Latest news with #Conquest
Geek Tyrant
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Robert Kirkman Breaks Down INVIBCIBLE Season 3, Why Mark's Future Should Scare You, and Lessons Learned from THE WALKING DEAD — GeekTyrant
Robert Kirkman knows how to wreck a superhero emotionally and physically, and Invincible Season 3 is a showcase of that skill. As the second half of the season wrapped on Prime Video, fans were left reeling from the mental toll on Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun), his brutal battle with Conquest, and the growing realization that Mark may be heading down a darker path than anyone expected. In a recent interview with Deadline, Kirkman offered a candid breakdown of Mark's psychological spiral, his complicated relationship with his half-brother Oliver, and how experience from The Walking Dead helped shape a more structurally sound adaptation this time around. Mark's Crossroads Season 3 is all about what kind of man—and hero—Mark is becoming. One of the most telling dynamics this year is the brotherly bond (or fracture) between Mark and Oliver, the half-Viltrumite sibling he barely knows but is now responsible for mentoring. The tension between their moral codes becomes a mirror that Mark can't look away from. 'I think it's good to give Mark as many outside influences as possible,' Kirkman said. '...One of the results of interacting with his father was that he brought Oliver home. Oliver has the same dad but is from an alien world... For Mark, his feelings can sometimes be scary when he seemingly agrees with some of the crazy things that Oliver is saying.' That inner conflict is no small matter. As Kirkman explains, Oliver starts off saying 'harsh things that make you worry,' but by the end of the season, Mark finds himself more aligned with his brother than before. 'So, by the end of this season, you should be worried for where Mark is headed in Season 4 and beyond.' A Relentless Descent Mark's downward arc isn't just philosophical, it's paved in blood. From Powerplex to the Invincible War and finally to his knock-down, drag-out fight with Conquest, Kirkman makes clear that the exhaustion and trauma have layered onto Mark's conscience in ways that aren't going away. 'He is unsure of himself and fears that he could be on the path getting closer and closer to what Omni-Man was... Without having any time to process that or work through it... Conquest comes and does more damage that Mark feels responsible for,' Kirkman said. It's that spiral of grief, guilt, self-doubt, then rage that sets the stage for Season 4's more dangerous version of Mark. As Kirkman put it, 'We're trying to deal with what it would be like to have the burden of the responsibility of having this much power... and we're excited about how the show goes into some really dark places.' The Teenage Factor But this is still a coming-of-age story, and Mark's contradictions are intentional. 'He's a somewhat erratic character by design,' Kirkman noted. 'We're constantly pushing this character to make bold statements and then go against those statements... That's kind of the life that we all experienced as a teenager... and it's fun to see a character go through that same process while he's able to crush planets.' Walking Dead Wisdom If Invincible feels more structurally sound than The Walking Dead ever was. Kirkman says the experience of adapting a comic he hadn't finished yet taught him some hard lessons. 'There were times [on The Walking Dead] when it was like, 'Yeah, let's make that different. That'll be fun.' But then you get to Season 6–Season 9, and you have entire storylines from the comic that don't work anymore...' Now, with Invincible, Kirkman says they've done the opposite. 'There's a lot of decisions that were made on Invincible Season 1–Season 3... so that when we're going Season 5–Season 6... we know the track has been laid.' The Conquest Challenge Of course, making Invincible isn't just emotionally demanding, it's a logistical beast. The fight between Mark and Conquest in the finale was one of the toughest scenes yet to animate. Kirkman revealed: 'We had to get extra board artists to come in... Usually, you have four or five board artists... I think we had six or seven that were doing two to four-minute chunks... It was an all-hands-on-deck kind of effort.' That battle was a key point of escalation—and that escalation is something Kirkman is intentionally building season after season. 'We're trying to make the show an escalating show... so that when you watch the show, you get a sense of growth... and intensifying stakes.' The Role of Violence As for the show's signature blood-and-guts spectacle? Kirkman says the violence only works if it means something. 'I don't really think of the violence as are we going too far... I'm thinking, is this violence resulting in the correct emotions we're trying to elicit...?' he said. 'We're trying to push the emotional buttons... so that you have that feeling.' And while streaming gives them room to push boundaries, Kirkman points to The Boys as the trailblazer that lets Invincible fly under the radar. 'I get to watch that show and go, 'We can do anything.'' Where It's All Going Mark Grayson may have set out to be Earth's protector, but Season 3 leaves us with a much more complicated reality: he's not just battling villains anymore—he's fighting who he might become. And that, according to Kirkman, is exactly the point. 'By the end of this season, you should be worried for where Mark is headed in Season 4 and beyond.' If that's not a warning shot, nothing is.
