (towards white people, of course) and win Oscars while doing so. Nolan, Musk explained to the trade publication Variety, was “pissing on Homer’s grave”, referring to the author of the film’s epic-poem source material.
As the final phases of the movie’s promotional campaign ramped up, Musk posted dozens of times on his self-owned social media platform with grievances related to the casting of Lupita Nyong’o (a Black woman) and Elliot Page (a trans man) in the movie, often spreading false statements about this casting existing to satisfy new Oscar requirements. (As detailed here, those new Oscar diversity requirements are extremely flexible, and often satisfied by studio-wide programs that have nothing to do with casting. The Odyssey did not need to hire Oscar winner Nyong’o to be eligible for awards.) Musk may be a divisive-at-best figure who large swaths of the population do not take seriously, but he commands enough attention and adulation from a vocal minority that plenty of online accounts were soon parroting his willful misunderstanding of Hollywood and The Odyssey. Many of them abruptly and hilariously zeroed in on the 2004 movie Troy – which the right flank of social media suddenly decided was a beloved masterpiece, rather than its own, far greater distortion of Homer’s epic poem The Iliad.
Continue reading...Despite official claims that the São Francisco River project supplies 12m people, many of those who had to make way for its construction in 2007 still have no water at all
A concrete canal cutting through the Caatinga scrubland feeds a surface reservoir two and a half miles from Maria de Fátima Ferreira da Silva’s home in rural Brazil. The canal passes Sertânia and continues until it reaches Monteiro, the next town along, where it spills its precious cargo into the bed of the Paraíba River – a human-directed inflow into the seasonally dry waterway.
Such proximity to a reliable water source would usually be considered a blessing in the sertão, a vast outback in Brazil’s north-east known for its punishing droughts. But not for Ferreira, who was displaced nearly 20 years ago by the construction of the canal and now lives in a house without any water supply, despite the nearby reservoir.
Maria de Fátima Ferreira da Silva in her maize crop at Salão productive rural village. She bathes at the reservoir and collects water there for her smallholding and donkey, and pays to fill her barrel with drinking water each month
Continue reading...Exclusive: Global investigation reveals 235 lawsuits have been brought against governments in five countries since 2010
The world’s biggest ultra-processed food companies have filed scores of lawsuits challenging government policies that tackle junk diets, the Guardian can reveal.
Ultra-processed food (UPF) is linked to harm in every major organ system of the human body and poses a seismic threat to global health. Worldwide consumption is rising and UPF now makes up as much as half the average diet in many countries, including the UK, the US and Australia.
Continue reading...The Guedez García family spent 18 days searching for their missing daughter in La Guaira, Venezuela, after the devastating earthquake. When her body was finally found, the family and volunteers from their village of Poblado Uno travelled back home to lay her to rest
In a mountainside cemetery high above Caracas, far from the chaos of Venezuela’s earthquake-lashed coast, a family of three huddles in the back of a pickup truck coming to terms with their loss.
“At first, it will be difficult,” says Adolfo Guedez, tears rolling down his cheeks as his eldest daughter, Carmen, hugs a wooden cremation box containing the ashes of her sister, Alexandra.
Yaritza García and her daughter, Carmen, hug after receiving the box containing the remains of Alexandra at El Junquito Cemetery on the outskirts of Caracas
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