Roumen.ganeff

Out of the top smartphone manufacturers, Samsung has clearly beat its competitors to the punch with its foldable smartphone, but it certainly will not be the only company to offer such a product. TCL, the company behind such brands as Alcatel and BlackBerry, is working on its own foldable display designed for more mainstream-priced handsets. Along with the display, it has patented its 'DragonHinge' design to deal with the fold in a device. The company states that these foldable handsets promise to be considerably more affordable than the first ones to market.

Prepare to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. Your next stop is…do we even need to say it?

Following an eerie Super Bowl ad, CBS All Access has released the first official trailer for its upcoming reboot of The Twilight Zone, which will premiere April 1 on the streaming service. Along with plenty of shiver-inducing imagery (and audio), the trailer shows off a murderer’s row of actors, including John Cho, Adam Scott, Tracy Morgan, Kumail Nanjiani, Zabryna Guevara, Jacob Tremblay, Alison Tolman, and Steven Yeun, as well as host Jordan Peele (who says nothing, but gives the camera one heck of a stare).

The new show will presumably follow the template of the legendary original anthology series, which presented new standalone stories every week, often in the horror or sci-fi genres and featuring sly social commentary. And as fans of Get Out know, meshing genre storytelling with a socially relevant message is something Peele excels at.

The Twilight Zone debuts April 1 on CBS All Access with a two-episode premiere, followed by a new episode every week starting April 11. Check out the trailer above.

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Netflix’s sci-fi drama Altered Carbon officially unveiled its new cast for season 2.

The lavish production, which debuted to mixed reviews last year, dropped star Joel Kinnaman from the starring role of mercenary Takeshi Kovacs. Instead, as previously announced, Anthony Mackie (best known for playing Falcon in The Avengers franchise) will take over the role.

The show’s premise based on Richard K. Morgan’s novel involves characters being able to jump into other “sleeves” (aka bodies), so changing actors is relatively easy to explain. Kovacs is an Asian character, however, and there was some protest during season 1 that Kinnaman largely played the role, though he was also played in certain scenes by Byron Mann.

There are several other new actors on board in the casting video above, but Renee Elise Goldsberry is back as Kovacs’ love interest Quellcrist Falconer and Chris Conner returns as the AI character Poe.

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Young Sheldon is here to stay.

CBS announced Friday that The Big Bang Theory spin-off has been renewed for two more years, beginning with the 2019-2020 broadcast season.

“Thanks to Chuck Lorre’s and Steve Molaro’s outstanding creative leadership, Young Sheldon has been a powerful performer for the network with an audience that towers over most of the television landscape,” Kelly Kahl, President, CBS Entertainment, said in a statement.

The double renewal isn’t surprising given that Lorre’s series is television’s second most matched comedy, right behind its lead-in show The Big Bang Theory.

Now in its second season, the hit stars Jim Parsons, Iain Armitage, Zoe Perry, Lance Barber, Montana Jordan, Raegan Revord, and Annie Potts.

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God knows we can always use another quirky comedy in our (after)lives. TBS’ new series Miracle Workers (premiering Tuesday at 10:30 p.m.) stars Daniel Radcliffe as Craig, an earnest, grunt-level angel who is tasked with answering prayers — and ultimately with saving the Earth from annihilation by his boss, God, played by… Steve Buscemi. Here, the genre- and medium-hopping actor (and former Harry Potter) opens up about why he’s starring in a TV comedy (hint: it involves a Rich man), what you can expect from this Miracle, and the last prayer that he himself answered from a fan.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You’re deciding whether to take this role. What are the angel and devil on each shoulder saying?
DANIEL RADCLIFFE: The angel is saying, “Do it! Do it! You’d be crazy if you didn’t do it!” When I got the chance to meet Simon Rich, our show creator, I said, “If you ever do anything with that book , I would be involved in any capacity.” I’ve been a fan of Simon’s writing. And the devil was saying the usual mix of anxiety and self-doubt it’s always saying, but the devil was not able to mount any formidable argument on this one.

