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Cardiff University 400 job cuts ‘threaten supply of nurses’ Cardiff University 400 job cuts ‘threaten supply of nurses’ PA Media Helen Whyley of the Royal College of Nursing says Cardiff University has a “significant pipeline” in supplying nurses to health boards in south Wales Job cuts at Cardiff University threaten the supply of nurses in Welsh health boards, a union leader has warned. The university has confirmed plans to cut 400 full-time jobs amid a funding shortfall, with proposals involving course closures, and department mergers, with nursing, music and modern languages among the subjects facing cuts. Helen Whyley, executive director of the Royal College of Nursing Wales, told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast the proposals were “worrying.” Lecturers have begun receiving letters advising them their post is at risk and offering links to support – although the university has said it would only make compulsory redundancies “if absolutely necessary”. Ms Whyley said the university has a “significant pipeline” in delivering nurses to health boards in south Wales. “The Welsh government through Health Education Improvement Wales commissions nursing education and funds the universities to do that, and it’s one of our largest providers,” she said. “It has a school of well over 1,000 students so that’s a significant number that come out every year. “At a time where we have a significant number of nursing vacancies, it doesn’t take a mathematician to work out the students that come through Cardiff University are a very important contribution into that pipeline,” she said. Ms Whyley said the cuts would also have an impact on the future of nursing academics. She added that hospitals in Wales were short of 2,000 nurses and while the number was starting to decrease “hospitals are still in a very difficult position”. The students that come through Cardiff University are a very important contribution to nursing, says Helen Whyley of the RCN Following Tuesday’s announcement, Cardiff lecturers began receiving letters from the university informing them of the planned changes. They read in part: “Please see attached a copy of your notification of consultation letter advising that your post is at risk of redundancy and providing links to support available for you during this time of change. Also attached are the proposals for change in your school.” On Tuesday Vice-Chancellor Professor Wendy Larner said the university would have become “untenable” without drastic reforms. She said the job role cuts were only a proposal, but insisted the university had to “take difficult decisions” amid declining international student applications and increasing cost pressures, and most *** universities were grappling with a “broken” funding system. ‘Uni job cuts make me nervous about my future’ Elsewhere, Swansea University said it will have to make £30m of cuts by the 2026/27 financial year despite more than 300 staff members leaving since September 2023. The university’s annual report, published this week, said it had made £8.5m in savings through voluntary redundancies in this financial year. But they stated they will extend their current financial savings programme for a further year and increased the level of expenditure savings by £30 million. Swansea University told Newyddion S4C: “Even taking the additional savings required into account, we are confident that we will meet our academic pay savings targets this year through vacancy management and our Voluntary Exit Scheme (VES) and can avoid compulsory redundancies relating to our financial position.” Plaid Cymru education spokesperson Cefin Campbell said the news of Cardiff job cuts was met with “deafening silence” by the Welsh government. He challenged the Welsh government to explain “what they knew and when” about Cardiff’s plans and called on the university to urgently rethink its proposals. A Welsh government spokesperson said it was “very disappointed that nursing courses form part of these proposals” and that it was “working urgently” to ensure the same number of nurses were trained in Wales. A statement shared by Cardiff University Student Union president Madison Hutchinson said: “We want to express our unwavering support with all students, and solidarity to staff who may be impacted.” Source link #Cardiff #University #job #cuts #threaten #supply #nurses Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Review: Train up and deliver with Accolade Sports Collection – Entertainium Review: Train up and deliver with Accolade Sports Collection – Entertainium Redemption-645h ago @crazyCoconuts Can’t say how much MS might have been paying, but if they are not willing to pay, it shows they didn’t get the results they wanted. i.e increased subscribers. Or MLB is asking for more money because what they are also not seeing the results they want. Honestly I can see Sony laughing about this, as they didn’t want to bring MLB to Xbox and with this move, I am expecting low sales and even lower player numbers on Xbox Source link #Review #Train #deliver #Accolade #Sports #Collection #Entertainium Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Anthony Albanese accused of betraying WA, caving to east coast backbenchers by reviving Nature Positive laws Anthony Albanese accused of betraying WA, caving to east coast backbenchers by reviving Nature Positive laws The legislation – scuttled by the Prime Minister last year following lobbying from Premier Roger Cook – is back on the Government’s agenda. Source link #Anthony #Albanese #accused #betraying #caving #east #coast #backbenchers #reviving #Nature #Positive #laws Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Revenge Of The Savage Planet's Fifth Planet Is Full Of Upgraded Cyber-Critters Revenge Of The Savage Planet's Fifth Planet Is Full Of Upgraded Cyber-Critters The Revenge of the Savage Planet team talks about the critters players can expect to encounter on its mysterious fifth planet. Source link #Revenge #Savage #Planet039s #Planet #Full #Upgraded #CyberCritters Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Bitcoin Price Surpasses $100K Without Showing ‘Extreme’ FOMO Signs—Research Bitcoin Price Surpasses $100K Without Showing ‘Extreme’ FOMO Signs—Research Bitcoin Price Surpasses $100K Without Showing ‘Extreme’ FOMO Signs—Research Bitcoin’s price has surpassed $100,000, but research suggests that the market is not yet experiencing extreme FOMO. On-chain data from CryptoQuant shows that newer investors, tracked through unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs), have not entered at the levels seen during previous bull market peaks in 2013, 2017, and 2021. Historically, bull market tops are marked by short-term holders, who have held Bitcoin for less than three months, accounting for more than 70% of UTXOs. Currently, this figure is just over half, indicating that the market has room to grow before reaching a cycle peak. Glassnode confirms that the share of Bitcoin held by new investors remains well below the levels seen at previous all-time highs. CryptoQuant’s analysis suggests that while new investor participation has increased, it has not reached extreme levels. This means Bitcoin’s price could still have further upside, but traders should monitor the ratio of young coins to long-term holdings for potential warning signs of a market top. Bitcoin has been trading within a $20,000 range for more than two months, fueling expectations of a breakout. Traders believe that a daily close above $110,000 could set the stage for a stronger rally. Analyst Jelle pointed to a bullish pennant breakout, stating that if Bitcoin closes above this key level, the next target could be around $145,000. Many traders expect sideways movements to eventually give way to another leg up. While market sentiment remains positive, CryptoQuant warns that investors should watch for signals that typically indicate the end of a bull cycle. Increased participation from inexperienced traders and a higher percentage of short-term UTXOs could suggest that the market is nearing its peak. At the moment, however, Bitcoin’s price activity does not reflect the same speculative frenzy seen in past cycle tops. Despite Bitcoin’s psychological milestone of crossing $100,000, research indicates that market behavior remains measured. Unlike previous peaks, where new investors rushed in to buy at high prices, current conditions suggest a more controlled phase of market growth. Some traders remain cautious, waiting for confirmation of a breakout before increasing exposure. The ongoing analysis from multiple on-chain data firms suggests that Bitcoin’s current price action does not yet mirror the conditions that have historically led to major corrections. However, traders and analysts remain watchful, knowing that the market could shift quickly. Whether Bitcoin’s rally continues toward $145,000 or encounters resistance depends on the strength of buying pressure and market confidence. Source link #Bitcoin #Price #Surpasses #100K #Showing #Extreme #FOMO #SignsResearch Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Warzone Is Collapsing, But At Least You Have More Gulag Rocks Now Warzone Is Collapsing, But At Least You Have More Gulag Rocks Now Warzone is in a bad spot right now. We’re a long way since the heyday of 2020 when Verdansk was on everyone’s minds, and what remains today is a shell of what was once the most popular battle royale game in the business. The competitive scene is in bits, pro players have waited months for payments, and cheaters are harassing the global community with increasing abandon. But fear not – in the recent patch notes published ahead of Warzone Season 02, Activision’s teams revealed that you now have the correct number of rocks to throw in the Gulag. Warzone in Tatters Last week, I covered the news that many Warzone pro players still chase hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments owed by Activision and Co. Following the World Series of Warzone last year, players from the top down failed to secure their winnings. The state of play for Warzone esports was already rough enough, but this revelation extinguished any hope fans had for a resurgence of sorts in the coming months. On social and streaming platforms, sentiments are at an all-time low. On Twitch, the game’s peak of 1.6 million viewers (in April 2021) seems like little more than a fever dream now. The average peak viewer count in the last seven days was around 24,000 users at the time of writing. That could be a symptom of the wider comedown of the battle royale genre, though – other games aren’t faring much better: PUBG – 12,800 avg Apex Legends – 16,100 avg Only Fortnite stays strong, boasting a 65,800 average peak viewer count over the last seven days – but given the game’s rampant success in recent years, that’s hardly a surprise. The recent patch notes for Warzone’s Season 02 update revealed plenty of bug fixes and tweaks, but one that stood out and drew some jibes on social media read: Fixed an issue where players only had one Gulag Rock instead of five in the Gulag. This prompted many users to throw jabs at Activision’s prioritisation matrix, suggesting that this fix is but a grain of sand amid a beach of problems. In a post on Twitter (X), CouRage suggested what needs to be done to revive Warzone: It’s so sad to see the state of Warzone. Call of Duty is one of the mismanaged IPs on the planet. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Too many egos. Too much greed from Activision. Pull the plug. Reset from Warzone 1.0 and let it be it’s own standalone experience. Only additive… In a spread of comments echoing the general sentiment, content creators across the net expressed their concerns: ‘Warzone has gotta be one of the biggest embarrassments ever right now…’ – Timmy2Cans ‘The mismanagement of Warzone will go down as one of gaming’s biggest blunders when all is said and done.’ – Loochy ‘Perhaps the magic of Warzone is just gone and we all have grown tired of playing the game.’ – DougDagnabbit What do you think about the state of Warzone in 2025? Are you still playing, or have you long since moved on? Let us know on the Insider Gaming forum. For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that we almost had Halo maps in COD SUBSCRIBE to our newsletter to receive the latest news and exclusive leaks every week! No Spam. Source link #Warzone #Collapsing #Gulag #Rocks Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

