Latest news with #1880s
New York Times
02-07-2025
- Science
- New York Times
Squashing Spotted Lanternflies Will Get Us Only So Far. We Need Wasps.
Back in the late 1880s, California citrus farmers found themselves dealing with a crisis caused by a fat bug covered in a shieldlike, granular white wax. Known as the cottony cushion scale, this insect, which had hitchhiked aboard ships from Australia, usually spends its entire life with its mouth affixed to a single plant, greedily sucking out nutrients. Now the bugs were making meals of the state's citrus trees. Some farmers resorted to erecting large canvas tents around their trees and fumigating the inside with hydrogen cyanide in attempts to murder the insect, which proved ineffective. That's when Charles Valentine Riley, who pioneered the field of entomology in the United States, was called in. In his role as chief entomologist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Mr. Riley sent an assistant to the land down under in 1888 to hunt for the bugs' natural predator. Within three months, a shipment of small branches arrived in California. The branches carried not only cottony cushion scale, but also another bug: the Vedalia beetle, a species of ladybug and a natural predator of the scale. As more shipments arrived, entomologists in California bred the beetles and eventually released them, marveling as the ladybugs dined ravenously. By the end of 1889, the fat cottony cushion scale was no longer a grave threat to citrus growers. 'It's hard to imagine what California's economy would have been like if citrus had collapsed and never taken off,' said Mark S. Hoddle, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside. The sharp reduction of cottony cushion scale was one of the United States' first large-scale programs in biological control, the broad term for using one organism — an animal, a fish, an insect or even a bacterium — to suppress another organism. These efforts won't fully eliminate a targeted pest. But if done right, they can drive down a pest population to levels where future damage is minimal. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Gilded Age Cast IRL: See How the Season 3 Stars Look Out of Costume
Like the time period from which it gets its name, The Gilded Age is all about excess. From the characters' lavish homes to their stunning gowns and jewelry, it's like every day is the Met Gala — and the servants aren't the only ones serving. Here at TVLine, we live for a good fashion moment as much as Mrs. Fish lives for drama at the opera, but it's easy to get lost in the 1880s fantasy. Sometimes we forget that there are present-day women buried under all those corsets, bustles and bonnets. More from TVLine Casting News: Andor Subs In for Kimmel, Connie Britton Joins Steve Carell Comedy and More Casting News: Severance Duo on Millionaire, Steve Carell Comedy Casts Bridesmaids Vet and More The White Lotus: Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood Reveal a Rick and Chelsea Sex Scene Was Cut From the Finale ('It Was So Powerful') But not today! In preparation for The Gilded Age's Season 3 premiere (Sunday, 9/8c), we're taking a moment to remind you what the HBO drama's cast looks like when they're not dressed in period-accurate costumes. And you might be surprised by some of the things you see. For example, did you know that Louisa Jacobson is actually a brunette underneath her blonde Marian Brook wig? Or that Ben Ahlers rocks a no-nonsense mustache when he's not playing baby faced jack-of-all-trades John Trotter? Prepare to learn all that and more as you peruse side-by-side comparisons of this season's Gilded Age series regulars (along with a few noteworthy Season 3 guest stars) out of costume, primarily using red carpet photos from the show's June 12 premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Scroll down to see the Gilded Age stars as they truly are, then drop a comment with your thoughts. Did anyone catch you by surprise? Best of TVLine 20+ Age-Defying Parent-Child Castings From Blue Bloods, ER, Ginny & Georgia, Golden Girls, Supernatural and More Young Sheldon Easter Eggs: Every Nod to The Big Bang Theory (and Every Future Reveal) Across 7 Seasons Weirdest TV Crossovers: Always Sunny Meets Abbott, Family Guy vs. Simpsons, Nine-Nine Recruits New Girl and More
Washington Post
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
In its third season, ‘The Gilded Age' is as staid and sudsy as ever
'The Gilded Age,' by virtue of its focus on moneyed late-19th-century decorum, is the current HBO drama that hews most closely to network broadcast standards. Indeed, the show was originally tipped for NBC before it got a Bertha Russell-approved status glow-up to the premium cable streamer. But while it eschews the brutality of HBO's reputation-burnishing series such as 'The Sopranos' or 'Game of Thrones,' it induces similar ethical cartwheels in the viewer. We're invited to cheer the victories of an amoral robber baron and his Machiavellian wife, whose campaign to conquer the old-money battlements of 1880s New York forms the overarching narrative of the series.