What surprised you about the afterlife?It’s highly bureaucratic. Parts of the bureaucracy have been brilliantly, intricately thought-out, like some incredible Rube Goldberg machine, and other parts have just been left completely without any thought or care. Eliza starts off working in the department which receives and sorts all the prayers and sends them to the department of answering prayers. In one of her moments of disillusion in the early episodes, she’s been carefully sorting all these prayers and putting them into specific pneumatic tubes that take them elsewhere, only to find out they all come out in one huge pile at the other end. So it doesn’t matter where you sorted up, it’s all ending up in the same chaotic mess, anyway.

One of the things that I find really fun about the script — and I think that people will find would actually be very disconcerting if it was a reflection of a true afterlife — is how lightly they take everything. We expect that they are agonizing over every detail, but they’ve been sitting up there for tens of thousands of years, and have seen people like us come and go every day, and our problems aren’t even particularly individual or unique a lot of the times. So I suppose that we’re not as important to them as we think we are in this series, where God has decided to open a restaurant.

Right. Lazy Susan’s. How would you describe that establishment?
Here’s the thing. There’s a part that does not sound great. If that restaurant were made to work, to be made hygienically, then it sounds like a great idea. Lazy Susan’s is a theme restaurant that God wants to open that combines two of God’s favorite things, which is delicious food and lazy rivers. So that becomes the thing that God is really focused on, as we are trying to get him back to his original creation — the Earth.

How would you describe Craig’s relationship with the almighty?I mean, he’s terrified of him first and foremost, because he is God — he is his boss — and despite appearances, there is always an aspect to him that seems kind of mysterious and hidden. Even though you think you’ve got him figured out, he seems to not be very focused and seems pretty carefree, there’s another part of you that’s thinking, “Well, is this all actually a kind of cover and he actually knows exactly what’s going on?” But then most of the time, it transpires that he really doesn’t know what’s going on. I think that’s one of the things that Craig becomes slightly disillusioned with at first. In his head, God has always been very kind of almighty, and initially, it’s a bit of a shock to the system to find that God has gone a little bit off the rails at the beginning of the series.

Craig seems interested in Eliza. Will they or won’t they? Or actually, can you in the afterlife?I think you definitely can — fall in love — I don’t know what the implications are for anything sort of practical in that sense. I think Craig does have feelings for Eliza, but it is also in part because she’s one of the first people he’s met who’s been nice to him in a very long time. So there’s part of him that is uncertain where the line of this new friendship begins and ends. But the more important thing in this series  is not whether they actually get together, it’s the question of whether Craig can get up the courage to see if they can get together. It doesn’t matter to me what her response would be to that, but we all agree that his thing to get over is just asking the question, more than actually being lonely. If I had to guess, I’m pretty sure Eliza is blissfully unaware that Craig has any of these feelings for her.

This afterlife comedy enters an orbit also occupied by The Good Place and Forever. What is it about the afterlife that holds such comedic appeal right now, or would you just describe it as eternal curiosity?I think there is just something about us that is eternally curious about that. There is something inherently comforting about any story involving the afterlife in any way, because most of us would like there to be something else, even if we don’t believe there is. Also, everybody has an image of it, everybody has a set of expectations about what it will be like and what it involves, so there’s a lot of things that you can go in and upend  and turn on their heads, because everybody’s got a pre-conceived idea of what heaven would be. There’s room to have a lot of fun.

Craig is in the business of answering prayers. When was the last time that you, in your own life, prayed for divine intervention?Oooh! That would be a long, long, long time ago. This is a really sad answer, I’m sorry, but I think the last time I sort of very sincerely believed in God and also had cause to pray was probably when I was about 11 or 12, and one of my dogs had died, so I think I was praying that she would be okay. Sorry, it’s such a heavy answer to your light question. I think I prayed that she would be okay, or that if she had died by then, that she was going to heaven.

What was the last prayer that you answered yourself from a Harry Potter fan? Oh! I don’t know that they actually prayed about this, but I did recently get to settle, or at least slightly remedy, the relationship between two sisters. I don’t think anything really bad had happened between them, but about 12 years ago, one of this girl’s friends had been backstage at Good Morning America, and I was on doing it that morning, and backstage she caught up with me and was like, “Hey, my friend’s a huge fan, would you speak to her on the phone?” And I said, “Yeah, absolutely.” And she called her friend whose phone was not working, so she called that friend’s sister instead, and that friend’s sister just went, “Oh, this is too early for this, call her, I’m not around,” not realizing that her sister’s phone was broken, and there was no other way of this girl contacting me. So this girl then came to the stage door the other day , gave me an illustrated pop-up book called — hold on, I’ve got it here — “The Real Life Story of the Time Daniel Radcliffe Tried to Call Me and I Missed It.” And it’s just like this genuinely very charming, funny thing, and she did say at the end of it, “I can now fully forgive my sister for hanging up on you that day, now that I have spoken to you.” So that’s the closest thing I’ve done to doing a good thing for a Harry Potter fan recently. I was blissfully unaware that this big whole thing had transpired.

