Tag: kind

‘It’s a game changer’: Artificial intelligence helps Iowa surgeon reconstruct teen’s jaw

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While waiting in a Des Moines, Iowa, exam room, Mya Buie nervously applies her lip gloss. Three months ago, the 17-year-old had multiple surgeries to reconstruct her jaw. In this moment, she is waiting to be seen for a postoperative checkup. She hasn’t liked medical settings since a shooting landed her in a Des Moines hospital’s intensive care unit for several days.”It was kind of scary. It was traumatic,” she said of the night her mother’s ex-boyfriend shot her in the face during a fight just days before her birthday.On the other hand, her surgeon, Dr. Simon Wright, has been looking forward to this appointment all week. He calls Buie one of his most memorable and brave patients.”I’m gonna take a look under your chin,” he says to Buie while carefully touching her face. The teenager was shot in the face with a .40-caliber bullet at close range. The impact of the bullet fractured and shattered her jaw into tiny fragments and permanently damaged four teeth.For years, Wright, a facial reconstruction trauma surgeon, has reconstructed facial bones by bending and molding titanium plates by hand to the injured area. It’s a time-consuming and often erroneous process.”There is always a level of dissatisfaction, and it doesn’t feel good to do something just good enough,” Wright said.The manual work has now been replaced with modern technology. Doctors used artificial intelligence to read a CT scan of Buie’s jaw, then a 3D printer turned that image into a custom jawbone plate.”It’s so much easier than trying to bend a plate to get it perfect,” Wright said. “It’s no question a game-changer.”Doctors say a customized jawbone plate allows for a more accurate fit, better aligns the jaw with a patient’s teeth, and cuts surgery time in half. What makes this process so unique: Buie’s customized plate was made in record time, a first for Des Moines trauma surgeons. “The ability to make a custom plate has been around for 10 years or more, but the ability to do it very quickly has not been,” Wright said.What would normally take several weeks took only a few days. The plate was created in a lab in Jacksonville, Florida, put on a plane to the Des Moines International Airport, then hand-delivered to the hospital on a Friday night before the teenager’s surgery first thing Saturday morning. “There is a lot of things that have to go right to do any kind of surgery at all, and to do something complicated like this, it’s really an inspiring thing to be part of,” Wright said, smiling. He also said this advancement serves as a reminder of the importance of supporting medical research because of its impact on people. “This came from the efforts of all kinds of people in different fields that have cross-pollinated. For example, 3D printing as a medical application, and at one point, it may not have begun with a medical endpoint in mind,” he said.For trauma patients, time is of the essence. For Buie, time does heal. The high school junior is back to school with plans to graduate early. Doctors expect her to make a full recovery. Her new jawbone plate will eventually fuse to bone and be as strong as ever. “I just thank God every day for giving me a second chance at life. I’m very grateful. I can tell my story and spread the word of God with this story, like a testament.” Buie will likely undergo additional surgeries. Next month, she will receive dental implants for her missing teeth.

While waiting in a Des Moines, Iowa, exam room, Mya Buie nervously applies her lip gloss. Three months ago, the 17-year-old had multiple surgeries to reconstruct her jaw. In this moment, she is waiting to be seen for a postoperative checkup. She hasn’t liked medical settings since a shooting landed her in a Des Moines hospital’s intensive care unit for several days.

“It was kind of scary. It was traumatic,” she said of the night her mother’s ex-boyfriend shot her in the face during a fight just days before her birthday.

On the other hand, her surgeon, Dr. Simon Wright, has been looking forward to this appointment all week. He calls Buie one of his most memorable and brave patients.

“I’m gonna take a look under your chin,” he says to Buie while carefully touching her face. The teenager was shot in the face with a .40-caliber bullet at close range. The impact of the bullet fractured and shattered her jaw into tiny fragments and permanently damaged four teeth.

For years, Wright, a facial reconstruction trauma surgeon, has reconstructed facial bones by bending and molding titanium plates by hand to the injured area. It’s a time-consuming and often erroneous process.

“There is always a level of dissatisfaction, and it doesn’t feel good to do something just good enough,” Wright said.

