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Google Reportedly Working on AI-Powered ‘Help Me Draw’ Feature for Google Keep Google Reportedly Working on AI-Powered ‘Help Me Draw’ Feature for Google Keep Google is reportedly working on a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature for Google Keep. The company’s note-taking app might soon offer AI-powered feature that can turn hand-drawn text and sketches into images. Dubbed Help Me Draw, the evidence of the feature were said to be found within the latest version of the Google Keep app for Android. The feature could reportedly first be available in the tech giant’s Workspace Lab, and then gradually rolled out to a wider user base. How Google Keep’s ‘Help Me Draw’ Feature Could Work Android Authority and AssembleDebug spotted Google Keep’s AI feature that is still in development. The publication found certain flags related to the feature during an application package kit (APK) teardown, and were able to make it visible in the app. However, since the AI capability is likely on-cloud, the feature could not be tested. It was reportedly spotted on Google Keep version 5.24.462.04.90 for Android. Google Keep’s Help Me Draw feature Photo Credit: Android Authority However, based on several screenshots shared, several details about the AI tool could be unearthed. The feature is said to be called ‘Help Me Draw’ and its description states, “Try Help Me Draw to create unique images from your hand drawings and bring your doodles to life.” Once the feature goes live, users can reportedly scribble a hand-written text or a sketch on a Google Keep page and highlight it to trigger the AI tool. By tapping on the Help Me Draw, the AI will process the visual information to see if it can recognise it. If it can, the AI is said to open a text field where users can type a prompt on what they want to create. There is reportedly also an option to select from different styles such as vector drawing, ********* pencil, ink marker, and more. Once everything is added, the AI is said to enhance the artwork. However, since the feature is not turned on, the publication was not able to test the end result. Notably, since the description of the feature mentions Workspace Lab, it is likely that this feature will be available to Google Workspace account holders with a Gemini add-on. However, nothing can be said conclusively till the tech giant makes an official announcement about it. Source link #Google #Reportedly #Working #AIPowered #Draw #Feature #Google Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

3 High Flying Stocks That Could Stock Split in 2025 3 High Flying Stocks That Could Stock Split in 2025 Companies tend to initiate stock splits from a position of strength in their underlying business to broaden their investor base and improve the liquidity of their shares. Netflix, up 69% YTD, hit an all-time high of $841 in 2024, making it a strong candidate for a third stock split if shares breach $1,000. ASML’s near-monopoly in EUV technology has driven its stock to $1,110 in 2024. Another split is possible as the semiconductor market stabilizes. There were many well-known and highly anticipated stock splits in 2024. Popular restaurant operator Chipotle ******** Grill (NYSE:) shares were trading at an astronomical $3,400 a share before they ********* their first-ever 50-to-1 stock split on June 25, 2024. This opened up the doors for numerous new investors who were unable to afford shares in their favorite fast casual restaurant. Artificial intelligence (AI) chip leader NVIDIA (NASDAQ:) ********* a 10-for-1 stock split, enabling small investors to gain directly from the AI ***** on June 7, 2024. Custom AI accelerator chips producer Broadcom (NASDAQ:) ********* a 10-for-1 stock split on July 15, 2024. While companies ******** stock splits for a number of reasons, usually, it’s to make their stock available to a wider audience of investors, thereby improving sentiment. When a stock is trading above $1,000, it severely limits the type and number of shareholders it can attract. Small investors are locked out of participating in the success of these beloved companies. An announcement of a stock split often causes the underlying stock to surge higher in anticipation of more investors taking positions. It also bolsters a stock’s liquidity. When stocks rise through $1,000 per share, the bid and ask spreads can be as wide as several points, leading to a lot of slippage. Stock splits ensure tighter price spreads, resulting in less slippage when executing trade orders. After the stock split is *********, share can continue to move higher, thereby compounding the underlying gains for pre-split owners like in the case of the consumer discretionary sector giant Walmart (NYSE:). The nation’s largest importer and the world’s largest employer issued a 3-for-1 stock split that priced shares around $58.18 on Feb. 26, 2024. Since then, the stock has climbed to $85.79 as of November 13, 2024. This was Walmart’s 10th stock split. An investor who purchased just one share of Walmart in 1975 would have 1,536 shares today as a result of all the stock splits. As we look ahead to 2025, similar trends could unfold as several high-performing stocks continue their upward momentum. Here are three stocks whose substantial appreciation makes them prime candidates for stock splits, offering new and existing investors opportunities to benefit from increased accessibility and liquidity. 1. Netflix: Dominating Video Streaming Netflix (NASDAQ:) pioneered the video streaming revolution. The company originally launched in 1997 as a mail-order DVD service. By 1999, they adopted a subscription model allowing customers to rent unlimited DVDs by mail for a flat fee and no late fees—instrumental in putting Blockbuster Video out of business. By 2007, Netflix introduced streaming services to its customers enabling them to watch a limited library of movies over the internet. Buffering times and slow internet speeds initially made it hard to watch videos, but as internet speeds accelerated, streaming video became a popular trend. Netflix ********* its first stock split (2-for-1) in 2004 when its shares reached $72, and its second split (7-for-1) in 2015 when shares reached a lofty $700. The company has continued to grow its market share to become the world’s most dominant video streaming service, with over 282.7 million paid subscribers recharged by its adoption of a cheaper ad-support subscription tier. Netflix stock is trading up 69% year-to-date (YTD), recently peaking at an all-time high of $841 on Nov. 14, 2024. Netflix may ******** its third stock split in 2025 if the stock stays elevated or even breaches the $1,000 price level. 2. ASML Holding (AS:): Dominating the EUV Market When semiconductor companies need to produce advanced computer chips on smaller nodes, they need special photolithography machines to imprint microscopic circuit patterns onto a silicon wafer. Netherlands-based ASML Holding (NASDAQ:) has a near monopoly in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography space. Their systems are used by major semiconductor manufacturers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:) to produce AI chips for NVIDIA and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:). ASML has had five stock splits in the past, two of which were unconventional. ASML ********* a 2-for-1 stock split in May 1997 and another in May 1998. Then in April 2000, the company ********* a 3-for-1 stock split. ASML implemented an 8-for-9 reverse stock split in October of 2007 and a 77-for-100 reverse split with a cash component in November 2012. The stock surged from $56 to a peak of $1,110.09 in July 2024 but has since declined by 40%, dropping to $658.63 as of Nov. 15, 2024. ASML has noted that outside of AI, the semiconductor industry is still trying to normalize. The return of the Trump administration and potential ramifications on its China business could impact whether or not ASML decides to issue another stock split. Time will tell. 3. ServiceNow: Dominating the Cloud and AI-Powered Digital Transformation Leading cloud-based digital workflow platform provider ServiceNow (NYSE:) has seen its stock surge over 3,000%—from its $18 IPO on June 29, 2012 to an all-time high of $1,061.66 on Nov. 13, 2024. The company has been riding the cloud computing trend from early on and continues to stay on the cutting edge of digital transformation. ServiceNow recently released its AI agents, which are customizable AI-powered autonomous software programs designed to perform tasks to achieve specific goals. ServiceNow stock is trading up 43% YTD, and the company has never had or announced the intention of having a stock split, leaving investors wondering when—or if—the first split will occur. As shares continue to rise, there may be more pressure on the enterprise platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider to consider implementing a stock split. ServiceNow continues to grow stronger, evidenced by the 27-cent EPS beat and 22.2% YoY revenue growth to $2.75 billion in its Q3 2024 release. Original Post Source link #High #Flying #Stocks #Stock #Split Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Jihadist police chief of Timbuktu jailed for war ******* in Mali Jihadist police chief of Timbuktu jailed for war ******* in Mali The International ********* Court (ICC) has sentenced the former head of the Islamic police in Mali’s historic city of Timbuktu to 10 years in prison for war *******. Prosecutors said al-Hassan ag Abdoul Aziz ag Mohamed ag Mahmoud led a “reign of *******” in the city after it was overrun in 2012 by the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine group. He was found guilty in June this year of ********, overseeing public amputations by machete and the brutal floggings of residents, including children. He was acquitted on charges of ***** and ******* slavery, as well as destroying Timbuktu’s ancient mausoleums. Hassan was handed over to the ICC in 2018 by the Malian authorities – five years after French troops helped liberate Timbuktu from the jihadists. Ansar Dine was one of several Islamist militant groups to exploit an ******* Tuareg uprising to take over cities in northern Mali. Another Islamist militant leader who destroyed ancient shrines in Timbuktu was sentenced to nine years in jail in 2016. Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi admitted to leading fighters who destroyed historic mausoleums at the world heritage site in Mali in 2012. Timbuktu was a major centre of Islamic learning between the 13th and 17th Centuries and was added to the Unesco world heritage list in 1988. Source link #Jihadist #police #chief #Timbuktu #jailed #war #******* #Mali Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Matthew Gaudreau was so much more than the brother of Johnny Hockey Matthew Gaudreau was so much more than the brother of Johnny Hockey His brother was Johnny Hockey. He had the Matty Dance. Ask any of Matthew Gaudreau’s childhood buddies about his moves, and they’ll chuckle knowingly. Gaudreau and his group of friends, which included his older brother, John, loved country music, especially Kenny Chesney. They regularly tailgated before concerts in college and in the years that followed. The group gathered early those summer days. They ate Wawa breakfast sandwiches on the way in. They sipped ***** in stadium parking lots, leaving red plastic cups scattered near the cooler, and grilled for dinner. These were all-day affairs. And at some point, without a doubt, Matty Gaudreau would find his way onto the back of someone’s truck, often when a Chesney song blared over the speakers. He’d break out the Matty Dance. “Just swinging his arms around in a circular, slow motion,” says friend Eric Robinson. “Some version of a windmill with a hip thrust,” adds Hunter Brody. They can still see it. This is who Matthew Gaudreau was: a life-of-the-party presence, arms waving through the air. When his widow, Madeline, spoke at his ********, she described him as so much more than a hockey player, coach and friend. That’s a consensus among people who loved him. He was someone who made a point to connect with others, be it his high school teachers or younger teammates at Boston College. Someone who never felt jealous of his older brother, a more skilled player who became an NHL star. Someone who cried when he heard his unborn son’s heartbeat for the first time. On Aug. 29, Matthew and John — his closest friend — were biking in Oldmans Township, N.J., when a Jeep Grand Cherokee struck them from behind. Both were pronounced ***** at the scene. John was 31, Matthew 29. Their sister Katie’s wedding was scheduled for the next day. When talking about Gaudreau, those who knew him often slip into the present tense. His ****** is still so recent that, for some, it doesn’t feel real that he’s gone. Perhaps it never will. The Gaudreau brothers grew up in a white, two-story house in Penns Grove, N.J., a small town southwest of Philadelphia. They regularly hosted their friends for bonfires and evenings at the backyard pool. Brody, who grew close with Matthew in high school, felt like he was there every summer night when he was younger. Matthew and John shared a bedroom overlooking the gravel driveway. Old hockey jerseys hung from the walls. When friends spent the night, the brothers pushed their beds together so more people could fit. Others would ****** over air mattresses, trying to avoid the one with a ***** in it. They’d get up in the mornings for training sessions and skates, then often find themselves back at the house again at night. The Gaudreaus were as tight-knit a family as could be. Community mattered. Their house was the center of it all. Matthew was slight in build. Friends remember waking up to Guy Gaudreau, his dad, whipping up breakfast. He’d pile eggs and bacon on Matthew’s plate, trying to help him put on weight. Sometimes Matthew would get so full he’d shove eggs to the family dog, Sadie, while Guy was looking away. The weight never stuck. When teams took measurements, Matthew would sometimes stuff pucks in his jock strap to trick the scale. His wife said in her eulogy that she thought he looked 90 pounds when they met as teenagers. The Gaudreau name carries weight in the South Jersey hockey community. Guy worked as the hockey director at Hollydell Ice Arena in Sewell, N.J., not far from Penns Grove. Dan Spencer, now an emergency backup goalie for the Flyers, calls Gaudreau the best coach he ever had. John Gaudreau, Eric Robinson, Buddy Robinson and Tony DeAngelo played at Hollydell growing up and went on to appear in NHL games. Plenty of other college players like Matthew started their careers there. “There are a crazy number of people who came out of Hollydell for being a small rink in South Jersey,” says Eric Robinson, now a forward on the Hurricanes. Boston College coach Jerry York once asked Guy how he taught Johnny and Matthew such good edge control. He replied that he trained them with Skittles. He’d throw one on the ice, and the boys would have to skate to it. Then he’d throw another. On top of his responsibilities at Hollydell, Gaudreau coached the Gloucester ********* High team. In 2009-10, Matthew’s freshman year and John’s junior year, the team went 15-4-2 and made its first-ever state championship. Though the Rams lost, both boys had a point in the final. Years later, Matthew would describe his days on the Gloucester team as the most fun he ever had playing hockey. Close as they were, the brothers had different personalities. Principal Thomas Iacovone remembers John as the quieter of the two. He wanted to fade into the background. He wanted to be like any other ****. “Matty wanted you to know he was there,” he says. “He did it in such a way that you couldn’t help but to love him.” Iacovone was a history teacher when Matthew was in school and taught him in first-******* homeroom his sophomore year. Matthew pulled his chair up to Iacovone’s desk seemingly every morning. They chatted about Philadelphia sports while waiting for the morning announcements. Rarely did the conversations revolve around Gaudreau himself. “He would engage me in what he knew I liked, and I was the teacher,” Iacovone says. “It should’ve been the other way around.” Once class began, Iacovone occasionally had to tell Gaudreau to sit down and be quiet. That was difficult, though; it usually resulted in Gaudreau cracking a joke that made him laugh. He was too charming to get in trouble, remembers now-athletic director Ryan Murphy, then an assistant athletic director. Matthew left Gloucester ********* early to play junior hockey in Omaha, where he met his wife and skated for the Lancers, a ******* States Hockey League club. In the week before moving away from New Jersey, he and Brody embarked on a morning fishing trip. They left at 5 a.m. Gaudreau was sad about leaving the friends he made at Gloucester *********, Brody remembers, but he was excited, too. This was a big step: at that age, junior hockey felt like the biggest thing in the world. They stood in the dark, shoes muddy. Bugs bit their exposed skin as they cast their lines into the water. Their futures lay ahead of them. Matthew Gaudreau with his friend Hunter Brody. (Courtesy Hunter Brody) Matthew and John were determined