You healed a rift—That’s probably overstating it slightly, but yes, I’ll give myself that.

Owen Wilson was originally attached to play God in Miracle Workers. Why the switch? And did the creative direction of the show change, too?Not particularly, in terms of the creative direction. Obviously things had to be rewritten a little bit — we’re working with a very skilled room of writers who can write for the voice of an actor as well, so it was more about changing things from Owen’s to Steve’s voice. But in terms of the actual character or the story, nothing changed, nothing shifted. I don’t feel like I’m probably qualified to talk about exactly why the change happened, but I cannot put it in strong enough terms how unbelievably lucky we were to get Steve. Obviously, they’re very different actors, but having now done it with Steve, I can’t imagine anyone else. We really landed on our feet there.

Tell us one thing you’ve learned from working with Steve.Okay, here’s one. You can pronounce his surname either “Boo-shemi” or “Boo-semi.”

He doesn’t mind? He’s fine either way?I did not know that. I’m just like, “Wait, there must be a way to say it.” And he’s like, “No, either is basically fine.” I was like, “Oh, okay, cool.” One of those arguments in the world is how you pronounce that surname — and everybody’s right. You can just go through the world now, pronouncing it however you like.

Since Potter, you’ve fearlessly disappeared into an interesting variety of roles across all genres, playing Allen Ginsberg, Frankenstein’s assistant Igor, a sentient corpse, a drug-smuggling pilot, and an FBI agent on film, not to mention your theater work. What’s the pattern here — or is the point to subvert any pattern?Yeah, I think I’m just spraying buckshot wildly. There isn’t really a pattern. It is to just try as much and do as much as I can, and the pattern, if there is one, is more based around doing what I like or will challenge me or working with people that I enjoy, and also just keeping busy. I don’t like to sit around for too long, doing nothing. I’ve been really lucky for years between getting a lot of jobs on film or TV, I’ve been able to keep busy in the theater, which is great. But I am an actor in the rarest of positions, which is, I get a say over what I do in my career, and I don’t have to do things right now for the money, so I can really just do things that I like. So I pretty much have always stuck to that, and it’s proven really fruitful.

Does it come with a little bit of apprehension? Or do you just have a fearlessness and a hunger to jump out of your comfort zone?I honestly think I get a bit more credit than I may be due for this, but I think most actors try to do as varied a bunch of things as they can. Because we train one thing so hard, it maybe stands out a bit more when you see me playing a corpse , but that’s how I have the most fun doing my job, is by doing things that I’m like, “Wow, I’ve never done this before.” Swiss Army Man was simultaneously one of the most terrifying experiences in my life, because before we started, I was like, “I don’t know how to play a corpse coming magically back to life.” But discovering that on set with those people was so much fun. So sometimes it’s fun to not quite know what you’re doing, and just work really hard and figure it out as you’re going.

What does Hollywood get wrong about you? What’s the biggest misconception?I’m not online like I used to when I was first coming out of Potter. I’m sure I can find so many interviews back then when I said, “Oh, I never read stuff online,” and I am lying at that time. I was very much in a dark place looking at internet comments sometimes. When Potter was coming to an end, around that point, I was reading internet comments and reading articles about myself and reviews and stuff all the time, which is a sort of form of weird mental self-harm, that I am not alone in having engaged in as an actor, but I have stopped that now, thank Christ. So I don’t really know what Hollywood says or thinks about me.

