Pelican Press

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Switch 2 Version Is Something Sandfall Thinks Could Be “Interesting” Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Switch 2 Version Is Something Sandfall Thinks Could Be “Interesting” VGChartz’s Mark Nielsen: “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 brings to life a dark yet colorful fantasy world, with amazing gameplay, meaningful relationships, and a general sense of wonder in one of the decade’s finest games, then paints it bleak with its final unsatisfying stroke. That’s not a fun conclusion to have to draw after being so deeply invested in the title – I badly wanted it to be the incredibly rare 10/10 game that it almost managed to be. Instead, it lands itself as an(other) almost masterpiece; one that feels absolutely incroyable while playing it, but left me with mixed feelings afterwards – and not in the way the developers intended.” Source link #Clair #Obscur #Expedition #Switch #Version #Sandfall #Thinks #Interesting Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Alexander Heights woman fined $1000 for using her Perth Airport security ID card to help family onto flight Alexander Heights woman fined $1000 for using her Perth Airport security ID card to help family onto flight A catering employee who used her Perth Airport security identification card so she could usher her family onto a Singapore bound flight has been fined $1000. Source link #Alexander #Heights #woman #fined #Perth #Airport #security #card #family #flight Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

China issues warning to *** over terms of US trade deal China issues warning to *** over terms of US trade deal China has warned the *** over its new trade deal with the US, accusing Britain of aligning with the US in a move that could compel British companies to exclude ******** products from their supply chains. The ***-US trade deal, signed last week, offers Britain limited relief from US tariffs on car and steel exports, but only if it complies with strict American security requirements. These conditions include scrutinising supply chains and ownership structures – a move widely interpreted as targeting ******** involvement. Beijing argues the agreement violates the principle that international agreements should not target third countries, noting this is a “basic principle”. China’s foreign ministry criticised the agreement in a statement to the Financial Times. It said: “Cooperation between states should not be conducted against or to the detriment of the interests of third parties.” Beijing fears these clauses are designed to pressure allies into excluding ******** products, in effect isolating China economically. China is doubling down on what it calls “dual circulation” – boosting domestic production and resilience so its economy can thrive. State-backed companies are being pushed to source components locally, and ministries are funnelling support into advanced manufacturing and green technology. Under the ***-US deal signed last week the US agreed to reduce tariffs on British car exports from 27.5% to 10%, applicable to a quota of 100,000 vehicles annually. Tariffs on *** steel and aluminium have also been lifted, provided British companies meet strict US security conditions, particularly around supply chain transparency and foreign ownership – measures that implicitly limit ******** involvement. The deal also includes liberalised quotas for US beef and ethanol exports to the ***, alongside a commitment to explore deeper cooperation in pharmaceuticals and advanced manufacturing, contingent again on *** compliance with US security provisions. Related: Chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef not crucial to *** trade deal, US suggests The timing of the ***-US trade agreement is sensitive given Keir Starmer’s government has been seeking to improve relations with China. Despite the tension, No 10 says the trade deal is intended to secure jobs and protect British businesses. A *** government spokesperson maintained that “trade and investment with China remain important to the ***”, emphasising a pragmatic approach to international relations. Earlier this year, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, visited Beijing to restart economic and financial dialogues that had been dormant for six years. Other ******** officials also criticised the ***’s decision to accept the US deal’s terms, viewing it as a departure from their efforts to rebuild bilateral ties. Zhang Yansheng, a senior researcher at the China Academy of Macroeconomic Research, said the ***’s actions were “not fair to China”. He described the deal’s clauses as “poison pills” that were worse than tariffs. Source link #China #issues #warning #terms #trade #deal Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Martin Crusius’ Armchair Voyage | History Today Martin Crusius’ Armchair Voyage | History Today When the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II seized Constantinople in 1453 shockwaves radiated through Christian Europe. According to Pope Pius II, the fall of the Byzantine capital amounted to nothing less than a second death for Homer and Plato. Others lamented the destruction or conversion of churches, including Hagia Sophia, and feared that the Ottomans might uproot the Christian way of life. But as the Ottomans spread into Greece, taking Athens in 1456 and most of the Peloponnese a few years later, few in Latin Europe knew much about the post-Byzantine fate of the country. The circumstances of the Greeks were mostly the subject of speculation, and fears about what life under ******* oppression would entail prevailed over attempts at finding out the reality of the situation. One 16th-century individual steered a different course. For nearly 40 years, a Lutheran professor of Greek named Martin Crusius (1526-1607) compiled a rich record of Greek life under Ottoman rule. Long before the plight of the Greeks perturbed Lord Byron, Crusius knew about the state of the Greek Church, studied literature in the Greek vernacular, and learned about Greek dress and folk songs. And he did so from Tübingen, a ******* university town, without ever visiting Greece – unable to go there himself because he did not have the means, and, as he liked to stress, because his teaching kept him occupied. How did Crusius become Europe’s foremost expert on Ottoman Greece? His extensive archive offers important evidence. He left a nine-volume diary, each volume 1,000 pages long, as well as numerous notebooks and hundreds of books, coated in thick layers of annotation. In these documents the personal and the professional merged: he recorded seating arrangements for dinner parties and the students that lodged with him as meticulously as the books that he read, the news that reached him, and everything that he ‘discovered’ about Ottoman Greece. Travelogues by Pierre Belon (1517-64) and Greek histories by Laonikos Chalkokondyles (c.1430-70) drew Crusius into a world he would never see, while Greek texts, such as a book with sailing directions and translations of the Iliad and Aesop’s fables, revealed how the language had developed. ******* informants in Istanbul were another important source of information: alumni from the University of Tübingen had joined the imperial embassy as chaplains, from where they sent Crusius letters, manuscripts, objects – including an ancient bronze coin with an image of Homer – as well as detailed observations of the churches they entered, the ceremonies they attended, and the people they met. In 1573, for example, one Stephan Gerlach sent to Tübingen an evocative set piece on the dress of Greek women: ‘They veil their hair with the purest gold. They adorn their heads and ears with precious gems and sumptuous earrings … And with their other ornaments they do not compete with our Empress. They leave her behind by miles.’ Martin Crucious, c.1600. New York Public Library. Public Domain. More than anything, though, Crusius informed himself by talking to Greeks themselves – not in Greece but in his Tübingen home. In total he interviewed nearly 40 Greek men and women who travelled through Christian Europe in search of alms and at some point passed – serendipitously – through Tübingen. Crusius offered them a bed and gave them food and money. In return, they informed him about their language, culture, and religion. They helped him draw maps, of Athens, for instance, but also of Mount Athos, the most important site of monasticism in Greek Orthodoxy. And they helped him visualise the Greek world through vivid descriptions that he called ‘verbal paintings’. One of his guests made Crusius Cypriot food, while another – a woman called Antonia – sang him a song about the many hardships she had suffered in captivity, accompanying herself on his lyre. Crusius’ guests also helped him decode his vernacular Greek books. Initially, these had baffled him; the language was so different from the ancient Greek that he taught at university. Crusius’ first Greek guest, Stamatius Donatus, who arrived in Tübingen in 1579, became, Crusius wrote, a ‘living lexicon’, glossing thousands of words in the week that they spent reading books together. This was no mean feat. Donatus could not read or write and knew only a few words of *******. He and Crusius thus had to interpret texts using different languages, including Italian and Latin, and sometimes other ways of communication: ‘He often explained these words to me through gestures, his hands, and paraphrases’, Crusius explained in his notebook. They would also study Crusius’ home: a house full of mundane objects, but also the students who boarded with him, his wife and children, and occasionally a maid. Donatus would take Crusius by the hand and guide him, giving the Greek names of particular parts of the house and of individual domestic items. With other guests such collaborative reading continued. Once Crusius got so carried away that his ‘head was full of Greek and was buzzing with it’, and he admitted that he had tired another guest, a priest by the name of Calonas, considerably. Even as Calonas was departing, Crusius would not leave him alone: he followed his guest to the gates of the city, pen and paper in hand. As Calonas ‘read’ the city, pointing out and translating individual objects, Crusius scribbled new items on his wordlist. The result of Crusius’ lifelong inquiry was a body of knowledge unparalleled in its day. Some of his findings were published in his Turcograecia of 1584, a groundbreaking book full of evidence that Edward Gibbon referenced repeatedly in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89). Yet the Turcograecia was by and large forgotten, as were Crusius and his notebooks. Leopold von Ranke would remember Crusius as Europe’s first philhellene, but he was not deeply familiar with Crusius’ work. Indeed, the Turcograecia sold poorly and the many colourful vignettes in Crusius’ notebooks remained unexplored until the 20th century. It is no small irony – and surely one that Crusius would have appreciated – that it took an Ottoman Greek from Istanbul, Basileos Athanasiou Mystakides (1859-1933), to draw attention to Crusius’ archive as an important but untapped source for Ottoman Greek history. After a three-year sojourn in Tübingen, Mystakides published a series of articles that reproduced excerpts from Crusius’ notebooks and diaries and made visible again how Crusius, without ever travelling, had become the *******’s foremost expert on Ottoman Greece. Richard Calis is the author of The Discovery of Ottoman Greece: Knowledge, Encounter, and Belief in the Mediterranean World of Martin Crusius (Harvard University Press, 2025). Source link #Martin #Crusius #Armchair #Voyage #History #Today Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Apple Unveils Accessibility Nutrition Labels, Magnifier for Mac, Braille Access and More Apple Unveils Accessibility Nutrition Labels, Magnifier for Mac, Braille Access and More Apple on Tuesday unveiled several new accessibility features that are set to arrive with its upcoming operating system updates later this year. Users will have access to ‘nutrition labels’ on the App Store, providing information about accessibility features offered by each application. Mac users will have access to a new magnifier app that lets them zoom in on a whiteboard or read documents with small fonts. Multiple devices will gain support for Braille Access with support for taking notes and making calculations, and the Apple Watch will add support for Live Captions with watchOS 12. Apple’s Newest Accessibility Features Will Arrive in Late 2025 The company says that it will being Accessibility Nutritional Labels to the App Store with iOS 19, which is expected to arrive in the third quarter of 2025. The company previously introduced support for displaying privacy details for apps in an easy-to-view card under each app listing. With iOS 19, users will see a similar label if an app supports features like Audio Descriptions, Voice Control, Captions, and VoiceOver. Mac users will soon get access to the company’s Magnifier app, which will arrive on macOS with a couple of new features. Users will need to use a USB camera or an iPhone with Continuity Camera, to access the Magnifier app. It allows users to zoom in on a whiteboard or a screen using their smartphone. When used in Desk View, users can also read documents, according to the company. Later this year, Apple will introduce a new feature called Braille Access that lets users take braille notes iPhone, iPad, Mac, and even the Apple Vision Pro. They can perform calculations using braille code, launch apps, take notes, and open Braille Ready Format (BRF) files using the new Braille Access feature. Name Recognition (left), Braille Access, and Accessibility Nutrition Labels Photo Credit: Apple Text across Apple’s operating systems will also get easier to read later this year, with a new mode called Accessibility Reader. The company says it is designed to help users with low vision or dyslexia, and supports font, colour, and spacing customisation. It will be built into the Magnifier app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac computers. Users can also use an Apple Watch to control Live Listen sessions on an iPhone, while viewing captions of audio captured by the smartphone on their watch screen. Meanwhile, blind users and people with low vision can use the main camera on the Apple Vision Pro to zoom in on their surroundings. Apple is also bringing Vehicle Motion Cues, a feature introduced to mitigate the effects of motion sickness on iPhone in 2024, to macOS later this year. The Personal Voice feature will offer more natural sounding voices, and the Sound Recognition feature will also help deaf users (or people who are hard of hearing) to know when someone mentions their name. These new accessibility features and improvements will make their way to users’ devices later this year, according to the company. We can expect them to arrive alongside (or after) iOS 19, iPadOS 19, watchOS 12, and macOS 16 are released later this year. More details of these software updates are expected to be revealed during Apple’s upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that is scheduled to begin on June 9. Source link #Apple #Unveils #Accessibility #Nutrition #Labels #Magnifier #Mac #Braille #Access Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