to play college hockey together, and John found himself in a lurch in June 2011, months before his freshman year. He had committed to Northeastern, but coach Greg Cronin had just left for a job as a Maple Leafs assistant. The older Gaudreau brother got out of his letter of intent because of the coaching change, but then he needed to find a new school — and fast. Not long after, the Gaudreau brothers and their parents were on Boston College’s campus. Future NHLer Kevin Hayes showed the boys around, York remembers, while he talked to the parents. After they were done, they stood in front of the rink. “Well, what do you guys think?” York asked. “Any questions?” John turned to his younger brother. That’s whose opinion mattered to him. “Let’s go here,” Matthew replied. And so they did. Their mother, Jane, said in a 2014 New York Times article that Matthew actually preferred Boston University, but he chose the Eagles when John gave him the final decision because he knew it was what his older brother wanted. “He was kind of a dynamic presence in their relationship, almost like he was the older brother,” York says of Matthew. “Johnny looked for advice from Matty an awful lot.” The decision had a major impact on both the program and the brothers. John was a point-per-game player as a freshman, two years before Matthew arrived on campus. The Eagles won the NCAA title that season. The season Matthew got to school, John won the Hobey Baker Award as the nation’s top collegiate player. Matthew Gaudreau joined his brother John on the ice after Boston College won the 2014 Beanpot Tournament. (Richard T Gagnon / Getty Images) Matthew played in only eight games that year. Not once, though, did he show a hint of jealousy. “He was his No. 1 fan,” says teammate Mike Matheson, a now-Canadiens defenseman who was the grade between the brothers. “They were just inseparable.” Though Matthew was not a lineup regular, he still had an important role with the team. Matheson remembers Matthew, aided by his relationship with John, acting as a bridge between the freshmen and upperclassmen. He made sure everyone was involved and did so throughout his time at Boston College. Classmate Ryan Fitzgerald describes him as “everybody’s first call.” Whenever someone wanted to do something, they called Matthew. “As cliquey as he could have been, he was always setting stuff up for everybody, making sure everyone was there, making sure every guy was happy and comfortable,” says Zach Sanford, who was a year below Matthew. Fitzgerald and Matthew lived together in six-person, on-campus suites their sophomore to senior years. One day rolled into the next: class, hockey and then hours on the couch talking the time away with their roommates. Those, Fitzgerald says, are memories he’ll always hold close. Matthew and Madeline were managing long-distance dating at the time, and she would visit frequently. Fitzgerald loved seeing how his friend’s face lit up with her in the room. He jokes she was their mother roommate. The hockey players lived like, well, college boys. She was disgusted whenever she arrived. She’d tell Matthew and his friends they couldn’t keep living like this. They’d all agree with her — temporarily, at least. “And then she’d come back a month later, and it’d look like a ***** went off,” Fitzgerald says. From a hockey perspective, sitting out most of his freshman year couldn’t have been easy for Matthew, who played more than 50 games each of the previous two seasons in Omaha. He didn’t let that show. York remembers him focusing through video work and prescouts of other teams, remaining ready at all times. This wasn’t a typical throwaway year for a **** who wasn’t playing much. He made sure to gain experience. Matheson describes Gaudreau as “the best I’ve ever seen” at handling being a scratch. Fitzgerald doesn’t think he’d have handled it as well. But Matthew savored his year as college teammates with his brother. Gaudreau’s attitude eventually paid off. He played in most games his sophomore and junior seasons, then never came out of the lineup as a senior. He was nearly a point-per-game player by graduation, scoring eight goals and 35 points in 40 games his final season with the Eagles. Though his skill showed by the time he left Boston College, Matthew had different elements to his game than his brother. Despite his 5-foot-9, 137-pound frame, “he was a little s— disturber,” Fitzgerald says. He didn’t shy away from scrums. His senior season — the same year John won the NHL’s Lady Byng Trophy for gentlemanly conduct — Matthew was one of only two Boston College players with more than 50 penalty minutes. Though similarly small, John was better at eluding contact, York remembers. Matthew would take huge hits. But he always seemed to get right back up, even when York prepared to send the trainers on the ice. “It was like he had a heart of steel,” the coach says. By the time Matthew graduated, he was ready to pursue professional hockey — something York thought seemed improbable at earlier points during his college career. He willed himself to that point. Graduation itself was memorable for Fitzgerald. The night before, the hockey players skipped the senior class celebration, instead going out on their own. “I don’t think any of us slept,” he says. Wearing ****** robes the next day, Matthew and Fitzgerald, both communication majors, joined their classmates for a procession through campus. As they waited, a woman came by asking if anyone wanted to lead the students while holding a large, maroon Boston College flag over their head. “I’ll do it!” Matthew called out. Fitzgerald still laughs thinking about it. All these communications majors had probably spent the entire night before together, but there leading the way was Matthew Gaudreau, bags under his eyes from one last college all-nighter with his friends. Matthew Gaudreau (left) carried the Boston College banner at graduation ceremonies. (Lee Pellegrini / Boston College) Gaudreau carved out a professional playing career for as long as he could. Most of his games came in the ECHL, two rungs below the NHL, but he appeared in 21 AHL games, too, and also had a brief stint playing in Sweden. Gaudreau looked like a hockey lifer, just like his dad. Ryan Murphy, the Gloucester ********* athletic director, remembers Guy telling him at one point that Matthew would become a great coach. While with the ECHL team in Worcester, less than an hour out of Boston, he’d swing by his college to say hi to York and the Eagles. York, who was always impressed with how well Gaudreau observed the game, remembers his former player asking questions about coaching on those visits. “The promise of life he had coming …” York says, trailing off. When John emerged as an NHL player, he began hosting offseason skills camps for kids at Hollydell. Robinson remembers going to the locker room with the brothers before camps began. Without fail, John would ask Matthew what drills they should do. The friend group joked that the younger brother was becoming his dad. “He had a knack for it,” Robinson says. “For whatever reason, some guys who play, they can transition into that.” Gaudreau got his coaching start with Philadelphia Hockey Club, which practiced at — where else? — Hollydell Ice Arena. The next season, 2022-23, a new opportunity arose: Gloucester ********* needed a new hockey coach. Matthew met with Iacovone and Ryan Meehan, then the athletic director, at an Italian restaurant near Hollydell. They talked for two hours, mainly about life outside of the sport. When it came to the job, Iacovone told Gaudreau he was his No. 1 choice — and he didn’t have a No. 2. A few days later, Gaudreau accepted the position his dad once held. His goal was to make a career out of coaching, and he was on his way. Guy joined his son’s staff as an assistant for 2022-23, and so did Spencer, his former Gloucester teammate. The team went 9-9-2 and made a run to the state semifinal. Billy Sheridan, a player on that team, remembers he could walk into Gaudreau’s office at any time and ask for help. During his time as Gloucester coach, Gaudreau tried to get his players to recognize how special high school hockey is. “You guys don’t realize it,” he’d tell them, “but this is going to be the best four years of your life.” The next season was more difficult. Key players graduated, and the team’s numbers dipped to around a dozen. It was hard to hold complete practices with so few players, and Gaudreau himself had to miss at times because of commitments as an assistant coach for the Philadelphia Rebels, the Hollydell-based junior team. Gloucester didn’t win a game that season. After it ended, Gaudreau met again with Iacovone. He felt it was best to step away. He couldn’t commit fully to the team and didn’t feel that was fair to the players. Plus, he had his first baby, Tripp, on the way. Life was going to get busy. Madeline Gaudreau wore a pink dress with a white floral pattern as she stepped to the marble podium at St. Mary Magdalen ********* ******* in Media, Pa. During her eulogy, she spoke of her husband’s bond with John, how they loved sharing a bedroom growing up and never wanted it to change. It brings her comfort that they are still together. “Anyone who knows Matty knows he was born to be a dad,” she said toward the end of the speech, stopping to compose herself. The idea of fatherhood consumed Matthew. He asked John for advice, ordered books and researched diaper brands. Iacovone remembers how excited he was when he saw him over the summer. Matthew never got to meet baby Tripp, who is due next month, according to Madeline’s Instagram account. Tributes have rolled in since his ******. Hollydell held a memorial for the boys. Gloucester ********* did, too, during which the hockey team presented Guy and Jane with a jersey. Both the Flyers and Blue Jackets have given Guy the chance to help with team practices. The Gaudreau family wanted loved ones to stop by their house in the days after John and Matthew’s deaths. People brought coffee and meals. During one visit, Brody went upstairs to Matthew and John’s old room, the site of their teenage sleepovers. It looked unchanged from when they were kids. He got the same feeling Madeline experiences when standing in baby Tripp’s nursery. They can feel Matthew with them. (Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic. Photos: Mike Stobe / NHLI via Getty Images; Richard T Gagnon / Getty Images) Source link #Matthew #Gaudreau #brother #Johnny #Hockey Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

How an ************ Marriage Sparked One of the Most Scandalous Trials of the Roaring Twenties How an ************ Marriage Sparked One of the Most Scandalous Trials of the Roaring Twenties Bryan Greene Contributing Writer The New York Daily News accused the young woman of switching off the hallway light at her parents’ house so the reporters outside the door could only see her in semi-darkness. “I’m not ********,” Alice Beatrice Jones told the newspaper, which published her comments in a November 14, 1924, article headlined “Blueblood Weds ******** Girl.” “I’m going to sue the papers that have called my father ********. I’m going to file suit for libel at 8 o’clock in the morning.” Exactly a month earlier, on October 14, 25-year-old Alice had married 21-year-old Leonard Rhinelander, who went by the nickname Kip and was the scion of one of New York’s oldest and wealthiest families, in secret. The New Rochelle Standard Star broke the story on November 13, generating the media frenzy outside of the Joneses’ home. “Is it true that you married the daughter of a ******** man?” a reporter asked Leonard as he arrived on the scene in his family’s limousine. “Yes,” the newlywed replied, “and we are very happy.” Just two weeks later, however, Leonard filed suit to annul his marriage. Frightened into submission by his father’s threats to disinherit him, Leonard alleged that Alice had defrauded him into believing she was white. Edith Wharton, the Gilded Age author whose novels examined the social strictures of upper-class New York, never explicitly wrote that her elite peers didn’t marry “********” people. The daughter of a Rhinelander herself, Wharton didn’t need to make such sweeping statements. While New York State didn’t legally prohibit ************ marriage, Knickerbockers, as “aristocratic” Manhattanites were known at the time, tended to stick to their own. The November 14, 1924, front page of the New York Daily News New York Daily News Archive via Getty Images Still, as the eugenics movement gained traction in the early 20th century, ********* lawmakers took steps to ensure that those deemed racially inferior didn’t surreptitiously cross the ****** line. In Virginia, the ******* Integrity Act of 1924 sought to prevent the inadvertent “intermixture of ******** blood.” Broader measures like the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act created quotas for immigrants from specific countries, limiting the ******* diversity of cities like New York, which one eugenicist referred to as a “cloaca gentium,” or sewer of the nations. The Rhinelander family also turned to the law—specifically, the courts—to reassert the social order in an annulment case that captivated the nation between November 1924 and December 1925. Jazz Age advancements in media technology, including the rise of tabloid journalism, the widespread adoption of news photography and the emergence of radio, made it possible for the ********* public to follow the daily proceedings of Rhinelander v. Rhinelander in a wood-paneled courtroom in White Plains, New York. While conducting research for their 2001 book on the case, Love on Trial: An ********* Scandal in ****** and White, historians Heidi Ardizzone and Earl Lewis found that every major city newspaper they consulted had covered the Rhinelander scandal in some capacity. “In New York, it was daily,” Ardizzone says. “Some of the papers had multiple editions. … And then, every ****** newspaper covered it.” The question at the center of the Rhinelander trial was this: Did Alice misrepresent herself to her husband as white and withhold her true ******* ancestry? Alice and Leonard first crossed paths in September 1921, when 18-year-old Leonard was enrolled at an inpatient clinic in Stamford, Connecticut, to undergo treatment for a speech impediment and shyness. After meeting Leonard by chance, Alice’s sister, Grace, introduced the soon-to-be couple, who spent the early days of their relationship going to the movies, taking drives in Leonard’s car and dining at the Jones household. In the winter of 1922, a Rhinelander family lawyer interrupted the lovers’ two-week stay at an upscale hotel in New York. To end the relationship, Leonard’s father sent his son away for the better part of a two-year separation from Alice. Nevertheless, the couple continued their courtship by exchanging hundreds of letters. They reunited in New York in early 1924, when Leonard turned 21 and inherited $340,000 from his grandfather (around $6.3 million today). The couple kept their rekindled relationship—and subsequent marriage—a secret from Leonard’s family. After hearing a rumor that Alice and Leonard had secretly wed, Leonard’s father, Philip Rhinelander, sent a secretary to New Rochelle to inspect the marriage record in person. “The father’s sobs were heard plainly over the wire” when he received telephone confirmation, the Daily News reported. A newspaper article about the case, featuring photos of Alice and Leonard Library of Congress Did Philip go to great lengths to separate Leonard and Alice just because she was from the lower classes? While the father may have been in the dark about Alice being “********,” the family chauffeur would testify at trial that Leonard was not. The driver, who was present at many of his young employer’s dalliances, said he’d confronted Leonard about dating the daughter of “a ******** man.” As the chauffeur later told the court, Leonard said he didn’t “give a *****.” Modern observers might wonder why ******* misrepresentation was a matter for the court in 1924. While New York wasn’t among the 29 states that prohibited ************ marriage at the time, the social stigma and eugenics-related fears surrounding such unions caused the public to view the non-disclosure of one’s “********” blood as an omission that could cause real harm. Elizabeth Smith-Pryor, a historian at Kent State University and the author of Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing and the Protection of Whiteness, says the judge and the parties involved in the case essentially accepted, on its face, that misrepresentation of one’s race was “the kind of [alleged] ****** that reaches such a level that it hits at the essential [core of] marriage.” If the evidence supported Leonard’s case, the public generally agreed that he “should be allowed to end his marriage” over the deception. For the Rhinelanders, ***** of the social fallout of miscegenation, the common term for ************ marriages and ******* relationships at the time, wasn’t the only concern. As Smith-Pryor says, if Alice had given birth to Leonard’s child, this mixed-race member of the Rhinelander family would potentially have “access to [its] property, real estate, wealth [and] status in society.” The Rhinelanders had a lot to lose, or