You’ve done broad musical comedy with How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and weirder comedy with Swiss Army Man. Miracle Workers, though, is your most significant comedy role to date. Maybe a possible misconception about you is how interested in comedy you are. Was a hit TV comedy ever a goal in the back of your mind?I grew up watching comedy on TV constantly. This is such an amazing time in American television, it’s such a fragile time in so many ways for independent film, and it’s a very transitional time for all that stuff. So in a way it was lovely to do something with the security of the television network, being like, “No, no, no, they have this money, we’re definitely gonna make it.” Also, I’ve always said, it really doesn’t matter to me; if Simon had phoned me up and said we’re doing a radio play of this book, I’d have been like, “Yeah! I’m in.” The medium doesn’t so much matter. And I do think that may be a freedom that comes with having been in some really big films when I was younger, it’s the sort of potential of “I’ve done that, and it’s amazing, if I get to do it again one day, great, but I also know that it’s not the be-all and end-all of working in this industry.” It’s possible to create great work and have a lot of fun doing it in whatever medium that is. In terms of the comedy stuff, it’s a good point. I feel like I’m so drawn to comedy, and I feel like I’ve done lots of weird, little comedies, I have done a lot on stage, but most people haven’t seen that. Hopefully people get to see me being stupid and funny in this show.

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Alita: Battle Angel features an unfamiliar face. It’s not the lead actress, since audiences have seen Rosa Salazar in Bird Box and the Maze Runner movies. It’s literally the face of Salazar’s character that’s unfamiliar -- the giant-eyed CG construct that is the title character of the new film.

Alita may be a bit off-putting at first, but moviegoers have been getting used to this sort of thing for some time now. Developments in visual effects filmmaking have allowed humans to be altered or entirely created via CGI, and the result has almost always been a little off. The feeling this “offness” creates in the viewer is what is known as the uncanny valley.

The uncanny valley occurs when an observer is supposed to recognize a humanoid object as real, but said object comes off as out-of-place and creepy. In the case of Alita, she’s supposed to look somewhat inhuman, but Hollywood has been attempting to create completely realistic people for some time now. Middle-aged actors have been brought back to their twenties while long-dead performers have risen from the grave. “Photorealistic” humans have been created in the computer, and the uncanny valley has often troubled viewers everywhere as a result.

Continue reading…

He’s her kryptonite.

Supergirl costars Melissa Benoist and Chris Wood are engaged, the actress announced Sunday.

Benoist, 30, posted an Instagram showing off her diamond ring (designed by Jen Meyer) as Wood, 30, kissed her cheek. A fire crackled in the background of the intimate image.

View this post on Instagram

yes yes yes it will always be yes

A post shared by Melissa Benoist (@melissabenoist) on Feb 10, 2019 at 4:41pm PST

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

“yes yes yes it will always be yes,” she captioned the photo.

The couple met on the set of the CW series — she plays the titular hero, and he joined the cast as her on-screen love interest Mon-El in 2016. Things apparently turned romantic sometime in 2017, when they were photographed kissing on the beaches of Cancun, Mexico.

Benoist was previously married to Glee costar Blake Jenner; they wed in spring 2015 and filed for divorce in 2016.

Good Omens has found its prince of darkness.

Showrunner Neil Gaiman announced Wednesday during the Television Critics Association winter press tour that Benedict Cumberbatch is joining the cast as Satan. (Yes, that Satan.)

The Sherlock star joins an already starry cast that includes David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Frances McDormand, Jon Hamm, Nick Offerman, Miranda Richardson, Michael McKean, and more. Gaiman adapted the show himself from the beloved 1990 novel he co-wrote with the late Terry Pratchett, and it stars Tennant and Sheen as a demon and an angel who band together in the face of the impending apocalypse. (McDormand is the voice of God, and Hamm plays the angel Gabriel.)

“It’s such a unique world that and Terry have created,” Tennant previously told EW. “If anyone else had taken it on, I don’t think we could have captured the real quirky essence of it.”

Amazon also dropped a look at the show’s opening titles and revealed that all six episodes will (finally!) be available to stream on May 31. So in other words, the end is officially near.

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You’re welcome, internet. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Here is The Mountain from Game of Thrones (Hafþór ‘Thor’ Júlíus Björnsson) reading GoT-themed love poems (with helpful subtitles) while lounging shirtless in front of a fire with roses. The poems were submitted by SodaStream social channel users. Sure it’s an ad for something, but we’re down. We only have eyes for The Mountain.

Game of Thrones returns April 14. And yes, The Mountain will return.

