Daniel Farr 02

Daniel Farr

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ASD Staff

Stephanie Salmons Headshot

Stephanie Salmons

Kam Napier Headshot

A. Kam Napier

Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Warning: dog attacks baby (with kisses)....."}]

Smile 26 4 20

<title>Daily Smile: Monday, April 20, 2026</title>

Warning: dog attacks baby (with kisses).....

Daily Smile: Monday, April 20, 2026

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

MĀNOA — Before Vladimir Kubr dished out a handful of assists as the University of Hawai‘i's starting setter on Saturday night, he was on the receiving end of the ultimate assist before the match even began. 

Kubr, the lone senior for the Rainbow Warriors, started his first career match for the 'Bows on Saturday against CSUN, earning a loud ovation from the Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 8,223 clad in white. The plan to start Kubr on senior night was devised by head coach Charlie Wade weeks ago. But first, he had to let regular starting setter Tread Rosenthal know. 

"It's a good cause for a good guy, and he was absolutely all on board," Wade said of Rosenthal's reaction.

With Kubr at the service line to begin the match, the 'Bows pounced on the Matadors early, jumping out to a 4-0 lead. The Rainbow Warriors led 10-3 when Rosenthal resumed his role as the team's regular setter, sharing an embrace with Kubr as he subbed out. 

Kubr's start set the tone for a 25-15, 21-25, 25-14, 25-16 victory for the No. 2 Rainbow Warriors, who closed out the regular season 26-4 overall and 9-1 in Big West play, 

winning the conference regular season title

 outright. Wade put Kubr back in during the closing points of the fourth set. Kubr, who finished with five assists, drew relentless cheers from fans with seemingly each step he took on the taraflex. 

"Everything. It means everything," Kubr said of the reception he received before, during and after the match on Saturday night. "This might be the best thing that will ever happen to me in my whole life.

"It felt good. But also, it's not just about me, it's about my team. It's about the program. It's about the fans and just the support."

And that favor Kubr received from Rosenthal in starting the match? Kubr did his best to return it, setting Rosenthal for a kill near the end of the fourth set. The 6-foot-11 Rosenthal skied for a spike that sent the Stan Sheriff Center crowd into a frenzy, but the point was overturned following a CSUN challenge. Kubr says it's the first time ever he was able to set ball for Rosenthal. 

, but that's what I expect from him," Kubr said of Rosenthal sacrificing his spot in the starting lineup on senior night. "He's a very selfless man. He's my brother, so we support each other."

[{"type":"text","text":"Was Kubr hoping a Rosenthal set would come his way? "}]

"Not at all," Kubr said. "No, I'm actually happy to be honest. We have Louis (Sakanoko) and Adrien (Roure). He should be not setting me."

As Mark Kubr, Vladimir's father, took turns gazing lovingly at his son and the tribute video playing for him on the arena's video board, the tears flowed.

"It was surreal, because I've come to the Islands since I was very young. Since the ’70s, I've worked here, and the Hawaiian people have always taken me in and just been so gracious and kind," Mark Kubr told Aloha State Daily following the match. "For him to play for such an established organization in such a hallowed land, it means the world to me."

During his childhood in Southern California, Vladimir would tag along with Mark, an actor, on set. Vladimir Kubr, an actor, stuntman and model, got an early start in Hollywood, appearing in "Iron Man" and "Alice in Wonderland" as a 3-year-old in 2008. 

 verifies that he's had credits in nearly a dozen movies and shows, most recently "

The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants" in 2025. 

Mark and Vladimir Kubr both like telling a story about how as a toddler, Vladimir was falling in and out of sleep during a shoot of a particularly important Iron Man scene.

"My first gig was Iron Man," Vladimir Kubr recalled. "The scene in particular was as 

dies, him and Iron Man are fighting on the highway. Obadiah picks up this SUV, and it was a family of five, and there's a little kid in car seat in the middle. That's me. It was 2 a.m. and shooting this, and they had to lift up the physical car, maybe 15, 20 feet in the air. 

"They had to keep waking me up. Because I was a little kid, it was like, bedtime. Jon Favreau, the director, was like, 'Is the kid asleep right now?' And then everyone is kind of freaking out because it's time to shoot, it's time to go. And they're like, 'Wake up the kid.' And as they're trying to wake me up, my dad is slowly walking away to try to just disconnect himself to the situation."

Added Mark Kubr: "I'm like, 'Oh s---,' right? He's asleep. He's asleep in the car. He's supposed to be a stuntman. So, anyway, to make a long story short, he ended up waking up and screaming, and he was perfect." 

Vladimir Kubr says he began playing volleyball because there was a year he didn't make the basketball team. While watching highlights of former UH star setter and 2023 AVCA Player of the Year Jakob Thelle, he set a goal to join the Rainbow Warriors and did so in 2024 after transferring from Pepperdine.

