The Summer X Games have kicked off in Sacramento, California, with a new format and a multimillion-dollar revamp. The event, credited with popularizing action sports like skateboarding and BMX biking, is moving from stand-alone individual competitions to a three-event season built around mixed teams. Each team features five men and five women, with several representing cities including New York and São Paulo. Private equity firm MSP Sports Capital envisioned the new format after buying X Games from ESPN in 2022. Several of the teams are also owned by private equity firms. The first X Games were held in Rhode Island in 1995, under the name Extreme Games.
How do you adjust when the odds are stacked against you?
Kathy Stearman’s FBI career began with a test of resilience. In 1987, she arrived at Quantico, the Virginia Marine Corps base and home to the FBI Academy. She came with a Kentucky farm girl’s familiarity with guns, only to find that her bullets kept missing the target. Her instructor told her she did not belong. Stearman suspected something else was wrong. Instead of quitting, she adapted. After realizing the gun was firing low and right, she aimed high and left. Only later, after she passed, did the instructor admit he had tried to push her out.
That same instinct to adapt followed Stearman overseas. As one of the FBI’s few female legal attachés, she worked from New Delhi across South Asia, helping coordinate investigations in countries facing terrorist threats. In Sri Lanka, amid civil war and suicide bombings by the Tamil Tigers, she helped examine evidence tied to weapons, attacks, and fundraising networks reaching into the United States.
Join Kathy Stearman in this week’s podcast selection, ‘The Legal Attaché,’ for a story of counterterrorism and resilience.
Take on immersive games and challenges at SPYGAMES! Test your team's skills and strategy, compete to climb the leaderboards, and recharge with food and drink in your own private space hosted by a dedicated staff member.
Book your next team social.
Take on immersive games and challenges at SPYGAMES! Test your team's skills and strategy, compete to climb the leaderboards, and recharge with food and drink in your own private space hosted by a dedicated staff member.
A newly identified Australian spider has been found using one of nature’s stranger traps: a web that launches prey into the air. The nocturnal species has not yet been formally named, but researchers have nicknamed it the ballista spider, after the ancient Roman weapon used to hurl stones.
The spider targets green ants, which appear to be its only prey. Instead of relying on a standard sticky web, it spends up to four hours building tension lines into a cone on a leaf, branch, or the forest floor. Researchers suspect it may release pheromones to draw the ants closer.
The trap only fires once the ant bites the cone. In a fraction of a second, the insect is catapulted nearly a foot into the air and into a primary web, where the spider feeds. A two-person team captured the behavior over 10 nights in the rainforest using high-speed and infrared cameras. According to the study, published in the journal Current Biology, the launch acceleration is roughly 15 times greater than that experienced by jet pilots, making this the first known web triggered by prey rather than predator and the first known web designed for a single species.
Dr. Alec, a brilliant but reclusive neurosurgeon, has been found murdered at his English countryside manor. When John Steed and Emma Peel investigate, they discover a secret laboratory and encounter Otto Maton, Dr. Alec’s astonishing creation: a robot equipped with a human brain. Follow the strange trail of clues in this week’s SPYSCAPE crossword!
Give your party guests an unforgettable experience designed to engage, entertain, and inspire. Our dedicated staff will be on hand to help, and you'll even get your own private space to celebrate.
Host your birthday at SPYSCAPE or SPYGAMES.
Give your party guests an unforgettable experience designed to engage, entertain, and inspire. Our dedicated staff will be on hand to help, and you'll even get your own private space to celebrate.
Bigger than movies and recorded music combined. In 2022, video games generated about $184.4 billion, compared with $26.2 billion for music and $26 billion in global box office revenue. Even after the pandemic-era boom slowed, the industry crossed $200 billion in revenue last year, largely driven by mobile and PC games.
Preorders recently opened for the long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI, set for release on Nov. 19. Its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto V, released in 2013 and became the second-best-selling video game of all time, behind only Minecraft. The series is known for sprawling open worlds, high-stakes heists, and online collaborative play. The new installment follows two protagonists in Vice City, a fictional version of Miami, as Rockstar Games returns to one of gaming’s biggest cultural franchises.
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