New Supercomputer Set to Propel Electric Spacecraft Technology Forward New Supercomputer Set to Propel Electric Spacecraft Technology Forward The advancement of electric propulsion technology for spacecraft may soon overcome critical challenges, aided by supercomputer simulations. This propulsion method, relying on ion engines, is recognised for its efficiency and is increasingly adopted in missions beyond Earth’s atmosphere. By using electric currents to ionise gases like xenon, these systems generate thrust through a high-speed ion plume. While this method reduces fuel requirements compared to chemical rockets, it presents unique challenges, such as potential damage caused by back-scattered electrons from the exhaust plume. Understanding Ion Plume Behaviour According to research published in Plasma Sources Science and Technology by scientists Chen Cui from the University of Virginia and Joseph Wang from the University of Southern California, new simulations have explored how electrons behave within an ion engine’s exhaust. As reported by space.com, the thermodynamic characteristics of these particles were analysed, offering insights into how their velocity and temperature impact the dynamics of the ion plume. The study revealed that core electrons, moving at high velocities, maintain a consistent temperature, while those at the edges of the plume lose energy more rapidly and risk colliding with spacecraft components. Challenges in Electric Propulsion The plume’s back-scattered electrons pose a significant threat to spacecraft. This can lead to damage on sensitive components like solar arrays and antennas. These challenges have drawn attention, as missions powered by electric propulsion need systems capable of enduring years of operation. Future of Ion Engine Technology With this enhanced understanding, solutions can now be integrated into engine designs to mitigate electron back-scattering. Strategies may include confining electrons more effectively within the beam or altering the plume’s structure. These developments hold promise for enabling spacecraft to undertake longer missions with greater reliability, powered by the steady thrust of electric propulsion. For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who’sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube. Asus ROG Phone 9 FE Design, Full Specifications Leaked; Said to Get Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, 5,500mAh Battery Xbox Chief Phil Spencer Suggests Starfield Could Release on Rival Consoles Source link #Supercomputer #Set #Propel #Electric #Spacecraft #Technology Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

ASML CEO sees low-cost AI models like DeepSeek driving more demand ASML CEO sees low-cost AI models like DeepSeek driving more demand Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML expects new low-cost models like the one rolled out by China’s DeepSeek to lead to more — rather than less — demand for AI chips, CEO Christophe Fouquet told CNBC Wednesday. ASML beat estimates on both sales and profit for the fourth quarter and said it had an order backlog of roughly 36 billion euros ($37.4 billion) at the end of 2024. The news prompted a jump in the firm’s shares as investor fears that DeepSeek’s model could cool semiconductor spending ebbed. Without addressing the specifics of DeepSeek’s newly revealed R1 model — which took the tech world by storm with performance benchmarks rivalling leading U.S. players at a fraction of the cost — Fouquet said that he sees no sign of a slowdown in demand for AI-focused chips. “A lower cost of AI could mean more applications. More applications means more demand over time. We see that as an opportunity for more chips demand,” Fouquet said in an interview with CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal. “For the hyperscaler, the capex [capital expenditure] is today spent for investment,” he said. “They are investing heavily in R&D [research and development]. They continue to want to do that.” Hyperscalers refers to cloud computing giants such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google which are investing heavily in the data center infrastructure that power AI models. Last week, DeepSeek released R1, an open-source reasoning model that claims to beat OpenAI’s o1 model on both cost and performance. Open-source software source code is made freely available on the open web for possible modification and redistribution. DeepSeek drama Growing awareness of DeepSeek’s new model caused a severe slump in technology stocks this week, amid concerns of a possible retrenchment in spending on the powerful graphics processing units required to train and run AI workloads. Nvidia lost close to $600 billion in market capitalization on Monday — the biggest single-day drop for any company in U.S. history — while ASML and other semiconductor stocks also notched heavy losses. Shares of both Nvidia and ASML have since recovered some ground later in the week. DeepSeek’s new AI model will benefit European chip stocks ‘counter intuitively,’ says JPMorgan Fouquet appeared unfazed by DeepSeek’s implications for both AI hyperscalers and chipmakers during the Wednesday interview. While acknowledging there is “a lot of discussion” surrounding DeepSeek, the ASML CEO said his company hasn’t heard from customers asking about the impact the ******** firm’s model will have on chip demand. “For AI to really come to life in the next few years — not only with the hyperscalers, but with all of us in our phone, PC — we need AI to address two things: cost and energy consumption,” he told CNBC. “We believe that anything that will go in the direction of lowering cost on AI is, in fact, probably news because this will allow applications to go to many, many more devices,” Fouquet added. The DeepSeek reveal triggered questions over eyewatering spending from leading AI players such as OpenAI and Microsoft on Nvidia graphics processing units, which are needed to train and run the most advanced AI models. This could in turn hit demand for ASML’s high-precision extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines, which are used to print the most advanced microchips. EUV tools accounted for 3 billion euros out of the 7.1 billion euros ASML reported in fourth-quarter net bookings. Source link #ASML #CEO #sees #lowcost #models #DeepSeek #driving #demand Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Western United go third in ALM with Mariners draw Western United go third in ALM with Mariners draw Western United have fought out a dramatic 2-2 draw with reigning champions Central Coast to go third on the A-League Men table. United will head into an extended break within touching distance of the top two after captain Ben Garuccio’s wonderful free kick equaliser in the 74th minute headlined an exciting clash at Ironbark Fields. In-form striker Noah Botic had headed United in front in the 33rd minute. The Mariners equalised through Mikel Doka’s chaotic free kick in the 39th minute, before taking the lead via Ryan Edmondson three minutes later. Garuccio then equalised before goalkeeper Matt Sutton twice denied Mikael Doka in injury time, the first when making a brilliant one-on-one save and again from an attempted bicycle kick, to earn United a point. John Aloisi’s United sit third on 25 points, five points off the top, while Mark Jackson’s Mariners (19 points) are still three points outside the top six. The first half was a see-sawing affair until Riku Danzaki burst forward and picked out Botic to flick home his seventh goal of the season just after the half-hour mark. Botic, 23, has emerged as one of the competition’s best young strikers, underlining his potential as a future Socceroo. But the high from Botic’s opener was short-lived. The Mariners equalised when Doka attempted to cross the ball but his skidding free kick evaded everyone, including Sutton, and nestled in the goal. Mere minutes later, the Mariners were in front. Teenager Haine Eames brilliantly released Nathan Paull down the left. Paull unleashed a first-time cross and Edmondson was on hand to tap home at the back post. United equalised when Garuccio curled a free kick around the wall and it caught Peraic-Cullen unawares and skidded into the bottom corner. Rhys Bozinovski had a late chance to slip through Abel Walatee but blasted a shot over the bar, while Hiroshi Ibusuki turned a close-range effort wide in the 89th minute. The Mariners have a tight turnaround before hosting Saturday’s derby against Newcastle. United have another break, returning to action away to Macarthur on February 9. Source link #Western #United #ALM #Mariners #draw Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Todd Howard Can Use DeepSeek AI to Solve a Critical Problem in Fallout 5 That Haunts Starfield Like a Spectre Todd Howard Can Use DeepSeek AI to Solve a Critical Problem in Fallout 5 That Haunts Starfield Like a Spectre The world was recently shocked by DeepSeek AI, a brand-new generative AI model from China. This new advanced reasoning model generates human-like responses and presents a lot of new possibilities in the world. But for now, let’s take it on the gaming industry of things, specifically towards Bethesda Game Studios and Todd Howard’s classic franchise. It was a really noticeable problem. | Image Credit: Bethesda Game Studios After the not-so-great reception and performance of Starfield, Todd Howard and Bethesda are looking to the future with The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5. Starfield was one of the most anticipated games ever, but it simply wasn’t the landslide hit many expected. But with DeepSeek AI, the next entries of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series could see some big improvements. Todd Howard and Bethesda have to lock in to succeed There’s a lot to learn from recent developments. | Image Credit: @LexFridman/YouTube One of the biggest complaints we had about Starfield was the fact that the NPCs felt kinda unfinished and unpolished. Despite the game’s vast open-world design, NPCs often had repetitive dialogue and never really reacted to player actions and decisions. In some cases, multiple NPCs even shared the same face so not great overall. In previous BGS games, all NPCs had routines. They had places to sleep, work, and hang out in the evening. They weren’t just background. Wondering if that will be true for #Starfield and if those tall buildings in New Atlantis are NPC apartments which can be entered (looted)? pic.twitter.com/No8fAOrMs0 — Ad Astra Starfield! (@Starfield2023) July 21, 2023 At the time, this was especially annoying because Bethesda’s already had a reputation for making some of the best games, and NPCs. This is a major flaw for ambitious and promising games like Starfied. Players want and deserve memorable and believable characters, especially with the kind of money that AAA games cost these days. Fallout 5 cannot afford to repeat these mistakes, and AI could be the solution. DeepSeek AI is designed to generate human-like responses based on contextual reasoning, making it an ideal tool for improving NPC behavior. It’s already gone viral in the last few days with the things it can do. Instead of repeating the same dialogue lines or failing to recognize key player actions, NPCs in Fallout 5 could react more naturally. This is how npc’s die in Starfield. This is xbox. pic.twitter.com/JceNafjZlO — kingthrash Reborn (@DoWhatYouDo6) September 2, 2023 For instance, if a player wears faction-specific gear, NPCs could respond with suspicion or admiration depending on which faction they themselves are from. We could have a better model of growing relations with NPCs as they adapt their tone and demeanor based on previous interactions. In this way, the possibilities are endless. We’d like to hear your ideas too. Bethesda can return to peak with Fallout 5 Image Credit: Bethesda Game Studios Bethesda is known for good games, and NPCs in some of its titles. But the studio also has a history of struggling with NPC realism. While titles like Skyrim and Fallout 4 featured improvements from previous titles, they still relied heavily on rigid scripting and predictable behavior. Bethesda developed Starfield before the AI *****, meaning it lacked access to the latest generative AI models. At the time, procedural generation was the primary method used to populate its massive world. But we now live in a different time. With AI capable of understanding context and