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Let's pretend there was an order of nuns with a particular devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. So much so that the order had, over the years, decided that any human heart was a holy symbol, and it was immoral to mess with it, even if you were a physician doing cardiac surgery. Following their consciences, these nuns banned heart related care from their employees' health policies. That affected thousands of workers, many of whom did not share their religious convictions. Still, the nuns noted, their insurance coverage was generous. Except for that one thing. I suspect you know what I'm setting this up for. The Little Sisters of the Poor have won the latest Supreme Court battle over contraception. The justices said they have the right to refuse to include birth control in their insurance policies. Actually, that was always the case. Under Obama era regulations, the federal government took care of the issue when religious groups had ethical objections. But the nuns didn't want to let the government know what they weren't doing. That counted as aiding and abetting the enemy, so they dug in their heels. No paperwork, no passing along information. And the Trump administration was happy to help them with the fight. Now, other employers with religious scruples or simply a yen to save money will leap on the bandwagon. An estimated 70,000 to 126,000 women will lose their current free contraceptive coverage. You have to admit the anticontraception forces were brilliant to get the Little Sisters of the Poor as their star in court. It sounds a heck of a lot more sympathetic than the other part of the same decision, Trump v. Pennsylvania. Or almost any other religious institution. When I was growing up I went to St. Antoninus Catholic school and I'm sure the nuns there would have been happy to lend a hand to the anti birth control fight if anyone wanted a case named after a 15th century archbishop of Florence. "Our life's work and great joy is serving the elderly poor, and we are so grateful that the contraceptive mandate will no longer steal our attention from our calling," said Mother Loraine Marie Maguire of the Little Sisters. "This is not over," said Alexis McGill Johnson, the head of Planned Parenthood. When it came to reproduction rights, nobody really knew where Donald Trump would be going as president. During the campaign, he was asked if he would be willing to shut down the government to defund Planned Parenthood. He refused to answer "because I want to show unpredictability." Yes, Trump went with his strong suit nobody really knew what his principles were. He was pretty clear on abortion the religious right's position ruled. But once he was elected, birth control services were hit hard, too. The new administration got right into the fray in 2017, announcing it was going to let a much wider range of employers off the hook if they didn't want to cover contraception in their company health plans. That was a memorable moment, since it came at about the same time the House of Representatives passed a bill banning late term abortions. Meanwhile, one of said bill's co sponsors announced he was resigning from office after word came that he had urged his lover to terminate her pregnancy. The moral here is that reproduction issues are both very political and very personal. The fighting has been going on ever since. It's hurt a lot of women who rely on low cost services supported by government aid. Groups like Planned Parenthood refused to cooperate with the Trump rule that prohibited doctors from giving their patients information on abortion availability. A lot of nonprofits fell by the wayside. Only about half as many women can now use the federal government's Title X family planning programs. Even under much better circumstances, it'd be unnerving to think of entrusting your reproductive future to a president who appears to have about half the medical sophistication of a Barbie Doctor Doll. You remember, of course, that this is the guy who claimed that testing had determined out of all the American coronavirus cases, 99 percent were "totally harmless." He's never thought this issue through with an eye toward anything but his base. The bottom line is basically whether women should be able to have sex without risking pregnancy. There are a lot of people, including conservative Catholics and evangelicals, who say no. There are a lot more who think that's one of the keys to living a happy, well planned life. Feel free to guess which side most of the women in Trump's life have been on. This is a guy who likes being unpredictable himself. But he seems to prefer a certain amount of self control when it comes to his mates. Most Americans believe women should have the right to terminate a pregnancy, at least in the early months, but the whole idea makes a lot of people very uncomfortable. However, the country is, in general, a big fan of contraception. And easy access to birth control is the key for keeping the abortion rate low. Basically, the president and the Little Sisters have struck a big blow for unwanted pregnancies. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Tongtianlong limosus, an unusual birdlike dinosaur, was unearthed in the Ganzhou region of China. It had feathers and a beak. It was the size of a donkey, and it did not fly. It was not a bird, but a dinosaur that was a close relative of birds. In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of scientists described a fossil of Tongtianlong limosus, a new species in a strange group of dinosaurs that lived during the final 15 million years before dinosaurs became extinct. "They just look weird," said Stephen L. Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and one of the authors of the paper. Dr. Brusatte described it as "alien looking" with a pug nose skull and a crest. Tongtianlong limosus the name means "muddy dragon on the road to heaven" is the sixth from the region of Ganzhou. This particular fossil was unearthed four years ago by fortunate happenstance during the construction of a school. "This one was found by workmen who were blasting with dynamite," Dr. Brusatte said. "It's a fine line sometimes between discovery and knowing nothing." The fossil made its way to Junchang Lu, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing, who had earlier studied another oviraptorosaur from Ganzhou. (A construction boom there has created a fossil discovery boom.) The fossil was found in an unusual posture, its limbs splayed and head raised. The scientists think it had become trapped in a quagmire and had died as it tried to pull itself out. "It is the first oviraptorid dinosaur preserved as struggling," Dr. Lu wrote in an email. Dr. Brusatte, who had collaborated with Dr. Lu on earlier projects, joined the study of Tongtianlong. Oviraptorosaurs are not direct ancestors of birds, but share a common theropod dinosaur ancestor with the lineage that later evolved to birds. Some features like the feathers come from the common ancestor, for display to potential mates or other creatures. "They were like advertising billboards," Dr. Brusatte said. The common ancestor had teeth, though, not beaks. For oviraptorosaurs, the