at least a lot to risk falling into the wrong hands. The Daily News reported that the young groom was “heir to a fortune of $100,000,000 in Manhattan real estate” (around $1.8 billion today). The paper deemed the family’s holdings “second only to the Astors as owners of realty.” The Rhinelanders couldn’t erase the facts of Leonard and Alice’s marriage from the annals of New York newspapers. But an annulment would serve their legal and social objectives better than a divorce. Until 1967, adultery, with few exceptions, was the only grounds for the legal dissolution of a marriage in New York State. Divorce might not extinguish Alice’s claims to Rhinelander property; she could still receive alimony. “An annulment creates a legal fiction that a marriage never existed, … that it never really happened,” says Smith-Pryor. Socially, an annulment allowed the Rhinelanders to backtrack on the marriage and deny that one of their own had tainted the family name they’d cultivated over more than 225 years in America. An informal photograph of Alice Bettmann via Getty Images Leonard relaxing on a chair Bettmann via Getty Images Family primogenitor Philip Jacob Rhinelander, a *******-born Huguenot, was among the first Europeans to settle in New Rochelle in the late 17th century. Over the next two centuries, the Rhinelanders amassed wealth through shipbuilding, sugar refinement and real estate. Leonard’s uncle T.J. Oakley Rhinelander, who co-directed the Rhinelander Real Estate Company with Leonard’s father, was widely known in New York as one of the Gilded Age “Four Hundred,” a rarefied circle more exclusive than those listed in the Social Register. Alice’s parents, meanwhile, had immigrated to the ******* States from England in 1891. While George Jones had once worked as a cab driver and his wife, Elizabeth, in the domestic service, by 1924, George owned several small New Rochelle properties that he also managed. Elizabeth was retired. The family’s humble circumstances were news alone, but it was the claim that George was “********,” a word used synonymously with ****** in the 1920s, that caused the greatest furor. In the eyes of the public, the Rhinelander marriage threatened both the family name and the ******* purity of the country as a whole. Millions of ******** Americans migrated north in the decades following World War I, confounding efforts to police the ****** line in many cities. In small Southern towns, Smith-Pryor says, everyone knew the ******* backgrounds of people in their community, regardless of complexion. “What if they move north?” she asks. “Who knows who they are? No one knows them anymore.” The Joneses’ hazy origins in England presented a similar problem for the Rhinelanders. The annulment trial was delayed until November 1925 so the plaintiffs could travel across the pond to investigate the family’s background. In the 1900 and 1910 censuses, enumerators recorded all of the members of the Jones household as white. In 1920, Alice, who was then residing at her employer’s home, was listed as “********,” then the official term (now considered derogatory) for the child of white and ****** parents. It was a label she resented: As the New York Times later reported, when government inspectors visited an athletic club where Jones worked during World War I to document foreign nationals employed there, they “did not ask her ****** but put her down as ‘********.’” According to Alice’s former supervisor, Alice expressed unfamiliarity with the term. “When I told her it meant that she was ********, Alice began to **** and warmly denied that it was true,” the supervisor said. In 1924, Alice recorded herself as white on her marriage license application. The night that news of her marriage broke, Alice told the Daily News, “I can prove my father and my mother are both English. … Father was born in Coventry, in Leicestershire, and mother came from Alford.” As if the family’s English ancestry alone were enough to set it outside of America’s binary ******* categories, she added, “There’s not a drop of West Indian blood in our veins. Father’s English.” In an affidavit responding to the Rhinelander complaint, George struck a more cautious tone, saying, “My mother was a Caucasian of pure English descent. The only information which I have about my father is that he was a native of one of the British colonies.” Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist who consults for the FBI and Naval ********* Investigative Service and has made headlines for tracing the Irish roots of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, says, “Many official documents, such as census and birth records of the relevant time frame, did not include columns for race in England, though most in the U.S. at that time did.” The ******* Kingdom never formally prohibited ************ marriage, nor did it mandate ******* segregation as the U.S. did. George’s affidavit acknowledged that this information simply wasn’t available in British government records. “If George was vague about his origins, it may well have been because he genuinely didn’t know,” Smolenyak says. When the annulment trial commenced in November 1925, Alice’s attorney, Lee Davis, surprised the plaintiff and the nation by announcing, “The defense counsel hereby withdraws the previous denial as to the blood of this defendant, and for the purpose of this trial … admits that she has some ******** blood.” Alice’s father, says Smith-Pryor, “didn’t mind being called ‘********,’ but he didn’t want to be called ‘******.’” Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander (right) sits next to his attorneys during the 1925 annulment proceedings. Bettmann via Getty Images As Smith-Pryor writes in her book, “In Great Britain, the term ‘********’ encompassed people with ********, West Indian, South ****** or ***** ancestry.” When news of the marriage broke, one of Alice’s attorneys told reporters that George’s forebears were from India, not the West Indies. Perhaps the defense’s concession that George and Alice were “********” was a compromise with ********* racism, a way of acknowledging they were “people of ******” without conceding that they were “******.” Nell Irvin Painter, a historian at Princeton University, notes that “********” wasn’t a catch-all term for non-white in 1924. “It’s more about two things,” she explains, the first of which was respect. In the early 20th century, the word “******,” often written in lowercase, “looked like an insult and also was uncomfortably close to the N-word.” The phrase “********,” Painter adds, took into account “the actual skin ****** of a lot of the most visible people of ******** descent in the North. They were light-skinned, and a lot of them didn’t want to be called ‘******.’” With the source of Alice’s dark complexion unknown, Davis generally took care to avoid referring to her as a “******” during the trial, apparently because he knew her ******** DNA might be remote. At the same time, he went to some length to leave the impression on the jury that the blood coursing through her veins was likely of ******** origin. This ambiguity created a Rorschach test that allowed Americans to hear what they wanted to hear—and not just white Americans. “There was a lot at stake for all ******** Americans whether or not [Alice] wanted to be counted with them, or should be,” Ardizzone says. The court case fundamentally centered on the acceptance of ****** people as equals in ********* society. ****** filmmaker Oscar Micheaux capitalized on the publicity surrounding the trial, advertising his latest film, The House Behind the Cedars, with the caption “Amazing Parallel to the Famous Rhinelander Case!” Adapted from Charles Chesnutt’s 1900 novel of the same name, the film’s heroine is a mixed-race woman who passes for white and is wooed by a white millionaire. Micheaux screened unauthorized footage from the Rhinelander trial when he exhibited the film in Harlem. The admission that Alice was “********” was key to the defense’s argument. Anyone could plainly see that she wasn’t white, Davis said. According to Smith-Pryor, the defense argued, “There’s no ****** here! [Leonard] had to have known. [He] met the whole family. How could he not have known?” After all, Alice’s sister was married to a ****** man, and Leonard had interacted with his future brother-in-law well before 1924. Kip had met Alice in 1921 at a clinic where he was being treated for extreme shyness and a stutter, and where she worked. Her British mother is white, her father of mixed ****** and white ancestry. Fearing scandal, the parents of both try to dissuade them from the romance. 2/5 pic.twitter.com/SCmYrJyzgP — 100YearsAgoNews (@100YearsAgoNews) October 14, 2024 Neither Alice nor her father ever took the stand. In what lingers as the most infamous moment of the trial, Alice’s counsel offered the all-male jury a glimpse of what Leonard had seen during the intimate moments of the couple’s three-year courtship—in other words, wrote Lewis and Ardizzone in Love on Trial, the lawyers exhibited Alice’s bare legs and torso, which they believed would “prove that her race was obvious in her physical appearance.” According to official court transcript: [The judge; the attorneys]; the jury; the plaintiff; the defendant; her mother, Mrs. George Jones; and the stenographer left the courtroom and entered the jury room. The defendant and Mrs. Jones then withdrew to the lavatory … and, after a short time, again entered the jury room. The defendant, who was weeping, had on her underwear and a long coat. At Mr. Davis’ direction, she let down her coat, so that the upper portion of her body, as far down as the *******, was exposed. She then, again at Mr. Davis’ direction, covered the upper part of her body and showed the jury her bare legs, up as far as her knees. With this strategy, the defense effectively backed the Rhinelander side into asking the jury, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” In December 1925, the all-white, all-male jury denied Leonard an annulment. As Davis had assured the jury in his closing argument, “We are not going by our verdict to compel Leonard Rhinelander to live with Alice Rhinelander. … You are only called here to decide whether at this juncture, these two should be separated on the ground of ******. It must be apparent to each and every one of you that these two young people can never live together.” In the years that followed, Leonard unsuccessfully appealed the outcome of the trial. It was only in late 1930 that the former couple finally reached a settlement, with Leonard agreeing to pay Alice a lump sum of $31,500 (around $600,000 today) and $3,600 (nearly $70,000 today) annually, an amount that would not be adjusted to account for inflation. In exchange, Alice promised to never publicly discuss the Rhinelanders and to renounce any future use of the Rhinelander name. Author on ‘great deal of courage’ shown by Alice Jones Rhinelander l ABCNL Leonard ***** of pneumonia in February 1936. Just 32 years old and unmarried, he inherited the eternal grave before he could receive his earthly inheritance. His ********** ****** marked the morbid fulfillment of his attorney’s closing argument at the annulment trial. Addressing the jury, the lawyer had said, “There isn’t a father among you … who would not rather see his son in his casket than to see him wedded to a ******** woman.” In 1930, the U.S. Census Bureau, bowing to pressure from eugenicists, eliminated the ******** ******* classification, instructing census takers that “a person of mixed white and ****** blood should be returned as a ******, no matter how small the percentage of ****** blood.” That year, the enumerator marked down Alice’s father, George, then 75 years old, as “Neg” for “******.” In the space for his father’s country of origin, the enumerator, perhaps at George’s insistence, wrote “India.” Alice, who appeared in New York’s 1925 state census as “Alice J. Rhinelander,” shows up in the 1930 census with the Rhinelander surname, as the data was collected before her divorce settlement was finalized. While her father was recorded in the state census as “B” for ******, Alice escaped that designation in 1925. The census was taken before the trial began that year, so perhaps the census taker gave her the benefit of the doubt in marking her down as white. The 1930 census shows that the enumerator, a woman, initially recorded Alice as white. Then, she crossed out that entry and wrote “Neg” for “******.” Alice never remarried, despite living until age 90. Ardizzone learned of Alice’s 1989 ****** while researching her book in the late 1990s. It was the first major work on the Rhinelander case, predating “the digital world that we are in today,” she says. Ardizzone didn’t know if Alice was alive or ***** until she visited the Jones family plot at Beechwoods ********* in New Rochelle. “I literally tripped over her horizontal, flat commemorative stone,” the author recalls. “I looked down and saw ‘Alice Rhinelander.’” In ******, Alice had restored to herself the name she’d been denied in life. Get the latest History stories in your inbox? Filed Under: ******** ********* History, ********* History, British History, Colonialism, Immigrants, India, New York City, Newspapers, Race and Ethnicity, Racism, Roaring Twenties, Source link #************ #Marriage #Sparked #Scandalous #Trials #Roaring #Twenties Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Disney Dreamlight Valley: Snippets Guide Disney Dreamlight Valley: Snippets Guide Disney Dreamlight Valley’s second major expansion, The Storybook Vale, has no shortage of new content. There are three giant biomes to explore, multiple fresh faces to meet, and plenty of mechanics never before seen in the cozy game’s previous updates. Among the new features in The Storybook Vale are Snippets, small origami creatures that can be found in each biome. Snippets can be caught using the Royal Net, which you’ll obtain very early in the expansion. And while they may look like companions eager to pal around with you, they’re actually resources that are used at the Lorekeeper in The Library of Lore. Turning these little fellas in allows you to reorder stories and earn unique rewards. The amount of Snippets needed to reorder each story varies, but you’ll definitely need quite a lot of them if you’d like to earn every item the Lorekeeper has available for you. As such, we’ve compiled every Snippet location and how to catch them, as well as a list of traps you can use to slow, lure, or repel the creatures. All Snippet locations in Disney Dreamlight Valley and how to catch them Elusive White Snippets can be used to craft any other Snippet type. There are currently 13 Snippet types to catch across three categories: Birds, Frogs, and Demons. Each of these Snippets acts differently than another, meaning you’ll need to catch each of them in their own way. Most won’t pose much of a challenge, but a few will make you work for it a bit. Additionally, you can catch an elusive White Snippet (found only back in your normal Dreamlight Valley), which can then be used to craft one of any other type of Snippet at a crafting bench. However, this is merely a supplementary method of obtaining Snippets and would be an extraordinarily slow way to build up your collection if you relied on it exclusively. Here’s where to find each Snippet and how to catch them. Blue Bird Location: The Bind This Snippet flies around in a straight line relatively quickly throughout the biome but can be tracked down and caught with minimal effort. A slowing trap can help you along, but it isn’t necessary. Red Bird Location: The Library of Lore This Snippet is one of the easiest to catch, as it flies around fairly slowly within the library where there are plenty of obstacles to keep it contained within small spaces. Green Bird Location: The Elysian Fields This Snippet flies very quickly around the field. While it’s certainly catchable without any outside aid, traps will most definitely make your life much easier. Yellow Bird Location: The Wild Woods This is the fastest of the Bird Snippets and can jet around the biome quickly enough to evade you with frequency, but a bit of persistence will help you ******* ’em anyway. Traps can make a world of difference for this one. White Bird Location: Dreamlight Valley This Snippet isn’t particularly fast and can be caught with little effort. It’s also the only Snippet found in your original valley, meaning you’ll need to return there if you’d like to catch one. Pink ****** Location: The Elysian Fields, The Fiery Plains This Snippet will teleport away a short distance one time when you attempt to catch it. Simply follow the trail left behind to find and catch it. Blue ****** Location: The Fiery Plains, The Fallen Fortress This Snippet will teleport moderate distances three times when you attempt to capture it. Just keep chasing those trails and it’ll soon be yours! Red ****** Location: The Statue’s Shadow This Snippet will teleport a long distance away two times when you try to ******* it. As with other Demons, follow the trail it leaves to eventually catch it. Green ****** Location: Mount Olympus This Snippet will teleport a long distance away two times when you attempt to catch it. You know the drill by now, though–just keep following those trails and it’ll