The manual work has now been replaced with modern technology. Doctors used artificial intelligence to read a CT scan of Buie’s jaw, then a 3D printer turned that image into a custom jawbone plate.

“It’s so much easier than trying to bend a plate to get it perfect,” Wright said. “It’s no question a game-changer.”

Doctors say a customized jawbone plate allows for a more accurate fit, better aligns the jaw with a patient’s teeth, and cuts surgery time in half. What makes this process so unique: Buie’s customized plate was made in record time, a first for Des Moines trauma surgeons.

“The ability to make a custom plate has been around for 10 years or more, but the ability to do it very quickly has not been,” Wright said.

What would normally take several weeks took only a few days. The plate was created in a lab in Jacksonville, Florida, put on a plane to the Des Moines International Airport, then hand-delivered to the hospital on a Friday night before the teenager’s surgery first thing Saturday morning.

“There is a lot of things that have to go right to do any kind of surgery at all, and to do something complicated like this, it’s really an inspiring thing to be part of,” Wright said, smiling. He also said this advancement serves as a reminder of the importance of supporting medical research because of its impact on people.

“This came from the efforts of all kinds of people in different fields that have cross-pollinated. For example, 3D printing as a medical application, and at one point, it may not have begun with a medical endpoint in mind,” he said.

For trauma patients, time is of the essence. For Buie, time does heal. The high school junior is back to school with plans to graduate early. Doctors expect her to make a full recovery. Her new jawbone plate will eventually fuse to bone and be as strong as ever.

“I just thank God every day for giving me a second chance at life. I’m very grateful. I can tell my story and spread the word of God with this story, like a testament.”

Buie will likely undergo additional surgeries. Next month, she will receive dental implants for her missing teeth.

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January 31, 2026
Commentary: How’s Newsom doing at Davos? Just ask Trump

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What’s the absolute best way to give Gov. Gavin Newsom free publicity and a worldwide audience?

Freeze him out at Davos, where the rich and powerful are meeting in the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland. The Trump administration is learning the hard way, in real time, that petty comes with a price — in this case, being laughed at by, well, the world.

And while Congress, Europe and law may hold no terrors for our president, we all know ridicule hits him in his soft, white underbelly.

In case you missed it, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the California governor has been banned from a scheduled media talk (allegedly under pressure from the White House) that was going to be a rebuttal to Trump’s ramble at the event, according to Newsom’s office.

On Wednesday, Newsom’s team announced that he had been turned away from USA House, the privately run but official gathering spot of the United States. Newsom was scheduled to do a fireside chat with Fortune magazine, but apparently when he arrived at the church-turned-conference hall, he was politely told to beat it.

“How weak and pathetic do you have to be to be this scared of a fireside chat?” Newsom posted on X.

Cue the outrage. Cue the coverage.

Fortune didn’t know the snub was coming, according to screen shots of private text messages reviewed by The Times, but within minutes it was world news. Except maybe on CBS.

That’s a lot of focus on a guy who isn’t even a billionaire and doesn’t run a country, and supposedly isn’t even in the presidential race yet. In case you’re not personally familiar with the gathering at Davos, it’s pretty much the kings (and occasional queen) of the world coming together to think big thoughts. Getting cold-shouldered in that crowd is a big deal.

But it’s the kind of big deal that makes Newsom look good. Blackballing him from USA House was akin to screaming in his face that he’s a big meanie and the president wasn’t going to take it any more. So there!

It’s funny. It’s powerful. It gets him the kind of news coverage that other not-yet-candidates dream about.

It makes it clear that far from the useful foil that the Newsom-Trump rivalry is often explained as, Newsom is hitting on points that are hitting home. With Trump, and with voters. And now, maybe with world leaders — which just makes him that much more viable as a candidate. Without a doubt, this is Trump quashing dissent.

Earlier in the day, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went after Newsom, calling Newsom “Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken.”

That’s a reference to the overly suave serial killer in the film “American Psycho” crossed with a popular 1990s version of a male Barbie known for its pretty eyes and good hair. To be fair, Newsom does resemble both of them.

