In March, Southwest Airlines upset millions of frequent flyers when it announced plans to drop its long-standing free check-bag policy. Many people chose to fly Southwest because the policy made air travel more affordable. But it seems that’s not the only change Southwest has in store for travelers. Per Southwest, beginning on May 28, its once-standard “travel credits don’t expire policy” will no longer be in place. “Flight credits issued on or before May 27, 2025, do not expire. However, if you apply the flight credit toward a new reservation booked and ticketed or changed on or after May 28, 2025, and later cancel the reservation, any flight credit or Transferable Flight Credit issued will have a specified expiration date,” the airline announced. So not only Southwest will have added checked bag fees, no more low fares, seat selection, but now the travel credits have an expiration date. what incentive is there to still fly with them over other airlines now?— kam (@kampagnepapi) March 13, 2025 Travels Are Very Unhappy With Southwest Airlines’ Changes Southwest Airlines also plans to eliminate its open seating policy, which many travelers love. These changes will result in many unhappy Southwest customers and a potential loss of business. In an already-suffering economy, the news was met with a lot of frustration. One traveler wrote on X, “So not only Southwest will have added checked bag fees, no more low fares, seat selection, but now the travel credits have an expiration date. What incentive is there to still fly with them over other airlines now?” A fellow traveler commented, “Totally agree. Why would I fly Southwest when they follow the same as other airlines? People go where the perks/ amenities rise above that also have the best price & comfortable seating when picking. Southwest is not 1st choice anymore.” This person also agreed, “There no longer is any incentive. They were my go-to airline. Placing customer first had made them the obvious prime choice. Now it seems customers are last… digging for every penny they can scrape out of them.” You can check out Southwest Airlines policy changes here. You can find Southwest Airlines’ new policies here. The post Southwest Airlines Makes Another Policy Change appeared first on InspireMore.

Rumors are swirling on Capitol Hill that more than a few Republicans are open to raising the top income tax rate to 40% from 37% as a way to make the tax bill “fairer.”

Common sense is winning

A Certificate of Sufficient Empathy is now a prerequisite to bearing arms

'Being built in the United States for the first time'

'Everybody out, please!'

News Mythic Quest Mythic Quest Has (Almost!) Come to Its End Game over, man. By Molly Templeton | Published on April 14, 2025 Image: Apple TV+ Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Apple TV+ The quest is over—just about. After four seasons, Apple TV+ has cancelled Mythic Quest, the workplace comedy set at a video game studio. But there’s an extra life of sorts still to come: An “updated” finale will arrive sometime this week, with a new ending. Variety quotes a statement from executive producers Megan Ganz, David Hornsby, and Rob McElhenney, who said “Because endings are hard, with Apple’s blessing we made one final update to our last episode—so we could say goodbye, instead of just game over.” Mythic Quest was one of the earliest Apple Originals, premiering in February of 2020. McElhenney, who co-created the show with Charlie Day and Megan Ganz, played the role of creator within the series as well, as Ian Grimm, the creative director of Mythic Quest the game. Charlotte Nicdao played Poppy Li, the game’s co-creative director. The rest of the cast included Ashly Burch, Jessie Ennis, Imani Hakim, David Hornsby, and Danny Pudi. The synopsis for season four, which ended in March, said, “Back under the same florescent office lights, the reunited team at Mythic Quest confronts new challenges amongst a changing video game landscape as stars rise, egos clash, relationships bloom and everyone tries to have a little more ‘work work’ life balance.” Reviews were generally very good, but it takes more than that to stick around. This cancellation, notably, comes in the wake of headlines about the breathtaking amount of money Apple loses each year on its streaming programming. Fans can keep an eye on Apple TV+ for that updated ending. A specific date was not given.[end-mark] The post <i>Mythic Quest</i> Has (Almost!) Come to Its End appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Yellowjackets Yellowjackets’ Season 3 Finale Comes “Full Circle” to Pit Girl and the Antler Queen Eat your hearts out. By Natalie Zutter | Published on April 14, 2025 Darko Sikman/Paramount+ with Showtime Comment 0 Share New Share Darko Sikman/Paramount+ with Showtime In some ways, the finale to this uneven season of Yellowjackets doesn’t necessarily tell us anything new, instead confirming the identities of the two most arresting figures from the pilot. But it establishes new and fascinating motivations behind these personas, and closes on a downright thrilling note in the Wilderness even when we already know how that timeline’s story ends. Recap Credit: Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with Showtime In the present, the adult Yellowjackets are all committed, in varying fashions, to exhuming all of their repressed memories of the Wilderness. It starts with Taissa, as she’s burying Van’s body on the side of the road—but not before ripping her open and eating her heart. “I’m done forgetting, Van,” she pledges over her lover’s body. “Starting now, I’m