Graphic: Allison Corr
A wanderer with terrible power, Sankofa, the protagonist of Hugo Award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor’s latest novella,
Remote Control, has the aura of a mythological figure. She inspires a mix of hope and fear everywhere she goes, and there are numerous conflicting tales about who she is and what she’s capable of. But while the people she interacts with call her the adopted daughter of Death or a witch, Okorafor most directly compares her to the stick-up man Omar Little from
The Wire. Okorafor uses Omar’s taunting line to his enemies “You come at the king, you best not miss” as an epigraph. People mark Sankofa’s appearance in town by shouting, “Sankofa is coming,” a riff on the warnings that greeted Michael K. Williams’ shotgun-wielding robber of drug dealers.
How to Choose the Best Fitness App Subscription
Image: Zwift
If you want to get fit at home, there are multiple fitness streaming services to choose from, and you don’t even have to splurge on pricey connected gym equipment. Apple, Fitbit, Peloton and others offer on-demand exercises you can stream to your TV or phone, and while there are similarities between these platforms, there are also some key differences.
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You do have options aside from a streaming fitness service, like signing up for a gym, finding a personal trainer, or taking advantage of free classes on YouTube. But if you want to work out in the safety of your own home and need a wide variety of classes, a one-stop-shop like the services below might be more your speed.
Photo: Samuel Corum (Getty Images)
Airbnb smartly decided earlier this week to cancel all D.C. bookings during inauguration week out of fear of another violent insurrection on the horizon, but its competitor Vrbo is apparently not following suit.
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As first reported by BuzzFeed News, short-term rental platform Vrbo said in a blog post Friday that it was “encouraging hosts to cancel bookings during this time” if they believe a guest intends to violate the company’s policies banning harassment and violence. But it stopped short of unilaterally canceling reservations. “If you mistreat people, there’s no space for you on Vrbo,” the company wrote, sticking to flowery platitudes about its commitment to safety and tolerance to distract from its lack of concrete preventative action.
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What it’s about: Not what it sounds like! (Sorry to disappoint!) As every single detail of the Nativity story has been dissected and given its own Christmas carol, even the donkey that enabled Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus’ flight into Egypt gets its own holiday. So the feast is merely a celebration of that particular ass, and no asses, in any sense of the word, are eaten.
Biggest controversy: The Feast of the Ass began as an offshoot of the Feast of Fools, essentially a medieval Christian equivalent to Saturnalia, in which social norms were overturned. Higher- and lower-level clergy would switch roles, church rituals would be satirized, and traditions would be mocked. It seemed to be a carefully scripted performance, but not many details have survived, as later generations of Catholics were eager to downplay or cover up what Wikipedia describes as, “almost blasphemous extravagances.” The 1431 Council of Basel forbid the Feast of Fools, and it’s been lar
Building a smart voice assistant like Alexa is hard, according to Amazon, and we can probably take its word for it. However, that doesn’t mean that voice assistants are out of reach for companies like car manufacturers, for example. Amazon wants car manufacturers to make their own voice assistants, using Alexa’s technology, of course, and the company has already found its first customer: Fiat Chrysler.