Let’s get this upfront: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the best comic-book film of the last decade.With an animation blizzard blown straight in from the pages of comics, Into the Spider-Verse took a supercollider to all the conventions of the superhero movie. Solemnity was out. Gone, too, was
Lavish meals, gushing praise and memes about “Comrade Musk” — China showered the Tesla CEO with admiration during his whistlestop tour of the country this week.The mercurial magnate is a controversial figure in the West but widely admired in China, where Tesla’s electric vehicles have become a stapl
Jeong Se-ah feels happy to see Tanaka, a Japanese bar host character from the early 2000s created by a South Korean comedian, because he revives her teenage memories of watching animations from the neighboring nation.The 24-year-old office worker is one of a growing number of young South Koreans dra
When the pandemic forced Nvidia Corp to hold a major product launch virtually, CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) beamed video to promote the event from his kitchen, where he pulled the company’s latest chip out of his oven.“I’ve got something I’ve gotta show you,” Huang says while reaching for a pot holder. “T
Ameca can speak French, Chinese or dozens of other languages, instantly compose a poem or sketch a cat on request. Ask for a smile, and you’ll get a clenched grin on her rubbery blue face.Ameca is a humanoid robot powered by generative artificial intelligence that gives it the ability to respond to
An unprecedented catastrophe has struck the US. The Oroville Dam — the country’s tallest such embankment — has collapsed, flooding a huge swathe of California. Hundreds are dead, thousands hospitalized; a further 150,000 people have been displaced following the destruction of their homes by floodwat
Buffeted by earthquakes and the potential of conflict with China, Taiwan’s leaders want to accelerate plans to make the island more resilient to communications breakdowns and direct attacks on its digital infrastructure.It could be an impossible task.Audrey Tang (唐鳳), the head of the Ministry of Dig
As negotiations towards a new pandemic treaty pick up pace, observers warn of watered-down efforts to ensure equitable access to the medical products needed to battle future COVID-like threats.Shaken by the pandemic, the WHO’s 194 member states are negotiating an international accord aimed at ensuri
When Theresa MacPhail was four, her brother was killed in an accident. When she was 14, her mother died in a car crash. And when she was 24, her father died from anaphylactic shock after a bee flew in through the open window of his truck and stung him in the neck. For anyone else, these devastating
A fine-grained opinion piece in United Daily News (UDN) in December was packed with data that tells the story of the coming voter shifts in this election. The piece cited another UDN poll from early last year that surveyed residents of the six municipalities. The overall data identified four areas o
May 28 to June 3Taiwan provincial governor Chen Cheng (陳誠) was adamantly opposed to the state-run Central Daily News (中央日報) moving from Nanjing to Taipei in 1949. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) already had a mouthpiece in Taiwan, the China Daily News (中華日報), and he argued that the relocation of
One might wonder why an exhibition about time would be in a railway museum, but as one display states: “Passengers must board the train on time, and operators need to know the exact position of each train at every moment. As the frequency of trains got denser and the division of time became more exa
Guided by the subdued, soothing and sometimes playful voice of singer Anpu (安浦), this stunning documentary uses ultra high speed (4k, 1,000fps) cameras to give the audience an extremely intimate view of the anatomy, life cycle and plight of the purple crow butterfly. Once dubbed the Butterfly Kingdo
The 24 bright green baby parrots began chirping and bobbing their heads the second anyone neared the large cages that have been their homes since hatching in March.The Central American natives, seized from a smuggler at Miami International Airport, are being raised by the Rare Species Conservatory F
When Wes Anderson comes down from Paris for the Cannes Film Festival in the south of France, he and his actors don’t stay in one of Cannes’ luxury hotels but more than an hour down the coast and well outside the frenzy of the festival.“When we arrived here yesterday, we arrived at a calm, peaceful h
If you were to resurrect the tired storyline of a young couple having to meet their partners’ parents and were looking around for someone to play the gruff, disapproving future father-in-law, one name should definitely not pop out. Robert De Niro.Yes, he’s hysterical as the intense, no-nonsense, ove
Private conversations with corporate insiders and ex-government officials that cost upwards of US$10,000 an hour. Coded language and blurred regulatory lines.For hedge funds and other global investors, China’s vast web of “expert networks” has become a key tool for navigating an opaque but potential
Two 500-year-old shipwrecks in the South China Sea, filled with Ming-era porcelain and stacked timber, provide significant clues about the maritime Silk Road trade routes, Chinese archaeologists have said.The two shipwrecks were discovered in October, and cultural and archaeological authorities have
Few events are as compelling as a pandemic, even a relatively mild one. Though nowhere near as severe as the 14th-century Black Death or the 1918 Spanish flu, COVID-19 has drawn responses from every sector of society, spreading panic and undermining trust in governments.Little wonder then that throu
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