beaks were "convergent evolution," when similar features evolve independently among different groups of animals. One of the unknowns is what Tongtianlong and other oviraptorosaurs were eating. Unlike better known theropods like velociraptors, "this guy was not a traditional meat eater," Dr. Brusatte said. Perhaps it munched plants, nuts, insects, small animals or mollusks, Dr. Brusatte said. Or perhaps it ate a variety of foods. Or, as in birds, the beaks varied in shape among different species to feed in different ecological niches. "Beaks are really good multipurpose tools," Dr. Brusatte said. The six Ganzhou oviraptorosaur species discovered so far are also very different from each other, and the scientists argue that this shows rapid evolution of these dinosaurs. That runs counter to the assertion of some paleontologists that dinosaurs were already in decline long before they became extinct 66 million years ago, most likely from the global devastation following a large asteroid impact. "This specimen is going to give us a much better idea how oviraptorosaurs are related to each other," said Amy Balanoff, a scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who was not involved with the research. "One of the interesting things about these specimens that are coming out of southern China is that they show this diversity of body forms." She was less certain about whether the rate of evolution is as fast as Dr. Brusatte argues, because the scientists lack precise dating of the layer of rock hundreds of yards thick where the fossils have been found. "You don't know if it's a million years or 10 million years," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Enjoying this newsletter every week? Share it with friends, and tell them to subscribe at Villa Park had seemed to shake when the goal went in, three minutes into injury time, fans leaping into one another's arms, Aston Villa's staff members running, in the daze that comes of delirium, up and down the touchline. The final whistle blew a moment later. The stands emptied, fans streaming onto the field, swarming their heroes, hoisting them on to their shoulders, clamoring for their jerseys. In that moment, late on Tuesday night, it would have been difficult to convince anyone at all that the Carabao Cup the lesser of England's two domestic cup competitions does not matter, that this is a tournament so unloved that the coach who has won it the past two years, and who may well win the cup again this year, would not be aggrieved if it were abolished. A few days before, we had been offered proof that the magic of the F.A. Cup is alive and well, too: Shrewsbury Town, of League One quick reminder: League One is what England calls its third tier, a level of ridiculousness that is for some reason accepted had come from two goals down to hold Liverpool, runaway leader of the Premier League, champion of Europe and the world, to a draw. So much, went the argument, for those who would belittle the oldest cup competition in the world. So much for those who would talk Britain down, including Jurgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, who said in the immediate aftermath of that game that he would send out his youth team for the replay, and that he would not be present to watch it. England as mentioned in this newsletter a few weeks ago frets over its cups more than any other country. Debating the future of both tournaments has become a fixture of the season in its own right; more and more time seems to be dedicated, every January, to assessing the state of both competitions. Almost every game is treated as some sort of thaumaturgic health check: Has this one event increased or diminished the average level of Magic of the Cup? Shrewsbury holding Liverpool? Magic. A pitch invasion after a Carabao Cup semifinal? Magic. Klopp staying away from a reply? Not Magic. Swaths of empty seats on third round weekend? Oh, no, not Magic at all. It is an odd sort of debate, given that everyone knows the cups no longer possess the same prestige they once did (when, as previously discussed, the F.A. Cup was the only live soccer on broadcast television, giving it an outsize importance in the public consciousness). It is often the elite probably rightly that are blamed for instigating that decline, though it is telling that most coaches, regardless of their team's situation, tend to use these games as an opportunity to field youth team and fringe players. Ascribing guilt to the greedy Premier League titans, though, tends to frame the issue in a specific way. To most, the demise of the cups is about money. The giants disdain it because it is insufficiently lucrative. The riches on offer in the Premier League blind everyone to the fact that the game is about glory. (Klopp and Pep Guardiola seem sincere in their belief that, to them at least, the problem is more about overworking their players, but again: The elite have gobbled up all the best players, with their money, meaning other teams are too weak to compete, even in one off games). That, in turn, means that the solutions on offer are, mostly, financial. Perhaps increasing the prize money would help? Perhaps abolishing replays would be acceptable, but only if the lower league teams had a greater share of gate receipts, or took home all of the television revenue, or had greater solidarity payments from the Premier League? All of this is true, of course, but it is not the root of the issue. No, at heart, the problem with the domestic cups across Europe is not money, but meaning. The F.A. Cup does not mean anything: not to players, few of whom now would remember the competition in its heyday; not to owners, who did not invest in the sport on the off chance of a cup run; and not, most important, to fans, who have both consumed and perpetuated a dialogue for 20 years about how the Premier League is the be all and end all, the best league in the world, the only thing that matters. (The Carabao Cup, regardless of its sponsor, has never really mattered, if we are all honest.) Soccer is not driven exclusively by money; price and value are not the same thing. The Champions League is worth less than the Premier League, but most would regard it as the grander prize. The World Cup's prestige is not related to its prize money. They matter because they mean something. The F.A. Cup does not matter, as much, because it is not clear what it means, not anymore. It is no longer the big day out. It does not mean a place in the Champions League. It just offers you a chance to win a competition that, people tell you, used to be a lot more important. That is what generates that duality: of joy for Villa Park and Shrewsbury, set against empty stadiums and absent managers. It is, in part, a problem of discourse: the debate itself, the scouring of games for proof of Magic, the constant comparisons to a halcyon past all serve to undermine the cups as they are now. It is only, really, when we stop asking why the cups are not like they used to be, and start asking why they should be celebrated now, that perhaps they will start to mean something again. Old Trafford stood, as one, to welcome the substitute onto the field. The sun was shining, Manchester United was cruising