That remark came in response to Newsom calling Bessent’s speech “smug” for suggesting that the average American couple was buying up homes as rentals for their retirements. Personally, like most of us, I can’t even afford an extra Barbie doll house, so to be fair, Newsom is right on that one.

Newsom also scored points off Trump’s speech. He called it “boring,” the most vicious insult you can hurl at Trump. But it was.

For more than an hour, Trump repeatedly called Greenland Iceland by mistake, while demanding it be turned over to him.

Yawn.

He went after windmills because “they kill the birds, they ruin your landscapes.”

Wut?

He went after Minnesota with a particularly rabid if overused bit of racism, because it “reminds us that the West cannot mass import foreign cultures, which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own.”

Yuck.

As Newsom pointed out in a press gaggle not too long afterward — right before being banned from his formal talk — for an American audience, it’s the same ugly drivel we’ve been subjected to for nearly a year. Absolutely none of it is fresh, though it remains awful and dangerous.

“My God, there wasn’t anything new about that speech,” Newsom said. “It was remarkably insignificant.”

It was certainly not a speech that won Trump credibility or support from those kings and queens. It certainly did not contain diplomacy or leadership, or frankly, even sense. Despite the laughter and applause from the audience, I doubt there are few if any outside of Trump’s team who would call it a success.

But for Newsom, Davos is a win.

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Anita Chabria

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January 21, 2026
Commentary: Memo to Minneapolis from California: Please don’t take the bait

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Dear Minneapolis:

We are sorry for what you are going through. We get it.

One day you’re living in a vibrant, multicultural city that, yeah, has its problems but is also pretty great. The next day, the president is calling you terrorists and insurrectionists and threatening to turn the U.S. military on you and your kids.

Been there.

First off, thanks for standing up for Lady Liberty. The old gal had a rough year in 2025, and 2026 isn’t promising to be any better. She needs all the friends she can get, and the Twin Cities folks are true blue. And I’m not talking Democrat or Republican, because we’re past that.

It’s come down to deciding what kind of American you are. The kind who believes in the Constitution, rule of law and due process, or the kind who believes in strongmen, rule of the rich and armed authorities who will disappear you if you make them mad, citizen or not.

Minneapolitans have proven they’re on the righteous side of that divide.

But here’s the thing — you’ve got to keep these protests peaceful. Being the entertainment capital of the world, we won’t deny that it’s riveting to watch video after video of ICE officers slipping on, well, ice like some klutzy Keystone Kops short. And the passion with which protesters are turning out, risking their own safety to protect strangers, is inspiring.

But don’t take the bait. Don’t cross the line. Don’t use physical violence, whether it’s throwing a water bottle or something more. President Trump threatened on Thursday to invoke the Insurrection Act, just like he did in Los Angeles before sending in the National Guard using a lesser authority. Even that turned out to be legally problematic, but he did it anyway.

“Minnesota insurrection is a direct result of a FAILED governor and a TERRIBLE mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche wrote on social media after Trump’s post. “It’s disgusting. Walz and Frey – I’m focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary. This is not a threat. It’s a promise.”

Whatever means necessary.

This administration is salivating to invoke martial law. They bring it up every chance they get. Although the Insurrection Act has been used before — by President George H.W. Bush in Los Angeles in 1992 after the Rodney King beating — this is different.

Too many other guardrails of democracy have been demolished. Too much power has already been consolidated into the hands of one man.

If it happens, if the military is turned against citizens, a boundary will be broken that can’t be easily restored. We will likely then have military in streets of multiple American cities ahead of the November elections, which can only make this fragile turn at the ballot box more precarious.

Los Angeles in 2025 was the test case on how far Trump could go, and it seems it wasn’t far enough. Just like in Minneapolis, we had some folks who used violence — even though the vast majority of protesters were peaceful. Because Los Angeles is and has always been a city of activists — like Minneapolis — there were plenty of leaders willing and able to step forward and ensure that protesters policed themselves.

The result of that restraint was that at the end of the day, not even the so-called “journalists” of the right-wing propaganda machine could come up with enough shock-and-awe videos to convince the rest of America that the place was out of control.