With the sole exception of Saturday night, Vladimir Kubr spent his UH career as a backup to Rosenthal, an AVCA All-American. Still, he has no regrets about staying in the Islands and seeing hs career through with teammates he considers brothers. 

"My father has always told me if you can count the friend number of friends you have on your on one hand, you're good," he said. "Your life is good. I don't have enough fingers for 19 (teammates) at all. I love my team very much."

After the season ends, Vladimir Kubr plans to wrap up his political science degree before moving back home to Southern California, where he'll pursue beach volleyball and more acting, modeling and stuntman opportunities. 

As he watched his son get filled to the brim with lei, Mark Kubr beamed with pride in the man his son has become. 

"I don't care what his endeavors are. I just want him to be a gracious, kind person. I'll be proud no matter what he does," Mark Kubr said. "As long as he's kind to other people, it doesn't matter to me."

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Vlad Kubr 041826

<title>Vladimir Kubr shines in his senior moment</title>

The UH men's volleyball team's lone senior got his first Division I start on Saturday night and electrified the home crowd in the team's regular season finale, a four-set victory over CSUN.

Vladimir Kubr shines in his senior moment

Golden Retriever wearing a hat went viral devouring a full hot dog at the ballpark.

Smile 26 4 19

<title>Daily Smile: Sunday, April 19, 2026</title>

Golden Retriever wearing a hat went viral devouring a full hot dog at the ballpark....

Daily Smile: Sunday, April 19, 2026

[{"type":"text","text":"On today's episode of \"Fat and Jobless\" ..."}]

Smile 26 4 18

<title>Daily Smile: Saturday, April 18, 2026</title>

On today's episode of "Fat and Jobless" ...

Daily Smile: Saturday, April 18, 2026

MĀNOA — The No. 2 University of Hawai‘i men's volleyball team was not going to miss the same opportunity twice. 

With a 25-20, 25-16, 25-16 sweep over CSUN on Friday night, the Rainbow Warriors clinched the Big West regular season title and top seed in next week's conference tournament. The 'Bows had an opportunity to gain both conference distinctions in their series at UC San Diego last week, but suffered a disappointing loss on Saturday. 

In front of a Stan Sheriff Center turnstile crowd of 6,765 on Friday night, the 'Bows left no doubt in improving to 25-4 overall and 8-1 in Big West Conference play. Immediately after the match, the Rainbow Warriors took off their jerseys in favor of Big West regular season champion shirts. 

"You win the Big West regular season, you absolutely are in the running to win a national championship, and that's certainly our goal every year," Hawai‘i head coach Charlie Wade said following the match. "Winning league championships in this league is hard to do, no question. So, super stoked. But again, we got bigger goals than just the league title but certainly want to enjoy the fact that we've gotten this far and will be the 1 seed in the tournament and putting together a nice resume going forward."

The 'Bows dominated the Matadors (12-13, 0-9 Big West) with 12.5 team blocks and 29 total digs. With Kristian Titriyski sidelined with what Wade described as arm fatigue, sophomore Kainoa Wade got the start at opposite for the Rainbow Warriors and registered a team-high 10 kills. 

"It was good to see us bounce back this week in practice and just be engaged the whole time," said Kainoa Wade, Charlie's son. "That's a good CSUN team, and we took care of business tonight."

Reserve setter Vladimir Kubr, the team's lone senior, entered at the end of the second and third sets as the 'Bows built commanding leads in each. Kubr served once in each set as the Matadors were able to side-out each time. 

"Vlad is the most rock solid dude you'll ever meet," Kainoa Wade says of his teammate. "He is just on everything. He gets on all of us when we're goofing off. He gets us back engaged, and he's like an older brother to me, honestly. He's such a great guy, and I'm so stoked for him. He got an opportunity to be in this environment and helped us win the championship, honestly. So, yeah, it was awesome. I love Vlad to death, and he knows that."

Before the 'Bows head to Irvine, Calif., for next week's Big West Tournament, they'll wrap up their regular season with another match against CSUN on Saturday at 7 p.m. With Kubr the lone senior on senior night, he's expected to get a prolonged celebration and ovation on Saturday. 

Charlie Wade said he has something special planned for Kubr on Saturday but wasn't willing to divulge what it was on Friday night. 

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I don't think I can tell you before I tell him,\" Wade said. "}]

Hawaii mens volleyball 041726

<title>Hawai‘i men's volleyball clinches Big West regular season title</title>

The Rainbow Warriors will be the top seed in next week's conference tournament in Irvine, Calif.

Hawai‘i men's volleyball clinches Big West regular season title

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Columnists

“It is usually better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the family.”