eventually give up and let you catch it. Green Frog Location: The Wild Woods, Teapot Falls This Snippet will only leap short distances at a very slow pace, making it a cinch to capture at any time. Pink Frog Location: The Statue’s Shadow, Teapot Falls This Snippet will leap a little further than Green Frogs and scurry a bit, but they’re still pretty slow and easy to catch. Purple Frog Location: The Fallen Fortress This Snippet leaps long distances and scurries away very quickly. They’re almost impossible to catch unless you chase them to a ***** end, so it’s highly recommended to make use of a slowing trap to make this far less frustrating. Yellow Frog Location: The Beanstalk Marshes This Snippet leaps long distances and scurries fairly quickly, but it doesn’t seem to be quite as fast as Purple Frogs. As such, they’re relatively easy to catch without slowing traps, though it never hurts to have some anyway. All Snippet traps in Disney Dreamlight Valley and how they work Snippet traps can make catching the little guys way easier. You’ll unlock access to new traps as you work your way through the main questline of The Storybook Vale. By the time you reach the end, you’ll have all the traps at your disposal, which should speed up the process of catching the remaining Snippets you need. There are three trap varieties–one for each biome. This means you’ll have to be sure you’re placing the appropriate type of trap in its corresponding biome if you want to be certain it’s working. Basic Fall Leaves Traps – The Bind Olympic Traps – Mythopia Faerie Traps – The Everafter Each type of trap has three varieties to choose from, each with a different use. Lure Traps – These traps will automatically lure and capture Snippets on a timer within the biome you choose. You can visit the lure trap and withdraw any captured Snippets any time you’d like. Slow Traps – These traps will slow any Snippets in the biome you place them in. This can make capturing faster Snippets much easier. Repellent Traps – These traps will reduce the spawn rate of Snippets within any biome they’re placed. This is mostly helpful if you’re wanting a biome to feel less cluttered with life. Much like Ancient Machines from the A Rift in Time expansion, each of your traps can be upgraded. However, unlike the Ancient Machines, you won’t actually need to process this upgrade at a bench. Rather, you’ll just need to visit the trap wherever you’ve placed it, then interact with it to purchase an upgrade using Storybook Magic. Upgrading is a good idea, as it will result in further storage capacity (Lure Traps), speed reduction (Slow Traps), and spawn reduction (Repellent Traps). Because you’ll need so much Storybook Magic for other things early in the expansion, though, consider upgrading your traps after completing the main story of The Storybook Vale. For more on Disney Dreamlight Valley, check out our comprehensive guides hub. Source link #Disney #Dreamlight #Valley #Snippets #Guide Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Amazon slashes the price of the new MacBook Air M3 with 16GB memory to a record low price – but only for a limited time Amazon slashes the price of the new MacBook Air M3 with 16GB memory to a record low price – but only for a limited time Apple has only just launched a new version of the MacBook Air which ups the default memory from 8GB to a much more respectable 16GB, and now Amazon has slashed its price to a record low ahead of ****** Friday – now just $849 (was $1,099). This might possibly be the best MacBook Air ****** Friday deal we see this year and beats the previous all-time low price of $899 for this model. This version of the MacBook Air comes with a 13-inch screen, the M3 chip (which is the latest chip you can get for a MacBook Air), 256GB storage, and that all-important 16GB of memory, making this a brilliant laptop for pretty much anyone who wants a thin and light laptop that’s also powerful. In the *** the same model has also had a price cut to £899.97, down from £999 at Amazon. Today’s best MacBook Air ****** Friday deal in the US Today’s best MacBook Air ****** Friday deal in the *** When the M3 model of the MacBook Air launched earlier this year, I was impressed enough to award it a rare five stars in my review. The M3 chip is excellent at day-to-day tasks, and while there are now MacBook ***** with the newer M4 chip, we likely won’t see any M4-powered MacBook Airs until next year. So, this is the most recent and powerful version of the MacBook Air. The only complaint I had about the M3 MacBook Air at the time was the rather low amount of unified memory it came with – 8GB in 2024 is rather hard to justify. The good news is that Apple seems to agree, and has now updated the base model to come with 16GB for the same price – and it’s this model that gets price cuts in both the *** and US at Amazon. In the US, the price is the lowest we’ve ever seen it – and Amazon claims this is a limited-time deal, so while we can’t imagine the price rising so close to ****** Friday, you never know, and Amazon isn’t clear how long this deal will be live. If you’ve been looking for a ******* deal for the latest MacBook Air, then this is the deal to get. More of today’s ****** Friday sales in the US Amazon: TVs, smart home & air fryers from $12.99 Apple: AirPods, iPads, MacBooks from $89.99 Best Buy: $1,000 off 4K TVs, laptops & headphones Cheap TVs: smart TVs at Best Buy from $69.99 Christmas trees: top-rated trees from $54.99 Dell: best-selling Inspiron & XPS laptops from $279.99 Dreamcloud: mattress deals from $349 + free shipping Holiday: decor, lights, Christmas trees & PJs from $10.99 Home Depot: 40% off tools, appliances & furniture Lowe’s: holiday decor, appliances & tools from $17.31 Nectar: up to 50% off all mattresses Nordstrom: 46% off boots, coats, jeans & jewelry Samsung: $1,500+ off TVs, phones, watches & appliances Target: save on furniture, tech & clothing Walmart: cheap TVs, ****** vacs, furniture & appliances More of today’s ****** Friday sales in the *** Amazon: up to 68% off toothbrushes and TVs AO: savings on games consoles and appliances Argos: up to 50% off toys, Lego, TVs and gifts Boots: up to 50% off Dyson, *****-B and Philips Currys: early deals on TVs, appliances, laptops Dell: laptops, desktops, monitors from £299 Dyson: up to £150 off Ebay: up to 50% off refurbished tech EE: up to £600 off Samsung and Apple John Lewis: up to £300 off appliances and TVs LG: £1,000 or more off TVs and appliances Samsung: up to £600 off TVs, phones and tablets Very: up to 30% off phones, appliances & clothing Source link #Amazon #slashes #price #MacBook #Air #16GB #memory #record #price #limited #time Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Goldman thinks Nvidia is going to beat and so does the options market Goldman thinks Nvidia is going to beat and so does the options market One of the most anticipated earnings releases of the quarter could spark big moves. Nvidia is set to report fiscal third-quarter results after stock market closes Wednesday. Analysts polled by LSEG expect the artificial intelligence darling to post earnings and revenue growth of more than 80% compared to the year-earlier *******. Given the chipmaker’s massive size — it has a market cap of more than $3.6 trillion, the biggest of any U.S.-listed company — the results will reverberate across the stock market. If the options market is any guide, the results could spark a big move higher, according to Goldman Sachs. Analyst John Marshall said options are implying an 8.3% move in either direction for Nvidia. However, “both volumes and skew suggest investors are more bullishly positioned in NVDA than the S & P 500,” he added. Goldman itself is also bullish ahead of the report. Marshall said the Wall Street bank expects Nvidia to beat 3Q Street expectations driven by strong double-digit data center revenue growth, and FY1Q (April) to be the true “break out” quarter when the ramp up in Blackwell chip sales and improved supply-side conditions push analysts to revise earnings estimates higher. Nvidia shares ticked slightly higher in the Wednesday premarket as traders awaited the report. Elsewhere this morning on Wall Street , Pivotal Research hiked its price target on Netflix to $1,100 — the highest on Wall Street. “Given the success of the Tyson/Paul ****** we expect Netflix to accelerate its offerings of ‘eventized’ live programming, which further enhances NFLX’s ability to offer households regular compelling content (juiced by the fact their competitors are now selling previously exclusive content to NFLX) = likely lower subscriber churn and greater ability to take price,” senior analyst and Pivotal founder Jeffrey Wlodarczak wrote in a Wednesday note. Source link #Goldman #thinks #Nvidia #beat #options #market Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Tories accuse government of ‘stoking inflation’ Tories accuse government of ‘stoking inflation’ The Conservatives have accused the government of “stoking inflation”, after price rises hit their highest rate for six months. An increase in energy bills helped push up the *** inflation rate, which measures price changes over time, to 2.3% in the year to October, up from 1.7% in September. Shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart, who was standing in for Tory leader Kemi Badenoch at Prime Minister’s Questions, blamed the government’s decision to agree above-inflation pay rises with unions and said last month’s Budget would also push up inflation. But Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner pointed out inflation hit 11.1% when Burghart was a minister under former PM Liz Truss. Burghart said the government’s decisions meant “higher inflation for working people”. “The truth is this government isn’t doing anything to bring down inflation. This government is stoking inflation,” he told the Commons. “First, we had above-inflation pay rises for the unions. Then, we had a Budget, which the OBR said was going to push up inflation. “This morning we had City economists, real economists, saying that next year inflation would hit 3%.” Rayner, who was deputising for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer while he travels back from the G20 summit in Brazil, hit back: “Many people might not know, but [Burghart] was the minister for growth when, under Liz Truss, inflation was 11.1% and growth flatlined, so we’re doing much better than he did.” However, Burghart said it was the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic that drove up inflation under the Conservatives. He added: “This government is doing it to the British people. High tax, high inflation, low growth, low reform, there’s a word for that, it’s Starmerism.” Since winning power, Labour has agreed above-inflation pay deals for workers including doctors and train drivers in an attempt to end long-running strikes. Meanwhile, in last month’s Budget the government announced almost £70bn of extra spending each year. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which monitors the government’s spending plans, said this would contribute to higher inflation in the short-term, although it would also help to drive economic growth. Businesses have also warned they will have to increase prices for customers to cover the cost of tax rises announced in the Budget. Defending the government’s economic strategy, Rayner said they had taken the “difficult decisions to fix the £22bn ****** *****” she claimed had been left behind by the Conservatives, while also “investing in the future”. Rayner was also challenged over changes to inheritance tax for farming businesses, which prompted thousands of people to protest in London on Tuesday. From April 2026, inherited agricultural assets worth more than £1m, which were previously exempt, will have to pay inheritance tax at 20% – half the usual rate. Other allowances could mean a couple who are married or in a civil partnership could pass on a farm worth as much as £3m. Burghart called on Rayner to commit to no further increases to inheritance tax or reductions to agricultural property relief during the current Parliament. The deputy PM did not answer directly but reiterated the government’s position that the “vast majority of estate owners will be totally unaffected” by the change. Source link #Tories #accuse #government #stoking #inflation Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Geno Auriemma never planned to stay at UConn — 40 years later, he’s about to set another record there Geno Auriemma never planned to stay at UConn — 40 years later, he’s about to set another record there STORRS, Conn. — A few years ago, UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma returned to his hometown of Montella, Italy, for the first time in years. He was on vacation elsewhere in the country, but a cousin reached out and invited him to a relative’s wedding. The ceremony, he discovered, would be in the same ******* where he attended kindergarten six decades earlier, so he decided to extend his trip an extra few days. As a child, Auriemma walked to kindergarten every day, stopping at a field where locals had erected a basketball hoop and created a soccer field. Years later, Auriemma’s mother, Marsiella, often told how that was the first time he saw a basketball hoop. On his trip six decades later, Auriemma retraced his footsteps from his childhood home to the *******. He stopped at the field to take in the view. The basketball hoop and soccer field were long gone. There are more houses now — with running water and electricity, unlike his home as a boy. He’s the oldest living person in his immediate family, the last one who remembers this place clearly. “We were living in ********, but we didn’t know it was ********,” Auriemma said. “As a ****, I thought, ‘Why do I need a telephone?’ No one had a telephone. ‘Why do I need money?’ Nobody had money. ‘Why do I need running water? Why do we need electricity? Everybody helps everybody else get by.’” Over the years, several earthquakes have ripped through this area, but the people have always rebuilt. Even the tremors couldn’t ******** the belief that the new structures would stand, even if everyone understood that everything could be gone in an instant. “Obviously, it has changed,” Auriemma, 70, says. “But it’s still kind of the same.” Such is true for Montella but also for Auriemma. If there’s a theme to his coaching and an explanation for how he has arrived at this pinnacle, it’s this: He’s a self-described optimist with a worst-case-scenario plan if anything and everything goes south. He has a memory like an elephant, which means his past is never far from his mind. That mentality has driven Auriemma to this point — one win away from becoming the winningest basketball coach of all time. Geno Auriemma joins Tara VanDerVeer as the all-time winningest collegiate basketball head coach. #NCAAWBB pic.twitter.com/q7FgrcbXi2 — NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessWBB) November 16, 2024 When Auriemma came to UConn in 1985 as a 31-year-old, he saw it as a stepping-stone job: Win a bit, grow the program and then move on to a more established program. Championship basketball wasn’t supposed to emanate from UConn; Auriemma could see that. During his interview, then-UConn athletic director John Toner intentionally avoided showing Auriemma the gym or the locker room out of ***** that Auriemma would turn down the job. After Auriemma took the job anyway, he shared a single office with his entire staff. He and longtime assistant Chris Dailey each had a desk; the rest of the staff shared a single couch and used a coffee table as a desk. Auriemma’s and Dailey’s coaching contracts stipulated they teach gym classes to non-athletes. Attendance was so poor at UConn games that they made it a class requirement for students. In 1991, the Huskies made their first Final Four alongside established programs Stanford, Virginia and Tennessee. “It was all the really, really good programs, great players, great coaches and …” Auriemma said, then paused. “And us. (It was) like, ‘Who are these people?’” After the Final Four, something changed. No longer was UConn a stepping stone. It was where Auriemma felt he needed and wanted to be. The program’s first Final Four run allowed the Huskies to attract more high-talent players, and when Rebecca Lobo visited campus in the early 1990s, Auriemma knew she could help put the program on the map. The Huskies had gotten to the Final Four with players no other Final Four team recruited, so he figured landing an All-********* could help them take the next step. Lobo’s parents didn’t want her to go to UConn. There wasn’t much infrastructure or community built around campus. The academics weren’t what they are now. (Lobo’s parents called it a “safety school” when they visited.) “He was the selling point,” Lobo said. “The reason to go there was to play for him. That has stayed consistent, but especially in the early years. This was before it was proven that he would get you to a Final Four or national championship, that he could be the one to usher you into the best version of yourself.” Rebecca Lobo is one of several stars Auriemma has developed into a national champion and All-*********. (Bob Stowell / Getty Images) In 1995, Lobo sat in Auriemma’s office when a fan delivered