generating human-like responses, Fallout 5 could set a new standard for RPG storytelling. With AI advancing at an unprecedented rate, it might be time to bring its uses into games. And that doesn’t mean in the field of replacing actual human work like game writing or designing. With the advancements of models like DeepSeek, we could soon interact with NPCs that truly feel alive. Source link #Todd #Howard #DeepSeek #Solve #Critical #Problem #Fallout #Haunts #Starfield #Spectre Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley | Silicon Valley ‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley | Silicon Valley George Gilder, bottom, argued that software was the purest expression of entrepreneurial genius. Illustration: Angelica Alzona/Guardian Design; Photos via Getty Images An influential Silicon Valley publication runs a cover story lamenting the “pussification” of tech. A major tech CEO lambasts a ****** civil rights leader’s calls for diversifying the tech workforce. Technologists rage against the “PC police”. No, this isn’t Silicon Valley in the age of Maga. It’s the tech industry of the 1990s, when observers first raised concerns about the rightwing bend of Silicon Valley and the potential for “technofascism”. Despite the industry’s (often undeserved) reputation for liberalism, its reactionary foundations were baked in almost from the beginning. As Silicon Valley enters a second Trump administration, the gendered roots of its original reactionary movement offer insight into today’s rightward turn. At the height of the dotcom mania in the 1990s, many critics warned of a creeping reactionary fervor. “Forget digital utopia,” wrote the longtime technology journalist Michael Malone, “we could be headed for techno-fascism.” Elsewhere, the writer Paulina Borsook called the valley’s worship of male power “a little reminiscent of the early celebrants of Eurofascism from the 1930s”. Their voices were largely drowned out by the techno-enthusiasts of the time, but Malone and Borsook were pointing to a vision of Silicon Valley built around a reverence for unlimited male power – and a major pushback when that power was challenged. At the root of this reactionary thinking was a writer and public intellectual named George Gilder. Gilder was one of Silicon Valley’s most vocal evangelists, as well as a popular “futurist” who forecasted coming technological trends. In 1996, he started an investment newsletter that became so popular that it generated rushes on stocks from his readers, in a process that became known as the “Gilder effect”. Gilder was also a longtime social conservative who brought his politics to Silicon Valley. He had first made his name in the 1970s as an anti-feminist provocateur and a mentee of the conservative stalwart William F Buckley. At a time when women were entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers, he wrote books that argued that traditional gender roles needed to be restored, and he blamed social issues such as poverty on the breakdown of the nuclear family. (He also blamed federal ******** programs, especially those that funded single mothers, claiming they turned men into “cuckolds of the state”). In 1974, the National Organization for Women named him “Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year”; Gilder wore it as a badge of pride. At the turn of the 1980s, Gilder celebrated the links between capitalism, entrepreneurship and the nuclear family. He claimed that entrepreneurs were the most moral and benevolent people in society, because they put products into the world without a guarantee of return – and then reinvested the profit back into the economy. George Gilder during a 1981 interview in Boston. Photograph: Santi Visalli/Getty Images For Gilder, entrepreneurship was also a route to rejecting the ******** state and restoring the male breadwinner role in society. He insisted that men were biologically and socially more suited to entrepreneurship than women, and that a societal emphasis on entrepreneurship could thus help restore the traditional nuclear family structure with its rigid gender breakdown. Drawing on religious language (Gilder himself was a devout Christian), he wrote that entrepreneurs are the humans who “know the rules of the world and the laws of God”. Gilder was far from the first person to celebrate the cultural figure of the entrepreneur, nor was he the first to link it with masculinity. As the scholar Michael Kimmel has shown, the ideal of the “self-made man” has been central to American conceptions of masculinity for almost 200 years. The ideal has also always been linked to the “male breadwinner” role in the nuclear family. More recently, in the 20th century, the economist Joseph Schumpeter had developed a theory of capitalism based around entrepreneurs (although he also had a far more pessimistic vision of capitalism, believing it would collapse over time). But at a time when American industrialism was in decline, Gilder helped revitalize a fervor for entrepreneurship and a belief in the moral power of entrepreneurs over industrial workers and company men. Increasingly, Gilder claimed that entrepreneurs were better suited to lead the country into the future than the “experts” found in academia or government. Gilder’s 1981 book Wealth and Poverty became known as the ****** of the Reagan administration, and Reagan began incorporating praise of entrepreneurship into his own speeches. (“If I didn’t know better,” Reagan once stated, “I would be tempted to say that ‘entrepreneur’ is another word for ‘America’.”) Throughout the decade, Reagan used the mythology of entrepreneurship to justify trickle-down economics and cuts to federal ******** programs. Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, in 1978. Photograph: Mirrorpix/Getty Images As Gilder became swept up in his own ideas about entrepreneurship, he turned his attention to Silicon Valley. The bourgeoning hi-tech industry, he began claiming, was the purest expression of entrepreneurship in the world. It’s not surprising that Gilder would be drawn to the tech industry in Santa Clara county, California. The state had its own powerful mythologies of masculinity and power. It was the end of the vast frontier, the end of manifest destiny. And it was the place of the former gold rush, where (white) men had struck it rich in the 19th century. It was also, counterintuitively, the birthplace of much of the modern conservative movement, including Reagan’s political career. Turning entrepreneurs into stars Gilder was publishing his ideas at a time when IPOs were creating instant wealth for startup founders at unprecedented speeds. The new riches added to Silicon Valley’s allure and seemed to underscore the draw of entrepreneurship in the world of high tech. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, other media outlets took up Gilder’s framing: tech entrepreneurs offered a hopeful way forward for the American economy, for masculinity, and for human progress writ large. Time magazine drew directly on Gilder’s vision of entrepreneurship to promote the then up-and-coming businessman Steve Jobs. The 1982 cover story called Jobs one of “America’s risk takers” who were not only striking it rich, but also “leading the US into the industries of the 21st century”. The article quoted Gilder, citing his claim that “the potentialities of invention and enterprise are now greater than ever before in human history”. Stories like this one did multiple duty for readers: they helped justify the rapidly growing wealth of a new class of tech businessmen; they inspired a new generation of readers to follow the same path; and they reinforced a cultural image of what entrepreneurs looked like (largely young, white men). This type of coverage accelerated as Silicon Valley entrepreneurs began turning from hardware to software. As the tech journalist Dave Kaplan wrote at the time, software “needed neither factory to build nor natural resources to mine – just [the] brain matter” of the entrepreneur behind the company. Tech culture increasingly gave the star treatment to young entrepreneurs whose success boiled down to a few thousand lines of computer code. Indeed, Gilder argued that software was the purest expression of entrepreneurial genius – an informational world of the mind, free from the material constraints of time and space. In the mid-1990s, the media discovered a young, newly rich entrepreneur named Marc Andreessen, who had recently made millions in the IPO of his company Netscape. As an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, Andreessen was on a team that built a new, user-friendly browser for the young world wide web. They called it Mosaic, and it consisted of merely 9,000 lines of code (compared to the approximately 8m lines required to run Windows computers at the time). In 1994, Andreessen moved to Silicon Valley and launched a commercial version of the browser called Netscape Navigator. In 1995, Netscape went public, earning the 24-year-old Andreessen $58m overnight. Marc Andreessen in San Jose, California, in 1998. Photograph: Bromberger Hoover Photography/Getty Images When he was just 24, the media embraced Andreessen as a fully formed genius, as someone genuinely deserving of his newfound wealth, and as a leader of America’s future. Andreessen graced the cover of a 1996 Time magazine issue, declaring an era of “Golden Geeks”. The article promised that the new era of Silicon Valley would “reward the people capitalism is supposed to reward – dynamic entrepreneurs, not rapacious monopolists or financial card-sharks”. Dipping into the mythology of Hollywood to make its case, the article claimed that the newly wealthy entrepreneurs represented “a Frank Capra movie, not [the movie] Wall Street”. Entrepreneurs could often translate this coverage into direct financial gain. In an industry increasingly built around ideas, hype was everything. As the Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison, said at the time: “There’s no place like Silicon Valley, where your talents can be magnified, and the projection of that magnification is cash.” The worshipful treatment of entrepreneurs thus directly brought them more power, and it continued to inspire young men to follow the same path. Fighting political correctness The entrepreneurial hype of the 90s rarely mentioned gender or overt rightwing politics. But the reactionary elements of the entrepreneurial ideal became visible whenever the growing power of tech entrepreneurs was challenged. In this way, Silicon Valley was part of a broader trend of fighting against “political correctness” – that is, a focus on inclusion and avoiding offense to people who had traditionally been marginalized. Throughout the decade, Silicon Valley not only became a leading space for a war on the “PC police”, but entrepreneurs also came to represent some of the biggest anti-PC culture warriors. It was often the most enthusiastically pro-entrepreneurial voices who were also the biggest anti-diversity fighters. This dual impulse was evident in the magazine Upside, a tech business publication founded in 1989 by two young conservatives who were friends of Gilder’s. They quickly gained a small but influential list of subscribers, including the legendary venture capitalist Arthur Rock, the Intel co-founder Robert Noyce, and the conservative luminary William F Buckley. From the beginning, the editorial team was both a champion for entrepreneurship and a set of “bullish contrarians” against anyone they felt threatened their specific vision of business. In one infamous case, the magazine published a 1990 cover story that in bold letters asked: “Has Silicon Valley gone ******?” The article itself, titled “The pussification of Silicon Valley”, claimed that the hi-tech industry was falling victim to feminization and political correctness. The writers claimed they weren’t opposed to women and minorities in business, but they were opposed to a kind of “new-age male” who was “sensitive and concerned, a whiner”. The authors also reveled in the discomfort and outrage their use of the word “******” had generated among the women on their own staff, and they bragged that their female assistant editor threatened to lead a walkout of female employees over the story. The solution to the problem, they claimed, was the reassertion of an older, glorified “anti-******” approach to business – one that prioritized masculine traits like fighting, risk-taking, and being “blunt” and “tough”. (One