"The remote island of Tinian, which is less than 40 square miles, is one of three principal islands in the Northern Mariana Islands, a string of sparsely populated islets in the Western Pacific Ocean that make up the U.S.'s westernmost frontier, along with the major military hub of Guam some 100 miles to the south."
You all remember why Tinian tickles a part of your memory bank, right? For all the concern about Russian-saber-rattling, China is the real risk.
If you are part of my generation, you probably thius classic Jules Verne novel as a kid. All of his novels have been hacked to bloody, incomprehsnible messes by Hollywood over the years including my favorite, Mysterious Island. There is a new BBC series on Masterpiece Theater. It was spared no production costs but as usual the original novel has been hacked quite needlessly. The absurd trip over the Alps by balloon from the 1950s musical is there but nowhere in Verne.
There are some excellent pieces of writing with no similar component in the original.
There are some substitutions that while a bit jarring really do no damage to Verne's story: Passepartout is now a black French valet, although very true to Verne's characterization. His backstory in Verne is both more interesting and comfortable to the plot than this production. The female stagecoach driver in the Old West is atypical, but not imaginary. There were such.
I knew that what is one of the more exciting parts of the novel -- San Francisco to New York City -- could be told with modern sensibilities as our travelers deal with a Sioux Indian raid on the transcontinental railway (which I am pretty was quite imaginary when Verne wrote this).
Dep, Marshall Bass Reeves appears although in an ahistorical context. Again, this is more about making the "woke" happy than spending the time to tell theinteresting story of Reeves, from slave to federal law enforcement.
The biggest surprise was the replacement of an overzealous police detective chasing Phileas Fogg around the world with a female jouirnalist of the same name recounting Fogg'sadventures for her stick-in-the-mud newspaper editor father. There are 19th century female journalists such as Nellie Bly, but she feels like a sop thrown to modern audiences.
It is still a bit of fun to watch, with often clever dialog. The ersatz Western Battle Mountain, Nev. has a Sweenet's Butcher Shop, just to see if you are payimg attention.
“You are free to assassinate Trump,” Routh wrote of Iran in an apparently self-published book in 2023, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” which described the former president as a “fool” and “buffoon” for both the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the “tremendous blunder” of leaving the Iran nuclear deal."
It gets weirder from there.
"The world would be better it were run by women, he wrote in the book that has links to his website and X account, because “it seems that the totality of the world’s problems revolve around men with massive insecurity and childlike intelligence and behavior.”
I smell projection. AK-47 scope for sniper work.
Police have released video footage of an American woman being arrested for eating a cat – 170 miles away from Springfield, Ohio where Donald Trump claimed Haitian immigrants were devouring pets.
The arrest took place in Canton on August 16 after police received several calls from the public.
According to a police report Allexis Ferrell, 27, smashed the cat’s head with her foot and then started eating it.
Police said they saw fur on the woman’s lips and blood on her feet.
"ABC News came under significant bipartisan criticism because its moderators fact-checked some of Donald Trump's statements but not a single pushback at any made by Kamala Harris."
Of course if you believe in your deepest heart that Trump is a liar and Harris is not, why would you bother checking her claims?
