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First Blood: Rambo’s first outing is a surprisingly poignant comment on masculinity

Directed by Wake in Fright filmmaker Ted Kotcheff, the 1982 ‘vetsploitation’ flick is brutal, destructive and tragic – just like the world that men createdIt was the early 80s, and Sylvester Stallone was on a roll. After years of making ends meet with bit parts, background artist work and pornography, he wrote and starred in Rocky in 1976, breaking into mainstream success. Before long he had carved out a new niche, writing, directing, and acting himself into stardom with a string of tough-guy movies including two hugely successful Rocky sequels.Then came Rambo. The character is peak 80s Stallone, a byword for pure testosterone

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Stephen Colbert: ‘What you thought you knew is just history’

Late-night hosts dig into Donald Trump’s firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner and an unnerving story about radioactive wasps.“You know something? No, you don’t,” said Stephen Colbert on Monday’s Late Show. “Because things cannot be known any more. What you thought you knew is just history.” Especially history, as the Smithsonian removed Trump from the impeachment exhibit in the American history museum

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What are Nigella Lawson, Robert Irwin and a cartoon kangaroo doing in Australia’s latest round of tourism ads?

So Steph, what do Robert Irwin, Nigella Lawson and a cartoon kangaroo have in common?Wait, is this a joke?No not at all, I’m genuinely asking.Oh, sorry. The answer is a new round of ads spruiking Australia as a tourist destination to potential international visitors.Is this the latest from Scott Morrison’s old workplace? Do you mean Tourism Australia? Yes, the former prime minister and former director of Tourism Australia liked to claim he was responsible for the “Where the bloody hell are you?” ad that featured Lara Bingle (and was banned from the UK for being too risque).This new round of ads feature a bunch of personalities from places where the agency intends them to air

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Woman’s memoirs give fascinating insight into life in 17th-century northern England

She was a 17th-century Yorkshirewoman whose memoirs combined commentaries on major political events with local and personal details of her life. Now an academic who has studied the writings of Alice Thornton has said they provide a “northern female perspective” in contrast to the London-based diarist Samuel Pepys.Thornton’s memoirs contain accounts of financial catastrophe, rumours of sexual impropriety, childbirth, attempted rapes and repeated interventions by God to deliver her from an early death. Thornton lived to be 80, a remarkable age at the time.Two of four autobiographical volumes were discovered by Cordelia Beattie, a history professor at the University of Edinburgh

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The Guide #202: Awol ​headliners to ​rampaging ​deer: ​how ​festivals ​survive the ​worst-​case ​scenarios

We’re in the thick of festival season in the UK, where every weekend seems to host a dizzying array of musical mega-events. The likes of Glastonbury, Download, TRNSMT, Wireless and others may already be in the rear-view, but there are still plenty more to come across all manner of genres: Camp Bestival (happening this very weekend), Creamfields, Green Man, All Points East, Reading and Leeds, End of the Road and so many others, across farms, city parks, country estates and the odd mid-Wales mountain range.For the people who run these festivals, months or even a full years-worth of work will have gone into readying for a single, crucial long weekend. The stakes are high: whether things go off without a hitch or not will, in some cases, determine that festival’s future. And boy, are there a lot of potential hitches: electricity, sanitation, ticketing, food and drink, security, and the fragile egos of famous musicians, to name but a few

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My cultural awakening: Minecraft taught me how to navigate life as a transgender person – one block at a time

Minecraft is my life. I got into it around 2012, when I was 23, and I’ve been playing ever since. It’s a game of endless possibility. You can do anything in it. You can build your own houses, machines, businesses, and put your own personality on to it