Now the Trump machine is trying it with you, Minnesota. It’s not by chance that this trouble has landed on your doorstep. After the killing of George Floyd, Minneapolis showed it wasn’t afraid to show up for justice. No one ever doubted — Trump especially — that sending immigration full-force into your city would stir up trouble.

Gov. Tim Walz said it himself on Thursday in his own social media post.

“We can — we must — speak out loudly, urgently, but also peacefully. We cannot fan the flames of chaos. That’s what he wants,” he wrote.

But also, please keep filming, please keep fighting. Thursday was also Martin Luther King Jr.’s actual birthday. In 1959, King made a little-known appearance on Minneapolis TV.

“I’m of the opinion that it is possible for one to stand firmly and courageously against an evil system, and yet not use violence to stand up against it,” he said then.

“It is possible to love the individual who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does.”

Someone described Minneapolis the other day as having the inclusivity and quirkiness of San Francisco but with the attitude of the Bronx — a fearsome combination.

Don’t let Trump exploit it.

In solidarity,
California

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Anita Chabria

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January 15, 2026
El Dorado Hills residents prepare for strong winds and possible power outages

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Residents of El Dorado Hills are preparing for strong winds expected to last through Christmas Day, with concerns about potential power outages in the area. Josh McGee expressed confidence in his Christmas-themed skeleton decoration, saying, “I got faith in Skully. He’s made it through a couple of winters with us already, so I have faith in him. The hat might be gone, but we’ll get it back.”McGee’s giant skeleton sits in the front yard of his El Dorado Hills home wearing a Santa hat and scarf.His neighbor Tom Molyneux-Elliot said that he is reconsidering his decision to put out the trash early, saying, “I might be picking up garbage in the morning.”Despite the subtle jokes from these two, the anticipated strong gusts have put residents on high alert for possible power outages. “I have generators and everything, but, you know, PG&E is notoriously unreliable during this kind of situation,” McGee said. “They don’t have the best track record of keeping power on.”Molyneux-Elliot added, “We used to lose power a lot, but the last couple of years, it’s been better. Hopefully, that won’t happen again this year. But I know up the hill it definitely gets a little worse.”PG&E has assured residents that they are fully staffed and have crews ready to respond to any outages caused by the high winds. Jeff Weeks from Ace Hardware at Town Center reported a steady flow of customers preparing for the storm. “We didn’t anticipate quite the run on things we have here,” he said. The lighting section shelves were bare on Tuesday night, and Weeks mentioned that the store plans to stay open on Christmas Eve for those who might need supplies during the storm.”Come in early, get the things that you think you’re going to need,” he advised. He emphasized the importance of being prepared with “generators, candles, lights, flashlights, huge things, batteries, we have all those kinds of things.”See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. —

Residents of El Dorado Hills are preparing for strong winds expected to last through Christmas Day, with concerns about potential power outages in the area.

Josh McGee expressed confidence in his Christmas-themed skeleton decoration, saying, “I got faith in Skully. He’s made it through a couple of winters with us already, so I have faith in him. The hat might be gone, but we’ll get it back.”

McGee’s giant skeleton sits in the front yard of his El Dorado Hills home wearing a Santa hat and scarf.

His neighbor Tom Molyneux-Elliot said that he is reconsidering his decision to put out the trash early, saying, “I might be picking up garbage in the morning.”

Despite the subtle jokes from these two, the anticipated strong gusts have put residents on high alert for possible power outages.

“I have generators and everything, but, you know, PG&E is notoriously unreliable during this kind of situation,” McGee said. “They don’t have the best track record of keeping power on.”

Molyneux-Elliot added, “We used to lose power a lot, but the last couple of years, it’s been better. Hopefully, that won’t happen again this year. But I know up the hill it definitely gets a little worse.”

PG&E has assured residents that they are fully staffed and have crews ready to respond to any outages caused by the high winds.

Jeff Weeks from Ace Hardware at Town Center reported a steady flow of customers preparing for the storm.

“We didn’t anticipate quite the run on things we have here,” he said.

The lighting section shelves were bare on Tuesday night, and Weeks mentioned that the store plans to stay open on Christmas Eve for those who might need supplies during the storm.

