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The demands of achieving both one-day shipping and a satisfying orgasm collide in Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl,” a kinky and darkly comic erotic thriller about sex in the Amazon era. Nicole Kidman stars as Romy Mathis, the chief executive of Tensile, a robotics business that pioneered automotive warehouses. In the movie’s opening credits, a maze of conveyor belts and bots shuttle boxes this way and that without a human in sight. Romy, too, is a little robotic. She intensely presides over the company. Her eyes are glued to her phone. She gets Botox injections, practices corporate-speak presentations (“Look up, smile and never show your weakness”) and maintains a floor-through New York apartment, along with a mansion in the suburbs that she shares with her theater-director husband ( Antonio Banderas ) and two teenage daughters (Esther McGregor and Vaughan Reilly). But the veneer of control is only that in “Babygirl,” a sometimes campy, frequently entertaining modern update to the erotically charged movies of the 1990s, like “Basic Instinct” and “9 1/2 Weeks.” Reijn, the Danish director of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” has critically made her film from a more female point of view, resulting in ever-shifting gender and power dynamics that make “Babygirl” seldom predictable — even if the film is never quite as daring as it seems to thinks it is. The opening moments of “Babygirl,” which A24 releases Wednesday, are of Kidman in close-up and apparent climax. But moments after she and her husband finish and say “I love you,” she retreats down the hall to writhe on the floor while watching cheap, transgressive internet pornography. The breathy soundtrack, by the composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, heaves and puffs along with the film’s main character. One day while walking into the office, Romy is taken by a scene on the street. A violent dog gets loose but a young man, with remarkable calmness, calls to the dog and settles it. She seems infatuated. The young man turns out to be Samuel (Harris Dickinson), one of the interns just starting at Tensile. When they meet inside the building, his manner with her is disarmingly frank. Samuel arranges for a brief meeting with Romy, during which he tells her, point blank, “I think you like to be told what to do.” She doesn’t disagree. Some of the same dynamic seen on the sidewalk, of animalistic urges and submission to them, ensues between Samuel and Romy. A great deal of the pleasure in “Babygirl” comes in watching Kidman, who so indelibly depicted uncompromised female desire in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” again wade into the mysteries of sexual hunger. “Babygirl,” which Reijn also wrote, is sometimes a bit much. (In one scene, Samuel feeds Romy saucers of milk while George Michael’s “Father Figure” blares.) But its two lead actors are never anything but completely magnetic. Kidman deftly portrays Romy as a woman falling helplessly into an affair; she both knows what she’s doing and doesn’t. Dickinson exudes a disarming intensity; his chemistry with Kidman, despite their quickly forgotten age gap, is visceral. As their affair evolves, Samuel’s sense of control expands and he begins to threaten a call to HR. That he could destroy her doesn’t necessarily make Romy any less interested in seeing him, though there are some delicious post-#MeToo ironies in their clandestine CEO-intern relationship. Also in the mix is Romy’s executive assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde, also very good), who’s eager for her own promotion. Where “Babygirl” heads from here, I won’t say. But the movie is less interested in workplace politics than it is in acknowledging authentic desires, even if they’re a little ludicrous. There’s genuine tenderness in their meetings, no matter the games that are played. Late in the film, Samuel describes it as “two children playing.” As a kind of erotic parable of control, “Babygirl” is also, either fittingly or ironically, shot in the very New York headquarters of its distributor, A24. For a studio that’s sometimes been accused of having a “house style,” here’s a movie that goes one step further by literally moving in. What about that automation stuff earlier? Well, our collective submission to digital overloads might have been a compelling jumping-off point for the film, but along the way, not every thread gets unraveled in the easily distracted “Babygirl.” Saucers of milk will do that. “Babygirl,” an A24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong sexual content, nudity and language.” Running time: 114 minutes. Three stars out of four.Icelandic airline PLAY is offering these holiday dealsokbet gaming 。