gonna remember it all—all of you, and all of me.” For Misty, that’s bringing citizen detective justice to the Sadeckis, by confronting Callie about how she killed Lottie. Something of a surprise, though Callie’s genuine remorse over it makes it seem as if it weren’t premeditated. She had followed Lottie to her father’s building’s basement, suspecting Lottie of stealing Melissa’s DAT tape (she did) and dying to understand if Shauna simply doesn’t love her. But then Lottie turned the tables by making a bunch of creepy pronouncements about Callie being the team’s “child of that place,” a replacement for the baby who died out there, filled with the same dark energy that made them do those terrible things. Eating each other, yes, but also “hunting each other—all those thrilling, terrible things.” Callie confesses for a second time to Jeff, who in turn apologizes for not recognizing the darkness in his wife, as he tells his daughter, “I am sorry that I didn’t protect you from her.” By the time Shauna returns home from dropping off Tai, Jeff and Callie have fled the house, taking their clothes and disconnecting at least one phone; the most she gets is a text begging for space to process. Tai and Misty meet up in a diner to discuss how Shauna needs to be stopped. Both have realized that it was Shauna who dragged all of their worst impulses out of them in the Wilderness, all because she thrived on the hierarchy and the hunt that they created. So it’s only fitting that we get caught up to the opening scene of the pilot, featuring Pit Girl and the Antler Queen. Following Hannah killing Kodiak in order to join up with the group, Shauna has turned their idyllic summer village into a more militaristic environment, dragging teammates like Nat out of their huts for surprise “bed checks” and stalking around with her gun like a commander. The look doesn’t entirely fit her, but the attitude of fear does. When Akilah’s animals die, just like in her vision, Lottie theorizes that the Wilderness must be upset with them for being “arrogant” in fostering game and crops. The girls reach a consensus, that they must offer up the Wilderness a true sacrifice—that is, not a criminal convicted by their bizarro-world trial or an interloper, but one of them, someone they truly care to lose. Van and Tai try to rig the card deck again for the forthcoming draw, even as Van has misgivings about not following the randomness that supported the ritual when they created it. Their intention is to stick Hannah with the queen of hearts card, but sensing conspiracy, an already paranoid Shauna steps into a new spot, throwing off the count. Now it’s Mari who draws the card, to Shauna’s utter delight. The Yellowjackets engage in the hunt, though there are various other motives at play. Gen tricks a couple of her teammates into effectively running in circles in order to give Mari more of a fighting chance. Mari inexplicably takes off her windbreaker and shoes as some sort of decoy, stripping down into the Pit Girl nightgown, bare feet, and loose hair. Hannah corners Nat to claim she’s on her side and wants to find help as much as the rest of that contingent. Akilah confronts Lottie in the cave about how she had to sacrifice the animals (!) in order to prompt the need for a hunt, and that she knows it’s all bullshit. Poor Mari does her best but ultimately falls back in the pit from the premiere, this time impaled on the stakes that Travis placed in there. At first it’s all visuals we’ve seen before, though this time with the added awful detail of her face and Van sobbing “It’s Mari” into Tai’s arms. And then, when Shauna orders Nat to prepare the body for the feast, she adds a vicious, twisted request: “When it’s done, bring me her hair.” (!!!) And so teen Shauna completes her transformation into Antler Queen, donning the costume while adult Shauna returns to journaling in voiceover: I’ve tried for years to remember what happened out there, to understand why it seemed like I couldn’t remember so much of it, why none of us could. I’m finally starting to realize we can’t remember it because at some point we became so alive in that place that we lost our capacity for self-reflection. The trauma people say survivors forget things to protect themselves because they were so horrible, but I think we can’t or won’t remember it clearly because we recognize deep down that we were having so much fun. That’s the terrible truth we left out there buried. Along with the people we called our friends. Except it’s all coming back to me now. The danger. The thrill. The person I was back then. Not a wife or a mother, I was a warrior. I was a fucking queen. I let all of it slip away from me. It’s time to start taking it back. But let’s not forget the best part from the Wilderness: The morning after the feast, Shauna (still dressed as the Antler Queen) goes to intimidate Nat some more, only to discover someone else has had a costume change: Hannah and Nat switched outfits! So Nat could slip away during the feast and spend all night hiking through the Wilderness! So she could get to the top of a mountain and set up the satellite phone she’s been repairing! So a stranger could say “I can hear you”! Nat is the MVP of this season, but hoooo boy Shauna is gonna ruin her life because of it. Commentary Credit: Darko Sikman/Paramount+ with Showtime I’m not entirely sure I got that the adult Yellowjackets were accessing repressed memories without them explicitly naming it as such; I could have used a clearer moment of realization in real time instead of the self-aware commentary. Ditto on Shauna’s journal entry, which didn’t entirely land for me the first time around. However, rereading it for this review, I find that even if the infodump-y format didn’t work for me, the sentiments behind it are compelling. Imagine being Shauna Shipman, the moon to someone else’s sun, and then in the aftermath of these tragedies piled upon tragedies, you get to reinvent yourself. Imagine being a teenage girl learning in world history about queens, these mythical figures so far removed from your unfulfilling daily life, and then you get to remake yourself in that image—that image, twisted into something even more primal. But you’re also a sociopath who rigs the hunt ritual so that your rival gets targeted, and you don’t even pretend to be upset about it, and you steal her hair like something out of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.  