of the driving forces behind the cover story was Michael Malone, the journalist who later warned of rising “technofascism” in the Valley. By the turn of the century, Malone acknowledged his own previous role in fueling this “fascism” and expressed regret about the “******” piece.) Technicians assemble electronic equipment at Cypress Semiconductor in California. Photograph: Jim Sugar/Getty Images Entrepreneurs also directly took on the mantle of the culture wars. None more so than TJ Rodgers, the CEO of a firm called Cypress Semiconductor. Rodgers has largely been erased from Silicon Valley’s memory, but in the 1980s and 1990s, he was one of its biggest celebrities. His company was a highly successful microchip manufacturer, but its success was inseparable from his own rising star. As Upside described it, Cypress’s “most famous product” was “the outspoken TJ himself”. Rodgers had quickly learned the art of garnering business media attention. In 1988, he staged a press event in which he gave out about $300,000 in gold coins to his employees. In 1990, when the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, visited northern California, Rodgers ran a full-page ad in a local news outlet inviting him to the Cypress campus to show him the wonders of capitalism. Throughout the 1990s, the outspoken businessman generated highly visible media spectacles based around his rejection of political correctness and demands for increased diversity in Silicon Valley. In 1996, a nun named Sister Doris Gormley sent a form letter to the CEO of a Silicon Valley company. She informed the CEO that she was a shareholder and that she would withhold her vote for the company’s board because it included no gender or racial diversity. Rodgers wrote a letter in response, which he broadcast to other shareholders and reprinted in media publications. In the letter, he told the nun she “ought to get down from your moral high horse” and claimed: “Your views seem more accurately described as ‘politically correct’ than ‘Christian’.” He also stirred up controversy in 1999 when the civil rights activist and politician Jesse Jackson came to Silicon Valley, hoping to help increase ****** and Hispanic participation in the hi-tech workforce. Jackson’s non-profit organization planned to buy $100,000 worth of stock in 50 hi-tech corporations, which would give Jackson access to annual shareholder meetings. In response, Rodgers went on a local media tour calling Jackson an opportunist and rejecting the need for diversity in tech. On local TV, Rodgers described Jackson as “a seagull that flies in, craps on everything and flies out”. Collectively, these efforts successfully generated controversy and attention. They showed that, in a world increasingly based on individual personalities and the ability to grab (mostly white, male) investors’ attention, politically incorrect showmanship could be good for business. One of Upside’s editors correctly predicted that the “******” article was “the one that’s going to make us famous”. Intel’s Andy Grove called Rodgers a “master manipulator of the press”. The efforts also helped stave off perceived threats to the growing power of male entrepreneurs. Upside readers lauded the magazine for its coverage of “pussification”, calling it one of the best articles they had read in years and thanking the editorial team for crossing the line of good taste. And in response to his stunts, Rodgers received hundreds of letters of support, including from the chairs of Hewlett-Packard and Advanced Micro Devices, two of Silicon Valley’s most powerful firms at the time. Dozens of investors likewise committed to increasing their holdings of Cypress stock as a direct result of his actions. This rising “technofascism”, as critics of the time had called it, was temporarily staved off by the dotcom stock market ****** of 2000. George Gilder’s reputation was badly damaged after he failed to predict the ******. And much of the hype around digital tech was temporarily tempered after hundreds of startups went bust. But a younger generation of aspiring tech hopefuls had already come to the valley, seeking fame, riches, and power. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and others had absorbed the lessons of the 90s. At the start of the new millennium, they were ready to put their stamp on the future, guided by reactionary dreams of the past. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk were among attendees at Donald Trump’s second inauguration. Photograph: Abaca/Rex/Shutterstock The Silicon Valley titans of 2025 are following the same blueprint. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta was ending its DEI programs and changing its platform policies to allow more discriminatory and harassing posts. On Joe Rogan’s podcast, Zuckerberg made his motivations clear: he claimed that corporate culture had moved away from “masculine energy” and needed to reinstate it after getting “neutered”. Elon Musk has reshaped Twitter into X, a platform in large part operating as a response to claims of a “woke mind virus”– the newest iteration of “political correctness”. And Marc Andreessen himself, the “boy genius” of the 1990s, has increasingly drawn inspiration from the Italian futurists, a movement of fascist artists in the early 20th century who glorified technology while seeking to “demolish” feminism. But the history of the valley suggests this isn’t a blip or an anomaly. It’s a crescendo of forces central to the tech industry, and the current wave of rightwing tech titans are building on Silicon Valley’s foundations. Becca Lewis is a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University, where she also received her PhD in communication. She is writing a book on the rise of reactionary politics in Silicon Valley and online Source link #Headed #technofascism #rightwing #roots #Silicon #Valley #Silicon #Valley Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Book Review: ‘Talk,’ by Alison Wood Brooks Book Review: ‘Talk,’ by Alison Wood Brooks She also warns about “candidate answers,” a kind of leading the witness, in which one asks an open-ended question only to narrow it down in anticipation. (As in: Why are you reading a book about how to improve your conversations? Do you think you have room to grow, or are you just hoping to feel superior?) I realized that I curtail my questions this way all the time; leaving them open has actually expanded the answers I receive. Brooks is a companionable writer, and she’s alive to the absurdity inherent in her project. Talk is messy, and good talk messier still; templates, instructions and guardrails are generally self-defeating. Kant, she notes, hosted dinners that adhered to a strict script: Guests spoke during the first course of headlines and the weather before proceeding, with their entrees, to politics and the sciences. Dessert came with “jesting.” Games, beer and music were forbidden; lulls were unpardonable. Though Brooks lauds the philosopher’s ambition, she prefers her conversations faster and ******* — something, she says, like Arlie Hochschild’s description of “the jazz of human exchange.” But I couldn’t hear the jazz in “Talk”’s pages of diagrams and graphs, among them a “conversational compass,” a “topic pyramid” and a “chart of emotions.” Brooks’s rigid, evidence-based approach means that she must frequently write things that I suspect she would find obvious or trite in conversation, such as, “It’s not just about choosing topics, but also deciding what to say about them.” By the time I read that talking like a rude cop at a traffic stop “is likely to make your friends, your romantic partner, your mom and everyone else uncomfortable in less charged circumstances, too,” I was about ready to take a vow of silence. Parts of “Talk” feel designed not to help humans communicate but to train A.I. This is especially evident in the section on levity, which advises “livening up your texts by sending Onion headlines to your friends” and imitating the outsize reactions of “Seinfeld” characters. Is this what it feels like to be optimized? I don’t know why I say half the things I say, and I often want my conversations to roam elsewhere, but to make “spreadsheets filled with promising topics to raise with strangers,” as some of Brooks’s students do, would make me feel even less human than I already do. Source link #Book #Review #Talk #Alison #Wood #Brooks Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Gunman opens fire in Indiana grocery store, killing 2 Gunman opens fire in Indiana grocery store, killing 2 Gunman opens fire in Indiana grocery store, killing 2 Source link #Gunman #opens #fire #Indiana #grocery #store #killing Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

When ‘Saturday Night Live’ Laughs at Itself When ‘Saturday Night Live’ Laughs at Itself In one of the most popular sketches of the last few seasons of “Saturday Night Live,” Heidi Gardner lost it. Playing a sober-faced news anchor, she suddenly broke character, convulsing in laughter after seeing her cast mate Mikey Day sitting in the audience of a town hall dressed up to look like Butt-Head from “Beavis and Butt-Head”: In an interview about this viral moment, she described feeling guilty about it. Lorne Michaels, the longtime producer of the sketch show, has a reputation for hating it when cast members break character. But over 50 seasons, so many “S.N.L.” performers have done just that (some repeatedly) that it has become one of the show’s signature moves, inadvertent or not — one that usually delights the studio audience and viewers at home. Bill Hader, who often broke, has said, “I think Lorne secretly loved it.” In general, breaking during a performance, whether it’s a play or a sketch, is considered unprofessional. The argument is that it panders for laughs, destroys the suspension of disbelief and draws attention to the person laughing at the expense of the scene. “30 Rock” used Tracy Morgan, a former “S.N.L.” cast member, to mock the phony mischievousness of breaking: The case for it is, well, it works. The audience loved it when Gardner lost her composure. And breaking figures in some of the funniest sketches in the history of the show. As Debbie Downer on a family vacation at Disney World, Rachel Dratch cracks up early and often, but seeing her recover only speeds up the momentum of this comic gem: Jimmy Fallon, the cast member most famous for breaking, couldn’t keep it together either: According to Christian Schneider, who co-hosts “Wasn’t That Special,” a podcast reviewing every season of the show, the first “S.N.L.” break was a muffled chuckle by Chevy Chase in the third episode of the first year: He made it about two-thirds of the way through a P.S.A. for the “Droolers Anti-Defamation League.” The most memorable examples of breaking fall into two camps: laughing because a sketch is extremely good or terribly bad. A notorious disaster happened when Eddie Murphy was dying during a nightclub sketch, and after Joe Piscopo tossed some food at him … … he dropped his character completely and yelled in an exasperated baritone: “This is live television!” It didn’t save the scene, but he at least made it interesting in a way that only live television can. One reason people like breaking is it gives them a peek behind the curtain. In this absurd restaurant sketch, Adam Sandler plays an apprentice pepper grinder taught by Dana Carvey. As Chris Farley hams it up as a customer, you hear the more seasoned cast member Carvey do some additional mentoring, quietly telling him not to laugh — but still in character, with an Italian accent: For die-hard “S.N.L.” fans, these moments add a meta layer of fun. You see the dynamic of the cast as well as that between characters. In some sketches, the cast appears to be working harder to make each other laugh than the audience. This was often the case with Stefon, the popular club-kid character created by Hader and John Mulaney, a former writer on the show: Some cast members were known for breaking everyone up. Farley destroyed many deadpans, as in the instantly legendary Matt Foley sketch: Will Ferrell had a similar reputation. When he played an office worker honoring America after 9/11 with a red, white and blue thong, he was the only one onstage who kept a straight face: There is sadistic fun in watching Ferrell’s drawn-out line readings undo his co-stars Dratch, Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler and Horatio Sanz. And it only increases when you learn that he set them