Brooks Nader Accuses Gleb Savchenko Of Cheating
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Travis Kelce vows to return to elite level in 2025: 'These past two years haven't been to my standard'
By most standards, the Kansas City Chiefs had a tremendous season in 2024. The team went 15-2, earned the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs and rode that success all the way to the Super Bowl. Under the surface, though, there were signs the team's excellence was overstated. The Chiefs barely won a number of close games during the regular season and, despite being the best player in football, Patrick Mahomes failed to put up MVP numbers despite the team trying to give him some new weapons. All of that seemed to get exposed in the Super Bowl, where the Chiefs were trounced 40-22 by the Philadelphia Eagles. Star tight end Travis Kelce knows he was part of that problem. After a decade of dominance, Kelce has seen his numbers decline in recent years. With the Chiefs' pass catchers plagued by injuries last season, Kelce should have turned in a monster year. Instead, he finished with his lowest yardage and touchdown total since his rookie season, when he played in one game. His own struggles, combined with the Super Bowl loss, weighed heavy on Kelce, who told GQ he's committed to getting back to an elite level in 2025. 'Win a Super Bowl is the only goal,' Kelce says. 'It's the only goal. It's every goal.' It's been nearly four months since that defeat, and Kelce is still hard on himself about it. 'I think it might have slipped a little bit because I did have a little bit more focus in trying to set myself up. And opportunities came up where I was excited to venture into a new world of acting and being an entertainer,' he says. 'I don't say this as 'I shouldn't have done it.' I'm just saying that my work ethic is such that I have so much pride in how I do things that I never want the product to tail off, and I feel like these past two years haven't been to my standard.' He adds, 'I just have such a motivation to show up this year for my guys.' Kelce admitted he might have "slipped a little bit" due to focusing on things outside football. Kelce has been involved in quite a bit in the entertainment realm in recent years. His "New Heights" podcast with his brother took off and is among the most popular sports podcasts around, he took on an acting role on "Grotesquerie" and hosted "Saturday Night Live." During that period, he also started dating pop superstar Taylor Swift, who he discussed in the GQ profile. Kelce's love and admiration for Swift come through in the piece, and Kelce also talks about how he got Swift to really love football. 'I sort of made her a football fan,' Kelce says. 'She is the most engulfed fan now. She knows what the injury reports look like. She understands what special situations are, third and short—all these things because she just naturally loves to hear about my job.' Whether Kelce is able to return to an elite level at his job remains to be seen. He's already put himself among the best tight ends to ever play the game and is easily one of the best football players of his era. But Kelce will turn 36 during the 2025 NFL season, and it's possible his recent decline is more related to age than commitment. Given Kelce's greatness, though, it's foolish to bet against him turning in at least one more phenomenal season before he hangs up his cleats. It certainly sounds like he's working hard to make that a reality.
Geek Wire
16 minutes ago
- Geek Wire
Worldcon 2025 celebrates the past and future of science fiction — and the part Seattle has played
Geek Life: Fun stories, memes, humor and other random items at the intersection of tech, science, business and culture. SEE MORE Thousands of science fiction and fantasy fans will be going back to the future this week when Seattle plays host to Worldcon, the world's premier sci-fi convention, for the first time since the Space Needle opened its doors. 'The Pacific Northwest is a great community of makers and doers and learners, and people really deeply engaged in speculative fiction and all that genre has to offer,' Kathy Bond, the chair of Seattle Worldcon 2025, told GeekWire. 'We want to share that with the rest of our world community.' Registered Worldcon members selected the site of the annual convention under the auspices of the World Science Fiction Society — a tradition that started with the first convention in New York City in 1939. Seattle's organizers have been preparing for this week since 2017, when they sent in their initial bid to host Worldcon. Bond, a volunteer who works as an attorney at her day job, became involved after attending her first Worldcon in 2015 in Spokane. 'From there, I got it into my head that we could totally do this in Seattle,' Bond said. The path hasn't always been smooth: This spring, a controversy arose over the revelation that generative AI was used to glean information about prospective speakers. Bond issued an apology, and the organizers reworked the process for vetting Worldcon's panelists — but the episode led some writers and fans to create a one-day alternative convention called ConCurrent Seattle, set for Thursday. 'The goal is to provide quality programming that rejects the use of genAI at all levels,' ConCurrent's organizers said. 'We firmly believe there is no place for genAI when it has been used to steal from artists and has a devastating impact upon the environment.' Headliners and the Hugos Worldcon's five-day program kicks off on Wednesday. This year's best-known featured guest is Martha Wells, the author of the Murderbot Diaries, a series of tales about a conflicted killer robot. 'With the Apple TV+ adaptation, the timing has worked out really well for her appearance here,' Bond said. Other guests of honor include sci-fi / fantasy artist Donato Giancola, rocket scientist Bridget Landry and folk minstrel Alexander James Adams. The convention's hosts are sci-fi authors K. Tempest Bradford and Nisi Shawl. George R.R. Martin, the writer whose novels inspired the 'Game of Thrones' and 'House of the Dragon' TV series, is among more than 800 panelists who have signed up to talk about topics ranging from generative AI and surveillance tech to the joys of Star Trek fanfic and tips for creating the perfect costume. You can expect a heady swirl of cosplay, particularly when the Worldcon masquerade takes place on Friday night. The convention reaches a climax on Saturday night when the annual Hugo Awards are handed out. But if you take a wider perspective, the Pacific Northwest and its science-fiction legacy could well be considered the stars of the show. Worldcon's organizers are leaning into the fact that the last time the convention came to the Emerald City, in 1961, the Seattle World's Fair (a.k.a. the Century 21 Exposition) was just seven months away from its opening in 1962. Promotional materials for this year's Worldcon reflect an appropriately '60s-style retro-futuristic look. The theme for the convention is 'Building Yesterday's Future — For Everyone.' Qne of this week's panel sessions will take a long look back at Century 21 and assess how close the fair's techno-optimistic vision of the future came to 21st-century reality. During the past six decades, the timelines for Seattle's tech history and science fiction's progress have become closely entangled, said Frank Catalano, a journalist, former tech executive and self-described 'minor science-fiction author' who is participating in three Worldcon panels this week. Catalano's résumé includes a stint as a GeekWire contributor — and he's also been the secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association as well as a member of the administrative team for SFWA's Nebula Awards. He has vivid memories of Seattle's science-fiction scene during its heyday. 