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SANTA CLARITA DIET is returning for its third season on Friday, March 29. The darkly amusing Netflix series focuses on the Hammonds, a normal real estate couple whose lives were thrown into a tailspin when Sheila became a zombie. Her husband, Joel, and their daughter, Abby, worked to hide the truth about Sheila and cover […]

After Netflix's Marvel shows got cancelled this past year, Hulu has now voiced they are open to scooping them up and possibly reviving Daredevil and Luke Cage.

In an interview with TheWrap, Senior Vice President of Originals at Hulu, Craig Erwich, said they would be interested in any titles under the Marvel name.

"Marvel has a ton of titles we’d be interested in," Erwich said.

"It kind of just depends on when they’re ready,

who, most importantly, is going to be behind these things," he said.

Netflix cancelled three of its five Marvel TV shows in the past few months, including Daredevil, Iron Fist and Luke Cage. Leaving Jessica Jones with a third season coming out, and season two of The Punisher debuted last month without any announcement yet of a third season to follow.

Continue reading…

After more than eight months without any communication, NASA officially declared the Mars Opportunity Rover's mission completed on Wednesday, Feb. 13.

The Opportunity Rover was on the planet of Mars for a record-breaking 15 years, since 2004.

"I declare the Opportunity mission as complete, and with it the Mars Exploration Rover mission complete," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said Wednesday, reported by Space.com.

NASA's official Twitter account also shared confirmation of the mission ending and information about what the Opportunity Rover has brought in terms of data and knowledge to their team.

Continue reading…

It's no surprise that Xiaomi has a foldable phone in the works. We've seen a couple of videos of it including one with the company's founder giving a hands-on demonstration of it in action. Xiaomi has issued an official statement to LetsGoDigital where the company describes the foldable phone and some background on its development, design, as well as overcoming some of the challenges with the flexible display and folding mechanism in addition to the way the MIUI reacts to the phone's different folding configurations. It also explains that the display is being developed in partnership with...

Qin Qisheng, a senior programmer at Chinese Bank Huaxia, has been jailed for 10 and a half years after taking advantage of "a loophole in the bank's core operating system that meant cash withdrawals made around midnight were not recorded." Mr. Qisheng, who was evidently unhappy with his employer's pay, ultimately managed to collect $1M before he was caught by a manual check. While the bank "accepted his explanation that he had simply been trying to test its internal security and the cash was just resting in his own account before he returned it to his employers," the courts demanded punishment. Qin discovered the flaw in the system in 2016 and in November that year he inserted a few scripts in the banking system which he said would allow him to test the loophole without triggering an alert. For more than a year he made cash withdrawals of between 5,000 yuan and 20,000 yuan (US$740-US$2,965) from a dummy account the bank used to test its systems. By January 2018 he had amassed over seven million yuan - the equivalent of just over a million US dollars - without telling his superiors what he was doing. Discussion

Google Home speakers and Smart Displays are now fully functional translators. The Google Assistant-based Interpreter Mode, announced at CES last month, is now rolling out.

Owners of compatible devices, which also include some third-party Google Assistant speakers, can say “Hey Google, be my French [or insert language of choice] interpreter” to receive real-time spoken and/or written translations.

Users will also be able to use “OK Google” commands like “be my Italian interpreter,” “help me speak Spanish,” or “interpret from Polish to Dutch.”

During the unveiling, Google said the tech will help tourists check into foreign hotels and understand local bus schedules, as well as simplify communication between two people who simply don’t speak each other’s language.

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In a support document, Google says 26 languages are available, but for now you’ll need to use English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, or Spanish to start using the mode. From there you’ll be able to begin translating from those into the wider range of languages.

Naturally, the feature is enhanced on Smart Displays due to the ability to read as well as hear the translation. Google seems to think that in particular will be at home in hotels around the world.

As demonstrations at CES 2019 showed, the translations aren’t exactly real-time. Users must speak the sentence and wait for it to be processed by the Google Home speaker or smart display before the translation is offered.

As Android Police points out in its report, the conversational feature has long been available within the dedicated Translator app, but will still prove highly useful in the scenarios mentioned above.

If the update isn’t yet working on your Assistant-based device at this point, you can force restart in an attempt to prompt the update.

Have you spied the Interpreter Mode feature on your Google Assistant device? Is it working as advertised? Or does it leave a lot to be desired? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.

