'There is nothing more urgent than mass migration'

'I think it’s such a bummer'

'I'm glad it was me, and not any of the passengers'

'There is just a lot of uncertainty'

A crew member immediately ushered him offstage for medical assistance

According to a truly field-altering fossilized bird found in China, birds already existed in the Late Jurassic period, approximately 160 million years ago. The new discovery suggests that rather than a linear evolutionary path from dinosaur to bird, these two orders evolved somewhat simultaneously. Baminornis zhenghensis is the world’s oldest species of avid. A holotype […] The post Chinese Scientists Discover Oldest Bird Fossils, Rewrite History of Avian Evolution appeared first on Good News Network.

News The Goonies 2 The Goonies 2 Appears to Be Happening This Time, With New Writer on Board Looks like the original sequel script is scrapped. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on February 14, 2025 Screenshot: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Warner Bros. Rumors about a sequel to The Goonies have been swirling since the 1985 film premiered in theaters. In 2014, director Richard Donner said he was planning to make a sequel. That sadly never came to pass before he passed away in 2021, even though he had a planned meeting in 2020 with The Goldbergs creator/showrunner Adam F. Goldberg, who shared that he had a script for a sequel. Goldberg’s story, however, doesn’t appear to be the direction that Warner Bros. Pictures is now taking. Deadline broke the news today that the studio has tapped Potsy Ponciroli, whose previous credits include writing and directing the 2017 Western feature, Old Henry, to pen the script. What will this sequel be about? No one is saying publicly (if they even know yet, since it appears that Ponciroli has yet to write the script), though Steven Spielberg is on board once again to produce along with Kristie Macosko Krieger and Holly Bario from Amblin Entertainment. Chris Columbus and Lauren Shuler Donner (an established producer and Richard Donner’s widow) are also on board to executive produce. No director is currently attached to the project to take over Donner’s mantle. This news also comes a month after the original Goonies played in theaters once again for its 40th anniversary, confirming that the love for the film remains strong. Whether any of the existing cast comes back for this one also remains to be seen (though given this is a nostalgia play, it’s likely).[end-mark] The post <i>The Goonies 2</i> Appears to Be Happening This Time, With New Writer on Board appeared first on Reactor.

News Brett Horror Comedy Brett Snags Smile Star Sosie Bacon And here we have another terrifying take of a doll enamored with its owner. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on February 14, 2025 Screenshot: Paramount Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Paramount Pictures There’s a new horror comedy in the works that involves a childhood doll getting supernaturally active and, in this case, enamored with its owner. The film in question is called Brett and will star Sosie Bacon, whose previous credits include playing the lead in the 2022 horror hit, Smile (pictured above), as well as a part in the critically acclaimed HBO series, Mare of Easttown.   Here’s the synopsis of the new movie, per Deadline: Brett follows Abby (Bacon), who returns home with her new fiancé and stumbles upon her cherished childhood ‘Brett’ doll. The doll suddenly awakens and professes his undying love for Abby and intends to prove that he can get all the… parts… of a real boy and win Abby back from her fiancé. The concept comes from writer-director Shane Mack, whose previous credits include 2020’s Coffee & Kareem and a 2013 short called The Guy Who’s Fucking Your Girlfriend. Is the titular guy in this short a childhood doll who has been imbued with a horny, supernatural essence? Probably not, but it’s nice to see how Mack’s oeuvre has evolved over the past decade. The film is currently being shopped in European markets by a company called The Coven, and Priscilla Ross Smith, an exec at the firm, describes the film as “a little bit Ted, a little bit M3GAN… an instant Saturday night must-see.” “We’re thrilled to bring this deliciously scandalous film to our buyers,” added Kendall Anlian of The Coven. “Sosie has shown she has the chops to start a franchise, and we’re ready to do it again.” No news yet on when the film will premiere in the U.S.[end-mark] The post Horror Comedy <i>Brett</i> Snags <i>Smile</i> Star Sosie Bacon appeared first on Reactor.