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Mumbai: Mahayuti alliance’s new government in Maharashtra will be formed on December 5 with Devendra Fadnavis emerging as the frontrunner to become the next chief minister, a senior BJP leader said on Saturday. In the November 20 Maharashtra assembly polls, the Mahayuti alliance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) retained power, pocketing a whopping 230 of the 288 assembly seats. The BJP emerged as the single largest party, winning 132 seats, followed by Shiv Sena with 57 and NCP with 41 seats. However, even after the announcement of poll results a week ago (on November 23), the formation of the government has been delayed as the tripartite alliance is yet to decide on who will be the next chief minister. Shinde, Fadnavis and Pawar met BJP president J P Nadda and Union minister Amit Shah late Thursday to discuss a power-sharing pact for the next government. A key Mahayuti meeting scheduled on Friday was put off and likely to take place on Sunday now as caretaker Chief Minister Eknath Shinde headed to his native village in Satara district, delaying government formation further. The BJP leader, who did not wish to be quoted, said the swearing-in of the new government will take place on December 5. Senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis, who was the chief minister twice and deputy chief minister in the last government, is the frontrunner for the top post, the leader said. Another senior BJP leader said the chief minister’s swearing-in ceremony will take place at Azad Maidan in south Mumbai. But before that, a meeting will be held on December 2 to pick the BJP legislature party leader, he said. Caretaker CM Shinde has made it clear that he will fully support BJP leadership’s decision to name the next CM, and that he won’t be a hurdle in the process, while Ajit Pawar-led NCP has backed Fadnavis for the chief minister’s post. In the assembly elections, Congress-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) suffered a setback. The grand old party registered one of its worst performances in the state assembly polls after it won only 16 seats. Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP) could bag only 10 seats, whereas Uddhav Thackeray’s (UBT) won 20.

Laurie M. (Rooney) Gray

Global stocks mostly rose Thursday following strong earnings from artificial intelligence leader Nvidia as bitcoin prices zoomed near $100,000 and oil prices rose. Nvidia itself had a volatile day, finishing modestly higher after several reversals. The chip company reported a whopping $19 billion in profits, although investors wondered if its current rate of stupendous growth is sustainable. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.Scientists are enlisting some unusual recruits in their efforts to forecast earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other natural phenomena. They are enrolling thousands of dogs, goats, and other farmyard animals – as well as a wide range of wildlife – in studies that will monitor their movements from space. The programme uses tiny transmitters that are being fitted to mammals, birds and insects. The detailed movements of these creatures will then be monitored from a dedicated satellite to be launched next year. The aim is not just to study how they react to imminent natural events like volcanic eruptions but to gain new insights into migration, the spread of diseases among animals and the impact of the climate crisis, say researchers. “Ultimately, we hope to launch a fleet of around six satellites and establish a global observation network that will not only provide details of wildlife movements and animal health across the planet but reveal how creatures respond to natural phenomena like earthquakes,” said the project leader, Martin Wikelski, of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Germany. The value of studying tagged animals in this latter area has already been demonstrated in early experiments in Sicily on the slopes of Mount Etna, said Wikelski last week. “We have found the behaviour of goats is pretty good at predicting large volcanic eruptions.” Sensors have shown the animals become nervous before an eruption and refuse to move to higher pastures that they would normally be happy to visit. “They know beforehand what is coming. We don’t how they do it, but they do,” said Wikelski. Similarly, researchers have monitored dogs, sheep and other farm animals on the Abruzzo mountains outside Rome and found that they also reacted in ways that predicted seven out of eight major earthquakes in the region over the past 12 years. Stories of animals behaving oddly before earthquakes or eruptions are not new. The Greek historian Thucydides claimed that rats, dogs, snakes and weasels deserted the city of Helice just before an earthquake struck in 373BC. Similarly, the 1975 Haicheng earthquake in China occurred after snakes and rats were witnessed leaving their burrows. Why these animals behaved this way is less clear. “During the build-up to an earthquake, tectonic plates slide across each other under enormous pressures, and that throws out ions from the rocks into the air. The animals may be reacting to that,” said Wikelski, the founder of the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space (Icarus), an international collaboration involving teams of scientists across the globe. Icarus has become possible because of a revolution in tagging technology. Tiny digital transmitters – using small lithium batteries – and cheap and plentiful minuscule GPS devices have made it possible to make tags that are only a few grams in weight. “We are going from where we couldn’t really track most vertebrate species on the planet to flipping it,” Michigan University ecologist Scott Yanco told MIT Technology Review . “We are now able to track most things.” Understanding how creatures react to geological changes is only one area of interest in that revolution, added Wikelski. “For instance, we can survey wildlife health from space,” he said. Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion An example is provided by electronic ear tags – fitted with tiny 30g accelerometers – that have been attached to wild boar. From changes in an animal’s movements, these show that if a boar develops African swine fever – a highly contagious virus – it spreads easily between wild boar and domestic pigs. Knowing when a disease outbreak occurs in the wild could be important for curbing the disease’s impact on farms, say researchers. “This is a gamechanger for wildlife disease monitoring,” said Kevin Morelle, a scientist based at the Max Planck Institute. The technology should also help scientists to understand the processes that drive migrations. Transmitters have been fitted to creatures as small as death’s-head hawkmoths, and their movements could soon reveal the mysteries that lie behind the 2,000-mile migrations they make between Europe and Africa every year. “Similarly, we will be able to study animal populations to determine how they are responding to habitat changes triggered by global warming,” said Wikelski. Icarus had originally been scheduled to be in full operation several years ago when the team began working with Russian scientists to use a radio telescope on the International Space Station to monitor tagged animals. “After the invasion of Ukraine we decided to halt that cooperation,” said Wikelski. As a replacement, the team has built a small satellite called the Icarus CubeSat, which is set for launch next year. “After that, we will scale up our operations until we have around six CubeSats and a permanent system for monitoring animals as they move and migrate across the world,” said Wikelski. “That should provide us with a massive amount of data about the way animals behave.”5 ways to tell if you’re on track for retirement — and 5 things to do if you need to catch up, according to experts