The post Google Assistant ‘Interpreter Mode’ hits Home speakers and Smart Displays appeared first on Trusted Reviews.

If you’re a regular person, but still have to make the occasional Skype video call in a professional context, chances are you’ve had to shuffle your camera around to avoid anything embarrassing in the background.

All that changes, with Microsoft adding the ability to blur out your background to Skype calls so that you’re Skype calls won’t inadvertently show off the rack of laundry in the background, something you don’t realise until your interview subject comments on your old school Doom t-shirt. You know, just in case that’s ever happened to you.

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The feature was trialed in Microsoft’s Slack-alike Teams, but has now made its way to a wider audience courtesy of its introduction into Skype.

Want to hide your embarrassing environs on a Skype call? It’s quite easy. You just have to hover your cursor over the the video camera button lurking at the bottom of your screen and mash the ‘Blur my background’ toggle and hopefully it’ll all blur out. We had some success with testing this out, even in low light situations.

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Alternatively, you can right-click your camera feed at the top right corner of the screen and click ‘Blur my background’ while you’re on a call in the pop-up menu.

Apparently, AI has made this possible. AI detects the edges of your face and body, and blurs things that aren’t you. Supposedly this feature is still being improved, so there’s no guarantee that you’ll absolutely blur out everything behind you, so it’s probably a good idea to move any passwords or bank details out of shot, just in case.

Are you using Skype’s new feature to blur out your background? Let us know how you get on on Twitter at @TrustedReviews

The post Microsoft is using AI to blur out the background in your Skype calls, and here’s how to turn it on appeared first on Trusted Reviews.

Storks make their nests high. To us they look remarkably precarious structures, not exactly a desirable residence – the ‘des res’ of your dreams. The stork, however, thrives at height most of us would avoid like the plague. Take a look at some amazing nests of the stork.

Although many Europeans encourage storks to nest on the roof of their home – it is supposed to increase the fecundity of the householders – many would gasp at the inherent danger that lies in building one’s home on top of a deadly current of electricity. In Denmark, however, the stork is not a welcome guest and so this would be considered appropriate alternative housing. The Danish believe that if a stork builds a nest on top of your house then someone who lives there will die before the year ends. These parent storks, however, will not be on the nest for great periods of time. This stork in Hungary is flying back to the nest to feed its offspring. The visit will need to be fairly quick though – stork chicks can eat anything up to sixty percent of their body weight each day. That is quite a few fish and frogs.


What would the Health and Safety freaks in the UK make of these storks nesting over a motorway in Portugal? They would, no doubt, send them a disapproving message and ask them to move on within the next few days. The storks themselves seem to be on sentry duty, watching out perhaps for the next lorry carrying cans of worms to spill off the motorway – and open them. Birds of a feather most certainly flock together. Pity the stork in Aesop’s fable. Caught in a net with a flock of cranes by a farmer, the stork begged for its life. After all, he was no crane. The farmer did not heed the stork’s pleas and that was the end of that.

The higher the building, the greater the views the storks have of their surroundings and the more likely they are to spot the next meal for their voracious chicks. However, this rather picturesque and old building in Germany has been the recipient of the remains of the many meals that the storks have enjoyed atop the clock. This may not make them popular with the owners, but for this pair, where their guano goes will be of no concern. Many think that storks pair up for life and are monogamous throughout. The latter is correct, but the stork is a serial monogamist. Each marriage lasts for a single season and next year the bird is unlikely to have the same mate. Regardless of this, however, the storks remain loyal to each other alone throughout this period.


Perhaps the choice of a church is appropriate. For the early Christians the stork became the symbol of the white marriage – that is one that is never consummated for religious reasons. As such they were highly respected and although this symbolism has not survived to this day it did last until the sixteen hundreds.

These storks have some cheek. However, it must be said that this electricity tower must have looked to them like some kind of ready made stork social housing project. It gives the nests some appearance of order, but the carefully done distance and spacing is simply a man-made illusion. Storks will happily live side by side with both their own and other species.

The most important element in their choice of site is not the immediacy or the species of their neighbors but rather the availability in the locality of a large and steady supply of food. Storks will eat anything that moves that is of the right size and so as well as fish and amphibians it will also eat insects and reptiles. Rodents and other small mammals are not immune to attack either, so if you have just bought that cute little kitten for your six year old, don’t let it out to play with the storks too soon.