Spectator
3 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
North and South America have always been interdependent
In 1797, following a written plea for troops to counter an incursion by an American Revolutionary War veteran into Louisiana, Manuel Godoy, minister to the Spanish crown, made a note in the margin: No es posible poner puertas al campo ('It is not possible to put up doors in a field'). Both literally and metaphorically, Spain could no longer defend the indefensible. In 2017, the 45th president of the United States signed an executive order to build a wall along the country's Mexican border. Its construction, for which he perversely wanted Mexico to pay, was a practical and symbolic one. The United States was turning its back on Latin America. That the relationship between the United States and its southern neighbours can be changeable is well enough known, but the depth of its complexity is perhaps not. Greg Gradin has spent an academic career investigating the tensions inherent in the 'western hemisphere', from Guatemalan history to Latin America as a proving ground for modernisation theory. In America, América, he expands on his previous work to write an original and outstanding 'new history of the New World'. The proposition he makes is unambiguous: One can't fully understand the history of English-speaking North America without also understanding the history of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking America. I mean all of it…And the reverse is true. You can't tell the story of the South without the North. Grandin sidesteps the dangers of comprehensiveness – histories of the region can often be prolix – by exploring the hemisphere's 'long history of ideological and ethical contestation'. Divided into 50 short chapters, the structure allows him to cut deftly between colourful anecdote and unfamiliar intellectual history. What emerges is a vital portrait of a New World in which, despite numerous differences, the relationship between North and South has always been symbiotic and not without a similar sense of purpose. Early on, the English took their lead from the Conquistadors. Captain John Smith saw himself as an anglicised Cortes when he sought to establish Jamestown in Virginia in 1607. Oliver Cromwell's horrific Irish campaign, which Grandin calls a 'prelude to empire', was a foretaste of what might befall the Indians and enslaved Africans of North America. The Spanish Conquest of the Americas, as one English investor stated, had 'awakened' Europe from its 'dreams', only to reveal death and destruction. Yet the nightmare of the Conquest would at least produce something extraordinary. The moral conscience of this book belongs to the Spanish Dominican priest Bartolome de las Casas (1484-1566), who, from his encounters with the Indians of the New World, declared: 'Todo linaje de los hombres es uno' ('All humanity is one'). He would become the Conquest's most vociferous critic, having seen with his own eyes the 'ocean of evil'. To this day, his universal humanism remains a guiding light for the region, especially among the social democratic left in countries such as Brazil and Uruguay. Grandin is keen to emphasise that the Spanish empire had 'yielded, by the early 1800s, to a republicanism that was both more inclusive and more activist than its counterpart in the United States'. The torch would later be carried by the Cuban poet Jose Marti, who believed the New World's diversity to be 'a wellspring of spiritual and material strength'. According to Grandin, the reason for this humanist climate can be traced back to Spanish colonialism's early moral crisis, and the fact that when independence finally arrived it was understood to include freedom from 'all forms of oppression'. The unifying hero of the sweeping narrative is Simon Bolivar. But it is Bolivar the statesman and founder of a league of nations that fascinates, not the disappointed revolutionary who 'ploughed the sea'. The enlightened objectives of the 1826 Panama Congress included publication of a manifesto that proclaimed the abolition of slavery, the ratification of the Monroe Doctrine as international law and the adoption of the Roman legal doctrine Uti possidetis, ita possideatis ('As you possess, so shall you possess'). Roman law for the most part has kept the region's borders intact, compared with Manifest Destiny and the taking of the west. No wonder sovereignty remains so highly prized. In the 20th century, Franklin D. Roosevelt's policy of the 'Good Neighbour' would become inter-American co-operation at its best. Those meetings between Thomas Jefferson and Francisco Miranda two centuries earlier, in which the seeds of Pan-Americanism were sown, had finally borne fruit. It is clear where Grandin's sympathies lie (though his discussion of the authoritarian left, especially in Venezuela and Nicaragua might have been more exacting). But with Donald Trump currently taking a Nixonian line in his dismissal of Latin Americans ('We don't need them. They need us'), this magisterial work shows that only within the context of the 'western hemisphere' – and not western Europe – can the United States be fully understood.