******** tech giant Tencent posts 13% revenue jump as growth at key gaming unit surges – CNBC ******** tech giant Tencent posts 13% revenue jump as growth at key gaming unit surges – CNBC ******** tech giant Tencent posts 13% revenue jump as growth at key gaming unit surges CNBCTencent’s Q1 revenue rises 13% on gaming strength ReutersTCEHY Set to Report Q1 Earnings: What’s in Store for the Stock? Yahoo FinanceTencent Profit Rises But Misses Expectations WSJTencent’s Revenue Climbs 13% After Gaming Gains Momentum Bloomberg Source link #******** #tech #giant #Tencent #posts #revenue #jump #growth #key #gaming #unit #surges #CNBC Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Moto Book 60 Review: Premium Design Meets Practicality Moto Book 60 Review: Premium Design Meets Practicality Motorola recently entered the competitive laptop landscape with the launch of its Moto Book 60. The brand has been quite active with its smartphone launches this year with its Edge series, and now, it has finally entered the laptop segment with its Moto Book 60. The latest laptop from the brand is targeted towards Gen Z and those looking for a budget laptop loaded with features. The company has packed the laptop with a sleek and colourful design, a solid performance, a vibrant OLED display, and more. The laptop has a price tag of Rs. 69,999 for the Intel Core 5 unit with 16GB RAM + 512GB storage. The 16GB + 512GB and 16GB + 1TB RAM and storage versions with Intel Core 7 series processor are priced at Rs. 74,990 and Rs. 78,990. That said, the Moto Book 60 is all set to give tough competition to well-established players like Asus, Dell, MSI, and even Lenovo. However, the question here is whether it is a promising debut from the brand. Let’s check it out in this in-depth review. Moto Book 60 Laptop Design: Sturdy and Colourful Dimension – 313.4 x 221 x 16.9mm Weight – 1.39kg Colours – Bronze Green, Wedgewood Motorola has made sure to make its first laptop as feature-loaded as possible. The latest laptop from the brand comes loaded with a premium look and feel, all thanks to the aluminium chassis. The laptop weighs 1.39kg, which is decent enough for carrying around. However, there are models available in the market that offer a sleeker profile. The Moto Book 60 is available in two colour options: Bronze Green and Wedgewood. The brand has gone with Pantone-certified colours for this laptop, a similar treatment to what it does with its range of smartphones. You get Pantone Bronze Green and Pantone Wedgewood colour options. I got the former for the review, and it surely looks subtle and unique compared to other models available on the market. Those who are looking for a more poppy colour might find the Wedgewood option to be more attractive. The laptop shell is made using aluminium, which makes it durable. The lid offers a smooth texture with the brand’s logo at the centre. For those who are wondering, yes, there is a slight flex at the centre of the lid and on the keyboard. The hinge is okayish; you don’t feel that sturdiness when you open it. However, once you open the lid, you will be greeted with a backlit keyboard and trackpad. As for the ports, the laptop offers a decent number of ports for everyday usage. You get an HDMI, two USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 ports (which support data transfer, Power Delivery 3.0, and DisplayPort 1.4), and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the right side, the laptop has two USB Type-A ports, a microSD card reader, and a power on/off button. Moto Book 60 Display: Smooth and Vibrant Display – 14-inch OLED screen Resolution – 2.8K (1800×2880 pixels) Refresh Rate – 120Hz The display on the Moto Book 60 is one of the major highlights. The company has added a 14-inch 2.8K (1800×2880 pixel) OLED display. The colour reproduction of the device is excellent, and you will enjoy watching movies on this device. The saturation levels are good enough, all thanks to the OLED screen. While watching Blood of Zeus on Netflix, I noticed that the ******* were well produced, while the colours were vibrant and accurate. The laptop also comes with Dolby Vision and HDR support, meaning you can easily view HDR content on Netflix and YouTube. The laptop comes loaded with a 14-inch 2.8K OLED display with a screen refresh rate of 120Hz. The laptop also has a 120Hz screen refresh rate, making the animation much smoother than the standard 60Hz panels. The laptop is also loaded with up to 500 nits of peak brightness, which is good enough for the indoor work environment. However, it is not great for outdoor conditions as the screen is a bit reflective. Moto Book 60 Keyboard, Touchpad, Speakers, and Webcam Keyboard – Backlit keyboard Webcam – Full HD+ IR camera Speakers – Dual Stereo Speakers with Dolby Atmos The Moto Book 60 offers a backlit keyboard, which is one of the best in this segment. The LEDs are decent enough to give a comfortable typing experience in low-light conditions and come with two levels of brightness. The laptop packs a backlit keyboard that offers good key travel. Coming to the performance, there is a decent key travel, and you get a rubbery feel when you press the keys. With a simple learning curve, you can easily get used to the keyboard as it is well-spaced out for a comfortable typing experience. The laptop also comes with a large Mylar touchpad. The touchpad is sturdy and offers a good response when you scroll. It also supports multi-touch, which makes it easier to quickly shuffle between applications. The device comes loaded with a Full HD IR camera, which delivers decent results. In terms of security, you get an IR-based camera for Windows Hello support, which is a rare thing in this price segment. The IR-based Windows Hello feature works effortlessly, even when the lights are dim in the room. The Full HD camera is also decent for video calls, and the dual microphone captures the sound nicely. You also get a physical shutter, which is a good addition. Coming to the speakers, the Moto Book 60 comes with dual stereo speakers that support Dolby Atmos. The speakers are loud enough to fill a small room, and the distortion is minimal, meaning that you can easily enjoy content or music while watching a movie or working. Moto Book 60 Software: Smart Connect Works Well Operating System – Windows 11 Home Other Features – Smart Connect The Moto Book 60 runs the Windows 11 operating system. The device also has a dedicated Copilot button to access the digital assistant. However, the star of the show is the Smart Connect application. The application allows you to easily connect your tablet or smartphone and transfer files, access applications, photos, and more. It works best when you have a Motorola tablet or Motorola smartphone with you. However, you can still get access to multiple features if you are using a different-branded device. For example, you can convert your tablet into a webcam using the Smart Connect app, access apps right from your phone, or simply drag and drop photos and documents between the connected devices. Moto Book 60 Performance: Reliable for Daily Usage Chipset – Intel Core 5 210H SoC RAM – 16GB LPDDR5 ROM – 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD GPU – Intel Iris Xe Graphics The Moto Book 60 is powered by the Intel Core 5 210H processor that comes with eight cores with up to 4.8GHz frequency. The laptop also comes loaded with 16GB of LPDDR5-5600 RAM and 512GB of M.2 2242 PCI 4.0 storage. The graphics duty is handled by Intel Iris Xe. Benchmark Moto Book 60 Infinix Inbook Air Pro+ Asus Vivobook 14 Flip Cinebench R23 Single Core 1695 1264 1427 Cinebench R23 Multi Core 7742 5310 9667 Geekbench 6 Single Core 2760 2277 2690 Geekbench 6 Multi Core 8929 8168 10625 PC Mark 10 4758 5219 6737 3DMark Night Raid 14162 12991 17848 3DMark CPU Profile 4649 2933 5915 3DMark Steel Nomad Light 750 997 1363 CrystalDiskMark 6562.70 MB/s (Read)/ 5430.97 MB/s (Write) 3459.20 MB/s (Read)/ 2541.40 MB/s (Write) 6345.60 MB/s (Read)/ 4246.06 MB/s (Write) The latest laptop from Motorola delivers good day-to-day performance. When you scroll, watch movies, edit documents, and more, the laptop will not stutter. I used the laptop as my daily driver and was satisfied with the daily performance. The laptop is powered by Intel Core 5 210H processor and packs 16GB of RAM. Even with heavy multitasking like opening multiple tabs on Chrome, playing tracks on YouTube Music, and writing an article on Microsoft Word, the laptop handled it effectively without any noticeable lag or overheating issues. However, I noticed some lag or stutter when using ChatGPT on this machine, which was odd. That said, if you want to use some heavy photo or video editing software, then you might want to look somewhere else. Interestingly, the laptop also comes with different modes, which you can change by pressing Fn + Q. Moving on, the laptop is also capable of handling casual gaming. I tried Valorant on this laptop and easily got 100 fps with low settings. On the other hand, Counter-Strike 2 delivered 50-60fps when the settings were set to low. That said, don’t expect it to run heavy games. Moto Book 60 Laptop Battery: Average Battery Capacity – 60 Wh Lithium Polymer (Typical) Fast Charging – 65W USB Type-C Adapter The Moto Book 60 comes loaded with a decent battery life. The device comes with 60W power support, which can last 7 to 8 hours with mild to moderate usage. Moto Book 60 features a 60Wh battery that can be fully charged under 2 hours. However, with heavy multitasking, the laptop delivered close to 6 hours of battery backup. It also comes loaded with 65W fast charging support, which can easily charge the laptop from 10 percent to 100 percent in less than 2 hours. Moto Book 60 Laptop Verdict The Moto Book 60 sure seems to be an interesting offering at this price point. The laptop offers vibrant colour options and comes with solid build quality. The display is the star of the show here, and you will definitely enjoy watching movies or TV series on this laptop. The performance is satisfactory for day-to-day usage, though if you are looking for something that can handle the load of heavy multitasking, then you should look at other options. That said, if you are a student or someone who wants to have a different-looking laptop that can attend to your daily needs, then you can consider the Moto Book 60. Source link #Moto #Book #Review #Premium #Design #Meets #Practicality Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Lawrence O’Donnell Sums Up Trump’s Middle East Trip In 2 Scathing Words Lawrence O’Donnell Sums Up Trump’s Middle East Trip In 2 Scathing Words Donald Trump is on a “humiliation tour” of the Middle East, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell said Tuesday. But the president is “too stupid to know it,” the “Last Word” anchor suggested. Trump has faced backlash from both sides of the aisle over his defense of accepting a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar. O’Donnell argued Middle Eastern leaders will view Trump with contempt and “someone who lives beneath them, as someone who takes their secondhand junk, their secondhand toys.” O’Donnell also pointed out the irony of Trump’s recent remarks about American children having limited Christmas presents due to price hikes caused by his tariffs, which Trump is now climbing down from. “The president of the United States, who just last week was telling American kids how many toys they could have for Christmas, is now humiliating himself with those Middle Eastern dictators by showing them just how much he covets their toys,” O’Donnell snarked. Watch from the 7-minute mark here: Related… Source link #Lawrence #ODonnell #Sums #Trumps #Middle #East #Trip #Scathing #Words Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Alcatel V3 Ultra’s New Teasers Show Design, Dedicated Display Modes; India Launch Date Leaked Alcatel V3 Ultra’s New Teasers Show Design, Dedicated Display Modes; India Launch Date Leaked Alcatel is set to re-enter the Indian smartphone market with the Alcatel V3 Ultra. While the exact launch date is still under wraps, the brand, which is operated independently by TCL Communication, has shared new teasers about the device on social media platforms. The Alcatel V3 Ultra is confirmed to offer dedicated display modes for different activities. The new Alcatel smartphones will be sold on Flipkart. Additionally, a new leak suggests that the Alcatel V3 series will launch in the last week of May. Alcatel and Madhav Sheth, founder and tech advisor for Alcatel India, have posted multiple teasers on X revealing details about the Alcatel V3 Ultra. It is confirmed to feature dedicated display modes for different tasks like reading, watching, scrolling and creating content. The phone will also come with stylus support. The new teasers also showcase the design of the unannounced Alcatel V3 Ultra. It is seen with a round rear camera module housing three sensors. The camera island includes a flashlight module. Further, Alcatel has revealed that it has collaborated with Padget Electronics, a subsidiary of Dixon Technologies, to manufacture Alcatel smartphones in India. The exact launch date of Alcatel V3 Ultra is not official yet, but the company is teasing it with a coming soon tag. Alcatel is also hosting a contest inviting users to guess the launch date of the upcoming smartphone. Participants stand a chance to win exclusive Alcatel merchandise and passes to the launch event. Alcatel V3 Series Launch Date Leaked Meanwhile, a report by 91Mobiles suggests the phone’s launch date and time. According to a poster shared by the publication, the India launch of the Alcatel V3 lineup will take place on May 27 at 11am IST. The Alcatel smartphones are already confirmed to go on ***** in india through Flipkart’s main platform and Flipkart Minutes. The Alcatel V3 Ultra marks Alcatel’s first smartphone launch in India after a gap of three years. It is rumoured to feature a 6.8-inch display and a 5,010mAh battery. It could run on the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chipset and pack a 108-megapixel primary rear camera. Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details. Source link #Alcatel #Ultras #Teasers #Show #Design #Dedicated #Display #Modes #India #Launch #Date #Leaked Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Boeing’s Strong Deliveries Could Signal Stronger Market Position by Year-End Boeing’s Strong Deliveries Could Signal Stronger Market Position by Year-End Boeing (NYSE:) has reported a significant increase in its jet deliveries for April 2025, nearly doubling the figures from the same month last year. This is because the company delivered 45 commercial jets, marking the fourth consecutive month with over 40 deliveries. Despite this progress, Boeing trails behind its competitor Airbus in terms of total aircraft deliveries and new orders. The U.S. planemaker faced additional challenges due to recent trade tensions with China, which recently halted further deliveries of Boeing jets. Meanwhile, Boeing’s stock has shown positive movement, reflecting investor confidence amidst these developments. Boeing’s Jet Deliveries Surged in April 2025, Continues Trend Over Past 4 Months Boeing’s jet deliveries in April 2025 have shown a remarkable increase, with the company delivering 45 commercial jets compared to 24 in April 2024. This has been a consistent trend over the past four months, with Boeing delivering over 40 jets each month. The deliveries included a variety of models, with 29 of them being 737 MAX planes, alongside eight 787s, four 777 freighters, and three 767s. Despite this progress, Boeing’s delivery numbers still fall short of Airbus, which delivered 56 jets and secured 11 new orders in the same *******. The halt in deliveries to ******** airlines due to trade tensions poses additional challenges for Boeing. Boeing Stock Continues Upward Trend, Hits 52-Week High Boeing’s stock has experienced an upward trend, with the price rising from a previous close of $198.53 to $203.56 at the time of writing. This increase reflects a positive market sentiment, as investors respond to the company’s recent delivery performance and future potential. The stock reached a day high of $205.31, which also marks its 52-week high, indicating strong investor confidence despite the challenges Boeing faces. Key metrics reveal a market cap of $153.49 billion, with a forward P/E ratio of 433.11703 and a recommendation rating of ‘Buy’. Analysts have set a target high price of $230.00, suggesting optimism for Boeing’s future growth and recovery. *** Neither the author, Tim Fries, nor this website, The Tokenist, provide financial advice. Please consult our website policy prior to making financial decisions. This article was originally published on The Tokenist. Check out The Tokenist’s free newsletter, Five Minute Finance, for weekly analysis of the biggest trends in finance and technology. Source link #Boeings #Strong #Deliveries #Signal #Stronger #Market #Position #YearEnd Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Benzo Withdrawal Symptoms Can Be Life-Threatening Benzo Withdrawal Symptoms Can Be Life-Threatening Tasha Hedges took Xanax for 20 years to treat her anxiety and panic attacks, exactly as a psychiatrist had prescribed it. Then in 2022, that doctor unexpectedly died. A general practitioner continued her prescription but retired shortly afterward. The next doctor moved to Canada. Finally, Ms. Hedges found a new psychiatrist. “The first thing he did was start yelling at me that I had been on Xanax too long,” said Ms. Hedges, 41, who lives in Falling Waters, W.Va. “He ripped me off my meds.” Discontinuing the drug typically requires decreasing the dose slowly over months or even years, a process called tapering. Ms. Hedges stopped cold turkey. Debilitating withdrawal symptoms followed: hot flashes, cold sweats, restless legs, the shakes and teeth grinding. “It was a nightmare,” she said. Two years after discontinuing the medication, she is still dealing with the fallout. “My brain has not been the same.” In social media groups and websites such as BenzoBuddies, people like Ms. Hedges say they have become physically dependent on benzodiazepines. Many then get cut off from their medication or taper too quickly, and face dangerous and potentially life-threatening withdrawal symptoms that can linger long after the drugs are discontinued. Some doctors, fearful of the risks and stigma associated with these drugs, refuse to prescribe them at all. “Benzos generate as much anxiety in the prescriber as they do in the patient,” said Dr. Ronald M. Winchel, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. “Do I start it? Is it the right context? Is it safe? Is my patient going to abuse it? What will my colleagues think?” Prescriptions for benzodiazepines like Xanax, Ativan and Valium have been trending down since 2016, in part because of doctors’ concerns. Even so, these medications are considered quick and efficacious, and they remain among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the country to treat conditions including anxiety and sleep disorders. In 2019, an estimated 92 million benzodiazepine prescriptions were dispensed in the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Current guidelines recommend prescribing the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible duration, usually less than four weeks. But patients tend to stay on them longer than that. A F.D.A. review found that in 2018 about half of patients took them for two months or longer. Sometimes patients stay on them for years without regular check-ins to see if the drugs are still needed or well tolerated, said Dr. Edward K. Silberman, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the Tufts University School of Medicine who has frequently written about benzodiazepines. Because patients can develop a physical dependence within several weeks of steady benzodiazepine use, going off the drugs — even after a short ******* — requires a gradual process. However, many practitioners are not well trained in tapering the prescriptions. To make the process clearer, in March experts at the American Society of Addiction Medicine released new guidelines for dosage reduction that were developed with funding from the F.D.A. “It’s absolutely insane to pressure people to get off and to withdraw people abruptly,” Dr. Silberman said. Jody Jarreau, 60, started taking Klonopin for insomnia 25 years ago while he was living in Dallas. When his psychiatrist quit practicing for medical reasons, he eventually found another who suggested that he take two other benzodiazepines, Xanax and Valium, and work toward weaning off the Klonopin. After about six months of taking all three drugs, Mr. Jarreau grew frustrated and decided to take matters into his own hands. He weaned himself off the Klonopin and Xanax. He is still trying to get off the Valium, with the help of his general practitioner and a coach from the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, a nonprofit group. Initially, Mr. Jarreau said, he tapered too quickly off the drugs, and developed headaches, nausea and agoraphobia, which is an excessive and irrational fear of being in open or unfamiliar places. But one of the toughest withdrawal symptoms has been thoughts of suicide. “There’s kind of like this background noise that says, You know, just take yourself out,” he said. “It’d be easier.” He says that he had never experienced any of these symptoms before cutting back on the drugs. In 2023, advocates for those injured by benzodiazepines gave a name to the varied long-lasting symptoms that may emerge during the use, the tapering or the discontinuation of the drugs: benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction, or BIND. Not everyone will experience BIND, they acknowledge. And with the right tapering plan, experts say, side effects can be minimized. “These are very good and safe drugs when given to the right person in the right dose for the right ******* of time,” said Dr. Carl Salzman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the former chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s benzodiazepine task force. But even though benzodiazepines have been around since the ’60s, some doctors are unaware of how best to help their patients stop taking these drugs. This is in part because there is no one-size-fits-all tapering strategy. It is the withdrawal symptoms, some patients say, that make it necessary for them to continue to access these drugs while slowly tapering. Dr. Silberman recalled one patient who needed to shave flakes off her pill with a razor blade to slowly decrease her dosage and minimize difficult side effects. The A.S.A.M.’s new guidelines for reducing a patient’s dosage of a benzodiazepine draw heavily from clinical experience given the sparse and limited research on tapering. They recommend that clinicians assess the risks and the benefits of ongoing benzodiazepine prescribing at least every three months, and, when tapering, consider reducing the current dose by 5 to 10 percent every two to four weeks. The guidelines also say patients who have been taking benzodiazepines for years may require more than a year of tapering, and should be monitored even after the drug has been discontinued. “Most of us were never warned about the chances of dependency and long-term complications,” said D.E. Foster, a researcher who contributed to the new guidelines and is an advocate for people like himself who have struggled with benzodiazepine complications. Slow tapering can be difficult, he added, “but abrupt tapering can be dangerous.” The A.S.A.M. guidance came too late for LaTasha Marbury, 49, who lives in Purchase, N.Y., and had become physically dependent on Klonopin. In 2022 she visited an addiction detox facility because she was desperate to stop taking the drug, which she had started for insomnia. Practitioners at the facility weaned her off it in just five days. Afterward, she cried hysterically and felt hopeless, she said. She experienced night terrors that felt “almost like a lion is in the room but you can’t see it and you’re fighting it,” an inability to sit still and deep depression. She visited another addiction facility in Florida where she received an antidepressant. Within weeks she began to feel much better. Now, she said, “I sleep like a freaking baby.” And she wonders: Was this, rather than the benzodiazepine, the drug that she should have been prescribed all along? “When I think about it — what I went through — I cry,” she said. “It wasn’t a physical pain but it was a mental pain. And I’m thankful to be alive.” If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Source link #Benzo #Withdrawal #Symptoms #LifeThreatening Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

India and Pakistan Talked Big, But Satellite Imagery Shows Limited Damage India and Pakistan Talked Big, But Satellite Imagery Shows Limited Damage The four-day military clash between India and Pakistan was the most expansive fighting in half a century between the two nuclear-armed countries, with the skies lighting up night after night along the vast boundary dividing them and deep inside their territories. Alongside that shooting war, the two sides also waged an information war. As both countries used hundreds of drones and missiles to test each other’s air defenses and deliver hits on military facilities, they claimed expansive accounts of severe blows inflicted on the enemy. But an examination of satellite imagery indicates that while the attacks were widespread, the damage was far more contained than claimed — and mostly inflicted by India on Pakistani facilities. In a new age of high-tech warfare, which has quickly reshaped the nature of South Asia’s most protracted conflict, verified strikes launched against both sides appeared to be precise. What is increasingly clear is that both sides suffered casualties among their armed forces, with India acknowledging the loss of five soldiers and Pakistan reporting 11. The heaviest blow to India appears to be the loss of aircraft. While the Indian government has not said how many went down, officials and diplomats say that at least two aircraft were lost, and most likely more. Where India appears to have had a clear edge is in its targeting of Pakistan’s military facilities and airfields, as the latter stretch of fighting shifted from symbolic strikes and shows of force to attacks on each other’s defense capabilities. High-resolution satellite imagery, from before and after the strikes, shows clear damage to Pakistan’s facilities by Indian strikes, if limited and precise in nature. At Bholari air base, located less than 100 miles from the Pakistani port city of Karachi, India’s defense officials said they had struck an aircraft hangar with a precision strike. The visuals showed clear damage to what looks like a hangar. Sources: Satellite images by Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs The Nur Khan air base, within a roughly 15-mile range of both the Pakistani Army’s headquarters and the office of the country’s prime minister and a short distance from the unit that oversees and protects Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, was perhaps the most sensitive military target that India struck. Sources: Satellite images by Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs The Indian military said it had particularly targeted the runways and other facilities at some of Pakistan’s key air bases. Satellite images showed the damage. On May 10, Pakistan issued a notice for Rahim Yar Khan air base saying that the runway was not operational. Sources: Satellite images by Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs At Sargodha air base, in Punjab Province in Pakistan, the Indian military said it had used precision weapons to strike two sections of the runway. Sources: Satellite images by Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs Pakistan’s military listed two dozen Indian military installations and bases that it said its forces had targeted. While Indian officials have acknowledged “limited damage” at four air bases, they have offered few details. Satellite images of the sites Pakistan claimed to have hit are limited, and so far do not clearly show damage caused by Pakistani strikes even at