up by wearing a less revealing outfit in the rehearsal. Jason Sudeikis brought a similar dynamic to the running Scared Straight scenes. Sudeikis, playing a police chief … … always tried to break up Hader, Andy Samberg and Bobby Moynihan at the end by hopping on a desk and asking: “You boys learned your lesson?” For regular “S.N.L.” viewers, it gives the sketch some added suspense. Breaking works if it feels genuine. But it can grate and come off as indulgent when done quickly. Witness Fallon and Sanz in this misguided sketch about leather salesmen: Fallon also breaks in one of his only lines in the irresistible cowbell sketch, in which Christopher Walken plays a ’70s music producer with a fever, its prescription now known to millions. During his time on “Saturday Night Live,” Fallon cracking up onscreen became an enduring aspect of his cultural reputation. It’s a more jarring jolt when a normally controlled “S.N.L.” veteran loses it. When the stoic comic virtuoso Phil Hartman broke playing Frankenstein’s monster, it was so rare that it doubled the impact of an already funny sketch: Similarly, Kristen Wiig cracked up so many of her co-stars over her seven seasons on the show, it felt well-earned (or even karmic) when she couldn’t help giggling at a rubber chicken: Then there are those who fought the good fight and succeeded. Chris Parnell was the only one who kept his composure in the famous cowbell sketch. And Vanessa Bayer was impressively disciplined on several episodes, including sticking to character beside a breaking Hader in an ill-fated holiday sketch: The sequence itself was so weak, it never made it to air — it was released online. But it includes my very favorite example of breaking. The sketch features Hader and Fred Armisen as apartment building doormen during the Christmas season. The humor leans largely on the thin foundation of their thick accents as they make annoying small talk with families, and the performers seem to lose faith in the comedy quickly. Flailing through a long story about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Armisen stares right at the child actor and completely loses it, laughing in his face. The boy stood there and didn’t budge, a feat of professionalism in the face of this comedian losing it. There’s something about this juxtaposition that, well, can make you break. Breaking is a failure. That’s also its appeal. After all, human weakness is comedy’s greatest subject. Michaels knows this. Just check out a 1996 episode when the presidential candidate Bob Dole makes a cameo in a sketch with Norm Macdonald playing him. Michaels shows up, and if you look closely you can see him breaking: Source link #Saturday #Night #Live #Laughs Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Leaving the W.H.O. Could Hurt Americans on a Range of Health Matters Leaving the W.H.O. Could Hurt Americans on a Range of Health Matters President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization could have harsh consequences for countries around the world that rely on the agency to achieve important health goals, including routine immunizations, outbreak control and nutrition programs. But it could also have unfortunate, unintended repercussions for Americans. Disengaging from the W.H.O. would rob the United States of crucial information about emerging outbreaks like mpox and resurgent dangers like malaria and measles, public health experts said. It may also give more power to nations like Russia and China in setting a global health agenda, and it could hurt the interests of American pharmaceutical and health technology companies. The W.H.O.’s work touches American lives in myriad ways. The agency compiles the International Classification of Diseases, the system of diagnostic codes used by doctors and insurance companies. It assigns generic names to medicines that are recognizable worldwide. Its extensive flu surveillance network helps select the seasonal flu vaccine each year. The agency also closely tracks resistance to antibiotics and other drugs, keeps American travelers apprised of health threats, and studies a wide range of issues such as teen mental health, substance use and aging, which may then inform policies in the United States. “There’s a reason why there was a W.H.O.,” said Loyce Pace, who served as an assistant secretary of health and human services under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “It’s because we saw value, even as a superpower, in the wake of the world war to come together as a global community on global problems.” “America, no matter how great we are, cannot do this work alone,” she said. Though it will take a year for the withdrawal to take effect — and it is not entirely clear that it can happen without congressional approval — Mr. Trump’s announcement has already prompted drastic cost-cutting measures at the W.H.O. In a memo to employees, the director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced a hiring freeze and limited renegotiation of major contracts, adding that more measures would follow. He also said all meetings without prior approval should be fully virtual from now on and “missions to provide technical support to countries should be limited to the most essential.” Late Sunday night, employees of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were instructed, effective immediately, to stop engaging with the W.H.O. in any way. The employees were later told not to participate in meetings or even email conversations that included W.H.O. staff. The W.H.O. is often criticized as a lumbering bureaucracy, too conservative in its approach and too slow to action. Mr. Trump cited the organization’s “mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic” as one of the main reasons the United States is pulling out. Many public health experts have for decades called for reforms of the agency, noting that it is too timid in calling out its members’ missteps, holds a rigid view of what constitutes medical evidence and has too many areas of focus. The criticisms escalated during the pandemic, when the W.H.O. was months late in acknowledging that the coronavirus was airborne and that the virus could spread in the absence of symptoms. Yet there is no other organization that can match the W.H.O.’s reach or influence in the world, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, who has worked with the W.H.O. for decades, including as a former C.D.C. director. “Are there lots of things they could be better at? Of course,” he said. But, he added, “are they indispensable? Yes.” For all its scope, the W.H.O. has a relatively modest budget, totaling about $6.8 billion for 2024 and 2025. For comparison, the health department of the tiny state of Rhode Island spent just over $6 billion in 2024 alone. The United States is the W.H.O.’s largest donor, accounting for nearly 15 percent of its planned budget. In the executive order, Mr. Trump complained that the W.H.O. “continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments,” adding that China contributes nearly 90 percent less. Both of those assertions are inaccurate. The obligatory fees are calculated according to each country’s population and income, using a formula approved by member states. For the two-year 2024-25 budget, that amount was $264 million for the United States and $181 million for China, a difference of about 31 percent. Mr. Trump’s claim that China pays much less may have been based on voluntary contributions, which are usually motivated by specific interests such as polio eradication: The United States has so far provided $442 million in voluntary contributions for 2024-25, while China has given only $2.5 million. Even so, China’s total contribution is about 74 percent less than the United States’, not 90 percent. Mr. Trump’s decision was “not based on sound, factual ground,” said Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand and former administrator of the United Nations Development Program. On Monday, the Trump administration halted the distribution of H.I.V. drugs purchased with U.S. aid. Abruptly ending treatment will jeopardize the health of people living with H.I.V. and lead to more infections and may drive resistance to available medications, health experts warned. The W.H.O.’s programs monitor drug resistance worldwide to antibiotics and medications for H.I.V., malaria and other diseases. “These are not invincible drugs, and having that ability to know when resistance occurs and why we need to change strategies can be very important,” said Dr. Meg Doherty, who directs W.H.O. programs on H.I.V. and ********* transmitted infections. “They are things that people in the United States should be aware of and should be concerned could come to them in the future,” she said. If the United States loses access to the W.H.O.’s information and data sharing, online reports and informal communications may fill some of the void, but they may be muffled, filtered or marred by misinformation. And the W.H.O. and other countries are not obligated to share information, such as genetic sequences, with the United States, let alone heed its advice, if the country is not a member. “If we’re not there, we don’t get to have a voice at all,” Dr. Frieden said. The W.H.O. began in 1948 as a branch of the United Nations focused on global health. Over the decades, it led the eradication of smallpox, nearly vanquished polio and has helped control use of tobacco and trans fats. Countries that do not have the equivalent of a C.D.C. or a Food and Drug Administration rely on the W.H.O. for public health guidelines, childhood vaccinations and drug approvals, among many other health efforts. “Ministries of health typically won’t move unless there’s a W.H.O. guideline,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Duke Global Health Institute and an adviser to the W.H.O. That dynamic has implications for American businesses, allowing pharmaceutical and health technology companies to operate in countries that adhere closely to W.H.O. recommendations, said Anil Soni, chief executive of the W.H.O. Foundation, an independent entity that facilitates partnerships and funding for the organization. “The U.S. won’t be at the table to set the evidence and quality standards that enable competitive positioning of U.S. companies and directly lead to U.S. business,” Mr. Soni said. Mr. Trump and others have criticized the W.H.O. for not holding China accountable early in the pandemic, and for taking too long to declare the Covid-19 pandemic a public health emergency. But the W.H.O. cannot reprimand its member countries, noted Ms. Clark, who was a co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which led an inquiry into the W.H.O.’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. “W.H.O. has no power to compel countries to do anything,” Ms. Clark said. “It has only the power of persuasion. China was not transparent, and that hindered W.H.O.’s response.” Mr. Trump has also said that China has too much influence over the W.H.O. But “actually, the real problem is that tiny Pacific islands with 100,000 people have too much power,” Dr. Frieden said. “W.H.O. works by consensus, and so any country can throw a monkey wrench in and stop proceedings,” he said. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump can unilaterally sever ties with the W.H.O. Unlike most international agreements, which may stem from executive action or require Senate ratification, membership in the W.H.O. was enshrined by a congressional joint resolution and may have to be dissolved in the same way. “There’s a very good argument to be made that the president cannot do this himself — that is, without congressional participation,” said David Wirth, a former State Department official and an expert in foreign relations law at Boston College. If Congress approves, the United States must still give one-year notice of withdrawal and fulfill its financial obligations for the year. Some experts worry that Mr. Trump’s action will prompt nations like Hungary and Argentina, whose leaders are ideologically similar, to follow suit. Already, Italy’s deputy prime minister has proposed a law to leave the W.H.O. U.S. withdrawal may also empower authoritarian member states in the organization, like Russia and China. Public health decisions in Russia and China are “much more politically controlled, and that’s a danger to everybody,” Dr. Beyrer said. “None of us wants to live in a world where Russia has a larger voice in global health governance.” In his executive order, Mr. Trump said the United States would cease negotiations on amendments to the International Health Regulations, legally binding rules for countries to report emerging outbreaks to the W.H.O. But the latest amendments were adopted by the World Health Assembly last year and are expected to come into force in September. Ironically, it was the first Trump administration that proposed the amendments because of frustration with the lack of transparency from certain countries during Covid-19, said Ms. Pace, who oversaw negotiations during the Biden administration. Ms. Pace also led negotiations for a pandemic treaty that would allow countries to work together during an international crisis. The treaty had been stalled and may now collapse. Source link #Leaving #W.H.O #Hurt #Americans #Range #Health #Matters Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