I love how this hunt was not as unanimous as the first one in season 2. Even as everyone reluctantly dons their garb, there are clear factions not wholly participating in the ritual. The fact that it was so chaotic makes it even more darkly funny that Melissa full-on tried to kill Shauna, only to have a crisis of conscience, which Shauna then turned back around into “I knew you’d turn out to be boring.” Like, DAMN, girl. I did find it fascinating that everyone was immediately masked except for Shauna; she keeps her hat up for long enough that I made a note about the others needing to obscure their faces and her not needing that barrier, only for her to pull her cap down over her eyes. Tai’s stitched-together ski mask, and Melissa’s bunny mask, seem to be just as much about protection against the cold as personal projects, whereas Shauna cut eyeholes out of her hat (possibly Javi’s hat??) and made it look more wolflike. Even the headdress sewn to the back is visual foreshadowing to the Antler Queen costume. I think my disconnect with the “Yellowjackets versus Shauna” setup for season 4 is that there wasn’t some big horror-movie signifying moment of SHAUNA IS THE BAD GUY. But that’s to the show’s credit, that it’s been a slow burn of her doing progressively more fucked-up stuff, how it shifts the balance from season 1 of “this poor suburban mom, no one understands her, she’s butchering a rabbit because that’s how she understands interacting with nature” to “wait no this person keeps killing people and biting the flesh of her living ex-girlfriends and she needs to be STOPPED.” But also, it makes me think of Melissa Albert’s The Bad Ones and how it explores the darkness of girlhood make-believe and shared fantasies—the moment when one girl is ready to end the game but the other can’t, or won’t, let it go. It’s going to be a tricky balance, for both Melanie Lynskey and the writers, to keep adult Shauna-as-Antler-Queen from descending into complete villainy next season. Adult Lottie became increasingly less sympathetic because it became clear she was using people in her cult while also losing her own grip on reality and alienating everyone she supposedly wanted to keep close. For teen Lottie, it made sense that she clung desperately to staying in the Wilderness, knowing that she could lose the self she had created out there. I’m excited to see next season explore a similar desperation in Shauna, as she has to bury the Antler Queen after being rescued but now might dig her up. Yet she must be aware that she’s pushed everyone away; will she try to bring them back around to her line of thinking that they have to take their Wilderness selves back? Because what’s a warrior queen without subjects? As Callie, Sarah Desjardins was doing some great face acting in this finale. First when on the stairs with Lottie—a cold fury comes over her when she pushes the older woman down the stairs, only for her to seem to snap out of it once she realized that her moment of rage had devastating consequences. And then when Jeff embraces her and tells her it’s OK, the way he says “It was an accident… right?” and you see her face crumple on the questioning note; but a beat before that, the darkness was right on the surface again. Shauna’s former teammates might not be willing to follow her again, but I wonder if her daughter would, if given the chance for the love that’s been withheld for so long. So, what’s gonna happen in the Wilderness when help is on the way but Shauna is desperately clinging to her power as Antler Queen? Fingers and Ears Credit: Eric Milner/Paramount+ with Showtime Pit Girl and the Antler Queen kinda sounds like an album or movie title, right? What a visual progression from Ben’s head being given a place of honor at his memorial feast to Kodi’s head being used as archery practice, oof. It was difficult to hear properly thanks to Travis’ slurring (can’t hunt if you’re drunk?), but he claims to hear Jackie’s thoughts, especially those about “sleepover makeouts” with Shauna. The only face we’d seen in the pilot’s first scene was Misty in her cracked glasses, slowly smiling. That shot initially seemed menacing, especially as Misty’s glasses breaking during the Hannah/Kodi chasei felt like a very Lord of the Flies moment demarcating before and after. But now that we know she’s smiling because Nat got out—because of some clever teamwork—there’s a grim sort of hope coming from Misty Quigley, of all people. What’d you think of this season? Does Yellowjackets have two more seasons left in it (as the showrunners initially planned) or (as I’m inclined to think) should it wrap things up in one more season?[end-mark] The post Yellowjackets’ Season 3 Finale Comes “Full Circle” to Pit Girl and the Antler Queen appeared first on Reactor.