baked goods to the team and fawned over the star All-*********. After the fan left, Lobo — who was seated across from Auriemma at his desk — rolled her eyes. “Don’t you ever be that way,” Lobo remembers Auriemma sternly telling her. “Don’t you ever take any of this for granted.” That was 200 wins in with six NCAA Tournament appearances and a Final Four on the resume. The Huskies were on the brink of their first national title. But an eye-roll, to Auriemma, signified what could bring it all crashing down. Though Auriemma saw potential in Storrs, he also recognized the program’s humble past could return if he didn’t build for the future. “When I first started, I thought we’d beat everybody because we’re smarter than them and we’re going to outsmart them, even though I knew we couldn’t win,” Auriemma said. “And then when we started winning all the time, all I kept thinking about was, ‘****** *******, we’re going to lose. They’re going to play great. We’re going to play sh—y.’” Auriemma continued hammering home his points with each new roster, and UConn became the sport’s gold standard. Lobo handed the reins to Jennifer Rizzotti, Shea Ralph and Nykesha Sales. They handed the baton to Sue Bird and Swin Cash. Then Diana Taurasi and Renee Montgomery. Maya Moore, Tina Charles, Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier, Paige Bueckers — the list goes on. The program became a bedrock of sports en route to Auriemma matching former Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer as college basketball’s winningest coach. Through it all, he has been confident that with the right preparation, UConn could continue to compete at the highest level, but he’s also convinced it could all be gone tomorrow. UConn’s success always felt precarious, with ******** always nipping at his heels. For Auriemma, the past — whether it be that one losing season or how it felt to help his parents acclimate to Norristown, Pa., after leaving the small village in Italy he called home — is always there. None of it’s a ********, but it’s all a reminder of how far he has come. It matters to him that he had to create his own success, and ultimately, he chose to make it at UConn. He never looked for a shortcut, and it’s a reminder that a divergence at any point could have created a very different life. Friday will mark 63 years since he arrived in America, which means that 63 years ago Wednesday — on the night when he could become college basketball’s all-time winningest coach with a victory against Fairleigh Dickinson — he was a 7-year-old boy somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, surrounded by water and sky, 11 days into a 13-day journey. His parents never promised him that life would be better here, only that it could be better so long as they didn’t take shortcuts and relied on the people around them. He never forgot that everything could be gone in an instant, which has driven him and shaped him the most from win No. 1 to 100 and eventually 1,217, from turning UConn from a stepping stone into a program that’s synonymous across all sports with success. As he has said countless times to his players and himself: Don’t you ever take any of this for granted. (Top photo: C. Morgan Engel / NCAA Photos via Getty Images) Source link #Geno #Auriemma #planned #stay #UConn #years #hes #set #record Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

The Rise and Function of the Polis in Ancient Greece The Rise and Function of the Polis in Ancient Greece In the society of Ancient Greece, the polis, or the city-state, was perhaps the most distinctive and important political innovation at the time. Emerging around the 8th century BC, this institution became the fundamental aspect of the ancient Greek civilization. Defining Greek life for centuries, the polis was not merely a city, but a distinct socio-political entity. Its emergence and development were closely connected with the traditional social structures of the time, the economy, and the landscape of Greece. And, as such, it shaped the development of Greek identity, politics, and culture. But more importantly, the polis ***** the foundations for major political concepts that shaped the governance of the time, such as democracy, civic participation, and citizenship. What made the polis so successful and influential? And what was its ultimate fate? The Emergence of the Polis The earliest origins of the polis can be traced back to the aftermath of the era known as the Greek Dark Ages, which lasted roughly from 1100 to 750 BC. This was the ******* marked by the collapse of the venerable Mycenaean Civilization, which was followed by a major decline in population numbers and economic activities in the region. The ensuing dark ages saw communities largely isolated, scattered in remote parts of the landscape and having next to none political organization. But as centuries passed, things stabilized. By the 8th century BC, the society in Greece once more began to revitalize, and trade once again began to flourish. Populations grew, and more stable social structures and settlements were established. Pericles gives a ******** oration in the ancient polis of Athens by Philipp von Foltz. (Public Domain) There were several factors that brought about the emergence of the polis. There was, naturally, the geography of Greece, which dictated the emergence of large cities in certain parts of the land where life was guaranteed to thrive. The Greek mainland was always dominated by rugged terrain, and the large mountains and deep valleys divided the nation into isolated pockets and distinct regions. These geographical conditions discouraged the formation of large, centralized states but supported smaller, self-sufficient communities that could grow into independent city-states. Of course, there was the natural pace of socio-political evolution, as well as the rising need for collective security. The societies who lived together and enjoyed the security of formidable city walls were much better off than those living in small, scattered settlements at odds with their neighbors. Read more… Top image: Ancient Greek agora scene. Source: AlexCaelus / Adobe Stock By Aleksa Vučković Source link #Rise #Function #Polis #Ancient #Greece Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

How to Complete The Poppy Field in STALKER 2 How to Complete The Poppy Field in STALKER 2 Early in your first playthrough of STALKER 2, you’ll come across a mission called ‘The Poppy Field’, and it can quickly become one of the most aggravating tasks you’ll be asked to complete. It’s also slightly branching with a couple of choices to make, but you can ‘trick’ the quest to get all the benefits possible. Read on to learn how to complete The Poppy Field in STALKER 2. The Poppy Field Walkthrough In The Poppy Field, you’ll be tasked with finding an ‘icon’ in an anomalous region and returning it to the requester in a timely fashion. That sounds simple, right? Well, The Poppy Field is housing a secret – it’s an anomaly-ridden zone that’ll put you to sleep faster than you can blink, and once you fall asleep in the poppies, you’re not waking up again. It has claimed many lives, and it won’t think twice before taking you out of the equation. With that being said, how do you complete The Poppy Field in STALKER 2? Firstly, you’ll want to search the outskirts of the field for a building containing a man called Pomor. He’ll offer you a unique deal – enter the field and bring back weapons and ammo from ***** soldiers to get a special reward and he’ll help locate the cellar that contains the icon. Before you venture into the field, you’ll want to stock up on energy drinks. They can be purchased from food vendors like Warlock in Zalissya, but they’re also scattered around the buildings that occupy the poppy field. Here’s how to complete The Poppy Field in full now that you’ve found Pomor: Skirt the outside of the poppy field, darting in to quickly loot the bodies as requested by Pomor. Don’t let your stamina bar empty, but move as quickly as possible, downing an energy drink once every 10 – 20 seconds if possible. Collect all the weapons and ammo from the bodies, leaving the poppy field with each pick-up. Take the weapons back to Pomor and he’ll tell you where to find the icon – but he’ll also offer to buy it from you, which is what you’ll be doing next. Run around the edge of the poppy field and find the cellar, diving down and grabbing the icon while still consuming energy drinks (there will be some in the cellar itself). Return to Pomor and complete the trade, giving him the icon and securing Unknown Stalker’s AR416 as a unique *******. Double-cross Pomor and ***** him, taking back the icon, getting a key to Pomor’s stash room, and still keeping his reward. Return to icon to Mityay in Zalissya as intended to get the full reward for The Poppy Field. If you don’t take energy drinks to complete The Poppy Field, you’ll find yourself constantly passing out and dying in the field – it pays to prepare for this quest. For more STALKER 2 guides, check out how to deal with anomalies in STALKER 2 Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest news and exclusive leaks every week! No Spam. Source link #Complete #Poppy #Field #STALKER Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Seat belt treatment: Panthers’ Jaycee ***** has been strapping in opposing WRs since college Seat belt treatment: Panthers’ Jaycee ***** has been strapping in opposing WRs since college CHARLOTTE, N.C. — During a late-September game between two south Charlotte high schools, Myers Park cornerback Orlando Brown broke up a deep pass against Ardrey Kell and celebrated with a seat belt gesture after “locking down” the wide receiver. Watch a football game at any level and you’re likely to see a defensive back punctuating a pass breakup or interception with the seat belt, a celebration that traces its origins to Columbia, S.C., during the COVID-19-shortened season of 2020. That’s where a pair of starters in the South Carolina secondary — Jaycee ***** and ******* Mukuamu — came up with the move during a walk-through while the Gamecocks were preparing to play at LSU that week. “A lot of guys were saying ‘strap’ at the time. So I had just started saying seat belt. Like (when you) seat belt, you strap. We both were thinking about a gesture to do. And we came up with the across the chest,” ***** said. “We were going to do it whoever got the first stop of the game. We did it in practice all week. When we did it in practice, it was just a funny thing. And then when I got a stop in the game, I just did it in the game. And it took off from there.” After defending a first-quarter fade pass in the end zone intended for LSU freshman tight end Arik Gilbert, ***** pulled an imaginary seat belt over his chest and snapped it into place. The Tigers would go on to win 52-24. But when *****’s personal trainer posted a video of the play on social media after the game, a new move was born. Let him know! @I_Am_OD3 pic.twitter.com/k4wDyrPH5s — Jaycee ***** (@jayceehorn_10) January 3, 2021 Four years later, ***** has noticed everyone from Pop Warner players to women’s basketball standouts doing the seat belt after defensive stops. Green Bay Packers cornerback Jaire Alexander has added his own flourish to what he calls the sword. In fact, Alexander claims to have started the craze, which ***** adamantly disputes. “You can check,” said *****, the Carolina Panthers’ fourth-year corner. “The first time anybody ever did the seat belt we were playing LSU in Baton Rouge my last year. Go see if you see a seat belt celebration anywhere before that game.” Mukuamu, a safety for the Dallas Cowboys, appreciates how widespread the celebration has become. But like *****, he wants to make sure folks understand its history. “It’s worldwide. I think that’s like the first thing DBs want to do once they get a bat-down. They want to put the seat belt on,” he said. “But remember: Seat belt started at South Carolina.” That ***** would be at the forefront of an iconic celebration makes sense. The 24-year-old comes by it naturally. During a nationally televised game at the Superdome in 2003, New Orleans Saints receiver Joe ***** — Jaycee’s father — famously celebrated the second of his four touchdowns in a rout of the New York Giants by snatching a flip phone he’d stashed in the padding around the goal post and pretending to phone home. *****’s choreographed call earned him a fine from the NFL of $30,000 — the same amount levied against Michael Thomas when the Saints’ receiver paid homage to ***** with his own cell phone celebration 15 years later. Jaycee ***** said he’s not in the same class as his dad when it comes to showmanship. “He was way more splashy than me,” he said. “Receivers be divas, so he was definitely one of them.” The younger ***** credits his dad for instilling in him a game-day demeanor that is equal parts confidence and aggression. “A lot of that comes from him and my older brother. That’s just the style he wanted us to play with,” ***** said. “He ***** near wanted us to think of it as war when we stepped between the lines. That’s the mentality he had, and I try to play with that, too.” Jaycee ***** has defended a career-high 10 passes this season. (Photo: Carolina Panthers) Joe ***** settled in an exclusive community in suburban Atlanta after ending his career with the Falcons. There was a field that hosted youth league games minutes from his house, but Joe had his boys play in the more rugged Metro Atlanta league that produced such NFL stars as Cam Newton and Eric Berry. “This league plays rain, sleet or snow in the hood,” Joe ***** told The Athletic in 2021. “I’ll say that with a capital H — in the Hood. And (Jaycee) grew up with that attitude.” ***** and Mukuamu, a South Carolina native who moved to Louisiana before his senior year of high school, arrived in Columbia in 2018. Both played as freshmen and were close on and off the field. GO DEEPER Panthers’ Bryce Young gets shot vs. Chiefs, Jonathon Brooks to make debut: 5 things Midway through their junior season, the start of which was delayed for a month due to COVID, the two started kicking around the idea of a signature celebration. “Throughout the whole year, Jaycee just kept saying like car seat, seat belt, whatever. And then one day in walkthroughs, I just did like this,” said Mukuamu, showing a reporter the across-the-chest gesture. “It was right before the LSU game. We were like, ‘It’s hard.’ The first time it ever came out was the LSU game. He ended up doing it first. … It just took off.” Not long after ***** debuted it, Mukuamu followed with another seat belt after intercepting Tigers quarterback TJ Finley and returning the pick 56 yards to set up a Gamecocks’ field goal. The move might have remained an inside joke between ***** and Mukuamu had Oliver Davis, an Atlanta-based defensive backs coach, not put a video of *****’s first seat belt on his Instagram story. “He posted it and it was blowing up,” ***** said. “All the kids in Atlanta were doing it. There were other college kids doing it.” ***** and Mukuamu only played two more games for South Carolina following the LSU loss. After Will Muschamp was fired in November after a 2-5 start to the 10-game schedule, both defensive backs opted out to prepare for the NFL draft. ***** revealed at his pro day he had several family members who contracted COVID, including an aunt who ***** of complications from it. Matt Rhule attended *****’s pro day in Columbia, where the junior enhanced his draft status by running a 4.37-second 40, pumping out 19 reps on the 225-pound bench press and posting a 41.5-inch vertical jump. A month later the Panthers took ***** with the No. 8 pick, one spot ahead of Alabama cornerback Patrick Surtain. Before *****’s rookie year, he and his agent Trey Smith tried to trademark the seat belt, but were told a move or a dance can’t be trademarked. ***** had printed some T-shirts of him doing the seat belt for friends and family, but his idea to launch a seat belt-styled clothing line ***** with the trademark ruling. “After that I started seeing other sports doing it. Then they put it on Madden. I’m like, ‘*****, they done took my celly,’” ***** said. “It is what it is. It still brought joy to me to see everybody doing it.” GO DEEPER 2025 NFL Draft: Projection model ranks 5 teams most likely to pick No. 1 Mukuamu has taken the same approach, even when Cowboys rookie cornerback Caelen Carson, a fifth-round pick from Wake Forest, showed up in Dallas with the X handle of “@walkinseatbelt.” “I just let people ride with it,” Mukuamu said. “We’re all DBs at the end of the day. So it’s just something cool to do.” When Derwin James broke up Joe Burrow’s Hail Mary pass on the final play of Sunday night’s NFL game, the Los Angeles Chargers’ safety ran off the field doing the seat belt. Safety Nick Emmanwori has kept the tradition going at South Carolina, while Brown — the Myers Park corner and son of Chicago Bears offensive coordinator Thomas Brown — is among the high school players strapping opponents up. “The cool thing for me is I’ve seen it in some basketball games, women’s basketball players doing it,” ***** said. “I’ve seen little kids doing it on social media (in) Little League games. Alexander, the Charlotte native and two-time Pro Bowler, suggested he was the inspiration for all the NFL defensive backs copying the move. “Everybody’s doing my celebration,” Alexander told Green Bay reporters last fall. “Man, c’mon, man. Might as well just put on 23 jerseys around the league, man. *****.” Jaire Alexander on the Packers CB group: “It’s gonna be Strap City. We might as well go ahead and start marketing that right now. We just waiting on 21 (Eric Stokes) to get back.” pic.twitter.com/Ie2FYvLy6R — Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) July 31, 2023 Alexander’s move is slightly different. He raises his arms to the sky and then brings them down across his chest to his opposite hip, as if putting a sword back in a sheath. Alexander corrected reporters last year who referred to it as a seat belt. “No,” he said. “It’s a sword.” So maybe there’s room in NFL secondaries for both the seat belt and the sword. “He does his own. They do it like where they point to the sky and then strap,” ***** said. “But that came from South Carolina, man. ******* Mukuamu and Jaycee *****. Them the two guys that created the seat belt.” Panthers special teams captain Sam Franklin doesn’t do either. After making plays in punt coverage, Franklin puts his hands at waist level and pushes them toward the ground, indicating his opponents are “little kids.” But Franklin likes what *****’s celebration stands for. “You’ve gotta go out there and have a great rep to put a seat belt on somebody,” he said. “The seat belt is basically saying, ‘I secured your **** home safe.’ That’s what the seat belt’s for. You’ve gotta ******* them back to the sideline safely.” After a couple of injury-plagued seasons, ***** is having the best year of his career. With seven games remaining, ***** already has surpassed his previous season high for passes defensed with 10. His 45.8 completion percentage allowed ranks fourth among defensive backs with a minimum of 250 coverage snaps, according to Next Gen Stats. Scoop City Newsletter Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox. Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox. Sign Up So ***** has had reason to celebrate, but the irony is he rarely throws on the seat belt these days. By his estimate, he’s done it three times this season, including after a pass breakup against former teammate DJ Moore during a Week 5 loss at Chicago. The unique move he and Mukuamu came up with in the shadow of Williams-Bryce Stadium has gotten too popular for *****’s liking. “I don’t do it no more like that ‘cause they took the sauce. It ain’t the same no more when everybody’s doing it,” ***** said. “It’s gotta be like a special (play).” ***** isn’t retiring the seat belt, just saving it for big moments. So buckle up: You never know when it’s coming. (Top photo of *****: Brooke Sutton / Getty Images) Source link #Seat #belt #treatment #Panthers #Jaycee #***** #strapping #opposing #WRs #college Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

How Mistletoe Became a Christmas Kissing Tradition How Mistletoe Became a Christmas Kissing Tradition The mistletoe plant has white berries, not red like the fake ones have. iStock The yuletide decorations are up: a trimmed tree, jolly stockings on the mantel and—wait, what’s that white-berried weed hanging from the ceiling? And why are people so amorous when they find themselves beneath it? Mistletoe, a parasitic plant, is actually accustomed to the suspension: In nature, it grows only on other trees’ branches. And it’s long been associated with mystical power: In Norse myth, the **** Balder is mistakenly ******* by an arrow of mistletoe—after which the plant becomes synonymous with his grieving mother’s undying love. While mistletoe’s berries are poisonous, ancient Romans and Greeks used its leaves medicinally, to treat cramps, epilepsy and ulcers. And first-century Celtic druids apparently used mistletoe to make a sacred fertility elixir—one historic use that presaged the plant’s now-dominant identity as an excuse for kissing. The first known reference to smooching under the plant dates to a 1784 English poem, in which three men “kiss beneath the mistletoe” the lips of a “girl not turn’d of twenty.” By then, any woman or girl who walked beneath this vegetal decor had to stop and wait to be kissed. One historian suggests the tradition was thought up by a “particularly lusty and inventive” British boy, whose trick spread around the country, then the world. As the ********* author Washington Irving wrote around 1820, each berry on a sprig of mistletoe had come to represent a kiss that a man was allowed to bestow upon a young woman standing underneath the plant, and “when the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases.” As for the girl on the receiving end, the era’s (otherwise chaste) social customs dictated she never refuse a kiss under the mistletoe, lest she invite bad luck on the marriage market. Today’s typical mistletoe decor differs from its 19th-century precedent in a few ways. Its berries aren’t poisonous—because the stuff’s usually fake; those false berries are often mistakenly red, rather than white; and the sprigs are (one hopes) no longer being used to force kisses upon unwilling recipients. Still, at family gatherings and in cheesy movies, mistletoe ******** the catalyst of many an awkward or playful holiday *****. Get the latest History stories in your inbox? Filed Under: Christmas, Plants, Rituals and Traditions Source link #Mistletoe #Christmas #Kissing #Tradition Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Nibble ******* Brings The Gaming Fashion Show to rAge Expo 2024 Nibble ******* Brings The Gaming Fashion Show to rAge Expo 2024 Nibble ******* is set to rock the rAge Expo with an exhilarating gaming fashion show! This event promises to blend cosplay, fandom merchandise, and street fashion into an eye-catching celebration of style and creativity. The fashion show will not feature professional models. Instead, members of the gaming community will take centre stage, highlighting how fandom culture is accessible to everyone. This year’s Gaming Fashion Show theme is influenced by Techwear, urban casual, and Afrofuturism. Expect to see a blend of streetwear fashion, with looks that are big on TikTok and Instagram, and rapidly making their way into South ******** culture. Nibble ******* team. Left to right seated Ruth Bleeker, Aidan Kruger, Dharshan Moonasar, Lukhanyo Gqokoma. Standing Glenn Marc (CEOFounder) “This year’s fashion show is all about celebrating how gaming culture influences fashion in the real world,” says Ruth Bleeker, Managing Director at Nibble *******. “We’re showcasing everything from full cosplay outfits to more casual gaming-inspired streetwear, focusing on how fandom, identity, and style intersect. “In addition, we’ll have SPOT (sophisticated agile mobile ******) from the University of Johannesburg (UJ) at the expo as well as participation from their dynamic Fashion Department – which is really exciting!” No matter if you’re a gaming enthusiast, a fashion lover, or someone who appreciates handcrafted art and unique gifts, rAge expo has something for everyone. Immerse yourself in the gaming culture, discover cutting-edge technology, celebrate artistic expression, and find the perfect festive gifts—all under one roof! Get your tickets and join us at rAge Expo 2024! Date: 29 November – 1 December 2024 Times: 09h00 to 18h00 on Friday & Saturday 09h00 to 16h00 on Sunday Venue: Johannesburg Expo Centre (NASREC) All ages are welcome. Children under 7 are free. TICKET PRICES: Day Pass Ticket @ R200 per person Weekend Pass Ticket @ R420 per person Get your tickets at Howler or click the banner. Source link #Nibble #******* #Brings #Gaming #Fashion #Show #rAge #Expo Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Best early ****** Friday deals under $100: Amazon Echo, TVs, headphones Best early ****** Friday deals under $100: Amazon Echo, TVs, headphones Beats Update 11/19/24: ****** Friday is still over a week away, but you can already start your shopping with the ****** Friday deals under $100 that we’ve gathered here. There’s a possibility that these affordable items get even ******* discounts when the ***** officially launches, but we won’t blame you if you’re already tempted by today’s prices. ****** Friday will start on November 29, but if you’ve already got the ***** to shop, check out the early ****** Friday deals under $100 that we’ve gathered here. The offers cover smart home devices, laptops, TVs, kitchen gadgets, and so much more, so if you want to start enjoying discounts without blowing your entire budget for the shopping event, take a look at our favorite bargains below. For larger potential purchases, you can also take a look at our ****** Friday deals across all retailers. If you’re already willing to spend a lot to avoid the chaos of the holiday season, we’ve got a lot of other roundups for you to browse, including ****** Friday TV deals and ****** Friday gaming laptop deals. You should hurry with your transactions though, as there’s a chance that stocks run out even before ****** Friday begins. Amazon Echo Pop — $18 $40 55% off Amazon The Amazon Echo Pop is the most affordable entry in its line of smart speakers that are powered by Amazon’s Alexa. It’s a great way to access Alexa without spending too much cash, says our guide on which Amazon Echo should you buy, and it offers pretty decent sound for its price. You can get it at 55% off, for a discount of $22. Samsung Galaxy A03s (Straight Talk) — $40 $60 33% off Samsung The Samsung Galaxy A03s is an inexpensive smartphone that’s currently even more affordable with this 33% discount that brings its price down by $20. It features a 6.5-inch HD+ screen, octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage. This smartphone is locked to Straight Talk though, which will be fine if you want a prepaid plan for it anyway. Microsoft Xbox Core wireless gaming controller — $45 $60 25% off Microsoft The Microsoft Xbox Core wireless gaming controller isn’t just for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S — it’s also compatible with the Xbox One X and the PC, as well as mobile devices running on Android or iOS. It features Bluetooth technology for wireless connections, a 3.5mm port for headsets, and up to 40 hours of battery life. It’s on ***** at 25% off, for savings of $15. HP DeskJet 2755e wireless ****** inkjet printer — $50 $85 41% off HP The HP DeskJet 2755e is an affordable wireless ****** inkjet printer that’s on ***** with a 41% discount, slashing its price by $35. It can print up to five pages per minute, and it can also function as a copier or scanner. The printer also comes with three months of HP’s Instant Ink, a program that will send you ink when your cartridges are running low so there will be no interruption to your printing schedule. Ninja AF100 air fryer — $59 $89 34% off Ninja The Ninja AF100 air fryer will let you cook fried food using little to no oil, so you and your family won’t consume too much grease. This air fryer, which is down by $30 following a 34% discount, comes with a basket offering a capacity of 4 quarts, a wide temperature range of 105 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and easy cleaning as the basket and crisper plate are dishwasher safe. Keurig K-Select coffee maker — $70 $150 53% off Keurig The Keurig K-Select coffee maker is a great choice for making single-serve beverages using Keurig’s K-Cup pods, which come in a wide range of flavors. You can brew cups of 6 ounces, 8 ounces, 10 ounces, and 12 ounces with this coffee maker, and all it takes is a single press of a button. It will be yours for less than half-price following a 53% discount, which translates to $80 in savings. Amazon ***** HD 10 tablet (32GB) — $75 $140 46% off Amazon The Amazon ***** HD 10 is the tablet that you want to buy if you want to maximize Amazon’s Alexa, as the device supports voice commands for the digital assistant. It features a 10.1-inch touchscreen with Full HD resolution, a battery life of 13 hours, and 32GB of storage that you can expand by up to 1TB through a microSD card. The tablet is on ***** at 46% off, for savings of $65. Asus CX1700CK Chromebook — $81 $299 73% off ASUS Chromebooks are generally more affordable than Windows-based laptops, and the Asus CX1700CK Chromebook is the perfect example with its 73% discount that further reduces its price by $218. Inside are the Intel Celeron N4500 processor, Intel UHD Graphics 630, and 4GB of RAM, and its 17.3-inch Full HD screen is big and sharp for its cost. Insignia 32-inch F20 Series HD TV — $90 $130 31% off Insignia You don’t have to spend a lot if you want a smart TV, as the 32-inch Insignia F20 Series HD TV, which runs on Amazon’s ***** TV platform, is even less expensive: $40 after a 31% discount. The TV also comes with an Alexa Voice Remote for voice commands to Amazon’s Alexa, and it also supports Apple’s AirPlay so you can stream videos, photos, and music to the TV. Beats Solo 4 wireless headphones — $100 $200 50% off Simon Cohen / Digital Trends The Beats Solo 4 were just released earlier this year, but they’re already on ***** at 50% off, so you can enjoy savings of $100. These wireless headphones don’t offer active noise cancellation or Bluetooth multipoint, but they’re lightweight and comfortable to wear, and provide fantastic sound quality while also supporting spatial audio. They can last up to 50 hours from a full charge, and a quick 10 minutes of charging will replenish 5 hours of usage. How to choose deals under $100 on ****** Friday There are so many ****** Friday deals under $100 that it’s going to be tough to narrow down your choices, but we’re here to help you out. You should begin by thinking about what you really need — you wouldn’t want to make a purchase just because it’s affordable. If you want easier access to your favorite digital assistant, get a smart speaker; if you want entertainment for your children in their room, get an affordable TV; and if you want to cook more recipes, get kitchen gadgets like an air fryer. You’re going to have to be vigilant when shopping ****** Friday deals that are selling for less than $100, as some of these products sacrifice quality for low prices. We highly recommend sticking to trusted brands so that you won’t find yourself regretting your purchases for the shopping event. It may also help to set your maximum budget before you start looking at these ****** Friday deals under $100, so that you won’t go overboard. How we chose these ****** Friday deals under $100 It’s a given that ****** Friday deals under $100 will be affordable, especially for the huge discounts that knock down the prices of certain products from more than $100. For our recommendations above, we focused on the bargains that will give you the best value for your money, whether that means getting a helpful device for next to nothing or taking advantage of huge savings. These ****** Friday deals under $100 may be available from more than one retailer, but we assure you that the prices that we have here are the lowest for the shopping event. We’ll keep looking for better bargains until the end of ****** Friday, and we’ll update this page whenever we find them. You may want to leave a bookmark so you can stay tuned whenever we find lower prices or add even more deals. Source link #early #****** #Friday #deals #Amazon #Echo #TVs #headphones Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Rogers cuts a ‘few dozen’ audio jobs in tight advertising market – National Rogers cuts a ‘few dozen’ audio jobs in tight advertising market – National By Staff The ********* Press Posted November 20, 2024 8:57 am 1 min read Descrease article font size Increase article font size Rogers Sports and Media has cut what it says are a “few dozen” jobs in its audio business. Company spokesperson Charmaine Khan says the radio industry is continuing to feel the pressure of an uncertain advertising market. Get weekly money news Get expert insights, Q&A on markets, housing, inflation, and personal finance information delivered to you every Saturday. She says Rogers has made some difficult but necessary changes impacting roles in several markets. Khan says the company recognized and thanked the employees who are leaving the company for their dedication. Trending Now Trump taps Dr. Oz to lead U.S. health insurance programs in next cabinet These were Canada’s top 10 stolen vehicles in 2023 Rogers has 56 radio stations across the country. It also has a podcast and streaming audio network. More on Money More videos &copy 2024 The ********* Press Source link #Rogers #cuts #dozen #audio #jobs #tight #advertising #market #National Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Olympic gold medal cyclists Conor Leahy and Sam Welsford named ****** athletes of the year Olympic gold medal cyclists Conor Leahy and Sam Welsford named ****** athletes of the year Olympic gold medal cyclists Conor Leahy and Sam Welsford have been named ****** West *********** Institute of Sport Athletes of the Year Source link #Olympic #gold #medal #cyclists #Conor #Leahy #Sam #Welsford #named #****** #athletes #year Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