“Come in early, get the things that you think you’re going to need,” he advised.

He emphasized the importance of being prepared with “generators, candles, lights, flashlights, huge things, batteries, we have all those kinds of things.”

See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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December 23, 2025
Billionaire CEO Daniel Lubetzky Shares Morning Routine, Tips | Entrepreneur

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Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind Snacks with a personal net worth of $2.3 billion, admits that his morning routine used to be exhausting.

“I used to have horrible habits,” he said in an interview with Entrepreneur.

Lubetzky founded Kind Snacks in 2004 and sold it for $5 billion in 2020; he is now the founder and chairman of Camino Partners, a $350 million fund he started in January 2023, and a regular cast member on ABC’s “Shark Tank.”

Lubetzky shared that he spent years going to sleep at 2 a.m. because he wanted to clear his inbox completely. Instead of going to sleep, he would spend hours checking and responding to emails. The next morning, he wouldn’t make his scheduled workout because he needed the extra half hour of sleep.

^{Daniel Lubetzky. Photo Credit: Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images}

“I had terrible exercise habits and sleeping habits,” Lubetzky said.

In the past two months, the 56-year-old entrepreneur has deliberately made some changes to his bedtime and morning routine.

“I conquered that,” he said. “I’m not going to sleep and waking up at the same time. It’s just transformed my life.”

Lubetzky now falls asleep around midnight and wakes up by 7:30 a.m. or 8 a.m., setting a new habit. His morning routine consists of stretching, something he says gives him “so much enjoyment.”

Related: Daniel Lubetzky Took Kind Snacks From Idea to $5 Billion. Here’s His Best Advice For Anyone Who Wants to Start a Business.

Productivity hack

Lubetzky also shared his top tip for productivity: When you’re working on a task, finish it.

“Don’t just leave things halfway, because then you have to start from scratch,” he said. “You’re being very unproductive.”

He recommended thinking about attention as a dot. Every time you read an email, that’s one dot virtually placed on the email. The goal is to minimize the number of dots, or points of attention, commanded by an email or document so that you’re not revisiting the same issue over and over again.

Book recommendation

Lubetzky recommended reading “The Daily Stoic” by Ryan Holiday, a book of 366 meditations. The book focuses on insights from Stoicism, a philosophical system that encourages focus on what can be controlled and acceptance of what can’t.

Related: Here’s What It Takes to Land an Investment From the Founder of Kind Snacks, Who Sold His Company for $5 Billion

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Sherin Shibu

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October 30, 2024
3 Body Problem is the kind of TV epic we need

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When Game of Thrones ended in May 2019, the hunt was well underway for a series that could match its blockbuster scale. HBO was already talking spinoffs with George R.R. Martin, while Netflix’s The Witcher, Disney’s The Mandalorian, Apple’s Foundation, Paramount Plus’ Halo, and Amazon’s mega-budgeted gambit on a Lord of the Rings prequel bubbled at various stages of development and production. Five years later, all the shows exist — but there’s no clear champion. Even reactions to HBO’s prequel, House of the Dragon, were more golf-clap acclaim than calls of the second coming of a franchise.

What the wannabe successors proved (that everyone seemed to know at the time except IP-hungry executives?) is that Thrones’ secret wasn’t scale, but substantive drama. A great show needs characters with big questions and big goals, but down-to-earth emotions. The balance of a continent could hinge on valiant knights and ancient prophecy and dragon battles as long as when those involved got mad, it felt like actual people getting mad. For all the finale-related flack, Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were afforded the time and space to adapt the human side of Martin’s sprawling narrative as well as its set-pieces. So it’s no surprise that while the rest of Hollywood chased tentpoles, Benioff and Weiss set their boyhood dreams of making a Star Wars movie aside (phew, crisis averted) to cash their chips on a deal where they could demand time and space and quality work that didn’t involve swordplay.

