'We showed them the timestamps'

Even former Lakers players don't believe the bubble ring is real

Imagine the outrage if construction of a highway interchange was approved directly overhead of the Brooklyn Bridge—that’s what one Tokyo neighborhood has had to deal with for more than 60 years. The most historic bridge in the city has long been bathed in the shadow and tumult of a concrete overpass, but things are looking […] The post Historic Tokyo Bridge Liberated from Concrete Overpass Will Shine Again Thanks to Grassroots Campaign appeared first on Good News Network.

Books parents Five Stories Featuring Highly Supportive Parents Encouraging the next generation of space pirates and superheroes… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on June 23, 2025 Photo by Suzi Kim [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Suzi Kim [via Unsplash] As previously discussed, parents can present a challenge for authors. Diligent, prudent, living parents might well interfere with their children’s plans to set out on bold adventures. However, two recent incidents drew my attention to parents as facilitators1. In some cases, parents could have a legitimate reason for encouraging their children’s ambitions in ways that facilitate plot. Here are five sets of parents who supported their kids’ dreams and ambitions. Mrs. Nash Buck Henry’s Captain Nice (1967) Credit: NBC Superheroes have a tendency to be orphans. Police chemist Carter “Captain Nice” Nash (William Daniels) was an exception. Nash’s secret formula could temporarily imbue him with super-strength, invulnerability, and flight. However, whether timid Nash would have pursued a superheroic career on his own is an open question. Enter Carter’s mother, Mrs. Nash (Alice Ghostley2). Mrs. Nash was quite enthusiastic about having a superhero son, providing him with encouragement and a costume… of sorts. As Carter was firmly under his mother’s thumb, he could hardly say no. Some viewers might think this all sounds oddly like Mr. Terrific (also 1967). Both were attempts to cash in on the camp superhero success of Batman (1966). Both involved superpower-inducing chemicals, and both featured unlikely protagonists. There were some differences. Captain Nice’s formula provided invulnerability, which Mr. Terrific’s pills did not. Mr. Terrific lasted seventeen episodes, two more than did Captain Nice. I didn’t say they were successful attempts to cash in on the camp superhero success of Batman (1966)3. Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga (1986–ongoing) The Vorkosigans’ investment in Miles Vorkosigan’s happiness and well-being predated Miles’ birth. Injured in a prenatal chemical attack on his mother, Miles was certain to be born with severe impairments… on a planet whose culture mandated abortion and infanticide for broadly defined “mutants.” Miles’ parents rejected this local norm. Throughout Miles’ life, Cordelia and Aral support and encourage Miles, even in pursuit of career goals, such as military service, where success is unlikely. When presented with Miles’ unauthorized clone Mark, the couple support Mark as well. It could be argued that the greatest challenge Miles’ parents grapple with is not Miles’ physical issues, but rather his exuberant personality combined with a marked tendency to wander into plots. In fact, it’s possible that even if there’d been no chemical attack, Miles would have been sufficiently challenging that his parents would make this list. Ririka KatoYūichi Sasamoto’s Miniskirt Space Pirates (2008–2014) Teenager Marika Kato is astonished to discover her father is none other than Space Pirate Gonzaemon. Or rather, he was, as Gonzaemon has died. Furthermore, he was more of a privateer than a pirate. Among his legacies to Marika, his Letter of Marque. As new Letters of Marque are no longer granted, Gonzaemon’s colleagues on the privateer starship Bentenmaru invite Marika to become their new captain. Privateering could be dangerous. Worse, it could imperil Marika’s grade-point average. Nevertheless, Marika’s mother Ririka encourages Marika to embrace her legacy. After all, Marika could get run over the next time she crossed a street4, so why not pursue an exciting career? I suspect the fact that Ririka used to be “Blasters Ririka, Space Pirate” factors into Ririka’s risk assessment skills. On the other hand, Yukari Morita’s mother used a similar argument in Rocket Girls, so maybe “better to risk death doing something interesting because everyone dies,” is just a popular philosophy among light novel, manga, and anime parents. Urano Motosu/Myne’s parentsMiya Kazuki’s Ascendance of a Bookworm (2013–2017) Left to her own devices, steadfast bookworm Urano would have spent her entire life—which turned out to be much shorter than Urano expected, thanks to insufficiently secured bookshelves—with her nose buried in a book. Her single mother did her best to encourage Urano to expand her horizons by dragging Urano with her into a long series of brief-lived hobbies. Crushed by her beloved books, Urano wakes in the body of frail young Myne in a secondary fantasy universe. Urano’s host body’s parents are as doting as her lost mother, and the parental figures who eventually replace them are just as supportive. Lucky for Urano, whose obsessive focus on books (and the fact her new home does not appear to have them) blinds her to obvious danger. One of the sadder moments in the series involves Urano’s belated realization of how much she owed her birth mother. By the time Urano has her revelation, Urano has died and been reborn in another universe, which means she will never be able to thank her mother. Typhon CutterMadeleine L’Engle’s The Arm of the Starfish (1965) Carolyn “Kali” Cutter is an aspiring femme fatale preying on weak-minded do-gooders like Adam Eddington, Calvin O’Keefe, and the rest of the O’Keefe family. She’s pursuing profit and general skullduggery. Kali’s opportunities to embrace global villainy might appear limited. She is, after all, only sixteen. Enter Kali’s father Typhon Cutter. Typhon is something of a villain himself. Rather than discourage his daughter from pursuing her vocation, he recruits Kali into his bold plan to purloin the secrets of human regeneration from O’Keefe. Not great from a moral perspective5, but definitely supportive. To be honest, Typhon’s big plan (sell O’Keefe’s research to Red China) is a bit of head-scratcher. China in 1965 wasn’t rolling in cash. Weren’t there wealthier prospects? It may be Typhon wasn’t the smartest villain around, which would explain why he apparently never advised Kali to stick to swimming with metaphorical sharks, rather than the real article. Om nom nom. No doubt I’ve overlooked many worthy examples (even discounting the ones I mentioned before). Feel free to mention your personal favourites in comments below.[end-mark] The first was a mother who spent four hours keeping her easily-bored, extremely energetic toddler happy without the adorable tot bothering the other patrons in the theatre where I work. This was a task on par with climbing K2 sans equipment. The second was a young person I overheard on mass transit describing to her friends how her parents’ reaction to her coming out of the closet was to produce a list of and orchestrate a series of dates with suitable young women. ︎More famous as Bewitched’s Esmerelda. ︎Living as we do in an age of endless remakes, may I point out that failed projects offer more room for improvement over originals than wildly successful classics? ︎Marika lives in the Tau Ceti system. It’s not clear if Truck-kun remained on Earth or emigrated to the stars. ︎Although where would heroes be without villains to oppose and temptations to resist? ︎The post Five Stories Featuring Highly Supportive Parents appeared first on Reactor.