Monitoring the Future, a long-running survey of American teenagers, has been tracking agreement with this statement for decades. In 2024, agreement among boys jumped to 41 percent, up from the lows of the late 2010s. Among girls, it nearly doubled to 23 percent.

 in Civil Beat this week. He warned that gender equality is under threat. The manosphere is winning. Tradwife influencers on TikTok are radicalizing your children. The Groypers, Milner explains, are a network of white nationalists, antisemites, and anti-feminists. They are the vanguard of a new and more threatening Republican Party. Democrats, he warns, have no answer.

Read the statement again. Does it condemn single mothers? Does it forbid women from working? Does it bar women from leadership? It makes a modest claim about what usually works. “Usually” is not “always.”

The wording also loads the dice against agreement. Paid work is called “achievement.” Home life is something else. A teenager who sees raising children as an achievement is nudged toward disagreement.

I generally agree with the statement, though I’d add that a woman caring for her family is achieving just as much as a man working outside the home. I suspect many readers agree.

Now look at the trend line, as analyzed at 

Agreement climbed from 1991 to a peak around 2013. It fell through the late 2010s. It rebounded in 2024 to roughly where it had been. The puzzle is not the recent rise. It is everything before it.

Teen agreement was rising for 20 years — before broadband, before the iPhone, before Instagram. No tradwife influencers existed. The manosphere had not been named. Yet the line rose. Milner does not mention this. A theory that blames TikTok for the 2024 number has to explain something: Why was the same belief already climbing, decades before TikTok arrived?

There is a risk in believing polls and not talking to people, so I asked my wife.

She is 34, too old to have grown up with tradwife content. She pointed out that most talk about sex roles frames it as a binary choice — family or career. The real question is usually sequencing.

She started having children at 19. At 34, she’s home with a 10th grader, an 8th grader, a 6th grader, and our three-year-old. Most days she takes the youngest to the park. The other mothers there often express regret — not that they had careers, but that they waited to have children.

There are inspiring stories of women starting careers at 50. There are far fewer stories of women leaving careers to give birth at 50. The order matters.

My grandmother started having her five children in her teens. She was a homemaker first and later worked as a waitress. She didn’t become the schoolteacher she once dreamed of being. She’s 94 this year, with five children, six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. A few years ago she wrote that she has no regrets.

Milner’s column performs a move Democrats have been making for a decade. Take a belief most of the Silent Generation held. Associate it with the worst actors who share some version of it. Insinuate that anyone holding the belief today must have been manipulated into it. Agreement with progressive conclusions is reasoning. Disagreement results from manipulation.

Were the Boomers who rejected traditional sex roles not also shaped by the media of their day? The universities, the press, the sitcoms that made Archie Bunker the butt of the joke?

Plenty of parties have been out of touch and recovered. The party that cannot recover is the one that treats its fellow citizens as inert clay, molded by whichever machine is in charge.

If you want to know why young people are returning to tradition, ask them. The families raising these teenagers are not a problem to be explained. They are neighbors worth listening to.

Mom and child

<title>Ask them, don't study them</title>

Political commentator Neal Milner is alarmed that teenagers find new value in mothers staying home to take care of the family. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa has a rebuttal.

Ask them, don't study them

<title>Letters to the Editor</title>

Letters to the Editor

A Chaminade student shares how habitat loss threatens Native Hawaiian land snails and how the Green Fee can help safeguard its resources.

Greenfriends

Letter to the Editor: Keep the Green Fee project portfolio intact

A reader shares a past example when mediation worked for evictions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, renters unable to pay rent will have more resources to avoid eviction through the state's Pre-Eviction Mediation Filing Program.

Kaahumanu Hale 16x9

Letter to the Editor: Mediation plays a major role

Krauss had influence on Hawaiʻi politics, culture and more, including family.

Krauss HI Observer Image 1975 16x9

Letter to the Editor: Remembering Bob Krauss

"Even if you don't believe in God, how can you argue against these 10 basic rules for living?"

I Stock 675323774

Letter to the Editor: 'We're already fighting a civil war'

Thanks for the reminder of "Hawai‘i's Forgotten Governor."

Quinn Eisenhower 16x9

Letter to Editor: Important to remember Gov. William Quinn

Maui County’s obsolete zoning code is making life difficult for our community.

Letters to the Editor

Latest from Letters to the Editor

Letter to the Editor: Keep the Green Fee project portfolio intact

Letter to the Editor: Mediation plays a major role

Letter to the Editor: Remembering Bob Krauss

Letter to the Editor: 'We're already fighting a civil war'

Letter to Editor: Important to remember Gov. William Quinn

Letter to the Editor: Lahaina's path to rebuilding

Letter to the Editor: My own eerie Topa Tower experience

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