bases where there was corroborating evidence of some military action. Pakistani officials, according to state media, said their forces had “destroyed” India’s Udhampur air base. The family of one Indian soldier has confirmed his death on the base. But an image from May 12 does not appear to show damage. Source: Satellite image by Planet Labs Source link #India #Pakistan #Talked #Big #Satellite #Imagery #Shows #Limited #Damage Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Apple Unveils Accessibility Nutrition Labels, Magnifier for Mac, Braille Access and More Apple Unveils Accessibility Nutrition Labels, Magnifier for Mac, Braille Access and More Apple on Tuesday unveiled several new accessibility features that are set to arrive with its upcoming operating system updates later this year. Users will have access to ‘nutrition labels’ on the App Store, providing information about accessibility features offered by each application. Mac users will have access to a new magnifier app that lets them zoom in on a whiteboard or read documents with small fonts. Multiple devices will gain support for Braille Access with support for taking notes and making calculations, and the Apple Watch will add support for Live Captions with watchOS 12. Apple’s Newest Accessibility Features Will Arrive in Late 2025 The company says that it will being Accessibility Nutritional Labels to the App Store with iOS 19, which is expected to arrive in the third quarter of 2025. The company previously introduced support for displaying privacy details for apps in an easy-to-view card under each app listing. With iOS 19, users will see a similar label if an app supports features like Audio Descriptions, Voice Control, Captions, and VoiceOver. Mac users will soon get access to the company’s Magnifier app, which will arrive on macOS with a couple of new features. Users will need to use a USB camera or an iPhone with Continuity Camera, to access the Magnifier app. It allows users to zoom in on a whiteboard or a screen using their smartphone. When used in Desk View, users can also read documents, according to the company. Later this year, Apple will introduce a new feature called Braille Access that lets users take braille notes iPhone, iPad, Mac, and even the Apple Vision Pro. They can perform calculations using braille code, launch apps, take notes, and open Braille Ready Format (BRF) files using the new Braille Access feature. Name Recognition (left), Braille Access, and Accessibility Nutrition Labels Photo Credit: Apple Text across Apple’s operating systems will also get easier to read later this year, with a new mode called Accessibility Reader. The company says it is designed to help users with low vision or dyslexia, and supports font, colour, and spacing customisation. It will be built into the Magnifier app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac computers. Users can also use an Apple Watch to control Live Listen sessions on an iPhone, while viewing captions of audio captured by the smartphone on their watch screen. Meanwhile, blind users and people with low vision can use the main camera on the Apple Vision Pro to zoom in on their surroundings. Apple is also bringing Vehicle Motion Cues, a feature introduced to mitigate the effects of motion sickness on iPhone in 2024, to macOS later this year. The Personal Voice feature will offer more natural sounding voices, and the Sound Recognition feature will also help deaf users (or people who are hard of hearing) to know when someone mentions their name. These new accessibility features and improvements will make their way to users’ devices later this year, according to the company. We can expect them to arrive alongside (or after) iOS 19, iPadOS 19, watchOS 12, and macOS 16 are released later this year. More details of these software updates are expected to be revealed during Apple’s upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that is scheduled to begin on June 9. Source link #Apple #Unveils #Accessibility #Nutrition #Labels #Magnifier #Mac #Braille #Access Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Book Review: ‘Capitalism and Its Critics,’ by John Cassidy Book Review: ‘Capitalism and Its Critics,’ by John Cassidy CAPITALISM AND ITS CRITICS: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI, by John Cassidy Given how reliably Americans tend to favor promises of plenty, it has been curious to see a president inherit a humming economy and then proceed to gut the federal work force, start a chaotic trade war and celebrate the scarcity about to ensue. Asked about potential shortages of goods, President Trump has repeatedly offered versions of the same strange example. “I don’t think a beautiful baby girl needs — that’s 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls,” he told NBC News. “I think they can have three dolls, or four dolls.” (He added, “They don’t need to have 250 pencils, they can have five.”) Trump makes a few cameo appearances in John Cassidy’s new book, “Capitalism and Its Critics,” for his demonstrated ability to brag about his riches while tapping into growing discontent with the global capitalist system. Some of the critics Cassidy features in this book wanted to replace capitalism entirely; others, like Trump, have sought to preserve a core of self-interest while remaking capitalism’s rules. Rejecting a world financial order fueled by free trade and a bedrock American dollar, the president has been promoting a grab bag that includes both tariffs and crypto — a Trumpian hybrid of the very old and the very new. But then capitalism has always been a protean force. In the 18th century, merchant capitalism yielded to industrial capitalism; in the postwar era, Keynesianism yielded to neoliberalism. Cassidy, a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, originally envisioned writing a “shortish history” that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he soon realized that to properly understand the roots of capitalism’s discontents, he needed to go much further back (some 250 years) and write much longer (more than 600 pages). Despite the obvious differences among the people in this book, they share some complaints. “Over the centuries,” Cassidy writes, “the central indictment of capitalism has remained remarkably consistent: that it is soulless, exploitative, inequitable, unstable and destructive, yet also all-conquering and overwhelming.” Cassidy begins in the early days of the Industrial Revolution and ends with some thoughts about the economic upheaval that may be wrought by A.I. In between he offers short chapters — 28 in all — dedicated to the life and work of figures both familiar and obscure. The result is an expansive history of capitalism that places less emphasis on economic abstractions like perfectly competitive markets and draws attention instead to how often capitalist systems have fallen short. “It is barely hyperbole to say that capitalism is always in crisis, recovering from crisis or heading toward the next crisis,” Cassidy remarks. In 1857, a financial panic on Wall Street prompted Marx and Engels to believe that a collapse was imminent. “The American crisis,” Marx wrote, “is BEAUTIFUL.” Engels replied, “The AMERICAN ****** is superb.” But the state stepped in, as it usually does — averting wholesale disintegration by saving the capitalist system from blowing itself up. This habit of state intervention, of course, runs counter to laissez-faire orthodoxy, with its insistence that markets should be left to their own devices. Cassidy devotes a chapter to Karl Polanyi (1886-1964), the Austro-Hungarian economic anthropologist who argued that free markets were such a “stark utopia” that they required a strong state to lay the ground rules. They were also so disruptive that societies spontaneously tried to reassert some order in response: Writing during World War II, Polanyi described socialism (which he supported) and fascism (which he abhorred) as two disparate reactions to the same capitalist upheaval. As Polanyi put it, “Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not.” Polanyi was underappreciated in his day, when laissez-faire economics had been discredited by the Great Depression; he was rediscovered in the 1980s, when neoliberalism was ascendant and his grim view of unfettered capitalism served as a stinging rebuke. Cassidy shows how belated recognition was often the fate of capitalism’s critics. The Cambridge economist Joan Robinson (1903-83) was a colleague of John Maynard Keynes, who maintained that the state could get an economy out of a slump by spending money to stimulate demand. Robinson was a Keynesian who nevertheless recognized the limits of Keynesianism. Writing in the 1930s, she theorized about the possibility of unemployment getting so low that bargaining between employers and workers could lead to what was later called a “wage-price spiral.” At the time, deflation was the biggest threat; it was only four decades later, when stagflation proved resistant to the Keynesian tool kit, that Robinson’s analysis got its proper due. By then she was already frustrated by the state of the economics profession, including the “bastard Keynesians” she accused of simplifying and deforming some of Keynes’s “acid” insights. Toward the end of her life, when asked by an economics student at Oxford if she would have done anything differently, she said she would have studied something more useful, like biology. Cassidy includes a number of thinkers like Robinson, who attacked capitalism from the left. He also writes about Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman — each in his own way a critic of what turned out to be a dying order, and who went on to become part of a new establishment. Those who have predicted capitalism’s imminent collapse underestimate its ability to shape-shift into yet another configuration. But stability has always been tenuous: Resolving capitalism’s many contradictions has also meant creating new ones. The most haunting figure in this book is an outlier: Thomas Carlyle, the 19th-century Scottish essayist, whose assumptions about both capitalism and humanity were so dark that he made no room for the possibility of social progress. He was an avowed racist and antisemite. He thought democracy was hopeless, and evinced utter contempt for “the multitude.” But Carlyle’s unrelentingly bleak vision, his insistence on hierarchy, his veneration of strongmen, don’t look so out of place in today’s reality. Nor does his ability to attract people who should have known better. Cassidy notes that Carlyle’s admirers included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The Transcendentalists thought that Carlyle wanted the same future they did. They thrilled to his excoriations of a soulless “mechanical age” and “Mammon-worship.” They were willing to overlook some of his more unseemly “exaggerations,” Cassidy writes, because, discounting all evidence to the contrary, they believed “his intent was benign.” CAPITALISM AND ITS CRITICS: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI | By John Cassidy | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 609 pp. | $36 Source link #Book #Review #Capitalism #Critics #John #Cassidy Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

A D.I.Y. Cooking Course in Mexico City A D.I.Y. Cooking Course in Mexico City Over the blitz of a whirring blender, Emilio Pérez, a chef and partner at Casa Jacaranda cooking school in Mexico City, yelled, “Check this out guys, come here.” Standing in front of a burner, he incinerated a tortilla, its charred remains bound for mole sauce, before directing our attention to the blender to taste the spicy red salsa. Then it was back to the burners to see shriveled raisins — another mole ingredient — plump up, before mixing dough for tortillas. For the next several hours, my attention volleyed from ingredient to ingredient, dish to dish, as our class of eight students prepared a ******** menu of green tamales, chicken mole, two kinds of salsa and blue corn tortillas under the energetic tutelage of Chef Emilio, as we called him. For cultural spice, he threw in observations such as, “We domesticated the corn and it domesticated us.” I had come to Mexico City in February seeking just such culinary and cultural immersion. A friend had recently returned from Italy, raving about her four-day cooking school, which was more than $1,000 a day. In the capital of Mexico, I knew I could stretch my budget — a dollar is worth about 20 pesos today — and spend about $200 a day on a D.I.Y. curriculum in one of the world’s most celebrated food traditions, cited on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Part of the experience trend in travel, cooking classes are booming. They are a major component of what the market research firm Grandview Research calls culinary tourism, accounting for $11.5 billion globally and projected to grow nearly 20 percent a year to 2030. Over three days, my husband, Dave, and I took three classes and still had time to catch a lucha libre wrestling match, visit the studios of the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and enjoy complimentary mezcal on the rooftop of NaNa Vida hotel in the bohemian Roma district (rooms from 2,888 pesos). Learning ‘a Love Language’ In a shady square in the central Juárez neighborhood, Chef Emilio of Casa Jacaranda ($225 a person), greeted our group of seven Americans and one ********* with a choice: Should we make tamales, mole, pipián (a sauce made with pumpkin seeds) or birria (stew)? By majority vote, we opted for green tamales — “Something everyone can get their hands on,” Chef Emilio said — and mole with chicken. The class, which was in English, moved on to the nearby Juárez Market for a tour. Amid towering produce stands and tiered displays of dried chiles, the chef discussed the milpa agricultural system where corn, beans and squash are grown together as the basis for ******** food. “We were conquered through food, as well as other ways,” he added, identifying Spanish-introduced foods such as wheat, olives, grapes and almonds. At La Rifa Chocolatería, a nearby cafe, we sampled ******** chocolate and discussed the importance of cacao, once traded like currency and now a key ingredient in many mole sauces. Then, a few blocks away, we set to work around an oversize kitchen island in the colorful workshop of La Jacaranda, which shares space with an art gallery. We roasted tomatoes, garlic and chiles for red salsa, mixed corn flour with pork **** for the tamale batter, and roasted ancho chiles before frying them in oil and