News Alejandro González Iñárritu Emma D’Arcy Joins Tom Cruise in Next Alejandro González Iñárritu Film By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on April 14, 2025 Credit: Theo Whiteman/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Theo Whiteman/HBO Alejandro González Iñárritu, the filmmaker behind movies like Birdman, The Revenant, and Bardo, is working on his next feature, which already has some A-list talent on board. According to Deadline, House of the Dragon’s Emma D’Arcy (pictured above) has joined Tom Cruise on the call sheet for the yet-to-be-titled film that Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment are backing. Details on the movie are scarce, though we do know the logline: “The most powerful man in the world causes a disaster and embarks on a mission to prove that he is the savior of humanity.” I’d bet a nickel that Cruise will be playing the “most powerful man in the world” mentioned above, though what role D’Arcy will be taken on is less clear. D’Arcy did, however, share a statement with Deadline. “I’m delighted to be working with such extraordinary and exacting artists as Alejandro and Tom,” they said. “They are the masters of their craft, and witnessing them in combination has been a privilege.” In addition to Cruise and D’Arcy, the movie stars Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest), John Goodman (Argo, The Big Lebowski), Jesse Plemons (Kinds of Kindness, The Power of the Dog), Sophie Wilde (Babygirl, Talk to Me), Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal, Relay), and Michael Stuhlbarg (Dopesick, The Shape of Water). Iñárritu wrote the script along with Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, and Sabina Berman. It’s currently slated to hit theaters on October 2, 2026. [end-mark] The post Emma D’Arcy Joins Tom Cruise in Next Alejandro González Iñárritu Film appeared first on Reactor.

Books book review Joyfully Revisiting Swordheart by T. Kingfisher An unabashed love letter to a modern fantasy classic. By Liz Bourke | Published on April 14, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Swordheart was first published in 2018 by Ursula Vernon writing as T. Kingfisher. I adored it then. I adore it now. And I have the challenge of reviewing a novel that exemplifies what is best in Kingfisher’s work: the generosity of spirit, the eye for the ridiculous, the compassion and the pragmatism, the humour and the weirdness, all wrapped up in the self-contained frame of Kingfisher’s (re)invention of a genre I can only call “sword and sorcery romance.” Halla of Rutger’s Howe is a woman approaching her middle years. Widowed young (and not exactly displeased to be so), she’s spent the years since her widowhood as housekeeper and general dogsbody for her great-uncle by marriage, Silas. Silas, a collector of peculiarities and a man of property, is dead when the novel opens. He’s left all his property to Halla. Bad news for Halla: Her in-laws thought the property would come to them. Worse news for Halla: Her in-laws are terrible people, who fully intend to force her to marry Cousin Alver, and shut her up to bear his children, in order to keep the property in the family. Alver has clammy hands, no personality, and takes direction from his mother, the deeply unpleasant Malva. Halla has no desire to be subject to such a future. She doesn’t particularly want to die, but living under these conditions would be intolerable. So, locked in her room and kept there by the in-laws, she’s looking for a way to kill herself. But when she draws the (long, awkward) sword that’s been hanging on the wall for as long as she’s lived there, a man appears in a flash of blue light. Sarkis was a mercenary leader when he was alive. He’s been bound to, and in, the sword for centuries, compelled to protect its wielder, only able to experience the world when the blade is drawn, held in silver dreams in between. Unable to die: His binding to the sword heals his wounds, even mortal ones, for he is already dead. Long years have passed since his sword was last drawn. He’s hardly expecting to emerge in front of a woman showing rather more breast than he’d normally see, who immediately starts babbling—asking him more questions than he knows what to do with. She needs defending from her family. He can do that; he’s good at violence. She needs legal assistance to claim her inheritance? That’s a bit beyond his skillset. After a dramatic escape in which they flee Rutger’s Howe via the graveyard gate, they set out on an uncomfortable roadtrip to the closest big city to petition for help at the Temple of the White Rat. Other gods have holy paladins, fight demons, or burn suspected witches (the very unpleasant priests of the Hanged Mother, also known as the Motherhood, like to do this latter); the White Rat solves problems, and brings holy lawyers to the fight. Along the road, both