And they actually did it: Teaming up with veteran TV writer Alexander Woo (The Terror season 2), their new Netflix series 3 Body Problem, like Thrones, feels epic in scale while probing the messiness of human instinct. Movies like Interstellar and Solaris ventured into deep space to confront our innate spirituality, but 3 Body Problem season 1 sticks close to home to the benefit of its characters, who juggle romantic relationships and work-life stress and impending doom. Still, there is something extraterrestrial out there in the universe, a cosmic unknown. Benioff, Weiss, and Woo treat that promise like a chemical pipetted into a petri dish. Just a few drops of knowledge cause an instant reaction with consequences that will only be felt hundreds of years in the future.

Image: Netflix

The showrunner trio adapts Liu Cixin’s famed Remembrance of Earth’s Past science fiction trilogy with both reverence and an eye toward storytelling economics. The core drama of 3 Body Problem season 1, focused on a set of physicists out to understand what the hell is going on in the universe, weaves together people, places, and things from across all three books in order to be propulsively paced while easily digested. Die-hard readers may miss Liu’s dense “far out, man”-core style, but the pillar moments remain. Early episodes bounce from China’s Cultural Revolution to present-day London to virtual reality landscapes that hold the key to greater mysteries. The prickly politics of solving Earth’s perilous future simmer across timelines. Benioff, Weiss, and Woo don’t dumb any of it down as they tear through the plot, relying on genre conventions to keep it all watchable. (British mysteries like Broadchurch and Happy Valley feel as much part of the show’s DNA as any sci-fi series.)

Perhaps a 10- or 12-episode season would have made room for deeper character work, but the writers are pros at making every line of dialogue illustrative of their characters’ deeper motivations, and every silent gesture — staring at the stars, gasping at equations, even watching a kid play Mortal Kombat — speaks volumes. Unlike recent Netflix adaptations that have crammed long narratives into uncompromising run times by removing all downtime “filler,” 3 Body Problem is full of humanity’s quirks. The show has religious zealots, anxious nerds, quiet romantics, and Benedict Wong as a no-bullshit cop. There is a lot of mumbo-jumbo about quantum physics and gravitational interaction, but also one of the best on-screen meet-my-family awkward dinner dates in recent memory.

Doing the Lord’s work is actor Jess Hong, a relative newcomer and the nexus of all of 3 Body Problem’s narrative strands. In a cast full of Game of Thrones veterans and big-screen talent like Wong and Eiza González (Baby Driver, Godzilla vs. Kong), Hong takes on the burden of making all of the show’s otherworldly turns feel totally natural. Whether her character, Jin, is sipping a beer and making pub chat or navigating the immersive third level of the least fun virtual puzzle game ever invented, she reflects an authentic reality that’s increasingly tested by the show’s oddities. 3 Body Problem ultimately questions whether we deserve the planet we have so often fucked up. Hong’s Jin, in all her ups and downs, glimmers with the kind of humanity that we want to believe in.

Jess Hong as Jin
Photo: Ed Miller/Netflix

It really helps that Netflix didn’t skimp on 3 Body Problem, which, for all its character drama, goes big when it needs to go big. Benioff and Weiss’ clout has bought them the kind of top-tier production value that I thought only David Fincher commanded; flashbacks to the 1960s/’70s China feel rich in detail, while scenes set in the present-day drama have a refined look, rather than the cheap digital sheen that’s plagued so many post-Fincher Netflix projects. Anyone haunted by awful renderings of VR in movies and TV will be relieved by the show’s intentionally uncanny, often fantastical digital worlds that look like actual Unreal Engine survival-game backdrops. And when 3 Body Problem kicks into a high sci-fi gear, the show gets truly mind-bending — and often gnarly. The giddy provocateurs who orchestrated the Red Wedding are absolutely at the helm of this series.

I’m a little in awe of 3 Body Problem. Liu’s books are like a character study of humanity itself; there is inherently too much to chew on. But Benioff, Weiss, and Woo came ready to cook. Their adaptation is gripping from the start and already prioritizing the pieces needed for a coherent endgame. From the trilogy’s pages of information they’ve carved out a visual story, dazzling and frightening. There are nits to pick from episode to episode, leaps in logic that may not stand up to scrutiny, but it’s a show that, unlike the Game of Thrones imitators, swept me up. Most of those shows settled on escapism. 3 Body Problem feels like a true escape, an excuse to wonder about the vastness of the cosmos from the comfort of the couch and wonder, What if?