If it’s high and has a good vantage point then your local historical monument will be a target for this bird. Here in Izmir, Turkey, a centuries old landmark has been taken over by some new (perhaps undesirable) tenants. Once the stork has decided where it wants to live it becomes something of a home body. Although the stork is migratory the same nest may be used for quite a number of years so if they are unwanted guests then this can pose something of a problem for the neighboring Homo sapiens. The nests can get rather large, too. At their largest they are often over six feet (or two meters) in diameter and, to ensure the chicks don’t tumble over the edge they are deep, too. The depth can be up to ten feet (or three meters). That’s about the same as the deep end of your local swimming pool.

It may be just a remnant of your history, like the tower in the previous picture. You might just get the hump if a stork decides to nest on one of your truly ancient monuments, and this happened recently to the Kasbah of Tamdaght in Morocco. Given the longevity of the nests this may well become a local fixture. Storks need a high vantage point from which to launch in to flight. They prefer to soar and glide which helps to conserve their energy and enables them to cover huge distances in search of a home or food. The Marabou Stork has a wingspan that is over three meters in length. As such it rivals the Andean Condor as the bird with the widest wingspan of all land inhabiting species.

Roman ruins? That will do nicely!

Modern lighting system? Whyever not?

As well as being no respecter of human history, the stork will also disregard politics. This commemoration of communist era soldiery in Poland has the possible unwanted finishing touch of a stork nest at its pinnacle. Storks appear in the warmer regions of the world, mostly, but also extend as far north as colder, wetter Poland. The neighbors of these storks do not need to worry about being kept away by the calling of the birds, however. The stork has no syrinx and so is mute. The syrinx is the vocal organ for birds and as the stork does not possess one then it is mute. This might help convince you that you would not mind a pair of storks in your vicinity. Well, the stork may not twitter but it clatters instead. For the adult stork, the clattering of bills is a means of communication and bonding – and they do it a lot.

As the stork is sociable once you have a single pair, if you have room it may not be long before they attract their friends to the neighborhood. The stork has long been a tactic used by parents anxious not to inform their children too soon of the mechanics of producing offspring. “The stork brought you”, is something that many parents have used in a sweaty palmed attempt to offset the moment when the messy, sticky truth must be revealed. However, if you lived in this house, your child may well begin to think that they will soon be in receipt of a horde of siblings, ready to overrun the house and divert parental attention away from them. Keep the knives locked away and the windows closed.

In Hebrew, the word for stork – Hasida – means someone who is religiously observant, devout and god fearing. With their nests, visible to the world, the stork became a symbol of good, dutiful parental care. If you think the Hebrew word is familiar then you are right – the word is also at the root of the name of the Hassidic movement of Judaism. Some ancient texts refer to stork parents as the most caring of the animal kingdom. It was noted that if the nest was on fire the parents would not leave their offspring behind, choosing instead to perish in the flames alongside their chicks. While this is dubious it is this sort of legend that makes the stork such a powerful symbol in many cultures.

Of course, the stork is not a bird that makes a bee line purely for houses or ancient monuments. It is quite happy, to be frank, with a pole – as long as it lends the nest the required height and vantage point. Comparatively, they may seem like the poor white trash of the stork world, but the stork is not one that is interested in aesthetics. It is a case, really of predators, what predators? Its size means that it is rarely interfered with by other birds and so as long as the nest meets the prerequisite of location, location, location then the bird is happy to make its home there. The Bible, in Leviticus, expressly forbids the eating of the bird – and if you are protected by God then what do you need to fear?

Of course as a human resident of a certain location you may not be too keen on storks making their home near – or on top – of you. So, if you see a stork gazing quizzically at your domicile – be afraid. Be very afraid.

Intellects not so vast but still cool and unsympathetic, may be regarding your roof with envious eyes.

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Fifty years ago, Buzz Aldrin went to the moon. He was hailed as an American hero. More recently, Buzz Aldrin was eliminated in the second week of Dancing With the Stars season 10, and then he mocked himself on 30 Rock, and then he mocked history in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, revealing that the Space Race was actually caused by Alien Robot Car-People. On Tuesday, Aldrin loaned his brand recognition to another questionable endeavor, waving cheerfully while President Donald Trump celebrated our species’ mooniversary during his State of the Union. History repeats: First as reality show, then as showy reality.