boiling them in chicken stock for the 27-ingredient mole sauce. “Mole is not a recipe, but a category,” said Chef Emilio, noting the endless ways it can be modified. We made three sauces demonstrating the spectrum of flavors that would be blended into one mother sauce. One involved plantain, sugar and burned tortillas. Another roasted cacao and the third, fried apples, raisins and sesame seeds. “When you make mole from scratch, that’s a love language,” he said. Sent to wash our hands, we returned to find the work table filled with ingredients for tacos using tortillas we had pressed and seared. For the next course, with Paloma cocktails in hand, we filed into an adjacent dining room where a long table was set for our meal of fragrant tamales and rich mole served over yellow rice. For another culinary lesson, I turned to Airbnb Experiences where the gastronomic offerings range from street-food crawls and mezcal tastings to churro-making and bread-baking. “Making tacos al pastor with a chef” ($66 a person) stood out for its bold attempt at a ubiquitous taqueria recipe — in which slabs of adobe-marinated pork turn on a vertical ***** before an open flame — and professional instruction. The France-born chef, ***** Elissa, worked in upscale restaurants in Paris and Los Angeles before moving to Mexico. In 2017, Chef *****, with his wife, Pilar Moreno, turned the garage of their home in the San Ángel neighborhood into a professional kitchen with stainless steel countertops. He has been teaching there ever since. “It’s nice to meet people from all over the world,” said the chef as he welcomed Dave and me and a couple from Germany at the Mercado Melchor Múzquiz in San Ángel by distributing shopping bags. While picking up pork, tomatillos, pineapple and other ingredients, he divulged secrets for reading chiles, noting that the larger, darker ones are milder but those with stretch marks “will be like a volcano erupting.” A three-stop bus ride brought us to the chef’s home where whitewashed walls concealed a shady yard and a tidy kitchen. Donning aprons, we prepared the pork marinade with vinegar, herbs and pineapple juice colored red by mild guajillo chiles. Normally, the lean pork used in tacos al pastor is layered and threaded onto a large rotisserie — known as a trompo — from which cooks shave outer bits of meat into tortillas. In the home version, we made mini trompos, driving wooden dowels into sturdy disks of pineapple, then impaling our marinated meat onto the stakes and roasting the assemblies in the oven. While the meat cooked, we charred and blended ingredients for salsa, used traditional molcajetes, or volcanic stone mortars, to make guacamole, and pressed and fried tortillas. We learned handy techniques, like how to rock a knife blade from front to back to keep from squeezing fragile produce like tomatoes; how to make a sashimi cut on a piece of pork to open it up like a book; and how to force garlic cloves from their skins by pinching them. When we sat down to eat, we worked our way around the mini trompos, slicing meat into tortillas and topping the tacos with diced onion, cilantro and salsa. ‘The Best Way to Make a Bond’ No mole, I texted our next instructor. And no tacos, please. “I will plan something different,” replied Alex Ortiz, an elementary schoolteacher who moonlights as a cooking instructor in his downtown apartment through the platform Traveling Spoon. What Airbnb is to lodging, Traveling Spoon is to cooking, matching hosts — usually skilled amateurs, but occasionally professionals — with food-focused travelers. Among seven Traveling Spoon options in Mexico City, we chose “Modern ******** Cooking Class with a Fun-Loving Couple” ($190 a person, including a market tour and meal). “I love to teach and I love to cook,” said Mr. Ortiz on our walk to the San Juan Market, explaining that the other half of the couple, his wife, Ale, was working. When he started with Traveling Spoon seven years ago, Mr. Ortiz sought supplemental income. Now, having expanded his culinary training with university courses, he does it for fun a couple of times a month. “It’s just like having friends over and eating and drinking, which is the best way to make a bond,” he said. Mr. Ortiz’s ambitious menu included the hominy and pork stew known as pozole, two appetizers — chalupas and chicharrón de queso — salsa, guacamole and corn cake for dessert. At the market, our guide shopped grocery stalls, produce stands and tortilla makers while pointing out a barbershop, office supply store and florist, calling the market “the original Walmart.” Back in his tiny kitchen, I chopped cactus paddles for a zesty cactus salad. For the main dish, Dave tackled the chile-based sauce and then browned the meat, eventually transferring all the ingredients to a pressure cooker. While it steamed, we made chicharrón de queso, shredded Gouda cheese fried in a nonstick pan until it becomes a thin crepe. Once flipped and crispy on both sides, the pliable sheet was coaxed onto a rolling pin where it stiffened into a tube shape. Once it was plated, Mr. Ortiz urged me to karate-chop it, producing decadent cheese crisps for dipping into guacamole. Topped with radish chunks and chopped cabbage and sprinkled with ground chile, the pozole — a dish Mr. Ortiz admitted was more elevated than average home cooking — became lighter and more complex at the table. “It’s like throwing a dinner party,” he said. “You want something better than everyday.” Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025. Source link #D.I.Y #Cooking #Mexico #City Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Asus and other Nvidia partner GPUs have been listed on Best Buy – and the price tags might seem like a big joke Asus and other Nvidia partner GPUs have been listed on Best Buy – and the price tags might seem like a big joke Nvidia RTX 5060 partner GPUs have been spotted on Best Buy ahead of launch Models from Asus and PNY were spotted before being removed The highest price for an overclocked RTX 5060 was $409 Nvidia’s RTX 5060 is set for launch on May 19, just before one of the biggest tech events in the world, Computex 2025, begins on May 20. However, it looks like we might have an early insight into the pricing of the 8GB GPU. As reported by Wccftech, Asus TUF and Prime RTX 5060 GPUs were spotted on Best Buy (by popular leaker @momomo_us on X) ahead of launch. Most interestingly, the Asus TUF RTX 5060 OC Edition was listed for $409, which is close to the RTX 5070’s $549 launch price. This comes after one of rival AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT partner cards was leaked in a listing on a Swiss retailer, with a high price tag for a low-end GPU. However, it’s important to note that this price is more than likely just a placeholder for now – at least that’s what we hope. You may like On the other hand, that might not be the case for the Nvidia GPUs. The other Asus RTX 5060 listings (which were as low as $339.99) are representative of pricing that is expected for a budget GPU, and are also consistent with the $409 price for the overclocked model (since most OC GPUs are sold at higher prices). It’s also worth noting that PNY’s overclocked RTX 5060 was also spotted on Best Buy, at $299.99, which might be a more reasonable proposition for gamers on a budget. These listings (which have now been removed) may very well be inaccurate with placeholder prices, but it would be hard to see retail pricing be much lower. Having said that, we’d also not like to see a price higher than $299.99 for a graphics card using 8GB of VRAM in 2025. (Image credit: Future / John Loeffler) Just like the Acer Nitro Radeon RX 9060 XT listings, this will be dead on arrival if true I hate to sound like a broken record, but 8GB of VRAM isn’t sufficient for gaming in 2025, and there’s enough evidence out there to prove this; from poorly optimized ports, VRAM-hungry titles, and more games like Assassin’s Creed Shadows forcing RTGI (Ray-Traced Global Illumination), frame rates and smoothness just aren’t up to par on 8GB graphics cards. Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Computex 2025 and the RTX 5060’s launch are now only days away, so it’s still early days. However, I’m willing to believe that Team Green’s partner cards on this occasion will be priced at absurd levels – especially when you consider the terrible state of the GPU market. I can almost guarantee that if any RTX 5060 GPU (including AMD’s RX 9060 XT 8GB) launches at $409 or above, it’s not going to sell well regardless of consumer desperation. That’s not me being harsh or targeting either Team Red or Team Green; that’s just the reality. Gamers need more powerful hardware to run newly-released, graphically-demanding games, and if they still have to spend that much for a weaker GPU that’s going to make too many compromises to play modern games compared to the likes of an RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080, then I can imagine there are going to be a lot of angry PC gamers… You may also like… Source link #Asus #Nvidia #partner #GPUs #listed #Buy #price #tags #big #joke Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Despelote review – a beautiful, utterly transportive game of football fandom | Games Despelote review – a beautiful, utterly transportive game of football fandom | Games Video games have been simulating football since the 1970s, but they have rarely ever thought about simulating fandom. You can play a whole international tournament in the Fifa titles, but what they never show is the way the competition seeps into the everyday lives of supporters, how whole towns are overtaken, how a World Cup can become a national obsession. The way most of us experience the really big matches is through stolen moments of vicarious glory on televisions and giant pub screens, surrounded by friends and family and the sounds and images of real life. This is the territory of Despelote, a beautiful, utterly transportive game about childhood and memory, set during Ecuador’s historic 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign. Football-mad eight-year-old Julián – a semi-autobiographical version of the game’s co-designer Julián Cordero – has just watched the team beat Peru, but now four more matches stand between Ecuador and the World Cup finals in Japan and Korea. Structured as a series of short, immersive tableaux, Despelote gives us control of Julián as he goes about his life, buffeted by his parents and teachers between shopping trips, car journeys and school lessons. Something of what it was like to be a kid … Despelote. Photograph: Panic Games The key scenes are where you are left alone, perhaps in a town square, or at a family get-together – and you experience something of what it was like to be a kid given crucial moments of freedom and agency. You listen in on adult conversations, watch an old man feeding pigeons, say hi to a shopkeeper, have a kickabout with friends – the world is depicted as a series of grainy photos, washed with single colours – a beautiful visual device replicating the haziness of our oldest memories, the background details indistinct behind the personal, emotional events. As the game goes on, depictions of Julián’s childhood merge and interchange with recollections of later teenage parties and responsibilities. We also learn about the sociopolitical background to the World Cup campaign: Ecuador is in the midst of a financial crisis, hyperinflation has bankrupted companies and gobbled up savings – in this context, the potential glory of footballing success becomes vital and talismanic. The tournament is discussed in the streets and at weddings, it permeates everything. But other aspects of Ecuadorian life and culture are drawn in too. You learn about the music, the food and the rebirth of the domestic film industry, via the 1999 crime film Ratas, ratones, rateros directed by Julián Cordero’s father, Sebastián Cordero. In this way, real life impinges on the game world, like a poetic and self-referential Agnès Varda film, and in one lovely sequence, while Julián is engrossed in a footie sim on the family’s console, his onscreen player leaves the pitch and wanders home – to Julián’s own house: a beautiful, subtle comment on embodiment, fantasy and the act of playing. Despelote recalls some of the great works of independent narrative game design – The Unfinished Swan, Gravity Bone, Virginia – yet it is also something thrillingly of itself. Even though it’s a game about one small boy in a specific rendering of Ecuador, it communicates the near-universal power of football as a cohesive social narrative: the way the Dutch team of 74, Maradona’s genius in 1986, and Gascoigne’s goal against Scotland at Euro 96 came to say something about the nations that produced them. At the same time, as we draw closer to the final matches of the qualifying round and the excitement and tension becomes palpable, the camera and narration pull back, beyond the structured world of the game and into a meditation on the creative process itself. This is fascinating, formally daring stuff that, in its two-hour playtime, asks more questions about the nature of memory, simulation and identity than a dozen 100-hour epics. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald’s weekly look at the world of gaming Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion Despelote is available now, £12 Source link #Despelote #review #beautiful #utterly #transportive #game #football #fandom #Games Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Markets Eye September Fed Rate Cut as Inflation Continues to Cool Markets Eye September Fed Rate Cut as Inflation Continues to Cool The and rose on Tuesday as investors analyzed new and considered what it might mean for monetary policy. The was, however, down as much as 318 points before a slight recovery left the index trading 180 points down from its daily high at the time of writing. Source: TradingView Softer US Inflation Keeps Equities on the Front Foot in the US dropped to 2.3% in April 2025, the lowest level since February 2021, down from 2.4% in March and below predictions of 2.4%. Energy prices fell by 3.7%, a ******* drop than the 3.3% decline in March. The CPI (MoM) went up by 0.2% in April, bouncing back from a 0.1% drop in March but below the expected 0.3% increase. Housing costs rose 0.3% and made up more than half of the total monthly rise. Markets will be breathing a sigh of relief as price hike threats appear to be receding, thanks in part to recent trade agreements. There is optimism that more trade agreements are on the way, but for now, we will have to wait and see. The question on everyone’s lips is what this means for the and US monetary policy moving forward? CPI Implications for the Federal Reserve Prior to yesterday’s CPI release, markets had already adjusted their outlook following the latest meeting. Markets had begun pricing in only two Fed rate cuts this year, with yesterday’s data likely to reinforce this stance. Taking a deeper look into the inflation data and there are some interesting takeaways. Firstly, services make up most of the US inflation basket. Goods, excluding food and energy, which are most affected by tariffs, account for only 19.4% of the items used to measure inflation. This means housing and services can help offset any inflation caused by tariffs, which is less worrying now due to the recent easing of tensions with China. With that in mind, market participants pricing in a first rate cut in September is beginning to look increasingly likely. Inflation should be less of an issue for the Fed moving forward if the current status quo remains as is. Individual Stocks – Biggest Movers for the Day Most large-cap and growth stocks rose, with Nvidia (NASDAQ:) up 5.5%, Meta (NASDAQ:) up 2.5%, and Amazon (NASDAQ:) 2.4% respectively. Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:), set to join the S&P 500 on May 19, was a standout performer, surging 15%. With over 90% of S&P 500 companies having reported earnings, investors now await Walmart’s (NYSE:) results, expected later this week. Looking at the Dow Jones and its struggles yesterday, the finger may in part be pointed toward UnitedHealth (NYSE:) which dropped around 12%. This came about after the insurer paused its yearly forecast and its CEO resigned. Technical Analysis – S&P 500 From a technical standpoint, the S&P 500 has gained significant ground over the past two weeks as trade fears subside. The index now trades above both the 100 and 200-MAs for the first time since February 27, 2025 in what could be seen as an ominous sign. The only thing that bears could keep an eye on is the RSI ******* 14, which is approaching oversold territory and a host of key levels resting above the current price. There is also the price gap from the weekend, which may need to be filled, however, price gaps may be filled at any time, and there is no guarantee that this will take place anytime soon. Immediate resistance rests at 5910 before the 6025 handle comes into focus. If a move to the downside materializes, immediate support rests at 5828 and 5770, respectively. S&P 500 Daily Chart, May 13, 2025 Source: TradingView Original Post Source link #Markets #Eye #September #Fed #Rate #Cut #Inflation #Continues #Cool Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Renewable Energy Is Booming in Texas. Republicans Want to Change That. Renewable Energy Is Booming in Texas. Republicans Want to Change That. Conservative states with a hands-off approach to development, such as Texas and Oklahoma, have become wind and solar energy dynamos in recent years. But a simultaneous push by Republicans in Washington and in Sun Belt state capitals to cut off tax incentives and tighten permitting regulations threatens to snuff out the red-state renewable energy *****. The one-two punch underscores the Republicans’ move away from embracing an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy to a one-sided effort to return to fossil fuels. Its success would unwind four years of Democratic efforts to address climate change and advance a clean-energy economy. The shift has been particularly jarring in Texas, the nation’s top wind power producer, which is second only to California in solar energy and industrial battery storage. Renewable energy companies have announced plans for $64 billion in new investments in Texas, mostly for solar and battery storage projects, since Democrats in Washington passed the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. Investments in Texas alone would eclipse the next five biggest states combined. But on Tuesday, Republicans in Congress began work on legislation that would roll back tax credits for low-carbon energy, using rules that ensure the bill could reach President Trump with simple majorities in the House and Senate. Rather than object, the Republican-controlled State Senate in Texas has passed — and the State House is currently considering — several regulatory bills to curtail solar and wind projects in favor of new natural gas plants. Long the party of limited regulation and free markets, Republicans are now seeking to impose new rules on how electricity should be produced. “That’s the choice these lawmakers have to make: ideology or pragmatism,” said Doug Lewin, an energy consultant who writes a newsletter focused on the Texas electricity grid. “Do you hate renewables so much that you’re willing to take out the Texas economy with it?” Proponents of the new bills say the goal is practical — to increase reliability and balance the effects of federal subsidies for renewable power. Representative Jared Patterson, a Republican from suburban Dallas, called it leveling “the playing field,” as he lamented the “multiple advantages in the market” enjoyed by renewable energy, at least for now. He has sponsored a bill that would force wind and solar companies to pay for backup power. In Texas, the effort comes at a potentially challenging time for the power grid. Energy-intensive businesses, including new manufacturing plants and massive data centers for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, have been flocking to the state in part because of its plentiful and relatively cheap power. At the same time, a warming planet has generated record summer heat and added to that power demand. A heat wave this week was expected to shatter previous electricity demand records for May. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the state’s grid manager, forecasts demand for power to possibly double within five years. Bills restricting renewable energy sources would compound existing risks, Pablo Vegas, the chief executive of ERCOT, said this month. But the fight over energy in the United States has become increasingly ideological. Mr. Trump has supported cutting renewable energy tax credits, and taken steps to block new wind projects. Seventeen states, led by New York, have sued in response. Texas was not among them. In Oklahoma, where companies have announced plans to invest $2 billion in wind, solar and battery projects since 2022, anti-renewable Republican legislators and the state’s attorney general are squaring off against Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who considers himself pro-business. “If I tried to limit wind energy and say, ‘Oh, I don’t want the wind energy to happen,’ am I not doing the same thing that they’re doing in California by trying to limit fossil fuels?” Mr. Stitt asked in an interview. “You either believe in a free market, or you don’t, right?” For years, Texas maintained its freewheeling attitude toward energy development even as other states have been issuing more restrictions on power plants. In Iowa, more than a dozen counties have effectively barred new wind turbines. California’s largest county has put a moratorium on large solar arrays. “Texas has maintained making it easy,” said Devin Hartman, director of energy and environmental policy at the R Street Institute, a moderate Republican advocacy group. “But,” he added, “they’re on the cusp of changing all that.” Legislation that has already passed the State Senate would create a new permitting process for renewable energy projects. New wind projects, for instance, would be required to be set back at least 3,000 feet from neighboring property lines, and state regulators would be allowed to veto new renewable energy installations. Another bill would require utilities to offset new wind and solar generation with an equal amount of “dispatchable” capacity, meaning power generation that can be quickly switched on, usually with natural gas. “It’s not wrongheaded to ask the question, How much dispatchable do we need for a reliable system?” said Katie Coleman, a lobbyist for the Texas Association of Manufacturers. But energy experts caution that new natural gas plants face a global backlog on orders of gas turbines. Any new gas projects that aren’t already under development are unlikely to come online before 2030, said John Ketchum, the chief executive of NextEra Energy, one of the country’s largest power producers. Nearly 91 percent of the electric capacity in line to connect to the grid over the next six years are solar, wind or battery plants, according to ERCOT data. Only about 8 percent are new gas plants. Even with a state-created fund to subsidize new natural gas-fired power plants, seven of the 17 gas power projects deemed eligible last year for low-interest loans are no longer moving forward. “Gas turbines are difficult to get,” said Rob Minter, senior vice president for government and regulatory affairs at Engie North America, which builds both renewable and gas-fired power plants. In February, the company withdrew two applications to build subsidized gas plants through the Texas fund, citing delays in procuring equipment. “So that leaves renewables,” he added, “and we have the ability to put those on the ground in a couple years, not five or 10.” That message has not swayed the Legislature. The Texas House could soon vote on a bill to require existing wind and solar generators to obtain backup power to supplement the hours when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. The State Senate has already passed it. “These bills would drive a stake through the heart of the industry,” said Judd Messer, Texas vice president of the Advanced Power Alliance, a clean energy industry trade group. Debate over electricity production has been a major political issue in Texas since 2021, when a winter storm crippled the power grid, and more than 240 people died. A federal study found the cold weather caused significant failures in natural gas-fueled plants, which can struggle in extreme heat and cold. Many Republicans blamed wind and solar power anyway. As with much of the country, Texas’ electricity costs have already been rising. In February, the cost of powering a typical home in the United States rose to about $149 a month, up about $4 from a year earlier, according to the Energy Information Administration. And William W. Hogan, who helped design the Texas electricity market and is now a professor of global energy policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said the push to favor fossil fuel generation would most likely further drive up costs, without increasing reliability. “It’s a new thumb on the scale,” Mr. Hogan said. A study last month commissioned by the Texas Association of Business concluded that restricting renewable development in Texas could increase electricity prices by 14 percent by 2035, and potentially leave up to 620,000 homes without electricity during extreme weather events. Ed Hirs, an economist and energy fellow at the University of Houston, said the state does need more natural gas capacity to run during emergencies. But he does not believe the solution is to restrict renewable energy. “Without that growth of renewables,” he said, “the Texas grid is dead in the water, and so is the economy.” Source link #Renewable #Energy #Booming #Texas #Republicans #Change Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Israeli strikes in northern Gaza kill at least 48, hospital says Israeli strikes in northern Gaza kill at least 48, hospital says At least 48 Palestinians have been killed in a series of air strikes in northern Gaza overnight, a local hospital says. The Indonesian hospital reported that 22 children and 15 women were among the dead after a number of homes in Jabalia town and Jabalia refugee camp were hit. A video shared online appeared to show at least a dozen bodies on the floor there. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports. It had warned residents of Jabalia and neighbouring areas to evacuate on Tuesday night after a ************ armed group launched rockets into Israel. It came as the UN’s humanitarian affairs chief urged members of the UN Security Council to take action to “prevent genocide” in Gaza. Speaking at a meeting in New York on Tuesday, Tom Fletcher accused Israel of “deliberately and unashamedly imposing inhumane conditions on civilians”. He called on Israel to lift its 10-week blockade on Gaza and criticised the Israeli-US plan to take over the distribution of humanitarian aid in the territory. The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told the council that foreign aid was being used to help ******’s war effort. Meanwhile, US Special Envoys Steve Witkoff and Adam Boehler said they would travel to Qatar for fresh negotiations on a possible ceasefire and hostage release deal. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has threatened to expand its military offensive in Gaza this week unless ****** agrees to release the 58 hostages it is still holding. On Tuesday, a massive Israeli air strike on the European hospital’s compound in southern Gaza killed at least 28 people, according to local officials. Israeli media reports said the target was Mohammed Sinwar, who is believed to have become the leader of ****** in Gaza after his brother Yahya was killed by Israeli forces last October. The Israeli military described it as “a precise strike on ****** terrorists who were operating in a command-and-control centre” underneath the hospital. The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy ****** in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. At least 52,908 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s ******-run health ministry. Source link #Israeli #strikes #northern #Gaza #kill #hospital Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Five P.G.A. Championships to Remember Five P.G.A. Championships to Remember The P.G.A. Championship, which gets underway Thursday at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C., might not be as popular or prestigious as the game’s other three majors, but there have been plenty of magical moments and striking duels. That includes from its inception in 1916 through 1957, when it featured a match play format — one competitor pitted against another — as well as since 1958 when the tournament switched to medal play, the winner being the one with the fewest total strokes. Among the high-profile champions: Jack Nicklaus and Walter Hagen, who each captured the title a record five times, and Tiger Woods who has four victories. Here, in chronological order, are five P.G.A. Championships that stand out: 1923: Pelham Country Club, Pelham Manor, N.Y. The battle in the 36-hole final was between two of the greatest players in the game: Hagen and Gene Sarazen. They would go on to win a combined 18 major championships. And the fight delivered from start to finish. Sarazen, the defending champion, appeared in control down the stretch, up by two holes with just three to go. He bogeyed 16 and 17, however, and the match was suddenly all square. Both players made pars on the final hole of regulation to set up a sudden-death playoff. Which was when things really got interesting. After each birdied the first extra hole, Sarazen hooked his tee shot on the second. Fortunate that it didn’t go out of bounds, he hit his next shot to within two feet of the hole and knocked in the putt for the victory. Safe to say that Hagen got over it. He won the tournament the next four years in a row. 1977: Pebble Beach Golf Links, Pebble Beach, Calif. With nine holes to go, Gene Littler was leading by five strokes, and what a remarkable story it would be. In 1972, Littler had a tumor removed from his left arm. The doctors told him he would never play professional golf again, but before long, Littler was practicing at La Jolla Country Club in California. In 1973, he won the St. Louis Children’s Hospital Classic and picked up three more victories in 1975. In the 1977 P.G.A., he was unable to hold on. He bogeyed 10, 12, 13, 14 and 15, and lost in a playoff to Lanny Wadkins, who won it with a four-foot putt on the third extra hole. Littler wasn’t the only one to make a comeback. So did Wadkins. A star at Wake Forest University, he won one tournament in 1972, his rookie year, and two more in 1973, but went three full seasons without another victory. He finished with 21 wins. 1986: Inverness Club, Toledo, Ohio. This was Greg Norman’s tournament to win or lose. He lost. Norman turned in a four-over 40 on the back nine, squandering a four-shot advantage. It started on No. 11 when he made a double bogey, the lead down to two. Capitalizing was his playing partner, Bob Tway, who birdied 13 and made pars the rest of the way heading to the 18th hole. Then it happened, the shot of Tway’s life — and one of the most memorable shots of the P.G.A. Championship. Tway holed out from the green-side bunker, prevailing when Norman failed to convert his long attempt for a matching birdie. “I wasn’t trying to make it,” Tway said afterward. “I was just trying to get it close to the hole. For it to go in was unbelievable.” For Norman, it was another missed opportunity in major championships. Eight months later, he lost in heartbreaking fashion once more when Larry Mize chipped in on the second playoff hole at Augusta National. 2000: Valhalla Golf Club, Louisville, Ky. Over the last nine holes, Tiger Woods, going for his third straight major victory — he’d won the United States Open at Pebble Beach and the British Open at St. Andrews — seemed a shoo-in. The only other golfer with a prayer was Bob May, who had never won on the PGA Tour. It was no shoo-in. May, who trailed by one after 54 holes, matched Woods shot for shot down the stretch, both shooting a five-under 31 on the back nine. Woods, in fact, faced a six-footer on the final hole of regulation to stay alive. Which he made. In a three-hole aggregate playoff, Woods knocked in a 20-footer on the first hole to seize a one-shot lead, and that’s how it ended up. “The way it happened and the battle that took place, when you look at it now, it’s something very unique,” May told Golf Digest in 2014. “People go, ‘you lost the tournament.’ No, I didn’t really lose it. He won it.” 2021: Kiawah Island Golf Resort, South Carolina No one gave Phil Mickelson much of a chance heading into the week. Except maybe Mickelson. After all, Mickelson was 50 years old and hadn’t finished in the top 10 of a major since the 2016 British Open. He started with a two-under 70, trailing the leader, Corey Connors, by three strokes. A 69 on Friday gave him a share of the lead, and he followed with 70 and 73 to prevail by two over Brooks Koepka. The two had been tied through six holes on Sunday but Mickelson gained a two-shot advantage on No. 7 and never relinquished the lead. It was his sixth major title. “I hope that others find that inspiration,” said Mickelson, who became the oldest player to win a professional major. “It might take a little extra work, a little harder effort, but it’s so worth it in the end.” Source link #P.G.A #Championships #Remember Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Tips for Anxiety From Dan Harris, Sara Bareilles and Dacher Keltner Tips for Anxiety From Dan Harris, Sara Bareilles and Dacher Keltner Sara Bareilles is emerging from a monthslong bought of acute anxiety. The singer, songwriter and Broadway star has grappled with the condition for years. She had been doing well enough to stop taking Lexapro, an antidepressant, she said. Then a close friend died, and she began to spiral downward. “The bottom dropped out and I couldn’t find the surface again,” Ms. Bareilles said onstage at the New York Times Well Festival in Brooklyn last week. Ms. Bareilles was speaking on a panel about living with anxiety, alongside Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. It was moderated by Dan Harris, the host of the “10% Happier” podcast — who, as he told the audience, is perhaps best known for having had a “coke-fueled panic attack on ‘Good Morning America.’” “If you Google ‘panic attack on television,’ you can see it for yourself,” he said. “It’s the No. 1 result.” None of the panelists claimed to have conquered anxiety. But they shared some of the strategies that have helped them cope. Focus on action. Mr. Harris applauded Ms. Bareilles’s openness about her recent struggles. It’s good that our culture talks about anxiety more openly than ever before, he added. “But one of my critiques is that we — especially in social media — tend to wallow in the suffering,” Mr. Harris said. He wanted people to turn to the “many, many things you can do about it.” Ms. Bareilles agreed, noting that those with anxiety — herself included — can start to “wear” the diagnosis as a kind of identity. It’s not easy or simple to move forward, the panelists agreed. Dr. Keltner described anxiety as “one of the hardest conditions to overcome.” Still, as a guiding principle, Mr. Harris said he liked to remind himself: “Action absorbs anxiety.” Be willing to experiment. Different coping mechanisms work for different people. Ms. Bareilles said she relied on therapy, medication, meditation, exercise and “lots and lots and lots of human connection.” (An attempt to self-medicate with the drug MDMA was a fiasco, she said.) Dr. Keltner, who said he had his first panic attack at age 30, has sought comfort in music, meditation, pickup basketball and time in nature. “The single best thing you can do outside of social connection is get outdoors,” he said, adding that research shows: “Clouds and sky and light and the sound of water and the smell of spring get into your nervous system and calm it all down.” Mr. Harris has been in talk therapy for years, he told the audience, and is using exposure therapy to manage the panic attacks he experiences on planes and in elevators. He and his therapist “go around New York City and try and find the most diabolically small elevators” and ride them together, he said. “I really believe that people should do what works for them,” Mr. Harris said. Cultivate mindfulness. The speakers emphasized the roles of mindfulness and meditation in their own lives. It can help to start small, just doing a few minutes here and there, Mr. Harris said. He has built a second career as an evangelist for meditation, but he acknowledged the practice might not resonate with everyone. Meditation might even serve to pile on the anxiety for some people. “If you’re trying to alleviate or mitigate stress, adding a stressful item to your to-do list seems counterproductive,” Mr. Harris said. So what should you do? Find something that can help you tap into a sense of calmness and awe, Dr. Keltner encouraged the audience. Music, for instance, can offer a real sense of peace, he added. So can visual art. Dr. Keltner recently tried a New York Times focus challenge, spending 10 minutes looking at van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” he said. He found himself tearing up as he took in the painting. “There are many ways to meditate,” he told the audience. Source link #Tips #Anxiety #Dan #Harris #Sara #Bareilles #Dacher #Keltner Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

PS5 shipments top 77.8 million PS5 shipments top 77.8 million PlayStation 5 has shipped 77.8 million units worldwide, Sony announced in its financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2025. Source link #PS5 #shipments #top #million Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Benzo Withdrawal Symptoms Can Be Life-Threatening Benzo Withdrawal Symptoms Can Be Life-Threatening Tasha Hedges took Xanax for 20 years to treat her anxiety and panic attacks, exactly as a psychiatrist had prescribed it. Then in 2022, that doctor unexpectedly died. A general practitioner continued her prescription but retired shortly afterward. The next doctor moved to Canada. Finally, Ms. Hedges found a new psychiatrist. “The first thing he did was start yelling at me that I had been on Xanax too long,” said Ms. Hedges, 41, who lives in Falling Waters, W.Va. “He ripped me off my meds.” Discontinuing the drug typically requires decreasing the dose slowly over months or even years, a process called tapering. Ms. Hedges stopped cold turkey. Debilitating withdrawal symptoms followed: hot flashes, cold sweats, restless legs, the shakes and teeth grinding. “It was a nightmare,” she said. Two years after discontinuing the medication, she is still dealing with the fallout. “My brain has not been the same.” In social media groups and websites such as BenzoBuddies, people like Ms. Hedges say they have become physically dependent on benzodiazepines. Many then get cut off from their medication or taper too quickly, and face dangerous and potentially life-threatening withdrawal symptoms that can linger long after the drugs are discontinued. Some doctors, fearful of the risks and stigma associated with these drugs, refuse to prescribe them at all. “Benzos generate as much anxiety in the prescriber as they do in the patient,” said Dr. Ronald M. Winchel, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. “Do I start it? Is it the right context? Is it safe? Is my patient going to abuse it? What will my colleagues think?” Prescriptions for benzodiazepines like Xanax, Ativan and Valium have been trending down since 2016, in part because of doctors’ concerns. Even so, these medications are considered quick and efficacious, and they remain among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the country to treat conditions including anxiety and sleep disorders. In 2019, an estimated 92 million benzodiazepine prescriptions were dispensed in the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Current guidelines recommend prescribing the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible duration, usually less than four weeks. But patients tend to stay on them longer than that. A F.D.A. review found that in 2018 about half of patients took them for two months or longer. Sometimes patients stay on them for years without regular check-ins to see if the drugs are still needed or well tolerated, said Dr. Edward K. Silberman, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the Tufts University School of Medicine who has frequently written about benzodiazepines. Because patients can develop a physical dependence within several weeks of steady benzodiazepine use, going off the drugs — even after a short ******* — requires a gradual process. However, many practitioners are not well trained in tapering the prescriptions. To make the process clearer, in March experts at the American Society of Addiction Medicine released new guidelines for dosage reduction that were developed with funding from the F.D.A. “It’s absolutely insane to pressure people to get off and to withdraw people abruptly,” Dr. Silberman said. Jody Jarreau, 60, started taking Klonopin for insomnia 25 years ago while he was living in Dallas. When his psychiatrist quit practicing for medical reasons, he eventually found another who suggested that he take two other benzodiazepines, Xanax and Valium, and work toward weaning off the Klonopin. After about six months of taking all three drugs, Mr. Jarreau grew frustrated and decided to take matters into his own hands. He weaned himself off the Klonopin and Xanax. He is still trying to get off the Valium, with the help of his general practitioner and a coach from the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, a nonprofit group. Initially, Mr. Jarreau said, he tapered too quickly off the drugs, and developed headaches, nausea and agoraphobia, which is an excessive and irrational fear of being in open or unfamiliar places. But one of the toughest withdrawal symptoms has been thoughts of suicide. “There’s kind of like this background noise that says, You know, just take yourself out,” he said. “It’d be easier.” He says that he had never experienced any of these symptoms before cutting back on the drugs. In 2023, advocates for those injured by benzodiazepines gave a name to the varied long-lasting symptoms that may emerge during the use, the tapering or the discontinuation of the drugs: benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction, or BIND. Not everyone will experience BIND, they acknowledge. And with the right tapering plan, experts say, side effects can be minimized. “These are very good and safe drugs when given to the right person in the right dose for the right ******* of time,” said Dr. Carl Salzman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the former chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s benzodiazepine task force. But even though benzodiazepines have been around since the ’60s, some doctors are unaware of how best to help their patients stop taking these drugs. This is in part because there is no one-size-fits-all tapering strategy. It is the withdrawal symptoms, some patients say, that make it necessary for them to continue to access these drugs while slowly tapering. Dr. Silberman recalled one patient who needed to shave flakes off her pill with a razor blade to slowly decrease her dosage and minimize difficult side effects. The A.S.A.M.’s new guidelines for reducing a patient’s dosage of a benzodiazepine draw heavily from clinical experience given the sparse and limited research on tapering. They recommend that clinicians assess the risks and the benefits of ongoing benzodiazepine prescribing at least every three months, and, when tapering, consider reducing the current dose by 5 to 10 percent every two to four weeks. The guidelines also say patients who have been taking benzodiazepines for years may require more than a year of tapering, and should be monitored even after the drug has been discontinued. “Most of us were never warned about the chances of dependency and long-term complications,” said D.E. Foster, a researcher who contributed to the new guidelines and is an advocate for people like himself who have struggled with benzodiazepine complications. Slow tapering can be difficult, he added, “but abrupt tapering can be dangerous.” The A.S.A.M. guidance came too late for LaTasha Marbury, 49, who lives in Purchase, N.Y., and had become physically dependent on Klonopin. In 2022 she visited an addiction detox facility because she was desperate to stop taking the drug, which she had started for insomnia. Practitioners at the facility weaned her off it in just five days. Afterward, she cried hysterically and felt hopeless, she said. She experienced night terrors that felt “almost like a lion is in the room but you can’t see it and you’re fighting it,” an inability to sit still and deep depression. She visited another addiction facility in Florida where she received an antidepressant. Within weeks she began to feel much better. Now, she said, “I sleep like a freaking baby.” And she wonders: Was this, rather than the benzodiazepine, the drug that she should have been prescribed all along? “When I think about it — what I went through — I cry,” she said. “It wasn’t a physical pain but it was a mental pain. And I’m thankful to be alive.” If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Source link #Benzo #Withdrawal #Symptoms #LifeThreatening Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

