Latest news with #Nanette
San Francisco Chronicle
05-07-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Madre Fire, California's largest, expands to nearly 80,000 acres
Nanette covers California's public universities - the University of California and California State University - as well as community colleges and private universities. She's written about sexual misconduct at UC and Stanford, the precarious state of accreditation at City College of San Francisco, and what happens when the UC Berkeley student government discovers a gay rights opponent in its midst. She has exposed a private art college where students rack up massive levels of debt (one student's topped $400k), and covered audits peering into UC finances, education lawsuits and countless student protests. But writing about higher education also means getting a look at the brainy creations of students and faculty: Robotic suits that help paralyzed people walk. Online collections of folk songs going back hundreds of years. And innovations touching on everything from virtual reality to baseball. Nanette is also covering the COVID-19 pandemic and served as health editor during the first six months of the crisis, which quickly ended her brief tenure as interim investigations editor. Previously, Nanette covered K-12 education. Her stories led to changes in charter school laws, prompted a ban on Scientology in California public schools, and exposed cheating and censorship in testing. A past president of the Society of Professional Journalists' Northern California chapter, Nanette has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in sociology from Queens College. She speaks English and Spanish.
IOL News
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- IOL News
'Once Upon a Time in Joburg' celebrating R&B and neo-soul with Sasha Keable and Goldlink
South Africa's vibrant R&B and neo-soul scene will once again command the spotlight as Once Upon a Time in Joburg returns for its highly anticipated second edition on June 21, 2025. Set against the picturesque backdrop of James and Ethel Gray Park, this festival is poised to be an enchanting celebration of music and culture, running from 12:00 PM to 10:00 PM. This year's festival shines a light on two of South Africa's most cherished musical talents, Shekhinah and Nanette. With her soulful ballads and introspective lyrics, Shekhinah has firmly secured her place in the hearts of many South African music lovers, famous for hits like "Suited" and "Fixate".
Los Angeles Times
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
How ‘Black Mirror's' ‘USS Callister' sequel became its ‘most ambitious' episode yet
Warning: The following contains spoilers from the 'Black Mirror' episode 'USS Callister: Into Infinity.' There's a reason 'Black Mirror' is not known for ongoing stories, says its British creator Charlie Brooker. 'I tend to kill everyone or leave them too depressed to function at the end of my story,' he says. 'Sequels can be tricky.' But in the seven years since the anthology series' Emmy-winning Season 4 episode 'USS Callister' galvanized fans with its funny, thrilling, twisty rendering of digital human doubles trapped in a 'Star Trek'-like game universe, Brooker and his collaborators knew its story could be extended, past the point where meek programmer Nanette (Cristin Milioti) helped save her cloned self from sadistic game designer Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons), left for dead. Ideas percolated, but so did pitfalls. As Brooker recalled, 'There's lots of corners you've painted yourself into, and story logic you have to navigate.' But perhaps more urgently, he said, 'If we've killed Darth Vader, what do we do?' What arose was a feature-length follow-up, 'USS Callister: Into Infinity,' premiering Thursday on Netflix as part of 'Black Mirror's' seventh season. Taking the spaceship's crew into a new adventure of real-life and game death, the episode is built around a fresh test of virtual Nanette's captaincy, and a villainous turn for Daly's obnoxious business partner Walton (Jimmi Simpson). Plus, adds Brooker, 'We just knew, because of what's unique about our video game premise, we've got to have the real world and virtual world meet.' He felt these narrative intricacies required a first-ever 'Black Mirror' writers' room to sort it all out. 'This was a different beast, quite complicated. So much fun but a headache to write.' Milioti likened her separate selves facing each other to 'seeing yourself on video or hearing a voicemail you've left. I find it to be really jarring.' Real-world Nanette Cole, still an undervalued 9-to-5-er, is impressed by the version of herself that runs a ship, but it's not mutual for Capt. Cole. 'The other one is so disappointed!' If the fun of returning to familiar sets and costumes after years away came with a kind of 'existential motion sickness,' Milioti jokes, navigating the precise choreography to act against herself with specialized cameras presented its own challenge. 'You really feel nuts trying to remain present with a memory of yourself, where your hand was, eyelines. It was fascinating and intense, like a dance. For two days, my brain was like an overheated modem.' Simpson's virtual Walton (the nice one) returns too, but in a caveman's loincloth, which required some prefilming training. 