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Conquest Resources Reports Results of Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - June 17, 2025) - Conquest Resources Limited (TSXV: CQR) ("Conquest" or the "Company") reports that it held its Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders on Thursday, June 12, 2025 at which all resolutions were approved and passed. ELECTION OF DIRECTORS All of the nominees for election as director, being John F. Kearney, Jamie Levy, Terence McKillen, Tom Obradovich and Peter Palframan, were elected to serve until the next meeting of shareholders. The voting results were as follows: Director Votes For % of Votes For Votes Withheld John F. Kearney 19,762,439 72.23% 7,596,869 Jamie Levy 12,583,293 45.99% 14,776,015 Terence McKillen 19,762,439 72.22% 7,596,869 Tom Obradovich 20,289,038 74.41% 7,070,270 Peter Palframan 20,289,038 74.41% 7,070,270 RE-APPOINTMENT OF AUDITOR Shareholders approved the re-appointment of Simone & Company as the Company's auditor for the current fiscal year. The directors were authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditor. The resolution was approved with 27,279,308 votes (99.7%) in favour and 80,000 votes (0.3%) withheld. APPROVAL OF THE COMPANY'S STOCK OPTION PLAN Shareholders ratified the Company's Stock Option Plan. The resolution was approved with 27,145,038 votes (99.2%) in favour and 214,270 votes (0.8%) against. ABOUT CONQUEST Conquest Resources Limited, incorporated in 1945, is a mineral exploration company that is exploring for base metals and gold on mineral properties in Ontario. Conquest holds a 100% interest in the Belfast-TeckMag Project, located in the Temagami Mining Camp at Emerald Lake, Ontario, which is believed to have exceptional exploration upside for magmatic sulphide deposits (Cu-Ni-PGE), volcanic massive sulphides, IOCG, iron formation hosted Au and Paleo-placer Au. The Belfast-TeckMag Project is the Company's flagship property, evolved from the Golden Rose Project, which was initially acquired in December 2017, and significantly augmented through the acquisition of Canadian Continental Exploration Corp. ("CCEC") in 2020 and subsequent additional claim staking and purchases in its adjacent Belfast Copper Project and TeckMag Property. Conquest now controls over 300 square kilometres of underexplored territory in the Temagami Mining Camp, including the past producing Golden Rose Mine at Emerald Lake. Conquest also holds a 100% interest in the Alexander Gold Property located immediately east of the Red Lake and Campbell mines in the heart of the Red Lake Gold Camp along the important "Mine Trend" regional structure. Conquest's property is almost entirely surrounded by Evolution Mining landholdings. In addition, the Company holds interests in the Smith Lake Gold Property and Lake Nipigon Basin Property. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: general@ Tom Obradovich President & Chief Executive 416-985-7140 Forward-looking statements: This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the Company's expectations, plans, exploration activities, proposed expenditures, potential mineralization, and the timing and content of upcoming work programs. Forward-looking information can often be identified by words such as "anticipates", "believes", "expects", "intends", "plans", "estimates", "may", "will", "should", and similar expressions suggesting future outcomes or events. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Such risks include but are not limited to: exploration results not being indicative of future results; variations in mineral grade or recovery rates; delays or failures in obtaining necessary permits; changes in commodity prices, capital market conditions, and general economic conditions. Although the Company believes the assumptions and expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking information, except as required by law. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Spectator