'It was amazing to me, even back in the 1980s, what a rich group of speculative-fiction writers lived here,' Catalano said. 'You had Frank Herbert, you had Vonda McIntyre and Greg Bear. Octavia Butler moved here in the 1990s. Terry Brooks, the fantasy writer, is in this area. So, you have some of what are considered now the greats of science fiction and fantasy living in this area and stimulating other writers.' One of Vonda McIntyre's contributions, beyond her sci-fi novels and short stories, was her role as the founder of Seattle's Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1971. Hundreds of writers have gone through Clarion West's summer workshop, under the tutelage of some of the best-known names in speculative fiction. The future of science fiction and tech Catalano argues that science fiction had a hand in making Seattle into the tech powerhouse it is today, with the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen serving as a prime example. 'I'm sure that Paul Allen, were he still alive, would admit that he was inspired by many of the same people whose artifacts he later wound up exhibiting in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame,' he said. 'The science-fiction presence in the greater Seattle area is not because of the tech industry and economy. It stimulated and was a precursor to that.' Catalano isn't so sure that Seattle's current cultural environment is as conducive to fostering the science-fiction community. 'Amazon and Microsoft and the other tech gorillas tend to suck all the speculative air out of the room,' he said. 'People are more interested in talking about the latest hype about AI and intelligent assistants than they are in speculating about the future and what these things might do.' That's where Worldcon could provide a boost. 'My hope is that with Worldcon here, and with the attention that gets, it will help raise the profile of science fiction, fantasy, horror writing and related speculative writing in the area, and maybe help writers find each other and re-create a stronger community here,' Catalano said. Convention chair Kathy Bond is on the same page. 'I've been thinking a lot about 'why this.' Why am I asking people to spend their money on coming to Worldcon when they could be donating their money to bail funds, or donating their money to Gaza, or all of these other things?' she said. 'The answer I've come to is that art is still really important,' Bond said. 'We need our fiction, particularly our speculative fiction, because it helps us build better futures and aspire to be better than we are currently. These spaces that we create for the community to come together and celebrate what's already there, and challenge each other to come up with new ideas and new ways to try to build better futures … I think that's really important.' Seattle Worldcon 2025 runs from Wednesday to Sunday, with most events taking place at the Seattle Convention Center's Summit building. Membership rates for attendees range from $75 to $500 for the full convention, and $20 to $70 for single-day attendance. Check the Worldcon website for details. ConCurrent Seattle offers a full day of panels on Thursday at the ACT Theatre / Union Arts Center. Admission is free, but registration is required. To hear more about Worldcon and the state of the science-fiction community, check out this week's Fiction Science podcast. Alan Boyle and science-fiction author Dominica Phetteplace chat with Tim Chawaga about his newly published climate-fiction novel, 'Salvagia,' and also discuss what's happening at Worldcon. Chawaga will do a book reading and participate in two panels at Worldcon this week, while Phetteplace will talk about the outer solar system with astronomer Pedro Bernardinelli of the University of Washington's DiRAC Institute.
Geek Tyrant
16 minutes ago
- Geek Tyrant
Simon Pegg Says Quentin Tarantino's Unmade STAR TREK Movie Was 'Batsh*t Crazy' — GeekTyrant
Simon Pegg has given fans a peek into the Quentin Tarantino Star Trek movie that never got made, and if his description is anything to go by, it would've been wild! Speaking at Fan Expo Boston (via Collider), Pegg revealed that J.J. Abrams and producer Lindsey Weber once shared the breakdown of Tarantino's pitch with him, and the idea was pure Tarantino energy set in the Star Trek universe. 'That was what we call in the business batshit crazy. It was everything you would expect a Quentin Tarantino Star Trek script to be.' Pegg admitted he would've loved to see the world of Star Trek through the Pulp Fiction director's lens, even if it might have divided the fanbase. 'I think it would have been such an incredible sort of curio to see Star Trek through his lens. I don't know how it would have gone over with the fans, but it certainly would have been an interesting thing.' Back in late 2017, Paramount and Star Trek producer Abrams accepted Tarantino's pitch, with Mark L. Smith ( The Revenant ) brought on board to write the screenplay. But the project stalled. In 2023, Smith revealed that the biggest obstacle was Tarantino himself, who was wrestling with the idea that Star Trek could be his final film. 'Quentin and I went back and forth, he was gonna do some stuff on it, and then he started worrying about the number, his kind of unofficial number of films. 'I remember we were talking, and he goes, 'If I can just wrap my head around the idea that Star Trek could be my last movie, the last thing I ever do. Is this how I want to end it?' And I think that was the bump he could never get across, so the script is still sitting there on his desk.' The movie's setting would have been a retro gangster-inspired world on an Earth-like planet in the 1930s, drawing influence from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode 'A Piece of the Action' where the Enterprise crew encounters a civilization steeped in 1920s mobster culture. Sadly, this crazy vision for Star Trek will remain one of Hollywood's great what-ifs. But somewhere, in Quentin Tarantino's office, sits the script that might have been.
