A New York appeals court tossed a nearly half-billion-dollar civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump on Thursday. The penalty, which now stands at over $515 million with interest, is “excessive,” a panel of five judges found. Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump last year to pay $355 million in penalties in the case brought by […]

'Egregious betrayal'

'I don't think we should be ruling that out'

'She's a good performer. She was never a mother'

Ava Cooper received a heart transplant in March 2025

A woman who was blessed with a loving father as her pen pal while growing up has decided to share her gift—her father—with the world. Starting the Dad Letter Project, she’s now connecting the love of letter writing among a group of fathers with a world of lonely, discouraged, or simply curious people. The story […] The post Woman Received Thousands of Letters from Dad Growing Up, Now Anyone Can Request a ‘Letter from Dad’ appeared first on Good News Network.

News Frankenstein Guillermo del Toro Calls Frankenstein‘s Limited Theatrical Release an “Easy Decision” Meanwhile, the Duffer Brothers offered a different perspective on Netflix’s theatrical release strategy By Matthew Byrd | Published on August 21, 2025 Photo: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Netflix In an extensive interview with Variety, Frankenstein director Guillermo del Toro discusses his incredible vision for a massive movie that he estimates ultimately cost around $120 million to make. Given the scope of that project and the director’s love for film and film culture, some were surprised to learn that Frankenstein will only receive a three-week theatrical run starting on October 17 before arriving on Netflix on November 7. It’s enough to put the movie in potential awards consideration, but it may not be enough to ensure that everyone gets to see this legendary director’s passion project on the big screen.  And while many (including the film’s co-stars Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac) argue that you should see the movie in theaters if at all possible, del Toro offers a slightly different perspective on the practicalities of this release strategy.  “Well, we will get the biggest theatrical release that Netflix gives its films,” says del Toro of Frankenstein. “The theatrical experience is very important. I believe in it. But if the choice is between being able to make the movie and have portions of the release be theatrical and portions be streaming or not make the movie, that’s an easy decision to make. For a filmmaker, you want to tell your stories.” Del Toro also mentions that Frankenstein can “stay in theaters longer” and that Netflix will eventually release the movie on physical media, but the core of his argument is largely unaffected by those variables. Del Toro’s suggestion that Frankenstein may not exist in this (or any) form if it wasn’t for Netflix harkens back to the reasons why so many legendary filmmakers flocked to the streaming service in the first place.  Netflix has fairly consistently offered creators ample resources to pursue their passion projects. The trade-off for those resources has long been the understanding that their projects will debut on Netflix. The streaming service has become slightly more open to limited theatrical runs over the years (largely for the aforementioned awards season considerations), but the lack of a full theatrical release has long been the devil in the details. For Guillermo del Toro, that arrangement seems easy to make peace with if it enables larger creative opportunities.  Yet, it’s very much worth mentioning that we’ve recently seen some rebellions against that arrangement. Most notably, Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers recently left Netflix for Paramount largely due to their desire to make projects that get a proper theatrical run. Netflix hit KPop Demon Hunters is also due to get a post-release limited theatrical run in the near future, and it’s been noted that some within Sony now regret their decision to give Netflix the rights to that project rather than trust it to receive what could have been an incredibly lucrative theatrical run.  It is fairly easy to assume that Guillermo del Toro would have chosen to give his vision for Frankenstein a full theatrical run if a studio had offered him sufficient resources to make that happen. Whether more studios decide to make more of those offers in the future may very well determine Netflix’s relationship with such creators and the future of the streaming vs. theatrical system. [end-mark] The post Guillermo del Toro Calls <i>Frankenstein</i>‘s Limited Theatrical Release an “Easy Decision” appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays astronomy No Two Worlds Are the Same: Planetary Diversity in SF There is no cookie cutter when it comes to celestial bodies… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on August 21, 2025 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech I was poking through my old reviews of Reginald Bretnor symposia and encountered this firmly worded assertion: “There’s no reason fictional planets should be any less diverse than fictional characters.” I didn’t mean “should” in the sense of some moral directive—rather, it is an expression of doubt that any fictional planet plausibly comes from the same cookie cutter, any more than humans do. Consider the Galilean moons of Jupiter. At a first glance, they do seem pretty similar. They range from about 3100 km to 5300 km diameter, large enough to be considered planets if they didn’t orbit another world. Three of them are icy worlds, and all of them have surface conditions that would kill an unprotected human1. On a closer look, the Galilean moons have as many differences as they do similarities. Io is the most striking example. Because of the tidal flexing to which it has been subjected, Io has many active volcanos. If it had ever had as much ice as Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede, Io would have been rendered down to a silicate moon2. However, the other three moons also display great disparities. In fact, it is trivial to tell them apart with a glance3: The Galilean moons (Click to enlarge) Why would this be? Each moon accreted from slightly different materials, each has a different mass, a different orbit (and thus different orbital speed), the degree of tidal flexing over billions of years has been different, and so on. Basically, they had their own individual geological histories, resulting in a different geological present. We see much the same situation around the Solar System. It’s possible to lump planets into groups (the gas giants, the ice giants, minor debris) but within sets, the differences are obvious. Nobody would confuse Saturn with Jupiter, or Mars with Mercury4. Even if we suppose that a focus on shirt-sleeve-habitable worlds narrowed down fictional settings to unusually Earth-like worlds (such as in Asimov’s Empire, where only a few million of the hundred billion star systems in the Milky Way were colonized), it’s intuitively obvious that “extremely Earth-like” covers a lot ground. Earth, for example, is as Earth-like a planet as it is possible for a planet to be. Global conditions on Earth have varied from the icy cold of the Cryogenian to the sweltering heat of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, to pick one obvious parameter. Even on specific planets in a single specific period, there’s considerable variation from location to location. You might think “Well, Calgary and Point Nemo are both on Earth, which means they’ve experienced a far more similar sequence of events than, say, Calgary and Mons Olympus.” In fact, even the least observant of tourists would spot dramatic differences between Calgary and Point Nemo as soon as they stepped out of their vehicles. What we see in on Earth in particular and the Solar System in general should be repeated on a vaster and more detailed scale throughout the Milky Way (and universe, for that matter). Each star has its own unique parameters (mass, age, original composition, orbital path through the galaxy and so on). Each world orbiting those stars will likewise. Like snowflakes, all of the worlds are subjected to the same essential forces, but the outcomes vary wildly. And why should all of that matter to a hard-working SF author whose only desire is to sell stories for money? To begin with, because taking into account that every planet is a wonderfully varied body with its own unique history might well suggest interesting story ideas. Moreover, diverse worlds provide a more textured reading experience than planets that might as well be a series of Paramount backlots. Finally, as Poul Anderson and Hal Clement’s careers made clear, detailed worldbuilding can be very fun, at least for a certain kind of author5. Maybe you aren’t one, but you probably can find one who will be thrilled to put their expertise at your disposal. Nobody would write a mystery set in “City” and nobody would write a romance focused on “Person A” and “Person B.” So why settle for bland, interchangeable planets?[end-mark] Much to the disappointment of Stanley G. Weinbaum fans. ︎I did try to determine if anyone has measured the hydrogen to deuterium ratios on Io because that would give a hint as to how much water was lost. No luck. ︎On that note, if sci fi movie makers who want to provide their alien planets with several large moons, it would awesome if it wasn’t clear that the SFX folks had just photoshopped two identical images of Earth’s moon into the sky. ︎Leaving aside the Babylon 5 tie-in novel author who knew that Mars was somehow different from Earth and guessed that it was much hotter. ︎And some tabletop roleplaying fans. Here, let me show you hundreds of Traveller subsectors I rolled up and will never use… ︎The post No Two Worlds Are the Same: Planetary Diversity in SF appeared first on Reactor.