In ‘A Complete Unknown,’ Bob Dylan’s Politics Are Blowin’ in the Wind In ‘A Complete Unknown,’ Bob Dylan’s Politics Are Blowin’ in the Wind It might at first seem obvious why filmmakers won’t leave the subject of Bob Dylan alone. Search “Dylan” and “movies,” and the list — from documentaries like “Don’t Look Back” (1967) to fictionalized treatments like “I’m Not There” (2007) — turns out to be surprisingly extensive. The man was one of our most idiosyncratic and arresting artists during a revolutionary ******* in our popular music. And for all its diffidence and evasiveness, his was the work most often held up as Important — no small claim in the realm of pop music, especially then — and he was the one ratified as profound, even before the Nobel Committee’s intervention. What actor doesn’t want to play a charismatically elusive genius? What director wouldn’t like to imagine himself or herself as a kindred spirit? But there are other reasons Dylan remains snagged in our collective consciousness, especially now. Though at least two of his songs — “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’” — have been irrevocably shanghaied as the examples of Protest Songs of the ’60s, his more fundamental role might have been to serve as America’s political songwriter for the apolitical. The lyrics for the albums “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited” are not only irreverently funny and freewheeling in their pillaging of high and low culture, but they’re also sardonic, ambiguous and offhand. They’re the opposite of earnest, and when they point out problems, they do it with a shrug. Like many of his countrymen and women, he periodically registered with clarity or even outrage the state of the status quo, but he mostly dismissed any notion that he should extend his fretting over it. Those two albums were recorded roughly in the ******* covered by James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown,” the most recent cinematic tribute to Dylan, starring Timothée Chalamet, and the latest stone added to the Everest of such works. Though the drama begins and ends with Dylan’s devotion to Woody Guthrie’s work, the movie makes vividly clear how much more anarchic and exciting Dylan seemed than folk music’s other standard bearers, singer-songwriters like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, since they were stuck not only lamenting injustice but also promoting an agenda for social change. Dylan’s lyrics, on the other hand, mostly seemed to suggest It’s All Absurd or, more pointedly, They’re All *********, a sentiment that adorned more than a few political lawn signs in 2024. A huge number of our cultural heroes, fictional and otherwise, have prided themselves on not being political, on their individuality as their ultimate value. Think of our western heroes, or our private eyes, or the way so many presidential candidates, the very definition of the triumphant insider, try to position themselves as outsiders. And as anyone who has attended one of his concerts knows, the central characteristic of Dylan’s career has been to not do what’s expected of him, even to the extent of putting out one of the most godawful Christmas albums in the history of the genre. Dylan’s version of rebellion much more resembles that of Brando’s in “The Wild One.” When asked, “Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” Brando famously replied “Whaddaya got?” In “A Complete Unknown,” that same orneriness causes Dylan to rebel against the expectation that he will be a crusader for social justice, a rebellion we’re encouraged to support. Bob Dylan should be allowed to be Bob Dylan, after all, and we Dylan fans know that going electric enabled some of his greatest music. Poor Pete Seeger and Joan Baez are portrayed as sweet and well meaning but also comparatively pallid and hopelessly unprepared for the ferocity of the tumult that’s about to upend American life. But while valorizing yourself as unwilling to dance to someone else’s tune might make you sound like a revolutionary, and even make you sympathetic to revolutionary impulses, it also most likely leaves you poorly suited to contributing to collective action. Source link #Complete #Unknown #Bob #Dylans #Politics #Blowin #Wind Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

ASML reports €28.3 billion total net sales and €7.6 billion net income in 2024 – GlobeNewswire ASML reports €28.3 billion total net sales and €7.6 billion net income in 2024 – GlobeNewswire ASML reports €28.3 billion total net sales and €7.6 billion net income in 2024 GlobeNewswireASML shares jump 11% as surge in orders defies fears of DeepSeek hitting AI chip demand CNBCASML Stock Jumps 10% as Strong Q4 Earnings Ease AI Demand Concerns Yahoo FinanceASML bookings blow past expectations as profit climbs 32% MarketWatchASML Orders Beat Estimates as Concern Over DeepSeek’s AI Grows Bloomberg Source link #ASML #reports #billion #total #net #sales #billion #net #income #GlobeNewswire Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Elon Musk Suggests SpaceX Will Accelerate Return of NASA Astronauts Elon Musk Suggests SpaceX Will Accelerate Return of NASA Astronauts In a post on X on Tuesday evening, Elon Musk said President Trump had asked his rocket company SpaceX to bring home “as soon as possible” two NASA astronauts who have been on the International Space Station since June. SpaceX, in fact, is already scheduled to bring those two astronauts home, but no earlier than late March, along with two other astronauts who are currently on board. NASA has not responded to questions about whether it was indeed working to have those astronauts come home sooner, which could leave the space station understaffed. Hours later, Mr. Trump in his own post on the website Truth Social, confirmed the request, stating that “Elon will soon be on his way,” without setting a time frame for a return trip. The astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, docked at the space station in June. Their trip was not supposed to last much longer than a week or two in orbit as part of a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. But because Starliner’s propulsion system malfunctioned during the trip there, NASA repeatedly extended the pair’s stay as engineers tried to figure out what had gone wrong. In his posting, Mr. Musk added, “Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.” In his Truth Social post, Mr. Trump echoed that sentiment, claiming that Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore had been “virtually abandoned in space by the Biden administration.” In fact, the space station has been resupplied four times since the two arrived. Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator during the Biden administration, did not respond to an email seeking comment. Lingering unease with the vehicle led NASA officials to decide that Starliner would return to Earth without Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore, who remained in orbit as part of the space station crew. At that time, Mr. Nelson said the foremost concern of NASA officials was the safety of Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore. The Starliner landed without problems on Sept. 7. Two extra astronauts in orbit led NASA and its international partners to juggle the next crew heading to the space station on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, a mission called Crew-9. Astronauts generally spend about half a year on the space station before returning on the same spacecraft they flew on to get there. But because Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore no longer had a ride home, two of the four astronauts originally assigned for Crew-9 were left on the ground when the mission launched on Sept. 28. That left two seats for Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore for the return trip, which was then expected in February. Before astronauts return, NASA prefers that their replacements arrive first to avoid periods of understaffing, which hampers scientific research on the space station and potentially leaves the smaller crew overwhelmed in case of an emergency. If something on the NASA side of the outpost broke and required a spacewalk to repair, there would just be one NASA astronaut aboard — Don Pettit — to perform the task. That would be dangerous, as spacewalks are usually conducted in pairs. The two Russian astronauts on board could help, but they are less familiar with those systems. For the next astronaut launch, Crew-10, SpaceX has been planning to use a brand-new Crew Dragon. But in December, NASA announced that SpaceX needed more time to finish manufacturing and testing of the new capsule and that the return of Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore had been delayed again, to late March. NASA has avoided calling the astronauts “stranded,” as Mr. Musk did in his post. The space agency has repeatedly insisted that Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore are in good health and that their extended stay falls well within the range of other astronauts’ times in orbit. Speeding up the return might present NASA officials with difficult choices. They could leave the station understaffed, with just three astronauts — two Russians, one American — instead of the usual complement of seven, until the new Crew Dragon arrives. In principle, NASA could have just Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore return and leave the other astronauts who launched in September in orbit. But that would leave those astronauts without a way to get back to Earth if they needed to evacuate. Or SpaceX could use one of its older Crew Dragons, possibly bumping astronauts from a scheduled flight to the space station in the spring on a private mission run by the company Axiom Space of Houston. Source link #Elon #Musk #Suggests #SpaceX #Accelerate #Return #NASA #Astronauts Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