to victory, and now, the cherry on the cake: Radamel Falcao had stripped off his warm ups and stood ready to make his debut for the club. The applause was deafening. You could see several people, in the stands, making the Wayne's World "We're Not Worthy" gesture (this, as it happens, is one of the most improbably persistent cultural memes of our time). United's fans had every reason to be excited by Falcao's arrival, back in 2014. Before the knee injury that had threatened his involvement in that summer's World Cup, the Colombian striker had been one of the most clinical finishers in Europe, first for Porto, then Atletico Madrid, and finally Monaco. It did not work out, of course the injury had robbed Falcao of something he never quite recovered and now I think quite often about him, particularly when a transfer goes through and fans and commentators forget, once again, that no one player can ever really solve a team's problems. It is especially acute at Manchester United at this point. There has been such a clamor for new signings, for fresh blood, that it is no surprise that the arrival of Bruno Fernandes this week has been greeted as a triumph, a success in and of itself, by both fans and some inside the club. ("We have successfully completed a recruitment operation: Someone cast the medals.") It may well work out that way, of course, but Falcao is a reminder that nothing is decided yet. This is one of the great tricks of the media generated transfer culture that has soccer so in its thrall: It fools you into thinking that the signing is the hard bit, where things are won and lost, and that the rest is just plug and play. This has not been a good month for Barcelona. It lost Luis Suarez to injury. It lost a manager. The new guy came in and promptly lost at Valencia, and with it, lost top place in La Liga to Real Madrid. Most troubling of all, in the last week of January, Barcelona seemed, just a little, to lose its mind. In the space of seven days, no more, the richest club in the world home of the greatest player in history has: tried to sign Rodrigo Moreno from Valencia in some sort of labyrinthine swap deal; reportedly made a 90 million offer for Everton's Richarlison, despite already being at the very limit of its financial capacity; contemplated an offer for Chelsea's Brazilian workhorse, Willian; and moved to sign Villarreal forward Cedric Bakambu, only to change its mind at the last minute (according to the Spanish newspaper Marca). It is a fool's game, predicting the end of this incarnation of Barcelona. (I know: I have done it quite a lot in the last couple of years, occasionally on purpose.) Lionel Messi alone is, ordinarily, enough to ensure that no low lasts too long; there is such underlying quality in the team that it is easy to exaggerate rumors of its demise. This scatter gun approach to the transfer market, though the undignified, ill conceived search for anyone at all to play in a forward role, the willingness to add to its already unhealthily bloated salary commitments for the sake of finding cover for Suarez for a few months is a bright red flag. And an idea out of nowhere from Andre Alban. "Why can't FIFA rearrange the geographical regions so the so called minnows are grouped together? This way one or two of them could always have the hope of going to the big dance." World Cup qualifying could definitely do with a shake up, Andre, though whether this is the way to do it depends on what you want the finals to be: a celebration of the global game or a competition to find the best team on the planet. Thanks for all your correspondence: askrory nytimes.com is the address to have your say. Everything does get read, so please keep it coming. I'm on Twitter, too, if it really can't wait, and I can't recommend any podcast higher than Set Piece Menu: It's where I road test some of my ideas, and steal all of the others. Oh, and please tell all your workplace acquaintances to sign up here. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
What books are currently on your night stand? "Certainty," by Madeleine Thien; "A Meal in Winter," by Hubert Mingarelli; and the book that's currently breaking my heart, "Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life," by Yiyun Li. What's the last great book you read? "Exit West," by Mohsin Hamid, which I consumed in one frantic gulp a day or two after the election. It was as if Hamid knew what was going to happen to America and the world, and gave us a road map to our future. It's a novel about refugees and doors portals that magically whisk them away from the dangerous and deadly place to somewhere new. Sometimes those new places are themselves dangerous and deadly. Sometimes they're not. Generally, I am far too practical and cynical to enjoy magic realism, but this book blew the top off my head. It's at once terrifying and, in the end, oddly hopeful. What's the best classic novel you recently read for the first time? This summer my husband and I were invited to Dublin for Bloomsday, and at the last minute I found out that we were both to be interviewed, onstage, as part of the festivities. I had assumed I'd be safely watching from the wings. In a panic, I tried (again) to read "Ulysses." The first time I attempted the book was in my senior year of high school, under the tutelage of an enthusiastic English teacher. Once a week, early in the morning before school started, we'd gather in his classroom and struggle through a page or two. I made copious margin notes to the first dozen or so pages of my mother's college edition. Then I threw in the towel. I've repeated that experience, minus the notes, six or seven times in the decades since. This time, however, I had a stroke of genius. Instead of battling it out on the page, I listened to it on audiobook. I got much farther than I ever had before, listening daily as I tromped through the woods with my sweet (and now sadly departed) dog. However, the audiobook is so damn long. Twenty seven hours! Not even my dog had the energy for that much hiking. I ended up going onstage having only read about half of the book I was ostensibly there to celebrate. I'd intended to fake it it was Bloomsday in Dublin; surely I could count on the audience to be sufficiently in their cups not to notice but I'm a compulsive confessor. Within a minute I'd admitted the truth. I like to think the audience was laughing with me, not at me. What's your favorite book no one else has heard of? "The Queen's Gambit," by Walter Tevis. I have exactly zero interest in chess, and yet I adore this book. It's suspenseful and heartbreaking and just wonderful. Which writers novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets working today do you admire most? Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. For inspiration in these times I look to Dahlia Lithwick and Emily Bazelon, who are to my mind the two most sophisticated American writers on the intersection of law and politics. Rebecca Solnit's essays on environmentalism and feminism are required reading. Peggy Orenstein's work on gender, especially her latest book, "Girls and Sex," is fascinating and important. For diversion (also important in these times), I highly recommend two writers of speculative fiction, Charlie Jane Anders and Naomi Alderman. What's the last book that made you laugh? "Loving Day," by Mat Johnson, about a man who describes himself as a "racial optical illusion." Among other fine moments is a particularly delicious one featuring a broken condom. The last book that made you furious? I was enraged when I read "The New Jim Crow," by Michelle Alexander, but with a productive fury. The book is a fierce dissection of the American justice system and of the policies of mass incarceration that have immiserated generations of African Americans. The country has begun to reckon with the systemic racism polluting the criminal justice system, inspired in no small part by Alexander's book and by others, like "Between the World and Me," by Ta Nehisi Coates. Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid? I'll read good writing in any genre. Well, maybe not nurse romance. Though, come to think of it, "Atonement," by Ian McEwan, is one of my favorite contemporary novels, and what is that if not a nurse romance? How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or simultaneously? Morning or night? I read both paper and electronically, though when I'm home I prefer to read on paper. Out of the house, I read electronically, primarily because my greatest fear in life is finishing my book and being stuck with nothing to read. Though I'm a frantic multitasker, what that usually means is that I do many things poorly, all at once. That's fine if what I'm screwing up is cooking dinner or doing my taxes. Truly important things like reading, however, demand focus and attention. I read one book at a time, until I've either finished it or tossed it aside as not worth the effort. I read primarily at night. My husband works at night, and my children are all old enough to be uninterested in my company, so every evening at around 8 I crawl into bed, watch TV for an hour or two (or six, depending on what Netflix is streaming), and then read until I fall asleep, at around midnight or 1 a.m. If a book is good, though, I'll just keep reading until I'm done, whatever time that is. My favorite thing about being an adult is that there is no one who calls "Bedtime" and snaps off my bedside light right in the middle of the best part. I get to read for as long as I want. How do you organize your books? Not long ago, my husband decided in a fit of who knows what lunatic O.C.D. to organize the books in our summer house by color, an odd move when you consider that both our sons are colorblind. The result has been that between the months of June and August, I have no idea where anything is, and am forced to just buy a second copy of any book I want to reread. A tip for book jacket designers looking to stand out: There are very few purple book jackets out there. Black, on the other hand, is sadly overused. What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most? I didn't have a lot of friends, my parents didn't have cable television and I'm not at all athletic, so really all I ever did as a child was read. I read while I brushed my teeth, I read while I walked to school. I slipped novels behind my textbooks and read in class. My very favorite book was "Half Magic," by Edward Eager. I loved "The Railway Children," anything by Roald Dahl, the Little House books and the Borrowers series. I was an avid reader of science fiction, an obsession that began for me, like for so many, with "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and moved on to books like "The Chrysalids" and "The Day of the Triffids," by John Wyndham, and the Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny. When I was very little, I loved the All of a Kind Family books. Unlike most of the books I loved as a child, which hold up remarkably well, when I bought the All of a Kind Family books to read to my kids, I found them to be nauseatingly cloying. Everyone was so well meaning and kind. I much prefer the twisted world of "Harriet the Spy." As a preteen I went through a Holocaust literature phase. "The Diary of Anne Frank" was my gateway drug. You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite? Alice Waters, Julia Child and Yotam Ottolenghi. But only if it's potluck. Of the books you've written, which is your favorite or the most personally meaningful? And do you have a favorite among the books written by your husband, Michael Chabon? "Daughter's Keeper" is not my best, but it's the novel that means the most to me. It was with "Daughter's Keeper" that I finally realized that I wasn't a lawyer on maternity leave, but a writer with aspirations beyond just keeping myself from going crazy while trapped in the house with babies. The book is about a young woman who gets caught up in a drug deal and ends up facing a long prison sentence. It's about the war on drugs and about motherhood. There are things I'm embarrassed of in the book my thinking on race in particular has evolved, as has, I hope, my prose but, looking back, I admire my ambition. The two midwives in "Telegraph Avenue" are my favorite of my husband's characters. They feel more real to me than do most people I know. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
With an eye toward helping young women and people of color break into the entertainment business, the city of Los Angeles is hoping to lend a hand. Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, and Ava DuVernay, a filmmaker who has rocketed up the ranks in Hollywood, are teaming up with the producer Dan Lin ("The Lego Movie") to start a public private partnership that would fund 150 internships for women, people of color and those from low income households, they announced on Monday. The goal is to support 500 interns a year by 2020 which, incidentally, might be when Mr. Garcetti follows through on his consideration to run for president. The program is called the Evolve Entertainment Fund, and it is partnering with top Hollywood powerhouses like DreamWorks and the Creative Artists Agency to place Hollywood aspirants on a track for a film career. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
This nagging sense of something darker crouching beneath the film's bright images is one of the things that makes "Kajillionaire" so fascinating. Even so, the narrative doesn't find its thematic groove until an airline insurance swindle introduces the family to Melanie (an indispensable Gina Rodriguez), a peppy and preternaturally wise optician's assistant. Breezing her way into their schemes, Melanie is the switch that will illuminate the Dynes's dysfunction and their director's surprisingly moving intent. Bearing the brunt of July's penchant for outlandish mannerisms and weird outfits, Wood eagerly embraces her awkward, near feral character. It's an intensely physical performance, requiring her to arc backward like a limbo dancer and, at one point, crawl across a parking lot on her stomach. But it's very much acting with an exclamation point, so stylized that the character is often unreadable. This makes Rodriguez, with her wide open face and relieving normalcy, crucial both to the plot and our investment in it: Melanie isn't just Old Dolio's savior, she's our emotional interpreter. Working with a soulfulness that slowly gains force, July hides real feelings inside surreal scenarios. In one remarkable sequence, the four invade the home of a bedridden old man, looking for valuables. Dying alone, he asks them to hang around and behave like a regular family, watching television and chatting about their day. So smoothly do Robert and Theresa comply, their ability to playact so practiced, that their very ease takes on the sheen of sociopathy; we can see why Melanie calls them monsters. Wrapping damage and poverty in bubbles and sunshine, "Kajillionaire" is about intimacy and neglect, brainwashing and independence. Periodic earth tremors freeze and then redirect the action, acting as punctuation in Old Dolio's growing suspicion that maybe raising her was her parents' longest con of all. Kajillionaire Rated R for fun in a hot tub. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In select theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Philip Guston is no longer here to defend himself but his fellow artists are, and they are angry. In an open letter published Wednesday in The Brooklyn Rail, nearly 100 artists, curators, dealers and writers forcefully condemned the decision last week by the National Gallery of Art in Washington and three other major museums to pull the plug on the largest retrospective in 15 years of one of America's most influential postwar painters. The show, after years of preparation, will be delayed until 2024. The stated reason is to let the institutions rethink their presentation of Guston's later figurative paintings, which feature men in hoods reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan members, and which, a National Gallery spokesperson said, risked being "misinterpreted" today. In the open letter, the artists, "shocked and disappointed," accuse the museums the National Gallery, Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston both of betraying Guston's art and of patronizing the public they are supposed to serve. The postponement, they write, is an admission of the museums' "longstanding failure to have educated, integrated, and prepared themselves to meet the challenge of the renewed pressure for racial justice that has developed over the past five years." They demand that the Guston exhibition take place as scheduled, and that the museums "do the necessary work to present this art in all its depth and complexity." The initial list of signatories reads like a roll call of the most accomplished American artists alive: old and young, white and Black, local and expat, painters and otherwise. Among them are Matthew Barney, Nicole Eisenman, Charles Gaines, Ellen Gallagher, Wade Guyton, Rachel Harrison, Joan Jonas, Ralph Lemon, Julie Mehretu, Adrian Piper, Pope.L, Martin Puryear, Amy Sillman, Lorna Simpson, Henry Taylor, Stanley Whitney and Christopher Williams. Hundreds more subsequently signed the open letter, which zeros in on the institutions' refusal to face up to Guston's Klan paintings. The artist first exhibited them in 1970, abandoning his earlier abstractions to face down the evil that he first saw as a young Jewish boy in Los Angeles. Though disturbing, these paintings have influenced generations of later painters; they were exhibited without incident at the last major Guston retrospective, staged in 2003 04 in New York, San Francisco, Fort Worth and London. But today's museum leaders have grown risk averse to a degree that edges into censoriousness, and their fear has spread from the boardroom to the gallery walls. "The people who run our great institutions do not want trouble," the artists argue. "They fear controversy. They lack faith in the intelligence of their audience. And they realize that to remind museumgoers of white supremacy today is not only to speak to them about the past, or events somewhere else. It is also to raise uncomfortable questions about museums themselves about their class and racial foundations." The letter, which confirms the breadth of opposition to the postponement of "Philip Guston Now," should be enough to impel the four museums to reinstate the show. Its catalog has already been published and discusses Guston's engagement with racism and anti Semitism in depth. This summer, after the nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd, curators undertook revisions of the wall text, paying special concern to how Black viewers saw the Klan paintings. Yet this was not enough to convince the leadership of the four museums. A spokeswoman for the National Gallery, the first of the four museums scheduled to present the show, told The Times that its director, Kaywin Feldman, had unanimous support for the decision from the museum's trustees. One of those trustees, the Ford Foundation president Darren Walker, implied that the power of Guston's art, and the scholarship the curators have brought to bear upon it, was no longer of principal importance. "What those who criticize this decision do not understand," Mr. Walker said last week, "is that in the past few months the context in the U.S. has fundamentally, profoundly changed on issues of incendiary and toxic racist imagery in art, regardless of the virtue or intention of the artist who created it." Put aside, at least for now, the calumny that Guston's imagery is "toxic." Put aside that it is wrong to censor any artist, toxic or not. Just on its face, Mr. Walker's stance would exclude from our museums many of the open letter's signatories, whose "virtue or intention" is not in question. Mr. Taylor, who has painted wrenching scenes of police brutality, or Pope.L, whose performances have regurgitated prejudices of Black men in messy and abject forms, might both be barred from exhibiting publicly if Mr. Walker's doctrine became the norm. (I don't even think the National Gallery's current, excellent show "Degas at the Opera" with depictions of what we would now call child prostitution, by the "toxic" Impressionist par excellence could survive such scrutiny.) Museums have faced frequent calls for accountability lately, but remember, the postponement of the Guston show is not a case of overreaction to protest. There has been no public outcry, and no contention that the curators sold the work short. This is a precancellation: a case of institutions running scared from phantasms, recoiling from their missions, assuming that their public is too clueless to look and think. Guston's Klan paintings indeed require interpretation, education and public outreach but that is precisely the job of museums at all times. It should not require four years of runway, and for the National Gallery and its partners to say it does counts as a breathtaking admission that they are not up to the job. For as the artists suggest in their open letter, the reason to reinstate "Philip Guston Now" is not, or certainly not only, because he passes some anti racist litmus test. It is to continue and accelerate the transformation of our museums into institutions that can do justice to the work of all artists and the experiences of all publics. A museum unequipped to exhibit Guston will never be able to show truly "problematic" artists like Paul Gauguin or Francis Picabia but just as inevitably it will fail Mr. Barney's mythopoetic melding of bodies, Ms. Jonas's culturally hybrid meditations on gender and climate, Ms. Piper's exacting probes of self and stereotypes. Really, a museum unequipped to exhibit Guston is barely a museum at all, or else only a museum in the most derogatory sense: a dusty storehouse of dead things. This week, at the first presidential debate, the incumbent was asked if he would condemn white supremacy outright. His response was to tell one of these white supremacist groups to "stand back and stand by." It was only the latest reminder that our art institutions cannot afford anything less than a united front against racism and anti Semitism, and should not be spooked by their own shadows when actual hatred is already at the gates. It's not too late to reverse this decision, which is shaping up to be an even worse misdeed than the 1989 cancellation of Robert Mapplethorpe's "The Perfect Moment" at the Corcoran Gallery of Art: worse because the censorship has come not from philistines outside the museum's walls but from those within. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