President Donald Trump is pulling funding from public schools in California that don’t comply with his executive orders on transgenderism. “Any California school district that doesn’t adhere to our transgender policies will not be funded,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Last summer, the California Legislature passed a law requiring school staff to hide a student’s gender identity from his or her parents. California has also defied the executive order prohibiting boys and men who identify as girls and women from participating in female sports. At the end of June, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notified California it must remove from federally funded sex education curricula all gender ideology references that “indoctrinate” students. On Thursday, HHS terminated California’s Personal Responsibility Education Program grant after the state refused to remove radical gender ideology from the federally funded education program to prevent teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections in students. The post Trump to Defund Schools That Trans Children in Deep Blue State appeared first on The Daily Signal.

An appeals court threw out the $355 million fraud penalty against President Donald Trump on Thursday. The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York found the penalty excessive in violation of the Constitution. However, the court upheld last year’s ruling finding Trump, his two oldest sons, and his business liable for 10 years of business fraud. In February 2024, a New York judge ordered Trump and his companies to pay more than $300 million in penalties after finding that he engaged in fraud by padding financial statements that went to lenders and insurers. Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him last year to pay $355 million in penalties. With interest, the sum is now over $515 million. “While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Judges Dianne T. Renwick and Peter H. Moulton wrote in one of the opinions shaping the court’s ruling. New York Attorney General Letitia James brought the suit on behalf of the state. She is currently under investigation for mortgage fraud allegations. During Trump’s first term, James campaigned on a promise to investigate the president, calling him a “con man” and ?carnival barker.” This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates. The post BREAKING: Court Throws Out Multi-Million-Dollar Fraud Penalty Against Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.