After DeepSeek, Venture Capital Investors Face Questions About Their A.I. Bets After DeepSeek, Venture Capital Investors Face Questions About Their A.I. Bets Jordan Jacobs, an investor at the venture capital firm Radical Ventures, has spent the last few days fielding half a dozen calls from his firm’s investors. All of them wanted to know about DeepSeek, a ******** artificial intelligence app that topped the app stores over the weekend. DeepSeek had created a powerful A.I. model with far less money than most A.I. experts thought possible, upending many assumptions underlying the development of the fast-evolving technology. To calm the panic, Mr. Jacobs said he explained to his investors that Radical Ventures had long invested in more efficient A.I. models, similar to the one made by DeepSeek. “Let’s focus on the companies who are actually building real businesses, rather than the ones that are chasing science fiction,” Mr. Jacobs said he told them. Nvidia, Google, Meta and other giant tech companies have faced a barrage of questions about DeepSeek since last week as the ******** start-up toppled longstanding notions about A.I. But its repercussions are being felt beyond the largest firms, reaching into the venture capital industry that has bet big on the technology by plowing billions of dollars into A.I. start-ups. For two years, venture capital firms have been engaged in a funding frenzy, pouring more than $155 billion into A.I. start-ups between 2023 and 2024, according to PitchBook, which tracks start-ups. Two of those A.I. companies — OpenAI and Anthropic — have raised $24 billion and $16 billion with the goal of building A.I. that is as intelligent as humans. OpenAI’s valuation has hit $157 billion — more than Pfizer or Citigroup — while Anthropic’s valuation has reached $20 billion. What DeepSeek did has now called that funding fever into question. If a ******** upstart can create an app as powerful as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude chatbot with barely any money, why did those companies need to raise so much cash? “It’s not a good look right now” for some A.I. companies “given their talk about needing ever larger scale to come up with the best model,” said Matt Turck, an investor at FirstMark Capital. But, he added, A.I. companies would ultimately need money, computing power and infrastructure to serve their customers. Venture capitalists have debated the best way to invest in A.I. ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022. Some investors have argued that the technology underpinning ChatGPT and other products — often referred to as “foundation models” because they can power many applications, including chatbots, search engines and image generators — is not a good investment because the systems are expensive to create and easy for competitors to copy. Marc Andreessen, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz, last year called such systems a “race to the bottom” and speculated that building a business with this type of A.I. would be like “selling rice” where anyone can compete. With the hubbub caused by DeepSeek in recent days, venture capital investors who have not invested in foundation model companies like OpenAI and Anthropic — either because they anticipated the race to the bottom or because they did not have the money or opportunity — have used the moment to share their views. Eric Vishria, an investor at the venture firm Benchmark, said on social media on Monday that he believed foundation models were “the fastest depreciating asset in human history.” Anjney Midha, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz, wrote that DeepSeek showed “the current AI foundation model market structure is far from stable.” Investors who have backed foundation model companies defended their investments. Gavin Baker, an investor at Atreides Management, which has invested in Elon Musk’s A.I. start-up X.ai, said he felt good about his bet because A.I. companies are limited by how much data they can access. X.ai, he said, was in a strong position because it has its own unique source of data from the social network X, which Mr. Musk also owns. “For me, I feel very, very calm,” Mr. Baker said. Other tech leaders have dissected DeepSeek’s claim that it only spent $6 million to create its A.I. model, which is a fraction of what other companies spend. Some pointed fingers at regulation, including former President Biden’s A.I. executive order and California’s failed attempt to enact a state law on A.I., for trying to hold back the industry’s progress. They also bemoaned export restrictions on powerful A.I. chips as ineffective in stopping ******** tech advances. Some lashed out at so-called A.I. safety advocates, who have tried to slow the development of A.I. because of its potential risks to humanity. Others invoked patriotism and said DeepSeek was a sign that the United States needed to move faster in A.I. Still others saw the moment as an opportunity. Mr. Turck said DeepSeek’s breakthrough might be bad news for some of the largest A.I. companies, but it opened up possibilities for other firms that were just getting started. “The panic over the last few days is a dramatic overreaction,” he said in a message. Niko Bonatsos, a venture capital investor at General Catalyst, said in an interview that DeepSeek had energized start-ups. “If you are building anything that is touching A.I. and you haven’t been excited, obsessed, scared and sleep-deprived over the last four days, what planet are you living on?” he said. Mr. Bonatsos spent Monday morning on the phone with the founders of companies who had enthusiastically built their own “forked” versions of DeepSeek’s technology, meaning they had copied and customized it. Many of these start-ups were already building software on platforms developed by OpenAI and Anthropic, he said. DeepSeek had showed people new techniques for developing A.I. models that are cheaper to train and maintain, he said, which could lead to more competition and possibly some “creative destruction” for incumbents. “That’s capitalism,” Mr. Bonatsos said. Clément Delangue, the chief executive of Hugging Face, a start-up that allows A.I. companies to post projects and work together, said on Tuesday that more than 600 versions of the DeepSeek model had been created on his site in just a few days. Investors are bracing for more surprises in the coming weeks. A.I. is “such a dynamic space that there is something wild that happens almost every day,” Mr. Jacobs said. Cade Metz contributed reporting. Source link #DeepSeek #Venture #Capital #Investors #Face #Questions #A.I #Bets Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Sundance Made Park City the It Town. Now, It’s Moving. Sundance Made Park City the It Town. Now, It’s Moving. Amid all the talk of films, fires and the state of the Oscar race, one question has dominated Sundance 2025: Where will the festival move? Last April, the nonprofit behind Sundance, the pre-eminent festival for independent film held for the past 40 years in Park City, Utah, announced that it was exploring where else to hold the event in 2027 and beyond. The organizers then narrowed their choices to three spots: Salt Lake City, just 45 minutes away, along with a smaller presence in Park City; Boulder, Colo.; and Cincinnati. The final choice is expected to be announced in late March or early April. That has left festival goers, industry insiders and locals imagining what the change would mean for the city and the festival itself. The organizers have said, essentially, that the event has gotten too big for Park City. When Sundance arrives every January, it balloons the ski town of 8,200 full-time residents into a snowy circus, with over 20,000 people streaming in from around the globe. Hotel prices skyrocket, the streets become clogged with ****** S.U.V.s, and what should be a simple five-minute ride down Main Street can turn into a 30-minute crawl, especially when it snows, as it has at this year’s festival. The organizers have said they are looking for a new home that can house the growing festival while maintaining its roots. Sundance representatives declined to comment for this article. But nearly everyone in Park City for this year’s event, which runs through the weekend, seems to have an opinion on the change. Some question whether coastal elites who trek to Utah would travel to Cincinnati in January. Others ask whether Boulder has the infrastructure to support a growing festival. And still more wonder if Sundance should be contemplating Utah or Ohio at all, considering the states’ conservative political leanings don’t align with Sundance’s commitment to celebrating diverse voices in an inclusive environment. For Park City’s full-time residents, many of whom have grown up with the film festival, the idea of it leaving seems unimaginable. “It’s heartbreaking,” said Ryan Williams, 37, an art dealer in town and the son of a former mayor. “Park City is not the most diverse place, not just in skin color but also in thought. And the thing that happens during Sundance is people are open, they are ready to connect and there’s this magic. We have people from all over the world here: different colors, different cultures. It’s this beautiful gift that we’re given each year.” Sundance has a significant effect on the Utah economy. Out-of-state visitors spent $106.4 million with the total economic impact reaching $132 million, according to a report released by the festival after last year’s 10-day event. That impact included 1,730 jobs for Utah residents. Many locals are still holding out hope that Sundance chooses the Salt Lake City option, because Park City would still hold some ancillary events. That could be why some local groups, such as Park City Chamber of Commerce, declined to comment on any possible move before a decision has been made. Not everyone in Park City is upset about the festival leaving town. Blaire Isleib, 42, the co-owner of Flight, a women’s boutique on Main Street, said Sundance no longer brought in additional sales for her store, in part because her front door is often being blocked by big trucks that clog the main street while they load in the pop-up shops that operate on the street for the week. That extra traffic keeps local patrons and the ski tourists away. The Sundance folks? Not big retail shoppers. “It’s definitely not our moneymaking time anymore,” she said. It is a big moneymaker for Hudson Valeriano, the owner of Rio Transportation, a car service offering luxury rides to people headed to Park City. The loss of Sundance would mean an annual 30 percent decline in business, he said. During the festival his fleet of seven S.U.V.s is constantly in motion, with clients often booking his drivers all day long, to shuttle them from event to event. (When Sundance isn’t in season, the majority of his business is hauling people between the ski town and the Salt Lake City airport.) “We’re going to have to change the style of the company,” he said, adding that he intends to focus it more on the ski tourists, which he believes will offset the 30 percent loss by about 10 percent. For Meagan Nash, a restaurateur and caterer, the loss of Sundance in Park City will be a significant hit to her revenue. Ms. Nash, 43, opened her restaurant Handle with her partners in 2014, after spending a few years catering for various Sundance events. The first weekend of this year’s festival was packed with special events — she counted at least eight private meals, hosting various production companies and media brands. And while it isn’t her biggest month of the year — that’s March, when the weather warms and families descend for spring break — the revenue generated by Sundance boosts her business during an otherwise slow *******. “Sundance, literally, has been here my whole entire life,” said Ms. Nash, who was born and raised in Utah. “It would be a massive bummer if it went to a different city. I don’t know if it would ever be the same.” Source link #Sundance #Park #City #Town #Moving Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Carnival scolds cruise passengers for this prohibited balcony activity — and it’s not sex: ‘It simply looks bad’ Carnival scolds cruise passengers for this prohibited balcony activity — and it’s not sex: ‘It simply looks bad’ Carnival Cruise Line is hanging its passengers out to dry. Nauti activities like smoking and having sex are openly disapproved of — but a representative for the cruise line is reminding guests that a more mundane act is also strictly prohibited. Carnival Ambassador John Heald issued a statement that was shared by Facebook personality Jayson Judson reminding cruise-goers that hanging laundry out to try on the balcony is not allowed. The warning is echoed on Carnival’s website, which states, “For safety concerns, clothing and towels should not be hung to dry on your balcony.” Getty Images “Carnival Cruise Line has issued a warning to passengers that hanging a clothesline to dry your clothes isn’t permitted on your balcony as two pictures were sent to John Heald, the brand ambassador for Carnival Cruise Line,” Judson narrated over the video. “John said that cabin attendants will remove them due to environmental concerns and that it simply looks bad.” He added that Carnival does provide self-serve washers and dryers for passengers to use, and there are places inside the cabin to hang dry clothes as well. The warning is echoed on Carnival’s website, which states, “For safety concerns, clothing and towels should not be hung to dry on your balcony.” Carnival provides self-serve washers and dryers for passengers to use. Christopher Sadowski Photos from two ships have recently circulated showing clothes lines with items such as T-shirts and underwear across balconies hanging to dry. In response to someone asking about the issue and if you can dry clothes on the balcony, Heald wrote on Facebook, “No, this is absolutely not allowed for very, very important safety reasons and I know that once the cabin attendants come to the cabin that morning they will be removed.” Carnival Ambassador John Heald issued a statement reminding cruise-goers that hanging laundry out to try on the balcony is not allowed. Carnival Cruise Line On top of the safety concerns, drying clothes on the balcony isn’t even the best method. According to GlobalEat, salty sea air can ultimately damage fabrics, causing them to wear out faster. The wind can also mess your clothes up and knock them off the clothesline. Plus, hanging clotheslines on balconies ruins the luxurious look of a cruise ship. “Imagine a ship full of laundry flapping on balconies,” GlobalEat points out. People in the comments on Judson’s video chimed into the conversation of on-board laundry etiquette. “A clothesline looks tacky. An item or 2 on the back of a chair is alright if attached securely,” one wrote. “Hang your clothes INSIDE YOUR CABIN,” another yelled. “Horrible! Honestly I just don’t understand people’s thinking,” someone commented. Source link #Carnival #scolds #cruise #passengers #prohibited #balcony #activity #sex #simply #bad Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