SAN FRANCISCO A mile from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino lies the sun faded carcass of the Vallco Shopping Mall. At the moment it consists of empty, buff colored buildings, acres of black asphalt and a pile of rubble where the parking garage used to be. About a year ago, a developer submitted a proposal to build 2,400 apartments on the site, half of them subsidized to put rents below the market rate. The city approved the plan reluctantly, and afterward a community group sued. The project is stuck in court. Stories like that hang heavy over Apple's 2.5 billion plan, announced Monday, to help solve the dire shortage of affordable housing that has come to dominate life and politics in the most populous state. The pledge came weeks after Facebook announced 1 billion for a similar program, and months after Google did the same. Earlier, in January, Microsoft committed 500 million for affordable housing in the Seattle area. Beyond public relations, the moves amount to a statement from some of the tech industry's largest employers that they are starting to take a more active role in addressing the chronic regional housing shortage that makes their expansion difficult not just for their employees, but for the public at large. "These investments are an opportunity, because clearly the tech companies want to engage and want their money to make a difference," said Carol Galante, faculty director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. "And yet, this scattershot approach, not just with each of them putting out their own announcements, but not having them coordinated with the larger conversation about how we are going to make the public policy changes that the Legislature is struggling with unless you marry those things together, it's not going to work." The housing programs announced by Apple and other companies are not philanthropy, but commitments to make affordable housing investments for profit in the form of corporate land and money. The details vary, but each company said it would allow housing development on land it already owned, and issue loans whose terms and interest rates are implicitly more generous than the terms that developers currently get from banks, but whose true costs will take years to figure out. Apple said its plan would, among other things, create an affordable housing fund that would give the state and others "an open line of credit" to build more affordable housing beyond land that it owns. The company expects to make money from the financing, but for the returns to be lower than what it would earn on investment grade securities where corporate holdings traditionally lie. A typical affordable housing deal can have a dozen or more funding sources that encompass state, local and federal housing programs, along with bank loans and equity investments from private companies. Tech companies are in a sense positioning themselves to join that pool to aid the construction of housing at all levels supportive housing for the formerly homeless, middle income housing for teachers and others priced out of the area, and market rate units of the sort where their employees might live. Few would disagree that putting money toward affordable housing investment is a positive move. Ms. Galante, the former head of BRIDGE Housing, one of the country's largest nonprofit housing developers, was emphatic that more money for subsidized housing, whatever its source, must be part of the long term solution. But in the context of California's housing problems which are rooted in intransigent local politics, not a lack of money even the billions from tech companies can seem inconsequential. Consider the math. At the moment it costs about 450,000, and considerably more in high cost areas like the Bay Area and Los Angeles, to build a single unit of subsidized affordable housing in California, according to the Terner Center. That is by far the highest of any state, and just short of twice the nation's median home value. And it's not as if these are houses. The 450,000 figure is for an apartment of modest dimensions in a multifamily building, with standard layouts, bargain finishes and few of the amenities of for profit development. Given those figures, the 4.5 billion that Google, Apple and Facebook have earmarked would create about 10,000 housing units. To be sure, the companies' money will stretch further on already owned land, and it is likely to be augmented by other public and private funding sources, which is why Google and Facebook estimated that their investments would produce a combined total of 40,000 housing units in the Bay Area. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. Even when the money is multiplied, however, the magnitude of the housing shortage remains pulverizing to any checkbook. According to a widely cited figure that originated with a 2016 report by the McKinsey Global Institute, California needs to build 3.5 million housing units by 2025 more than three times the current pace to address its shortage and regain any semblance of affordability. The theoretical cost is outlandish ( 1.6 trillion), and while Gov. Gavin Newsom campaigned on McKinsey's 3.5 million figure, his office now refers to it as "a stretch goal." None of this is to say that California's housing problem is unsolvable, or that tech companies shouldn't be helping. It's to make the point that if single or even double digit billions were enough to even dent the problem, it would have been dented long ago. "For 50 years, California has been designed around the idea that everyone will have a single family home with a yard, that they will drive everywhere, and that geometry no longer works," said Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator from San Francisco who last year introduced a bill to make it easier to build housing near transit lines. "California cities have systematically made it hard to impossible to build housing, and money can't fix that." As it stands, the housing situation is getting worse, with homeless counts rising in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland, despite costly efforts to ease it. The pace of California development is actually slowing, with