Sarkis and Halla find themselves attracted to the other, and discover that they appreciate each other’s skills and sense of humour; neither believe that the other could possibly find them attractive in turn, and even if their interest was returned, it’d be bad form to pressure the other person when they’re rather relying on each other for certain basic needs and dignities. Buy the Book Swordheart T. Kingfisher Buy Book Swordheart T. Kingfisher Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Swordheart is set in the same world as Kingfisher’s prior Clocktaur Wars duology and her subsequent “Saint of Steel” series of novels (Paladin’s Grace and sequels, which are romances with rather more severed heads than your average romance novel). The Temple of the White Rat is a presence in all these novels, to greater or lesser degree. Halla receives assistance from Bishop Beartongue, who’d like to be able to help Sarkis too (Beartongue and Halla’s conversation about how you’d fake Sarkis being bound to the sword—the appearance and disappearance of a man in a flash of light—is a highlight of the novel, and emblematic of Halla’s deeply interested and curious approach to the world), but the most she can do is make sure that neither Sarkis nor Halla feel coerced by the other. Nonbinary priest Zale, who’s a lawyer with the appropriate skills, is the primary means of assistance offered by the White Rat. The legal case itself is straightforward, once Zale gets to work—except that Halla’s relatives-by-marriage are unwilling to take their defeat lying down, and Halla’s attempt to give Sarkis to himself (angrily, immediately after learning a truth about his history as a living man) backfires into additional complications. Kingfisher keeps the pace and tension mounting with unexpected turns and reversals, right to the very last page. I’ve described sword-and-sorcery before as the “fantasy of encounter,” in which people meet with fantastic incidents in the course of their lives and work. That’s part of why I see Swordheart—and indeed, the “Saint of Steel” books—as a quintessentially sword-and-sorcery sort of romance: Halla’s quest is, at root, about a very understandable problem. She just meets with a lot of strangeness on the way, usually with generosity of spirit and kindness, frequently with many questions, and often with a deep pragmatism and sense of humour. Sarkis, the man bound to a sword, belongs to the classics of sword-and-sorcery, and mutters about “decadent civilisation” with the best of them. Their roadtrip together recalls in part the atmosphere of Robert E. Howard or Fritz Leiber, in part Jennifer Roberson’s Tiger and Del or Mercedes Lackey’s Tarma and Kethry stories, but with Kingfisher’s trademark sense of the ridiculous and with updated sensibilities. Such as, for example, when Halla and Zale convince Sarkis to participate in an experiment to determine whether his bodily fluids remain behind when he de-materialises into the sword. You can call Swordheart a fantasy romance, and indeed it is. But in its attention to the weird and the ordinary, the unsettling and the quotidian, to travel and encountering strangeness in the course of what would otherwise be normal events, sword-and-sorcery is intrinsic to its makeup. And to its atmosphere.  Among all the humour and banter, adventure and entertainment, this is a novel with depth. Sarkis is haunted, in Kingfisher’s understated emotional register, by old grief and terrible suffering. Halla is worn through with years of responsibility, penned up by poverty and respectability, painfully aware of her vulnerability. Swordheart is a novel that starts with a man who can’t die but wants to, meeting a woman who can die and doesn’t want to, but is nonetheless trying to in order to escape an intolerable situation. They are both trapped. With each other, eventually, they find support, mutual respect, understanding, and greater freedom. They respect each other’s autonomy so much in part because they’ve had the experience of being trapped themselves. They also misunderstand each other and make mistakes. Some of which involve stabbing. The course of true love never did run smooth, did it? I love this novel to pieces. So many individual parts of it are wonderful, from Halla learning an ox’s name to Zale shifting into full-on dramatic lawyerly performance when, as a travelling companion, they’d been nerdy and slightly overwhelmed in the face of stabbing and hills that move. But Swordheart is more than the sum of its parts: It gathers up all its incidents and transmutes them into a greater whole. If you haven’t read it yet, then today’s your lucky day: You get to read it for the first time. And if you’re anything like me, several more times after that.[end-mark] Swordheart is published by Bramble. The post Joyfully Revisiting <i>Swordheart</i> by T. Kingfisher appeared first on Reactor.