‘What’s a first down?’: Meet Tobi Haastrup, the accidental superstar and coveted recruit ‘What’s a first down?’: Meet Tobi Haastrup, the accidental superstar and coveted recruit Tobi Haastrup had no idea what to do. The 17-year-old had never lined up in a defensive stance before. He wasn’t sure what it meant to jump offsides and had never heard of a tackle for loss. Come to think of it, he didn’t exactly know what downs were, either, or how they worked. But here he was, working out last summer with the Mayde Creek High football team in Houston. “Everything was new to me,” said Haastrup, born and raised in England. But who needs to know the rules when you are 6 feet 4 and 235 pounds and run a 10.7-second 100-meter dash? Mayde Creek defensive line coach Dechristeon Wilson, also the school’s assistant track coach, urged Haastrup to try football heading into his senior year. At best, Haastrup would take to the sport. At worst, he’d leave high school with no regrets. “Little did I know,” Haastrup said. On Aug. 30, he played in his first-ever football game and finished with five sacks and about three offsides penalties. Within a week, more than a dozen FBS schools, including Ole Miss, LSU, Tennessee and Texas A&M, reached out with scholarship offers. Three months later, Haastrup is up to 23 offers and is one of the most coveted uncommitted Class of 2025 prospects leading up to the early signing ******* next month. The accidental superstar who never attended a summer camp or took an official visit before this fall is ranked No. 279 nationally in the 247Sports Composite. With official visits to Boston College, Missouri, Vanderbilt, Florida State, Texas Tech and, most recently, USC already in the books, Haastrup has two final stops on what has become a hectic college tour. He will be at Michigan this week and Oregon next week ahead of a Dec. 2 decision and Dec. 4 signing. And to think, three months ago, he knew nothing of the Big Ten or SEC. “It’s overwhelming at times,” he said. “But I thank **** each and every day for the experiences.” Haastrup was born in England and spent the first nine years of his life in Southeast London, where he didn’t follow ********* football in any capacity. The family moved to the Sacramento, Calif., area in 2016 and then, three years later, relocated to Houston, where Tobi, the youngest of three children, started to come into his own as a sprinter and shot-putter. But he never thought much about football. That changed this past summer. Mike Arogbonlo was hired as Mayde Creek’s head coach in May after a stint as the quarterbacks coach at Texas powerhouse Duncanville High. A few of his new assistant coaches wasted little time in filling him in on priority No. 1. “The first thing I was told by the coaching staff was (how big it would be) if I could get this **** to come out that looks great, is fast — he’s a great athlete,” Arogbonlo said of Haastrup. “I said, ‘OK.’ And I went and found him, and we started talking.” Haastrup and Arogbonlo hit it off quickly, bonding over their families’ ********* roots. There was an innocence to Haastrup that Arogbonlo appreciated, having spent time around arrogant five-stars at his previous stops. More than anything, Haastrup was willing to learn and had no problem acknowledging what he didn’t know. “It just kind of takes you back to the basics,” Arogbonlo said. “There were a lot of questions that he had: ‘What’s a first down? Where’s the down marker? What’s a defensive end, and what’s the difference between a defensive end and an outside linebacker?’ He didn’t know any of those things. But he’s been like a sponge, just soaking in whatever he can.” Wilson realized the Mayde Creek coaches needed to simplify the game for Haastrup as much as possible. He decided to relate football to track whenever he could. Exploding out of a D-lineman’s stance was just like springing out of track blocks. The same speed Haastrup used in races would be what got him to the quarterback, too. The only difference was Haastrup would need to learn to run around a curve instead of down a straightaway, which Wilson prepared him for with various figure-eight drills in practice. The duo worked on ghost moves, bull rushing and other basic pass-rushing techniques, with Wilson letting Haastrup pick his favorites come game time. “With him, it was like, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta take it back — way back,’” Wilson said. “Like I’m teaching younger and younger kids. Like I’m teaching my nephew or someone. But I love that because it was like a blank canvas.” When the season rolled around, Haastrup’s biggest issue was lining up offsides. He’d be so focused on his pass-rush technique that he forgot the basics and kept picking up 5-yard penalties. “All I knew was, ‘Get down and just see ball, get ball,’” he said. But as time progressed, Haastrup started to get more comfortable. By midseason, he settled in and didn’t need to look to the sideline as much for guidance. Through film study, he was able to pick up how opposing offensive linemen set their feet and eventually developed countermoves he could utilize. Mayde Creek went just 5-5 this season, but Haastrup finished with 20 tackles for loss and nine sacks, playing at the Class 6A level of Texas high school football. “A couple of (colleges) were weary,” Arogbonlo said. “They wanted to see him play two or three games (before offering). “The main question was always, ‘Is he 6-3 or 6-4?’ And I would tell coaches, ‘I don’t care what he is. He’s a 10.7 100-meter runner at 240 pounds. This is a no-miss (prospect) because at worst he’s playing special teams.’” Arogbonlo said he fields a call or two from a college coach every day about Haastrup, who is starting to get a feel for which programs are historically the most successful and which conferences are the most competitive. Wilson, the school’s recruiting coordinator, has helped guide Haastrup through the process, encouraging him to trust his instincts. Haastrup’s coaches believe his decision will go down to the wire. Academics are important to Haastrup, who eventually wants to attend medical school and become an orthopedic surgeon. His 19-year-old sister is studying neuroscience at Texas A&M. Development will be a major part of the decision, too. “Because I’m still so new to the sport,” he said, “it’s definitely going to be one of the most important decisions I make in my life.” In a college football world in which prospects are often first identified in eighth or ninth grade, Haastrup’s story is rare. “Football can take you places you never thought you would go,” Wilson said. In Haastrup’s case, he’s just getting started. “(Whoever gets him), they’re getting a **** with a lot of upside,” Arogbonlo said. “I suspect with more time, with nutrition, with the training table on the next level, with the coaching staffs, I just expect a huge growth. I really believe he’s a Sunday player. That’s the kind of **** I think he is. “If **** could make a football player, he made Tobi.” (Photo courtesy of Jimmie Aggison / The Houston Defender) Source link #Whats #Meet #Tobi #Haastrup #accidental #superstar #coveted #recruit Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Gladiator II: Historians on the Fate of the Real Roman Royalty Featured in the Film Gladiator II: Historians on the Fate of the Real Roman Royalty Featured in the Film Stephan Blum & Michael La Corte/The Conversation Twenty-four years after Gladiator, Ridley Scott has returned with a sweeping sequel to his epic tale. Thanks to cutting-edge CGI, Rome’s grandeur – and its downfall – have never looked so breathtaking. Warning: this article contains spoilers for Gladiator II. Gladiator II picks up years after the original film, taking place during the reign of the co-emperors Caracalla (played by Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn) in the early 3rd century AD. The film follows Lucius (Paul Mescal), the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus (protagonist of the first Gladiator movie). Now an ******, he’s been living in the ancient northwest ******** kingdom, Numidia, under the guise of a new identity to escape Roman politics. When Roman forces, led by Tribun Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), invade Numidia, tragedy strikes. Lucius’s wife is ******* and he is captured. Purchased as a ****** by the Roman Macrinus (portrayed masterfully by Denzel Washington), Lucius is transported to Rome. There he is forced into the brutal world of gladiatorial combat, fighting to bring his captor profit in the arena. But which of these characters were based on real ancient people – and how far did their fates match the arc they have in Scott’s sequel? The opening invasion scene in Numidia, set in 200 AD, diverges from the real history. After Julius Caesar’s victory at the Battle of Thapsus in 46 AD, Numidia (modern-day Algeria) was divided. The eastern part formed the province ******* Nova and the western region around Cirta became a Roman colony. By the early 3rd century AD, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (not depicted in the film) made Numidia an independent province. The film’s portrayal of a rebellious Numidian city seems more like a playful nod to the French comic series Asterix and Obelix, where a small village defies Roman domination. Instead of reflecting the complexities of Roman imperialism, the film adopts the trope of a tiny, indomitable group holding out against an empire in a heavily fortified harbor city. This blending of myth and history evokes a comic strip sensibility rather than a serious historical narrative, prioritizing spectacle over accuracy. History Rewritten for the Big Screen Set in 200 AD, the film places Caracalla and Geta at the center of political intrigue. This is despite the fact that the real imperial heirs were still only children, around nine and ten years old at the time. Portraying the young boys as cunning political operators is a stretch that even the most imaginative screenwriter might struggle to defend. Furthermore, in 200 AD, their father, Septimius Severus, was still very much alive and in control of the empire, continuing his rule for another 11 years. Then there is Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the second daughter of Marcus Aurelius. The film casts her in a prominent role though, inconveniently, in real life she had been ********* around 181 or 182 AD – nearly two decades before the events of Gladiator II. The portrayal of Macrinus is another historical misstep. Although he rose to power under Septimius Severus and Caracalla, Macrinus did not become emperor until 217 AD. Denzel Washington plays Macrinus in the film. (YouTube Screenshot) The film dramatizes Macrinus’s role by showing him guiding Caracalla in Geta’s ******* and even directly assassinating Caracalla in the Circus Maximus, adding a fictional layer to historical events. But in fact, while Macrinus was involved in the *********** to eliminate Caracalla, he did not physically ***** the emperor himself. Historical accounts such as those by Cassius Dio or Historia Augusta do not support the movie’s portrayal of Macrinus stabbing Caracalla in such a public setting. Caracalla was actually murdered in 217 AD during a journey from Edessa in Turkey to Carrhae in Syria. The *********, a soldier named Martialis, struck Caracalla with a fatal *****, reportedly at the behest of Macrinus’ supporters, who sought to elevate him to the throne. Leaving aside the inaccurate timeline, the film is an opulent portrayal of Roman lifestyle in the mid-imperial *******. With impressive battle scenes, gladiator duels, grand festivities and stunning costumes, there’s still plenty to enjoy, even for the most fastidious history buff. Top image: Pedro Pascal plays General Acacius and Paul Mescal plays Lucius in Gladiator II from Paramount Pictures. Source: Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures This article was originally published under the title ‘Gladiator II: historians on the fate of the real Roman royalty featured in the film’ by Stephan Blum & Michael La Corte on The Conversation, and has been republished under a Creative Commons License. Source link #Gladiator #Historians #Fate #Real #Roman #Royalty #Featured #Film Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Unknown 9: Awakening developer Reflector Entertainment has suffered layoffs Unknown 9: Awakening developer Reflector Entertainment has suffered layoffs Unknown 9: Awakening developer Reflector Entertainment has suffered layoffs, according to several former developers posting on social media. As first noticed by Kotaku’s Ethan Gach (via Game Developer), several ex-Reflector Entertainment employees have taken to social media to confirm that they are no longer with the company. Anna Karina Bermudez, a former narrative and game designer on the project, wrote on LinkedIn: “Unfortunately, I was affected by the layoffs at Reflector Entertainment, which means I’m currently looking for a job as a Narrative Designer or Game Writer. If you hear of any opportunities, please let me know.” Manou Deneuvel, a former brand manager on the project, wrote: “Hi everyone. I was affected by the layoffs at Reflector Entertainment, and I’m seeking a new role in Marketing or Social Media/Community Management, effective immediately. If you hear of any opportunities or just want to catch up, please reach out.” Unknown 9: Awakening was released on October 17. At the time of writing, the game has 74 user reviews on Steam, suggesting the game hasn’t sold particularly well. The Steam description of the game reads: “You are Haroona, a Quaestor born with the ability to venture into a mysterious dimension that overlaps our own, known only as the Fold. “On her quest for powerful hidden knowledge, Haroona will learn to master her unique connection to the Fold, which allows her to channel its powers into our world, but such power does not go unnoticed and Haroona quickly becomes the target of a splinter faction calling themselves the Ascendants, who want to use the Fold to alter the course of human history.” Source link #Unknown #Awakening #developer #Reflector #Entertainment #suffered #layoffs Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Google Home reminds me of everything that’s wrong with smart homes and how desperately we need to fix it Google Home reminds me of everything that’s wrong with smart homes and how desperately we need to fix it Few things in the tech world are as fraught as smart home updates. Changing out a hub, a smart lock, an intelligent thermostat, or a web-connected security camera is not like updating an app or setting up a new laptop. This is your home. It’s your life. It’s your temperature. It’s your security. The very term “smart home” promises an integrated system where one node speaks to another, and all of them operate in tandem to make your home safer, more comfortable, and easier to manage. Smarter. And yet, it never works out that way. As I’ve written, my smart home is a non-homogenous mess. Recently, I stayed at a friend’s home that was built just a few years ago. She smartly standardized on Amazon’s Alexa for all her smart home bits. In my house, we have Amazon Alexa, Apple Homekit, Google Home, some Kasa, a bit of Govee, and vestiges of Nest. On the bright side, I’ve owned some of my smart home gadgets for the better part of a decade. I’m impressed at how well my Nest Outdoor cam still works, even if the power cable now sheds its crumbling white skin. I owned a Dropcam that was so old that Nest and Google stopped supporting it last year. My Nest Hello Video Doorbell is first generation and so old that the cover glass fell off, leaving the camera lens exposed (I superglued it back in place). Aside from their impressive build and longevity, I keep using the same smart home gear because no one in my home likes it when I upgrade. My wife, in particular, hates new technology. If something works, why touch it? I would agree, except for my job – which has been defined by 38 years of trying new stuff. When Google unveiled its new Google Nest Learning thermostat 4th Generation, I was intrigued. It’s a ******** redesign with a much larger and more expressive screen face, though thankfully still not a touch screen. When Google offered to send me one, I agreed but with some trepidation: where would I install it? Which of my two classic Nest thermostats would I replace? How would I tell my wife? In the end, I replaced my original 2nd-gen Nest Learning Thermostat in my kitchen and initially did not inform my wife. Instead, I waited for her to notice. She did after a day or so, and in any case, that turned out to be the least of my problems. Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable ****** Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content. A new home Google Home struggled to find my new thermostat. Then, after the transfer to Google Home Public preview, it lost the new thermostat. (Image credit: Future) It’s been a decade since Google bought Nest, but to its credit, Google kept the Nest name and app alive. I manage both my thermostats and multiple Nest cams through the app. In recent months, though, Google has persistently asked me to switch my login to Google and to start using Google Home. I ignored these entreaties, and I did so until I installed the new Google Nest Learning Thermostat. It only works with Google Home. During installation, Google offers to migrate your account. Again, I didn’t want to do this because I am not the only person controlling our smart home, and I worried that switching to a new app and platform would shock everyone. With this new thermostat, though, I had no choice. The platform automatically migrates existing Nest devices to the new platform to ease the whole process. Well, it would if it worked. After installing the new Google Nest thermostat, I found that my upstairs Nest Learning Thermostat second generation was marooned in the Nest app, which now only recognized my Google login. This also meant that my wife lost access to the Nest App and our old equipment because she didn’t have my Google login details (I gave them to her.) No matter what I did, I could not migrate my existing hardware to Google Home. Managing two nest Thermostats on two separate apps was the opposite of smart. Frustrated and out of options, I contacted Google and soon learned that I’d stepped into a smart homework in progress. Google told me it was already migrating legacy Nest hardware, like my old Nest Hello video doorbell and the 2nd gen Nest thermostat, to Google Home. In fact, they’d already completed some of the work. However, I could only access this progress by switching to Google Home’s Public Preview, which is like public beta software where you get still-under-development updates that might not always be as stable as the fully baked versions (Google gives this stuff a “labs” feel by using a beaker icon atop the app to indicate you’re running the public preview). I switched to the Public Preview, and soon, my Google Home was automatically ingesting my old hardware. Each camera and the old Nest thermostat took just a few minutes to walk from the old Nest app to my new Google Home system. I was saved. [Narrarator: He was not saved] The missing device Some things went better than others in the transition. The key is to use the Public Preview. (Image credit: Future) I scanned through my suddenly flush Google Home, grinning at all my key smart home devices in one place. All but one: the brand new Nest Learning Thermostat 4th Gen. It was nowhere to be found. While switching to the Google Home Public Preview, that thermostat disappeared. I tried restarting the thermostat and even did multiple factory resets. Each time, it would connect to Google Home, find my WiFi network, start “Finishing setup,” and then fail. I contacted Google again, and they asked for the serial number and my account ID. Desperate, I gave them both. While I waited for their help, I tried again to connect the Google Nest Learning thermostat to my Google Home. This time, though, I saw something new: The thermostat was downloading something. I assume it was an update forced by Google and the Public Preview app. It never ceases to amaze me how even the newest consumer electronics hardware always needs an update, usually right after unboxing. This process was hard. For me. A tech “expert”. Imagine what this would be like for an average home consumer, one who can’t email someone in Google’s corporate offices. Encouraged, I continued the setup in Google Home. After five minutes or so, the installation was completed, and I finally had the new thermostat nestled alongside the old thermostat and my two Nest cameras. There was just one thing left to do: Invite my wife to control this Google Home system with me. Google Home makes this simple: There’s a big plus next to my Google ID. I hit that, found the email address associated with my wife’s Google Home app installation, and hit send. Naturally, it *******, not once but every one of the half-dozen times I tried. Back to Google. Not good enough It is a lovely new Google Nest Learning Thermostat (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff) The solution should have been obvious to me: I can’t invite my wife unless she, too, is running the Google Home Public Preview. That makes sense, though a message in the app to that effect would’ve been helpful. It is wonderful to have full control of so many key smart home pieces in one app, and I admit that Google Home is a better app than the aging code Nest provided. But this process was hard. For me. A tech “expert.” Imagine what this would be like for an average home consumer, one who can’t email someone in Google’s corporate offices. It’s also unreasonable to think consumers will upgrade their homes wholesale. They will have aging smart home technology. It will always be the manufacturer’s job to deliver complete solutions that adapt to the new and support the old. Shipping products that force unsupported change – even if it’s temporary – is bad form. Google was enormously helpful in this process, and when I asked them for comment on my experience, a Google Spokesperson sent me this statement: The Home app is designed to provide an easier, more personalized, and more organized way to manage all your compatible third-party and Google Nest devices in one place. You can now manage all of your Nest Cams in the Home app, and we’ll continue to bring over support for additional Nest devices and features while maintaining privacy, security, and experiences for our customers. Each device has its own complexity and requires migrating infrastructure, updates to device software, and evaluating if the hardware can be supported. – Google, by the way, is not alone in this. I’ve long complained that Apple Homekit is a mess and has yet to improve my smart home life. Amazon Alexa wins points for simplicity, but I still wonder why I can’t effectively create an “I’ll be away” schedule using just my voice. We will fail as a smart home industry until Google and others solve this. And if someone says to me “Matter will make it all better,.” I may just punch them. ****** Friday Deals Amazon: TVs, smart home & air fryers from $12.99 Apple: AirPods, iPads, MacBooks from $89.99 Best Buy: $1,000 off 4K TVs, laptops & headphones Cheap TVs: smart TVs at Best Buy from $69.99 Christmas trees: top-rated trees from $54.99 Dell: best-selling Inspiron & XPS laptops from $279.99 Dreamcloud: mattress deals from $349 + free shipping Holiday: decor, lights, Christmas trees & PJs from $10.99 Home Depot: 40% off tools, appliances & furniture Lowe’s: holiday decor, appliances & tools from $17.31 Nectar: up to 50% off all mattresses Nordstrom: 46% off boots, coats, jeans & jewelry Samsung: $1,500+ off TVs, phones, watches & appliances Target: save on furniture, tech & clothing Walmart: cheap TVs, ****** vacs, furniture & appliances Source link #Google #Home #reminds #wrong #smart #homes #desperately #fix Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Comcast to spinoff MSNBC, more cable brands into new company Comcast to spinoff MSNBC, more cable brands into new company Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, is announcing a major shakeup in some of its key assets. The company is expected to spin off its cable networks into a separate company and would cleave off some of NBCUniversal’s best-known brands, including MSNBC, E!, Syfy, Golf Channel, USA, CNBC and Oxygen. NBC’s Brian Cheung reports for TODAY. Source link #Comcast #spinoff #MSNBC #cable #brands #company Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

NHL player poll: As sports ******** increases, so do harassing messages — and Venmo requests NHL player poll: As sports ******** increases, so do harassing messages — and Venmo requests There doesn’t have to be a milestone moment or viral play for an NHL player’s phone to be flooded with notifications in the wake of a game. Maybe there’s a text from a parent, a reminder from a partner, a few messages of congratulations or condolences. Not to mention the usual spate of emails and push alerts that inevitably pile up when you’ve been away from your phone for a few hours. But these days, as sports ******** becomes more and more prevalent in the hockey world, there’s a new app jockeying for space atop players’ home screens. “I’ve been sent Venmo requests before,” one NHL player surveyed in The Athletic’s player poll said. “Like, ‘Hey, I bet on you guys to win and you blew it. So give me back my 50 bucks.’” That player said he found it “comical.” “I think I paid one guy back once,” he said with a laugh. “Sent him like 20 bucks.” Of course, the Internet being what it is, it’s not always terribly funny. Almost one-third of the 161 players polled said they’ve been getting more harassing messages from fans since sports ******** has become legal in more states. GO DEEPER NHL player poll: Injury transparency? Want Ovechkin to break Gretzky’s record? Expand to 34 teams? “Oh, almost every day,” one goaltender said. “Honestly, I’d say 75 percent of them are them being **** about something. ‘How did you let in that late goal? I had the under. Thanks a lot. You f—ing *****.’ Things like that constantly. I feel like, as a goalie, we’re a little bit more exposed to it, too.” “Together with a couple ****** threats and a few other things,” another player added. Perhaps the biggest revelation from The Athletic’s anonymous player poll was how common the Venmo requests are. “They’re demands, not requests,” one player clarified. “’You owe me $200 because you were on the ice when …’ and it’s insane. It’s really bad when you play against Toronto because it seems like everybody is ******** on Leafs games. But that’s Toronto for you.” Apparently, NHL players need to do a better job of masking their identities on cash apps. “Yeah, that’s real,” another player said. “When you ruin a guy’s parlay or something? Hundred percent, that’s real. I got one last game where some guy bet on my number of shots or something and then he’s DM’ing me: ‘You f—ed my parlay!’ Pardon my language, but that’s what he said.” “Yeah, 100 percent,” said another player. “I’ve gotten plenty of them show up in my inbox before. Like I kept them from hitting some parlay or something or, ‘Here’s my Venmo. Send me $100.’” “Oh, yeah,” one player said. “People on social media are way crazier now because they have more skin in the game. I think that’s for all sports.” “I get messages all the time, and these are people probably ******** $1.50,” said another. Some such requests are obvious gags. But other messages carry a more sinister tone. “Not here, but to be honest, mostly in Russia,” one player said. “Like it’s getting crazy. You’re up 2-0 and lose, you get messages, like, ‘You f—ing ********, I’m gonna f—ing ***** you.’” One player said he gets at least one or two such messages every day from gamblers. But two-thirds of the players who responded said they don’t get any. It could depend on how high-profile a player is. Not a lot of fans are ******** on fourth-liners and third-pairing defensemen. As one player joked, “I don’t think I’m the ******** favorite.” Unsurprisingly, many players have done their best to unplug entirely. That also could explain the two-thirds who said they don’t get such messages. “I used to know that I got harassing messages,” one player said. “Now I don’t know. Who would read these f—ing idiots? I don’t anymore.” “That’s why I turned everything off,” another said. “You get some scary messages out there.” Another: “Good thing I’m not on social media.” Another: “No one can find me, so I don’t know.” ****** threats and profanity-laced tirades aside, sometimes the players feel the bettors’ pain. “Sometimes they bet on me to score and I don’t and they want me to give them money,” one player said. “I’m like, ‘I want to score, too!’” (Graphic: Meech Robinson / The Athletic, with photos from Gary A. Vasquez, Katherine Gawlik and Andre Ringuette / Getty Images) Source link #NHL #player #poll #sports #******** #increases #harassing #messages #Venmo #requests Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Final Fantasy XIV Mobile is an “extension of beloved franchise” but This Move Could Prove to be Detrimental for the Franchise Final Fantasy XIV Mobile is an “extension of beloved franchise” but This Move Could Prove to be Detrimental for the Franchise Mobile Gaming is slowly taking over the gaming industry, and it looks like Square Enix has also decided to ***** headfirst with Final Fantasy XIV Mobile into the market. This will be an officially licensed mobile version of the original game and will be developed by Lightspeed Studios under the watchful eye of FFXIV’s visionary producer and director, Naoki Yoshida. The announcement for the FFXIV’s mobile version has sparked a buzz in the community. | Image Credit: Lightspeed Studios Since the recent announcement, the excitement among the community is palpable. However, beneath this excitement, they are also questioning whether this is the right move for the franchise. Will FFXIV Mobile be able to maintain the level of quality expected from the studio’s lineup, or will it ruin the legacy of one of the most successful MMORPGs of all time? Will Final Fantasy XIV Mobile Be a Blessing or a Curse for the Franchise? Final Fantasy XIV Mobile looks to carry forward the charm and content that made the original game a favorite among the community. The game will offer a variety of playable races, each with its own distinct lore and aesthetics, staying true to the diverse cultures of Eorzea. It was announced that nine jobs will be available at launch, alongside the unique Armoury System. Besides the different jobs, the mobile version will also carry forward the social aspect of the original game. Players can forge strong connections with other players through social features, whether they’re playing solo, in parties, or meeting new players on their journey. The mobile will feature the mentoring systems as well. Developed by Lightspeed Studios @__lightspeed___ supervised by Square Enix, FINAL FANTASY XIV MOBILE is annouced today! For the first reveal of FFXIV MOBILE, #FFXIV Art Team Lead Yusuke Mogi has created a new visual highlighting nine iconic jobs from the title. Which are you… pic.twitter.com/RuisyuqtMu — FFXIV_MOBILE (@FFXIV_MOBILE_EN) November 20, 2024 With the epic music of the game present, there’s no doubt that FFXIV Mobile will be a great addition to the franchise. However, despite the optimism surrounding the game, there is a growing concern among the community that Square Enix is taking a considerable amount of risk with this new venture. Ahhh this is so exciting — Hoshi (@HoshizoraOW) November 20, 2024 I’m cautiously optimistic about this… As long as they don’t fill it with microtransactions I will probably actually give it a shot (I don’t normally play mobile games). — Nozomi Kei (@NozomiKeiXIV) November 20, 2024 Really? What a waste of resources. Really should have invested this back into the actual game and put some effort in the current expansion’s writing. — Roeark (@Roeark) November 20, 2024 The primary worry among the community is the general live-service model itself. As with many mobile games nowadays, FFXIV Mobile may be filled with microtransactions, pay-to-win mechanics, or aggressive monetization that takes away the excitement from the player. Since the official website says that the game will be cross-play, it also introduces another issue: if the mobile version is not done correctly, the difference in experience/performance between the mobile version and the PC/PS version has the potential to not only divide the gameplay experience but also the community. It’s important to understand that while FFXIV is a massive success on PC and PlayStation, FFXIV Mobile is a drastic departure from what usually is considered the core experience. Additionally, the mobile market is a different ******, and the pressures of adapting a game of such scale and depth to a smaller screen, particularly with touch controls could lower the original’s magic. Is this A New Chapter or a Risky Venture? The venture into the mobile market is a risky one but only time will tell if the game is a success or not. | Image Credit: Lightspeed Studios Final Fantasy XIV Mobile could prove to be an exciting and well-********* expansion of the Final Fantasy XIV universe. But to achieve success both Square Enix and Lightspeed Studios need to dedicate their time and find the right balance for the gameplay for the mobile platform. The promise of an accessible, and social experience, combined with the iconic world of Eorzea, is an enticing prospect for both new and returning players. However, if the game fails in any of the following aspects: content, performance, or monetization, it has the potential to severely impact the franchise’s goodwill. Over the years, FFXIV’s vision has earned the full trust of the players but many ***** that a poor ********** of this mobile venture could undo all the previous efforts. For fans and developers, the mobile release is both an opportunity and a potential risk that could shake the foundation of what makes Final Fantasy XIV great. In the end, while there are a lot of exciting things in the announcement to be excited about, there is also just as much to be cautious about. Only time will tell whether the mobile version will be able to live up to the legacy of its parent game or not. Are you excited about the mobile version of FFXIV, or are you planning to stick to the PC/PS version? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below. Source link #Final #Fantasy #XIV #Mobile #extension #beloved #franchise #Move #Prove #Detrimental #Franchise Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]