ASML Shares Surge After Orders Beat Forecasts as AI Chip Demand Remains Strong – The Wall Street Journal ASML Shares Surge After Orders Beat Forecasts as AI Chip Demand Remains Strong – The Wall Street Journal ASML Shares Surge After Orders Beat Forecasts as AI Chip Demand Remains Strong The Wall Street JournalASML shares jump 11% as surge in orders defies fears of DeepSeek hitting AI chip demand CNBCASML Stock Erases DeepSeek Selloff After Earnings Beat. AI Still Driving Growth, CEO Says. Yahoo! VoicesASML bookings blow past expectations as profit climbs 32% MarketWatchASML Orders Beat Estimates as Concern Over DeepSeek’s AI Grows Bloomberg Source link #ASML #Shares #Surge #Orders #Beat #Forecasts #Chip #Demand #Remains #Strong #Wall #Street #Journal Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

DigiValet checks in with Crestron to deliver smart hotel experiences DigiValet checks in with Crestron to deliver smart hotel experiences Experiential guest room services provider DigiValet has integrated its control and automation hospitality offerings with control systems from automation technology firm Crestron. Since 2008, DigiValet has aimed to deliver digital experiences to hotels, hospitals, workspaces, residences, membership clubs and smart cities. It offers guest engagement and control technology, including lighting; shading; heating, ventilation and air conditioning; hospitality television – including IPTV and OTT services; in-room dining ordering and point of sales (PoS); housekeeping service requests through job dispatch systems; restaurant and spa reservation; and personalised messages and promotions. The tablet-based guest room services have been deployed in thousands of guest rooms at hotels across the globe, including the iconic Wynn Las Vegas, Raffles Singapore, Bulgari Paris and St Regis Maldives. The offering’s hospitality dashboard empowers operations teams to customise the guest experience based on their loyalty status, VIP status or group code. DigiValet’s 360-degree analytics engine also provides insights about guest preferences, and is one of the most important contributors to building a true CRM. Crestron describes itself as being committed to delivering “unparalleled” experiences in the hospitality industry, with reliable technology that enables delivery of “the ultimate” personalised guest experience combined with scalable, cost-effective property-wide monitoring and management through a single platform. The technology’s range of deployment spans from guest rooms to event spaces, and the company claims that hotels will be able to use its offering to create “an unparalleled experience that will keep guests coming back”. DigiValet founder and CEO Rahul Salgia said: “DigiValet is committed to offering its customers best-in-class guest room management systems that are well integrated into its guest-facing solutions. Partnering with Crestron allows us to join one of the most trusted names and deliver a highly reliable and widely supported guest room solution.” Bob Bavolacco, director of technology partnerships at Crestron, added: “Providing a premium guest experience is essential in creating a memorable stay. This includes incorporating seamless in-room technology to maximise comfort, and the integration between DigiValet and Crestron helps bring those personalised control points to the next level. “Not only are guests benefitting from a better experience, but hotels also have an opportunity to use their solutions to help generate recurring revenue through repeat guest reservations.” Source link #DigiValet #checks #Crestron #deliver #smart #hotel #experiences Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

‘Boycott’: Aussie beer company Great Northern slammed over ‘woke’ campaign move ‘Boycott’: Aussie beer company Great Northern slammed over ‘woke’ campaign move Aussies have voiced their outrage at a popular beer company by running over cans of the liquor, in a boycott of the company’s recent campaign which has been slammed as “woke”. The Great Northern Brewing Company came under intense fire following a recent campaign — Outdoors for a Cause — which aimed to raise money to buy and protect land to add to national parks in support of the non-profit organisation Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife, according to Yahoo News. However many moved to boycott the company, which typically uses imagery of people outdoors to market their beer, following the campaign’s announcement. Facebook group 4wd TV lashed out at the move in fear the money raised would be used to turn state parks into national parks. “In an absolutely disgraceful move, Great Northern Brewing Co. has gone woke with a campaign to help get us locked out of forests!” 4wd TV posted to Facebook. “Let’s save our State Forests! No more National Parks.” However it’s understood the campaign was intended to help transform private land into national parks, not state park land. In the comments, 4wd TV further explained their boycott. “Great northern sells to outdoor enthusiasts who love to camp, fish, 4wd and hunt. Most of which can’t be done in a national park,” the group wrote. “Their customers are furious that Great Northern is financially supporting national parks and hence helping to stop bush users using the bush.” Many flocked to the comments to claim they would no longer be buying the beer. “They have lost me as a customer,” one wrote. “That’s the bear (sic) I drink. Not anymore. Its there to share and use by all australians. What a joke,” another added. “Another to boycott,” wrote another. Camera IconGreat Northern has since ‘paused’ the campaign. Supplied. Credit: Supplied Other posts shared by 4wd TV showed a car driving over cans of Great Northern. “#boycottgreatnorthern and #rememberbudlight,” the post read, in reference to a boycott of American beer Bud Light after they brought in transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote the brand. Following scrutiny, Great Northern head of marketing Zac Gelman said the campaign was “paused”. “Great Northern’s Outdoors for a Cause campaign was yesterday paused following feedback from our passionate drinkers,” Mr Gelman said. “Our donation to the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife will now not be used to buy land to add to national parks. “Our donation will instead be used for the preservation of endangered species. “Whether it’s hiking, fishing, 4-wheel driving or just relaxing, Great Northern drinkers use and preserve their precious spots in the great outdoors and we support them.” Simon Christie from 4wd TV told Yahoo News he was “proud” of the “overwhelming impact” his company made on Great Northern. “It’s the old go-woke, go-broke thing,” Mr Christie said. NewsWire has contacted Great Northern’s parent company, Asahi Group, for comment, along with 4wd TV and the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife. Source link #Boycott #Aussie #beer #company #Great #Northern #slammed #woke #campaign #move Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Consolidator changes will boost competitiveness Consolidator changes will boost competitiveness This story was originally published on Supply Chain Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Supply Chain Dive newsletter. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy described the Postal Service’s large-scale changes impacting package consolidators as necessary for his wide-ranging “Delivering for America” plan in an interview with Supply Chain Dive on Sunday. “I’m not trying to take over the package business industry. I’m trying to just fill my trucks and fill my carrier bags, right?” DeJoy said. “And once I do that, and I’ve leaned out the whole place, we have potentially a chance of covering our costs and saving the Postal Service.” Consolidators like DHL eCommerce and OSM Worldwide use the Postal Service for final-mile delivery of its customers’ packages. But two changes the Postal Service rolled out last year incentivized these companies to overhaul their longstanding business models in varying ways. For one, the Postal Service eliminated ounce-based rates for packages shipped via Parcel Select, spurring partners that used it to pursue heavier shipments. The agency also nixed contracted rate discounts for consolidator volume going to its delivery units, or facilities closest to the end recipient. This has led more packages to be dropped off further upstream in the Postal Service’s network. “Going into delivery units was not something that I was happy with on a competitive standpoint. I thought it was a foolish strategy,” DeJoy said. Previous consolidator arrangements didn’t align with the agency’s aim to streamline its middle-mile operations and maximize the amount of volume its ground transportation network handles. Instead, consolidators were often handing packages off one step before delivery. “We have to get paid for that work, but they were paying somebody else for that work, right?” DeJoy said. “So it’s our system now that’s bringing the product down. And you know what? I’m going there anyway with my trucks.” The Postal Service’s strategic shift under DeJoy has sparked major changes throughout the parcel delivery industry over the past year. Consolidators are looking to deliver heavier packages due to ounce-based pricing changes. Alternative delivery providers are moving to compete directly with the Postal Service on lightweight shipping services. And UPS is now delivering all of its SurePost packages in-house rather than splitting up the work with the Postal Service. Amid the overhaul, DeJoy said he’s open to reach more deals with services that previously relied on the agency. However, he noted there is limited room at the Postal Service for additional business from consolidators in the near term. Story Continues The Postal Service is also amenable to discounts for delivery unit drop off, but only through direct contracts and offered more tightly than in the past, according to DeJoy. Some customers still drop off volume at delivery units, but the agency wants to ensure those facilities aren’t “overwhelmed” as some locations were in previous instances, he added. “I gave everybody opportunities to negotiate with us for what I felt was the reasonable price adjustment that we needed to make,” DeJoy said. But the Postmaster General still views consolidators as competitors in the agency’s efforts to snag a larger share of the parcel delivery market. Key in that plan is to secure more direct contracts with shippers, including through its Ground Advantage service that offers its own ounce-based rates. The agency is also gearing up to launch its Next Day Priority shipping service later this year. DeJoy said the offering will “roll it out regionally as the deals come.” “We were not dealing with our customers when I got here,” DeJoy said. “We had resellers, consolidators, our sales force was dormant. I got a sales force that’s on fire now.” Industry stakeholders have voiced concern about how the changes could challenge on-time delivery reliability as more volume is entered into the agency’s transforming network earlier. Although DeJoy acknowledged the Postal Service’s overhaul has had its share of challenges, he added that shipping partners who align with the agency will see “great service” going forward. “We’re going to perform, we’re going to deliver on time,” DeJoy said. Recommended Reading Source link #Consolidator #boost #competitiveness Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]