College Professors Are Using ChatGPT. Some Students Aren’t Happy. College Professors Are Using ChatGPT. Some Students Aren’t Happy. In February, Ella Stapleton, then a senior at Northeastern University, was reviewing lecture notes from her organizational behavior class when she noticed something odd. Was that a query to ChatGPT from her professor? Halfway through the document, which her business professor had made for a lesson on models of leadership, was an instruction to ChatGPT to “expand on all areas. Be more detailed and specific.” It was followed by a list of positive and negative leadership traits, each with a prosaic definition and a bullet-pointed example. Ms. Stapleton texted a friend in the class. “Did you see the notes he put on Canvas?” she wrote, referring to the university’s software platform for hosting course materials. “He made it with ChatGPT.” “**** Stop,” the classmate responded. “What the hell?” Ms. Stapleton decided to do some digging. She reviewed her professor’s slide presentations and discovered other telltale signs of A.I.: distorted text, photos of office workers with extraneous body parts and egregious misspellings. She was not happy. Given the school’s cost and reputation, she expected a top-tier education. This course was required for her business minor; its syllabus forbade “academically dishonest activities,” including the unauthorized use of artificial intelligence or chatbots. “He’s telling us not to use it, and then he’s using it himself,” she said. Ms. Stapleton filed a formal complaint with Northeastern’s business school, citing the undisclosed use of A.I. as well as other issues she had with his teaching style, and requested reimbursement of tuition for that class. As a quarter of the total bill for the semester, that would be more than $8,000. When ChatGPT was released at the end of 2022, it caused a panic at all levels of education because it made cheating incredibly easy. Students who were asked to write a history paper or literary analysis could have the tool do it in mere seconds. Some schools banned it while others deployed A.I. detection services, despite concerns about their accuracy. But, oh, how the tables have turned. Now students are complaining on sites like Rate My Professors about their instructors’ overreliance on A.I. and scrutinizing course materials for words ChatGPT tends to overuse, like “crucial” and “delve.” In addition to calling out hypocrisy, they make a financial argument: They are paying, often quite a lot, to be taught by humans, not an algorithm that they, too, could consult for free. For their part, professors said they used A.I. chatbots as a tool to provide a better education. Instructors interviewed by The New York Times said chatbots saved time, helped them with overwhelming workloads and served as automated teaching assistants. Their numbers are growing. In a national survey of more than 1,800 higher-education instructors last year, 18 percent described themselves as frequent users of generative A.I. tools; in a repeat survey this year, that percentage nearly doubled, according to Tyton Partners, the consulting group that conducted the research. The A.I. industry wants to help, and to profit: The start-ups OpenAI and Anthropic recently created enterprise versions of their chatbots designed for universities. (The Times has sued OpenAI for copyright infringement for use of news content without permission.) Generative A.I. is clearly here to stay, but universities are struggling to keep up with the changing norms. Now professors are the ones on the learning curve and, like Ms. Stapleton’s teacher, muddling their way through the technology’s pitfalls and their students’ disdain. Making the Grade Last fall, Marie, 22, wrote a three-page essay for an online anthropology course at Southern New Hampshire University. She looked for her grade on the school’s online platform, and was happy to have received an A. But in a section for comments, her professor had accidentally posted a back-and-forth with ChatGPT. It included the grading rubric the professor had asked the chatbot to use and a request for some “really nice feedback” to give Marie. “From my perspective, the professor didn’t even read anything that I wrote,” said Marie, who asked to use her middle name and requested that her professor’s identity not be disclosed. She could understand the temptation to use A.I. Working at the school was a “third job” for many of her instructors, who might have hundreds of students, said Marie, and she did not want to embarrass her teacher. Still, Marie felt wronged and confronted her professor during a Zoom meeting. The professor told Marie that she did read her students’ essays but used ChatGPT as a guide, which the school permitted. Robert MacAuslan, vice president of A.I. at Southern New Hampshire, said that the school believed “in the power of A.I. to transform education” and that there were guidelines for both faculty and students to “ensure that this technology enhances, rather than replaces, human creativity and oversight.” A dos and don’ts for faculty forbids using tools, such as ChatGPT and Grammarly, “in place of authentic, human-centric feedback.” “These tools should never be used to ‘do the work’ for them,” Dr. MacAuslan said. “Rather, they can be looked at as enhancements to their already established processes.” After a second professor appeared to use ChatGPT to give her feedback, Marie transferred to another university. Paul Shovlin, an English professor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, said he could understand her frustration. “Not a big fan of that,” Dr. Shovlin said, after being told of Marie’s experience. Dr. Shovlin is also an A.I. faculty fellow, whose role includes developing the right ways to incorporate A.I. into teaching and learning. “The value that we add as instructors is the feedback that we’re able to give students,” he said. “It’s the human connections that we forge with students as human beings who are reading their words and who are being impacted by them.” Dr. Shovlin is a proponent of incorporating A.I. into teaching, but not simply to make an instructor’s life easier. Students need to learn to use the technology responsibly and “develop an ethical compass with A.I.,” he said, because they will almost certainly use it in the workplace. Failure to do so properly could have consequences. “If you ****** up, you’re going to be fired,” Dr. Shovlin said. One example he uses in his own classes: In 2023, officials at Vanderbilt University’s education school responded to a mass shooting at another university by sending an email to students calling for community cohesion. The message, which described promoting a “culture of care” by “building strong relationships with one another,” included a sentence at the end that revealed that ChatGPT had been used to write it. After students criticized the outsourcing of empathy to a machine, the officials involved temporarily stepped down. Not all situations are so clear cut. Dr. Shovlin said it was tricky to come up with rules because reasonable A.I. use may vary depending on the subject. His department, the Center for Teaching, Learning and Assessment, instead has “principles” for A.I. integration, one of which eschews a “one-size-fits-all approach.” The Times contacted dozens of professors whose students had mentioned their A.I. use in online reviews. The professors said they had used ChatGPT to create computer science programming assignments and quizzes on required reading, even as students complained that the results didn’t always make sense. They used it to organize their feedback to students, or to make it kinder. As experts in their fields, they said, they can recognize when it hallucinates, or gets facts wrong. There was no consensus among them as to what was acceptable. Some acknowledged using ChatGPT to help grade students’ work; others decried the practice. Some emphasized the importance of transparency with students when deploying generative A.I., while others said they didn’t disclose its use because of students’ skepticism about the technology. Most, however, felt that Ms. Stapleton’s experience at Northeastern — in which her professor appeared to use A.I. to generate class notes and slides — was perfectly fine. That was Dr. Shovlin’s view, as long as the professor edited what ChatGPT spat out to reflect his expertise. Dr. Shovlin compared it to a longstanding practice in academia of using content, such as lesson plans and case studies, from third-party publishers. To say a professor is “some kind of monster” for using A.I. to generate slides “is, to me, ridiculous,” he said. The Calculator on Steroids Shingirai Christopher Kwaramba, a business professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, described ChatGPT as a partner that saved time. Lesson plans that used to take days to develop now take hours, he said. He uses it, for example, to generate data sets for fictional chain stores, which students use in an exercise to understand various statistical concepts. “I see it as the age of the calculator on steroids,” Dr. Kwaramba said. Dr. Kwaramba said he now had more time for student office hours. Other professors, like David Malan at Harvard, said the use of A.I. meant fewer students were coming to office hours for remedial help. Dr. Malan, a computer science professor, has integrated a custom A.I. chatbot into a popular class he teaches on the fundamentals of computer programming. His hundreds of students can turn to it for help with their coding assignments. Dr. Malan has had to tinker with the chatbot to hone its pedagogical approach, so that it offers only guidance and not the full answers. The majority of 500 students surveyed in 2023, the first year it was offered, said they found it helpful. Rather than spend time on “more mundane questions about introductory material” during office hours, he and his teaching assistants prioritize interactions with students at weekly lunches and hackathons — “more memorable moments and experiences,” Dr. Malan said. Katy Pearce, a communication professor at the University of Washington, developed a custom A.I. chatbot by training it on versions of old assignments that she had graded. It can now give students feedback on their writing that mimics her own at any time, day or night. It has been beneficial for students who are otherwise hesitant to ask for help, she said. “Is there going to be a point in the foreseeable future that much of what graduate student teaching assistants do can be done by A.I.?” she said. “Yeah, absolutely.” What happens then to the pipeline of future professors who would come from the ranks of teaching assistants? “It will absolutely be an issue,” Dr. Pearce said. A Teachable Moment After filing her complaint at Northeastern, Ms. Stapleton had a series of meetings with officials in the business school. In May, the day after her graduation ceremony, the officials told her that she was not getting her tuition money back. Rick Arrowood, her professor, was contrite about the episode. Dr. Arrowood, who is an adjunct professor and has been teaching for nearly two decades, said he had uploaded his class files and documents to ChatGPT, the A.I. search engine Perplexity and an A.I. presentation generator called Gamma to “give them a fresh look.” At a glance, he said, the notes and presentations they had generated looked great. “In hindsight, I wish I would have looked at it more closely,” he said. He put the materials online for students to review, but emphasized that he did not use them in the classroom, because he prefers classes to be discussion-oriented. He realized the materials were flawed only when school officials questioned him about them. The embarrassing situation made him realize, he said, that professors should approach A.I. with more caution and disclose to students when and how it is used. Northeastern issued a formal A.I. policy only recently; it requires attribution when A.I. systems are used and review of the output for “accuracy and appropriateness.” A Northeastern spokeswoman said the school “embraces the use of artificial intelligence to enhance all aspects of its teaching, research and operations.” “I’m all about teaching,” Dr. Arrowood said. “If my experience can be something people can learn from, then, OK, that’s my happy spot.” Source link #College #Professors #ChatGPT #Students #Arent #Happy Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]