'I had turned into the full dad bod,' says Simpson, who calls the double-filming days toggling between looks 'a full-on marriage of performance and technique. Television is not a film schedule. It's designed to take up as little time as possible.' But the energy, he says, with much of the original crew returning, was 'addictive.' He enjoyed real-world Walton's megalomaniacal tech-bro turn as well. 'The thoughtlessness and greed is turned to 11, and that was fun,' says Simpson. 'People have said it looks like I'm always up to something, so I get to play villains. My mother doesn't get it at all.' Returning director Toby Haynes calls the original 'a perfect script, a neat potboiler,' but describes 'Into Infinity' as 'maybe the most ambitious 'Black Mirror' episode ever made.' If the original's cheeky replication of 'Star Trek' was its defining aesthetic, this one's faster-paced, action-meets-farce peril spurred a visual language crafted from gaming. 'The guns, the design elements and the visual effects when people get fragged, that was all fun to explore,' he says. The cues of classic sci-fi were still there — including Nanette's garb deliberately evoking Ripley in 'Aliens,' and space combat evoking 'Star Wars' — but Haynes also wanted to lean into what makes these stories original. 'It's not pastiche anymore; it's its own thing,' he notes, ' which is really thrilling.' The sequel's most tense inside-the-game face-off takes place in a virtual suburban garage, that mythic place of tech origin, where a wiser, harder Nanette encounters a younger, more innocent Daly (a returning Plemons). Says Brooker, 'We always wanted that juxtaposition, with the dynamic slightly altered. She needs his help, and he's a complex figure. If we hadn't done a good job, it would have been excruciating to cut from a space battle to two people talking.' Cue Haynes, who knew how to introduce the door-opening moment with otherworldly suspense: light, mist, a silhouetted Nanette. 'I wanted this to be my Spielberg moment, building up to this godlike creep, and Nanette facing her abuser.' The reunion with Plemons was a favorite scene of Milioti's. 'I like things that explore different facets of people,' she says. 'She's a different person, exhausted and in disbelief that she's back dealing with this person, and you're devastated by his loneliness, how badly he wants to connect and how that got twisted. There was so much to excavate. We shot for four days in a room. It felt like a two-hander play.' With amped-up drama, comedy and action this time around, Brooker knows he's made something 'quite mainstream' for his often bleak, beloved storytelling outlet. 'It's almost family-friendly, apart from the language,' he jokes. 'But it still has the distilled essence of 'Black Mirror,' those elements and ingredients. Hopefully people feel we did the first one proud.'
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Mavericks' Jason Kidd thinks it's 'kinda cool' the Luka Dončić trade is getting compared to Babe Ruth
Jason Kidd had an interesting take on the Luka Dončić trade shortly before the Los Angeles Lakers star's return to Dallas. It will leave you wondering how much he knows about Babe Ruth. Speaking with reporters, the Dallas Mavericks head coach was asked to address the fans who feel hopeless in the wake of the deal that has rocked the foundation of their team and triggered a massive backlash. Advertisement His immediate response was to whip out the worst possible analogy and say he improved: "This is a business. It happens, right? Trades happen. This won't be the last trade. Someone compared it to Babe Ruth, which is kind of cool." In case basketball fans need a refresher on the Babe Ruth trade, the basics are Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold the rights of the 24-year-old Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000 after the 1919 season. As the lore goes, Frazee did it to finance the Broadway play "My Lady Friends" (which turned into the oft-cited "No, No, Nanette"), though Ruth was also asking for a lot more money. Ruth went on to win four World Series titles with the Yankees while transforming the sport of baseball with his unprecedented power. The Red Sox didn't win another World Series title for 86 years, with their struggles ascribed to the "Curse of the Bambino." You do not want to be the Red Sox in this scenario. The Dallas Mavericks do not want the Luka Doncic trade to go the way of the Babe Ruth trade. (Photo by) (Ron Jenkins via Getty Images) So when the Mavericks just traded a 25-year-old star to a larger-market team, the absolute last words they want on anyone's mind, especially among their employees, is "Babe Ruth." Advertisement Kidd's comments were just one part of an emotional and awkward homecoming in Dallas. The Mavericks welcomed Dončić with some nice shirts, but the team will be feeling the after-effects of his forced exit for years to come. They can only hope they won't feel them for as long as the Red Sox. Jason Kidd's full quote on Luka Dončić (and Babe Ruth) "With 77 there's a lot of hope, right? With Luka, there's a lot of hope. This is a business. It happens, right? Trades happen. This won't be the last trade. Someone compared it to Babe Ruth, which is kind of cool. But when you look at the business of sports, change happens, but when change happens, it's the ones who can carry on and keep moving forward, those are the special people. Fans are gonna be fans, they have a right to boo, they have a right to cheer. Hope is still in that locker room.