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
It's no surprise that Prevent has gone to the dogs
Conquest's Second Law states that the behaviour of an organisation can best be predicted by assuming it's controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies – and that certainly seems to apply to Prevent (although it's a 'programme' rather than an organisation). Prevent is a key strand of the counter-terrorism framework introduced after the 7/7 bombings and aims to stop people becoming radicalised. Given the historical context – and the fact that 75 per cent of MI5's counter-terrorism work involves monitoring Islamist extremists – you'd think the main focus would be radical Islam. At least, you would if you weren't familiar with Conquest's Second Law. Of the 6,817 people referred to Prevent in the year ending 31 March 2023, just 11 per cent were suspected of Islamist extremism, compared with 19 per cent in danger of succumbing to 'extreme right-wing terrorism'. And according to a Prevent Refresher Awareness Course on the Home Office website, one of the three most common subcategories of extreme right-wing terrorist ideology is 'cultural nationalism'.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Flamebar Investments LLC Secures Multi-Million Dollar Growth Investment to Expand Capacity and Drive Conquest Flamebar Growth
Revenue-based transaction will fund expansions of the Michigan-based company through an innovative, shareholder-friendly financing structure WARREN, Mich., June 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Conquest Flamebar, a leading provider of fire-rated duct and fire-rated A2L refrigerant enclosures, has secured a multi-million dollar growth investment from Decathlon Capital Partners. The funding will be used to support capacity expansion and fuel the company's ongoing growth initiatives. Further details of the transaction were not disclosed. Headquartered in Warren, MI, Conquest Flamebar specializes in delivering code compliant fire-rated architectural and engineered duct systems for infrastructure projects across a variety of industries. With proven experience, globally recognized approvals, and advanced manufacturing capabilities, the company helps ensure the safety of building occupants and first responders in the event of fire in commercial and industrial building systems. James Miller, CEO of Conquest Flamebar, said the company is committed to advancing fire protection solutions that meet the highest industry standards. "At Conquest, we are focused on delivering fire-rated duct systems that are tested and rated to rigorous standards," Miller said. "From design through delivery we take pride in supporting the success of our customers' projects and are excited to continue growing our capabilities to meet rising demand." Thomas Webster, Managing Partner at Pacific Growth Investors, said the funding provides Conquest Flamebar with resources needed to capitalize on growing market opportunities. "This investment gives Conquest the flexibility to scale operations and meet increasing demand while maintaining full control over the company's future," Webster said. John Borchers, Managing Director of Decathlon Capital Partners, expressed excitement about supporting Conquest's next phase of growth. "Conquest Flamebar has built a strong reputation for quality, reliability, and innovation in the fire protection space," Borchers said. "We're proud to support their expansion efforts and look forward to seeing their continued success." About Conquest FlamebarConquest Flamebar specializes in manufacturing fire-rated duct and A2L enclosure systems for a wide range of commercial, industrial, and multi-family residential projects. With a commitment to precision, performance, and occupant safety, Conquest provides solutions that meet the highest global standards. The company is headquartered in Warren, Michigan. Learn more at About Decathlon Capital PartnersDecathlon Capital Partners provides growth capital for companies seeking alternatives to traditional equity investment. Through the use of highly customized growth-debt financing solutions, Decathlon provides long-term growth capital without the dilution, loss of control and operational overhead that often comes with equity-based funding. With offices in Palo Alto and Park City, Decathlon is active across a wide range of sectors and geographies. Learn more at View original content: SOURCE Flamebar