President Donald Trump promised to primary Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., on Sunday, saying he would campaign against him in Kentucky. “MAGA should drop this pathetic LOSER, Tom Massie, like the plague! The good news is that we will have a wonderful American Patriot running against him in the Republican Primary, and I’ll be out in Kentucky campaigning really hard,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sunday afternoon, appearing to endorse a challenger to the popular Kentucky legislator.  “Massie is weak, ineffective, and votes “NO” on virtually everything put before him (Rand Paul, Jr.), no matter how good something may be,” the president continued. Massie and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have each raised objections to the spending of the Republican-led budget reconciliation bill that seeks to enact much of the MAGA agenda, but also is projected to raise the national debt by trillions of dollars. In the House, Massie cast the sole Republican no vote on the bill. He also was quick to elevate Elon Musk’s critique of the bill as well, agreeing with the tech magnate’s characterization of the legislation as “a disgusting abomination.” Massie, who has served as the 4th congressional district of Kentucky’s representative since 2012, is known to occasionally buck the GOP party line with his fiscal conservatism and foreign intervention skepticism. That has served him well representing his district, where he won 75% of the vote in the 2024 Republican primary. But Massie may have finally worn out Trump’s patience by declaring on X that his weekend bombing of Iran was not constitutional. This is not Constitutional. https://t.co/EU3fS5jcwb— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) June 21, 2025 The president appeared to allude to Massie’s media posts about the attack on Saturday writing, “He [Massie] is disrespectful to our great military, and all that they stand for, not even acknowledging their brilliance and bravery in yesterday’s attack, which was a total and complete WIN.” Massie for his part critiqued the president by saying that he is not following through on his campaign promise to keep the U.S. out of endless wars.  “This is not America First folks,” Massie wrote in reply to another Truth Social post where the president said, “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” Massie has also introduced a bipartisan War Powers Resolution with colleague Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., that would direct “the President to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force against Iran.” Because of the nature of the legislation, it can be voted on just 15 calendar days after being introduced without going through the full committee process.  A spokesman for Massie referred The Daily Signal to the congressman’s interview on WBT 1110 AM. The post Trump Says He Will Campaign Against Rep. Thomas Massie appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A lawyer who worked for Kamala Harris’ Senate office and President Joe Biden’s National Security Council now works in President Donald Trump’s administration as an ostensibly non-political staffer in the Department of Defense, even though she wrote an op-ed calling Trump “unfit to hold office.” While presidents appoint more than 3,000 people for political positions, the federal government directly employs roughly 2.3 million people, most of whom serve in ostensibly nonpolitical, career positions. The Office of Personnel Management tracks when political appointees transition to career positions—a process often referred to as “burrowing in” to the bureaucracy—and Samantha Goldstein did so in 2023. Goldstein went from senior counsel at the Office of Legal Policy in the Department of Justice to attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel in the DOJ. OPM approved her move on Jan. 15, 2023. Goldstein received a pay bump from $110,460 annually to $127,942 annually. According to her LinkedIn profile, Goldstein left the DOJ in July 2024 to serve as deputy legal advisor on Biden’s National Security Council until February, when she joined the Department of Defense as associate deputy general counsel. Goldstein graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2013, and clerked for two U.S. appeals courts: the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. She interned with the left-leaning NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 2016 and served as a special counsel for Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., in 2018. Between these two positions and before she joined the Justice Department, Goldstein worked at the firm O’Melveny & Myers. Legistorm confirms this history. During her second stint at O’Melveny, Goldstein wrote a Washington Post op-ed with Walter Dellinger, a partner at O’Melveny who had worked in the Clinton administration. (Trump fired Dellinger’s son Hampton, who had served as the special counsel in the Office of Special Counsel, earlier this year, sparking a legal battle.) In that op-ed, Goldstein and Dellinger insisted that Trump is “unfit to hold office.” “In the face of an unprecedented attack on American democracy by a hostile foreign power, Donald Trump and those who worked for him both as a candidate and a president failed to defend the United States,” they wrote regarding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into accusations of collusion between Trump and Russia. “For this alone, he is unfit to hold office.” Golstein and Dellinger wrote that the Mueller report “demonstrates that the president and his closest aides violated … fundamental duties imposed by their oaths of office,” namely the duty to protect and defend the Constitution “against all enemies foreign and domestic.” Deep State Opposition A recent poll found that a whopping 75% of Washington, D.C.-based federal employees making $75,000 or more per year who voted for Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris in November said they would not follow a lawful Trump order if they considered it bad policy. While some political appointees who took “career” positions may faithfully work for the U.S. government under any president, this poll suggests that some staff inside the federal government may work against the goals of the current president, in this case Donald Trump. Furthermore, a recent Foundation for Government Accountability study found that Democrat employees outnumber Republican employees by a 2-to-1 margin across federal agencies. In the 2024 presidential election, 84% of the money that federal employees gave in political contributions went to Harris. Federal workers enjoy workplace protections that make them very difficult to fire. The new administration is seeking to reform these rules to enable the president to fulfill his duties as head of the executive branch without facing opposition from hostile bureaucrats. Goldstein did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal by publication time. The Daily Signal also reached out to O’Melveny & Myers, the offices of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Defense Department, and the White House for comment. The post Former Harris Lawyer Now Works for a President She Called ‘Unfit to Hold Office’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Iran Blew Smoke One Too Many Times