I don’t want to denigrate Aldrin’s achievements as an astronaut. But any sensible person will wonder why, in this State of the Union speech, this President talked more about Apollo 11 than the recent government shutdown or the resurgence of white supremacy. And it might seem strange to praise NASA for its achievements in lunar flag-planting, without once mentioning the creeping horror of climate change, a real global crisis you can read about on NASA’s website. “American astronauts will go back to space on American rockets,” the president promised. Can those rockets do something about our country’s soaring maternal death rate? Or is that not pointlessly awesome enough?

I’m a TV critic, so I hope you’re going somewhere smarter for coherent political analysis. But it struck me that the president’s speech on Tuesday struck a constant note of toxic cultural nostalgia, looking backward to dream a brighter yesterday. We should always honor our heroic veterans, but the president’s chest-beating over D-Day went beyond homage into freakish avoidance. The beaches at Normandy earned more airtime than the opioid epidemic. Here is a president who is very ready to win World War II.

Trump’s American history is a nostalgic history, shorn of political awareness, denying all context but triumph. Easy enough to praise heroic soldiers who fought Nazis in Germany 75 years ago. Trickier, of course, to take on actual Nazis today. Trump paid homage to survivors of the horrific Pittsburgh mass shooting, but only barely addressed the actual perpetrator of that shooting, with his ideology allegedly baked in alt-right social media hubs. No mention of the possibilities of gun control — but Trump did find time to promise that “America will never be a socialist country,” recalling with awe our nation’s “triumph over communism.” Last year, a domestic terrorist sent pipe bombs to multiple American citizens. Say what you will about Cesar Altieri Sayoc, but his problem wasn’t reading too much Marx.

This State of the Union will be remembered, mainly, for the president’s embarrassing attempt to tip his hat towards the ongoing investigation into various 2016 electoral skullduggery. “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” he said, a dumb rhyme spoken with mad pride. Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tried very hard not to play Trump’s onscreen foil, could be seen motioning calm down-looking gestures toward her fellow Democrats. But it was easy to meme-ify her deadpan microexpressions. When the president said that he singlehandedly avoided war with North Korea, you watched the Speaker’s face, wondering if she would laugh or cry.

A conciliatory tone was attempted, with motions towards “the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good.” But Trump has no real vocabulary for optimism. He is like one of those critics who only enjoy writing bad reviews. It’s telling that he orchestrates his heartwarming State of the Union moments around special guests, outsourcing emotion to the people upstairs. Meanwhile, the language became florid when it turned to “our very dangerous southern border,” land of “ruthless coyotes, cartels, drug dealers, and human traffickers.” To this hellscape, add the elites: “Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards.” And don’t forget about New York, which the president said was celebrating “the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.”

This is not true, but you don’t go to this president for clarity. “All children, born and unborn, are made in the holy image of God,” he said. And how does God feel about the children in detention camps? Fun fact: The detention camps were mentioned less than “the golden beaches of California.”

There was a bit of talk about innovation, though it’s not clear what this president thinks our nation should be innovating, precisely. He mentioned “the cutting edge industries of the future,” and even that phrase “cutting edge” sounds unfrozen from the 1980s. Remember, this is a man who hasn’t properly mastered spellcheck. But that’s part of the pitch, too. Trump got elected on a platform of glorious nostalgia, and he began the second half of his presidency struggling for more examples of the old greatness America once was.

Don’t assume that America’s nostalgia problem is just a Trump thing. So much of popular culture now looks backward longingly, these remnants of childhood reheated toward the future, a glorious past reclaimed. Boomers practically invented the commodified nostalgia, but millennials reinvented it for the internet age, launching untold millions of Facebook posts off with variations of the phrase “Stuff Only ’90s Kids Understand.” Of course, some nostalgia is dumb and clickbait-ish and silly — astronauts dancing badly on television for high ratings! — and then some nostalgia is a political force crushing liberty and separating actual children from their actual parents. There simply has to be a better way to honor where we came from without losing sight of where we are now. But this was a State of the Union that mentioned “the railroads” more than the student debt crisis. The railroads, man. It’s hard to build a better future when you can dream about a better past.

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