Miami Herald
27-02-2025
- Sport
- Miami Herald
Cote: Spoiled Miami Heat fans should embrace struggle of rare down season and cheer the fight
Wait. What? The forlorn, beaten, maligned, written-off Miami Heat had one of its best games of the season on Wednesday night? No way. Heat fans must have been so, so disappointed. Not all of them, of course. Just the good many who seem to delight in complaining and grousing. (Heat fans led the NBA in grousing until being bumped when Dallas traded Luka Doncic — the most notorious deal in sports history at least since the day after Christmas 1919 when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees to help finance the owner's musical, 'No, No, Nanette'.) The Heat is 27-30 today and the spoiled, entitled wing of the fandom act as if the record is 17-40. To hear and see the vitriol on social media you would think we inherited the Washington Wizards. Looking for a landing spot for their outrage because Miami dares to struggle through a rare down season, Heat fans have gone to the usual place (game has passed Pat Riley by) but also invented a new one: Erik Spoelstra has lost his mojo! Nah, what happened was, disgruntled star Jimmy Butler pouted his way out of town and is presently the golden guy in Golden State, having found his 'joy' again after quitting on the city of Miami, the Heat, the fans and the integrity of basketball by openly not playing hard. The tumult sucked the life out of the season. Riley is not faultless. You can blame him for not trading Butler earlier. I have said and written for a few years., even when Miami got to the Finals in '23, that a team with Butler as its best player won't win a championship. Riley was so slow to see that Butler, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro was a solid trio but not a championship one. Spoelstra was left to deal with all of the Butler drama and fallout and to incorporate the players here in return (Andrew Wiggins, Davion Mitchell, Kyle Anderson) and to do it on the fly in the midst of a brutally long stretch of mostly road games. I might argue not that Spoelstra has lost his mojo, but that this is among his most challenging seasons and one of his better coaching jobs, given everything. Heat fans need to be made to spend a year in Dolphins colors and experience what it feels like to be a fan of a franchise that hasn't won a championship in 52 years. Or be made to sit at an empty Marlins ballpark this year and watch a team full of prospects lose because the cheapskate owner won't spend on actual big-leaguers. Consider, for broad perspective, the track record of playoff appearances by our four longest-standing pro franchises: ▪ Heat: .703 (26 playoffs in 37 seasons if they make it this year, which is likely. And three NBA titles in seven Finals). ▪ Dolphins: .424 (25 playoffs in 59 seasons With two championships in four Super Bowls). ▪ Panthers: .355 (11 playoffs in 31 years if they make it in '25, which is all but certain. And one title in three Stanley Cup Finals). ▪ Marlins: .125 (Four playoffs in 32 seasons. With two championships in two World Series). The Florida Panthers are flying high and rightly the market darling at the moment, but year in year out since their birth in the late '80s the Heat has set the standard for winning in South Florida — and not abdicated that this season even among their struggles. Miami presently is in play-in tournament purgatory but — having begun a stretch of nine of 10 and 14 of 17 games at home — certainly will have the chance to rise into the Eastern Conference's top six and avoid the play-in. A bigger test comes Friday at home vs. Indiana, but what we saw Wednesday to end a 1-6 skid could serve as a spark. The Heat hit 23 3's, one short of a club record. Herro, Adebayo, Mitchell and Duncan Robinson off the bench all topped 20 points. Miami shot a season-best 59 percent. (Guess Spo found his missing mojo hidden in the sock drawer?) I won't apologize for a positive spin column on this Heat team and season, if only as an antidote to the extreme pall that has hung over it, put there by fans beside themselves to handle a down year because this franchise has had so few. Herro, Adebayo, Wiggins and Mitchell are a stout quartet to build on, to add to. Kel'el Ware is presently top-three in rookie of the year odds. But I won't sugar-coat the state of the Heat, either. Riley has work to do. The club president will turn 80 on March 20, and it is fair to wonder of the godfather has one last hurrah in him — one more whale, one more parade down Biscayne Boulevard. The whale-hunting has been sketchy of late. Damion Lillard wanted to come to Miami but the Heat couldn't pull it off. The dalliances with Kevin Durant have borne no fruit. Will the speculation about Giannis Antetokounmpo turn into anything? Will the summer of '26 be Riley's last, best shot? Miami has seen itself lapped in the East not only by the champion Celtics but also by the suddenly excellent Cavaliers and by the traditional-rival Knicks and others. There is much climbing to do. Post-Butler, the Heat is right now without a bona fide superstar for the first time since the early 2000s, pre-Dwyane Wade. Riley must marshal the powers that made him a Miami legend and work a deal to deliver another superstar and provide Spoelstra the firepower to compete again in the stacked East. Meantime the Heat is today what is never was under Alonzo Mourning, Wade, Shaquille O'Neal, Chris Bosh, LeBron James or Butler before he quit trying. The Heat is the underdog, struggling to rise above mediocrity in a season unusually wrought with turmoil. Struggling through its deficiencies, and injuries, and its own fans' disappointment and doubts. There is nobility in the climb, the challenge, the struggle. It is a fight worth cheering.