House Republicans on Thursday approved a budget resolution that aims to fulfill much of President Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda.  Fiscal hawks in the House of Representatives have been warning repeatedly that any budget bills need to show reform through spending cuts if they are to win their support. On Thursday, they successfully negotiated $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, though accompanied by $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. The deal also raised the debt ceiling about another $4 trillion. As for the MAGA priorities of stopping the border crisis, House Republicans came up with $300 billion for border and defense spending increases.  In terms of the budget process, Senate Republicans were largely waiting for the House to catch up. Last week, Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., released his budget resolution. Graham’s proposal had money for a border wall, securing the southern border, and increasing the capacity of detention centers that hold illegal aliens caught inside the United States. Graham’s budget also eliminated the tax on natural gas and opened up onshore and offshore leases for drilling.  Republicans have to be careful when going about their tax cuts. Chief among the concerns is saddling the United States with further debt that could disproportionately hurt the poor and the young. Out-of-control deficits and debt could lead to even higher inflation rates and massive interest rate increases. Inflation is essentially a regressive tax on the poor because they have less financial leeway to absorb the increase in costs. Mortgage rate increases disproportionately hurt young people who tend to have less money on hand. Richard Stern, The Heritage Foundation’s chief budget analyst, put it this way to The Daily Signal: “The deficits produce higher inflation rates and higher interest rates. Mortgage rates at a crushing 7%, and the 20% price spike for most families over the last four years, [both] results of reckless federal deficits and spending.” There are also Republicans who would like to see more fiscal restraint in the future. “I believe restoring pre-COVID spending levels through budget reconciliation and the appropriations process is a critical goal in our effort to get our nation’s fiscal house back in order,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., told The Daily Signal. “Spending cuts will happen. The budget resolution that we passed out of the House Budget Committee enables us to reach $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and potentially more than $2 trillion in spending cuts. Through negotiations, the House Freedom Caucus secured an accountability mechanism that ensures Republicans uphold our promise of delivering both tax cuts and spending cuts,” Clyde said, adding: In short, both of these goals must be met. For every dollar that we cut in spending, there will be another dollar in tax cuts—just as for every dollar missed in spending cuts, there will be a dollar less in tax cuts. This is a commonsense approach to achieving our mission of delivering on President Trump’s America First agenda in a fiscally responsible manner. There is also incredible potential for government savings and reform. As Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal in a statement, “We can look at the hundreds of billions of dollars in mandatory spending programs that are on autopilot and have been growing at 5, 6, 7, 8% a year, and surely we can find some savings on those mandatory spending programs, just like most families and most businesses.” The post House Republicans Agree on Budget Resolution With Tax Cuts, Spending Reductions appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Oracle co-founder and the company’s executive chairman and chief technology officer Larry Ellison is trying to persuade governments to descend deep into AI-powered surveillance dystopia by centralizing the entirety of their national data in a single place. And when he says everything should go into this “unified” database, Ellison means everything. That includes health-related data, such as diagnostic and genomic information, electronic health records, DNA, data on agriculture, climate, utility infrastructure… Once in there, it would be used to train AI models, such as those developed by Oracle – Ellison shared with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair during a panel at the World Governments Summit in Dubai. As for why any government would do such a thing – his “sell” is that it would allow AI to be used to provide better services. But this time, he left out how this centralization would also represent an exceptional opportunity to “turbocharge” mass government surveillance, even though there is little doubt that many governments are hearing him loud and clear on that point as well. In September, Ellison wasn’t so coy regarding this angle when he spoke in favor of introducing real-time population surveillance. And naturally, that would be done with Oracle’s machine learning tech. “As long as countries will put their data – all of it – in a single place we can use AI to help manage the care of all of the patients and the population at large,” Ellison told Blair. As over the top, as all this may sound, Ellison appears to figuratively and literally mean business: he revealed that his company is building a 2.2 gigabyte data center to train AI models and spending “between 50 and 100 billion dollars” on these endeavors. And, he suggested that massive amounts of data would not be the only thing centralized in a handful of places, going forward – the same is true of the AI model training, because of the high price tag attached. In other words, Ellison’s vision of the future is complete control over everyone’s data in the hands of governments and a select number of super-rich companies capable of building and running this infrastructure for them. Ellison also told Blair about Oracle’s AI-powered biometric ID that’s currently used only to log into the company’s system: “The computer recognizes you. It recognizes your voice. It might ask you to put your index finger on the return key. And we know, we’re absolutely certain it’s you. There’s no reason to enter a password.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Larry Ellison Pushes for AI-Powered National Data Centralization and Mass Surveillance appeared first on Reclaim The Net.