The controversy around a religious Christmas sign that was taken down in downtown Kelowna continues. Two days after a sign stating 'Keep Christ in Christmas' was removed from the nativity scene display at Stuart Park, Kelowna-Centre MLA Kristina Loewen went to social media to express her opinion on the matter. "We believe that it's an important detail that Christmas is a Christian holiday," said Loewen in her video, referring to 'we' as all of the MLAs for the Central Okanagan. "We will be standing united and defending all British Columbians rights to religion and freedom of expression, speech, thought, belief," she added. "Canada is an incredible country full of diverse cultures and religions, and a wide variety of views, and I think that's one of the things that makes us so incredible." Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream MLA Tara Armstrong agreed with her fellow Conservative, quote-tweeting the video and saying "a great message from a colleague and friend. I'm proud to be part of a team that stands for what's right." Macklin McCall, MLA for West Kelowna, also quote-tweeted Loewen's post. However, Kelowna-Mission MLA Gavin Dew appears to not have commented on social media. The nativity scene is put up by the Knights of Columbus every year and a permit is given from the City of Kelowna to do so. When the 'Keep Christ in Christmas' sign was displayed beside the scene on Monday, Dec. 9, some people in the community, including the Kelowna Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists Association (KASHA) took issue. A letter by KASHA to Black Press Media on Dec. 9, stated the nativity scene is part of Christmas, just as "lights, festive trees, and other decorative displays" are also. "This message is not merely festive—it is political, advocating for a specific religious interpretation of the holiday," said KASHA about the sign. The next day, the sign was taken down and the City of Kelowna confirmed that the sign was not part of the Knights of Columbus' permit for the nativity scene. The Knights of Columbus had no comment regarding the matter. Capital News reached out to Loewen for further comment but was met with an automatic e-mail reply. Additionally, the City of Kelowna stated it had no comment on Loewen's video. However, Ian Bushfield the executive director of the B.C. Humanist Association did have a comment. "Freedom of religion in Canada includes freedom from religion," said Bushfield in an e-mailed statement. "Ms. Loewen and all Christians are obviously free to celebrate Christmas as a Christian holiday but our governments have a clear duty of religious neutrality. That means neither endorsing nor prohibiting any religion over any other. That sign, and arguably even the nativity scene, being on public property breaches that duty. She can put the sign up at her church or at her own house but we do not live in a theocracy." Bushfield has previously stated that BCHA is an organization committed to secular values. “Part of that is the separation of religion and government," said Bushfield. The City of Kelowna also said it received five letters on the matter when the sign was up but none since it's been taken down.

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