3 Body Problem premieres on Netflix on March 21.

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Matt Patches

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March 8, 2024
‘Some kind of terror.’ Snowboarder spends 15 hours trapped overnight in Tahoe ski gondola

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A woman spent 15 freezing hours inside a gondola high above the snow-covered slopes of a Lake Tahoe area ski resort, according to local authorities.

Monica Laso was on a snowboarding trip with friends at Heavenly Ski Resort on Thursday when she decided she was too tired to ride back down the mountain, according to KCRA News, which first reported the incident.

So she asked an employee if she could take a gondola back down, boarding at about 4:58 p.m. Two minutes later, the station reported, the ski lift stopped running and she was left alone, cold and without a phone or light.

Laso remained inside the gondola through the night, rubbing her hands and feet to stay warm as the temperature dropped into the low 20s.

Friday morning, a call came in to South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue at about 8:30 a.m. There was a woman at Heavenly Ski Resort who was suffering from cold exposure, the caller said, according to Sallie Ross, spokesperson for the department. She had been found inside the gondola after workers started the lift up for the day, sending her back down to the base of the mountain.

An engine was dispatched and minutes later firefighters arrived at the resort, Ross said. Laso was treated at the scene and declined to be taken to a hospital.

“They assessed her and she did not choose to be transported,” Ross said in a telephone interview Saturday. “It sounds like she wasn’t injured or anything, but she definitely didn’t have a great night, that’s for sure.”

Laso said in a Spanish-language interview with KCRA that she yelled out whenever a worker passed by below, but that she “felt very frustrated” because they couldn’t hear her. The long, dark night was “very cold,” she said.

A media contact for Heavenly did not immediately return a call seeking comment Saturday evening. KCRA reported that the resort provided a statement saying that it was investigating the incident, which came barely two weeks after one skier was killed and another injured in an avalanche at Palisades Tahoe, a ski resort about 40 miles northwest of Heavenly.

Ross said the fire rescue department had “certainly never responded to anything like this,” describing the incident as “a total anomaly.”

“I don’t know how something like that could have happened. It’s very weird,” she said. “She must have felt some kind of terror, really, knowing she’s there all alone and not knowing if someone was going to find her. That must have really been terrifying for her.”

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Connor Sheets

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January 27, 2024
Vince Staples’ Netflix show looks like a cross between Atlanta and Uncut Gems

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Vince Staples is getting his own Netflix series. The rapper, and occasional actor, first tweeted about his show on Monday, but it wasn’t until Wednesday that we got our first look at it in Netflix’s new trailer and it already looks great. The series, called The Vince Staples Show, will premiere on Feb. 15.

The trailer starts off with Vince arriving at his home and sitting down on the couch to watch TV with his girlfriend. As she asks him about his day, we see brief flashes from the show, of Vince beefing with someone in a mascot costume, getting recognized during a bank robbery, and struggling to order fast food.

The trailer seems to be more interested in communicating the vibe of the show than any actual plot details, but it’s pretty successful nonetheless. Each scene looks weirder, funnier, and more tense than the last. It would be hard for an offbeat series created by a rapper to dodge comparisons to the Donald Glover-created Atlanta, but weirdly the trailer has a similar feel to Uncut Gems too, where Adam Sandler’s minor New York celebrity took him to some pretty terrible places.

While Staples is mostly a musician, this isn’t his first time trying to get a show off the ground. He also created a much smaller version of The Vince Staples Show for Facebook back in 2019, but that series was short-lived. Since then, Staples has shown up on series like Abbott Elementary and Insecure.

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Austen Goslin

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January 17, 2024
beguiled unaided fermented

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Have you taken the VHS pill yet? A few years ago I started collecting VHS tapes as kind of a joke. But then I realized you can snag CRT TV’s for next to nothing, if not free on marketplace. Next thing I know I am watching Raiders of the lost ark on a luxury 90s media setup with over 700 more classic titles. My wife and I do weekly movie nights now and the kids are watching magic school bus. N64, pS1, movies, all look better on the native hardware. Take the VHS pill and join us in the last good era the world knew.

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January 8, 2024