Forbes
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Season Three Of ‘The Gilded Age' Is Rife With Power Shifts Among Society's Elite
Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector star in "The Gilded Age" as Bertha and George Russell. Photograph by Barbara Nitke/HBO 'I think thematically the whole season [is] about who's in charge; who is in charge in society, who's in charge of marriages, who has the power. I think the power shift is relevant to all the stories and all the characters,' says Sonya Warfield, the co-writer and executive producer, about the new season of The Gilded Age . Set in the United Stated during the 1880s, the series follows several families navigating the social landscape of a city undergoing rapid change, rife with conflict between old and new money. The Gilded Age explores themes of social mobility, wealth, class, and the changing American society during a time of immense industrial growth. The series stars Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Cynthia Nixon, Christine Baranski, Louisa Jacobson, Taissa Farmiga, and Denee Benton. Along with Warfield, Julian Fellowes is the creator, the executive producer, and the co-writer of The Gilded Age. Coon and Spector play Bertha and George Russell who are very concerned with the trajectory of their daughter, Gladys (played by Farmiga), hoping to marry her off to an appropriate suitor, which Fellowes says is accurate for the time period. However, he points out that, 'Marian is resistant to the idea of simply settling down. She wants her life to be something. She wants to do something that adds up to more than getting dressed for the opera or not being late for dinner. But in that society, it was very difficult for women who weren't content to simply run the house and run the children and say, 'Have you had a good day dear.' That was not enough for them.' He adds, of Gladys' story, much of which centers around her reluctance to adhere to the will of her parents, 'I think that one of the key moments of growing up, for all of us, is when you realize you don't have to follow your parents' prejudices. You've loved them, and that's great, but I [think this] is also what young people have gone through always. It's not disloyal, it's just an acceptance that you are a different person from your parents.' Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski star in "The Gilded Age" as Ada Brook and Agnes Van Rhijn. Photograph by Karolina Wojtasik/HBO Bertha's drive to secure what she sees as the ideal future for her daughter causes issues in her relationship with George, Spector explains, saying, 'The rift that develops between them is not a minor one. They see the situation of Gladys' marriage in a fundamentally different way. And so, yeah, they're pulling with all of the might of their separate identities in opposite directions.' Coon jumps in to say that, 'George can't really understand the stakes for a woman. The woman's purview is very different. He doesn't understand our instinct for survival, which is, in this case, through marriage, so there really is a huge lack of psychological understanding between them that's quite sad.' As for what's happening with sisters Agnes and Ada, played by Baranski and Nixon, respectively, Nixon, pipes in to reveal — just a bit — saying that things won't be 'status quo' by any means for the pair. "It is really fun to put these characters in different situations, [because] it's not interesting to watch the same character do the same thing over and over again. It's fun to take them and put them in a wildly different situation and watch them flounder and scramble and try and fake it until they make it.' Playing Peggy Scott, Agnes' secretary, and often confidante, Denee Benton, feels that her storyline, which features a look at Black society at the time, is helping people to understand the past in an unique way. Jordan Donica and Denée Benton star as Dr. William Kirland and Peggy Scott in "The Gilded Age." Photograph by Karolina Wojtasik/HBO 'I think that Julian planting the seed of this Black elite world in our show and it getting to blossom into this garden with all of us watering it is just astounding to me. I'm learning history and I feel like I'm getting to embody something really important and I want to know more and more.' While The Gilded Age features wealthy characters and problems that might seem outdated, this isn't exactly the case, says Warfield, '[These] are universal themes for human beings, whether it's love, death, marriage, all of that. And so, even though those people were around in the 1880s, those are still the themes that we live out today.' Season three of 'The Gilded Age' premieres Sunday, June 22nd at 9 e/p on HBO Max. The series is also available for streaming on the HBO Max app.