It looks as though AMD is gearing up to launch a new AMD Ryzen X3D gaming CPU with a cheaper price than the acclaimed Ryzen 7 9800X3D. The new AMD Ryzen 5 9600X3D may not have officially launched, but the name of the new gaming CPU has now been spotted in a driver entry on AMD’s own website, hinting that its release is imminent. AMD has recently changed its approach to the design of its X3D chips, with the huge layer of 64MB cache now sitting under the CPU cores, rather than on top of them, while also moving to the powerful new AMD Zen 5 architecture. As we found in our AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D review, the new design enables higher clock speeds and cooler running, gaining this chip the coveted top spot on our best gaming CPU buying guide. The 9800X3D is expensive, though, and it looks as though AMD is now offering a cut-down, cheaper design based on the same principles. Continue reading AMD Ryzen 5 9600X3D exists, CPU maker inadvertently confirms, undercuts 9800X3D MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Ryzen 7 9800X3D review, Best gaming CPU, Radeon RX 9070 XT review

“Wait, it’s a survival game?” That was the prevailing question surrounding We Happy Few when it launched in early access in 2016. Having lowered jaws industry-wide with the rich world and narrative clout it demonstrated in previews beforehand, it felt almost like a bait-and-switch that Compulsion’s hype magnet was not, in fact, from the Bioshock mold, but more of a DayZ-alike in Andrew Ryan’s clothing. Here was a game pulled straight from the sort of books you'd expect to find on Ken Levine's bedside table: Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984, novels rich in social allegory and poetic resonance, distinct from the pulp of Tom Clancy or Warhammer that other games unduly lean upon. It had found a genuinely fresh setting in alt-history 1960s Britain, where everyone takes psychoactive drugs to suppress the terrible reality that would otherwise confront and consume them. Continue reading We Happy Few was an early access flop, but it's finally brilliant MORE FROM PCGAMESN: We Happy Few review, Best horror games, Best survival games