some developers suspending projects because costs are so high that even multimillion dollar condos and 4,000 a month one bedrooms won't yield a profit. High taxes are often cited, particularly by Republicans, as the reason California is a difficult place to put down roots, but the real cudgel is housing costs. After a decade long growth streak in which California has consistently outperformed the nation by most economic measures, and despite a 4 percent unemployment rate that is the lowest on record, the state continues to see more people move out than in. That is: The cost of housing has caused people to flee one of the hottest job markets in the nation, in one of the most beautiful places on earth. In fact, economists' reports on the state's outlook often cite housing costs, not trade wars or a tech bubble, as one of the biggest question marks for future growth. Over the past year, the Bay Area's labor force the number of people working or looking for work has declined. Taken literally, the numbers imply that positions are being added by giving people second jobs and enticing workers to commute from outside the region. "People say housing costs are driving people out of the state," said Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, a consulting firm. "No, housing supply is driving people out of the state." The Bay Area has added 676,000 jobs over the past eight years, and 176,000 additional housing units, a ratio far from the 1.5 jobs per housing unit that planners consider healthy. Cities like Palo Alto have ratios as high as four jobs per housing unit, which, judged by their swollen daytime populations, make them more Manhattan like than Manhattan. While tech companies are widely blamed for causing the housing crisis, policy experts say that it results from decades of political decisions and that tech companies are merely stuffing workers into office buildings that local governments have repeatedly approved while resisting new housing. So far technology companies have largely been content to send fleets of private buses to ferry employees to work from ever farther locales. But now even tech employees, despite high salaries, are not immune. Some tech executives say the prospect of a move to California, once an asset in recruiting, is now a liability. Google has said its work force is growing faster outside the Bay Area than in it, while Apple is planning to build a campus in Austin, Texas. But the companies also seem intent on adding tens of thousands of employees in and around their headquarters a prospect that has become more difficult, with cities like Cupertino and Palo Alto now trying to slow the growth of office space. "We want to create an environment where people have access to good paying jobs and producing more of them is seen as a positive and not a negative," Menka Sethi, director of location strategy for Facebook, said after the company announced its affordable housing investment in October. "Until we solve the housing crisis, I don't think we are going to get back to that narrative." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
WELLESLEY, Mass. Members of the Wellesley College faculty reacted strongly when word spread that Peking University might fire Prof. Xia Yeliang, a critic of the Chinese government. Professor Xia, an economist, had visited Wellesley over the summer after the college signed a partnership agreement with Peking University. In September, 130 Wellesley faculty members sent an open letter to Peking University's president, warning that if Professor Xia was dismissed for his political views, they would seek reconsideration of the partnership. The next month, Professor Xia was fired. Peking University said it was because of his teaching, not his politics, but many at Wellesley doubted that. Still, after much debate, the faculty voted to keep the partnership, as the college president preferred. Like American corporations, American colleges and universities have been extending their brands overseas, building campuses, study centers and partnerships, often in countries with autocratic governments. Unlike corporations, universities claim to place ideals and principles, especially academic freedom, over income. But as professors abroad face consequences for what they say, most universities are doing little more than wringing their hands. Unlike foreign programs that used to be faculty driven, most of the newer ones are driven by administrations and money. "Globalization raises all kinds of issues that didn't come up when it was just kids spending junior year in France," said Susan Reverby, one of the Wellesley professors supporting Professor Xia. "What does it mean to let our name be used? Where do we draw a line in the sand? Does a partnership with another university make their faculty our colleagues, obliging us to stand up for them? Do we wait for another Tiananmen Square?" Wellesley is hardly alone in wrestling with these issues. Many American universities have partnerships with Peking University, but few reacted to Professor Xia's dismissal. "We went into our relationship with Peking University with the knowledge that American standards of academic freedom are the product of 100 years of evolution," said Richard Saller, dean of the school of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, which opened a 7 million center at Peking University last year. "We think engagement is a better strategy than taking such moral high ground that we can't engage with some of these universities." This week, another prominent professor, Zhang Xuezhong, who teaches at the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai, lost his job after refusing to apologize for writing that the Communist Party was hostile to the rule of law. That university has many partnerships with foreign institutions, including an exchange program with the law school at Willamette University in Oregon and an executive M.B.A. program offered with the University of Wisconsin law school. With so many universities seeking a foothold in China New York University opened a Shanghai campus this year and Duke will open one in Kunshan next year concern is growing over China's record of censorship. Earlier this year, the Chinese government banned classroom discussion of seven topics, including human rights and the past mistakes of the Chinese Communist Party. Of course, similar issues arise elsewhere. Last year, just as Yale was starting a liberal arts college in partnership with the National University of Singapore, the Yale faculty, despite the university president's objections, passed a resolution expressing concern about Singapore's "recent history of lack of respect for civil and political rights." "There's a million unanswered questions about Yale and Singapore," Christopher Miller, a Yale professor, said. "We don't know how much of the Singapore specialty of self censorship has taken place. I continue to think the whole setup is inappropriate, and deeply regret that this was set up where it was and the way it was." Last month, Frederick M. Lawrence, the president of Brandeis University, suspended a 15 year partnership with Al Quds University, a Palestinian university in Jerusalem, after campus demonstrators in black military garb raised a Nazi like salute, and the president of Al Quds, asked to condemn the demonstration, responded with a letter that Mr. Lawrence deemed "unacceptable and inflammatory." Syracuse University followed suit. But Bard College, which offers dual degrees with Al Quds, is staying. Many American colleges argue that their presence abroad helps to spread liberal values and push other societies toward openness, whereas leaving would accomplish little. "I think engagement is more important than rules right now," said Allan Goodman, the president of the Institute of International Education. "It's in our institute's DNA to advocate engagement, because that process is what brings change." Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, cautioned that universities must be prepared to revoke partnerships that violate basic principles of freedom. "I do see value in liberal education, but you have to ask on what terms," he said. "If a country like China wants to legitimize a cramped version of liberal education by attracting prestigious Western universities, there's a real possibility of those universities compromising the values on which they were built because they're so eager to get into China." Some universities, including Columbia, have created study centers rather than branch campuses, in part to avoid commitments that would be hard to break. At Wellesley, the faculty protest did have some effect: Wellesley's president announced that a faculty group would develop recommendations "for the parameters and elements of the partnership" to be approved by the full faculty. And Professor Xia is being invited to spend two years as a visiting fellow at the Freedom Project, a program at the college. But given that Chinese universities have many Communist Party representatives in their administration, Thomas Cushman, the sociology professor who leads that project, is still deeply concerned. "We're not telling them to adopt the Bill of Rights," he said. "We're asking what it means for Wellesley to work with a regime that instills fear in people. I'm concerned that a formal relationship could affect how we work here that maybe in our exchange program, we'd only send people who talk about safe subjects." When American universities establish campuses abroad, they usually have explicit agreements guaranteeing free speech for faculty and students within the cloister of the campus but implicitly accepting local limits on off campus expression. "As I believe would be true in any country," Duke's provost, Peter Lange, said, "your behavior there is governed by the laws of that country." That understanding also holds at New York University's campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, both paid for by those governments. While John Sexton, the university's president, sees it as the first global university, that vision has many critics. The faculty has voted no confidence in Dr. Sexton partly over this issue. In 2011, after the arrest of three dissidents in the United Arab Emirates, Human Rights Watch called on N.Y.U. to protest: "Is N.Y.U. going to advertise the magnificence of studying in Abu Dhabi while the government persecutes an academic for his political beliefs?" Sarah Leah Whitson, the group's Middle East director, said then. The university responded that in Abu Dhabi or elsewhere, it did not get involved in matters outside its academic mission. In September, the N.Y.U. chapter of the American Association of University Professors wrote to the trustees, describing their concerns about the overseas campuses. "Accepting vast sums of money from foreign governments puts N.Y.U. and every scholar affiliated with the university in a morally compromising situation," it said. "In such situations, academic freedom is usually the first casualty." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
The line is right there in the script, a brokenhearted lover's puzzled lament at a relationship gone wrong. "We had such chemistry," Louise, a Broadway actress on the rise, says after a breakup with her composer boyfriend, Harry not their first. Yet one of the most glaring obstacles to Daniel Zaitchik's ambitious and wonderfully tuneful new musical "Darling Grenadine," at Roundabout Underground, is the utter absence of romantic chemistry between its leads, who play Harry and Louise. On the page, this show is effervescent. On the stage, for long stretches, it stays flat. Which is a shame, because Zaitchik is attempting some intriguing storytelling. Set in a fondly retro version of contemporary Manhattan, "Darling Grenadine" begins in a kind of Cole Porter present a fantasy of New York where the music is lively, the dialogue is snappy and the constant flow of cocktails never impedes the elegance. Except that Harry, who has been coasting for years on the cash from his one hit commercial jingle, is a not so secret alcoholic. Deep in self loathing, he almost believes the lies he tells about himself almost believes, too, that life is a party, that all of those drinks are celebratory. Well, maybe not the ones he sneaks, topping up his morning coffee with a little something from the flask. At its dark core, "Darling Grenadine" is a musical about addiction, and about the lives caught up in an addict's diligent self destruction. It's about the hope that loving someone can save him from himself, and the smashing of that illusion. But Zaitchik has written a deceptively fragile work, and Michael Berresse's production treats much of it with surprising ham handedness. This is, mind you, a good looking production, performed in the round on a spare set (by Tim Mackabee), where clever line drawing projections (by Edward T. Morris) do much to change the scenery. Tucked away in an alcove, the three piece band (directed by David Gardos) sounds rich without overwhelming the small space. There are a few moments in the show so extraordinary that I suspect I will think about them for years. There is also a surprise at the end that you may regret ruining for yourself if you look too closely at the program before then. A credit in there is a dead giveaway. Yet this production is frustratingly flawed, in a way that does its stars no favors. Adam Kantor, who plays Harry, and Emily Walton, who plays Louise, seem to have been cast for their singing, which is gorgeous, and for the beguiling way that their voices twine around each other. But they are a mismatch with the kind of acting that is required. Harry and Louise's early flirtation depends on a facility with wisecracking screwball style. Because the actors' tone is off, lyrics and laugh lines with the potential to charm as in Louise's silly confessional "Every Time a Waitress Calls Me Honey," or Harry's ode to their home borough, "Manhattan" read as corny or cloying, or both. It's hard to tell, actually, why Louise even goes out with Harry after he waylays her at the stage door of her show, where she is in the chorus. For all the compliments he showers on her, he is merely persistent and awkward, not charismatic. Without that quality, we never like Harry even before he starts falling apart, and it's crucial that we do. A complicated character with multiple layers to peel away, he isn't sufficiently realized in Kantor's portrayal for us to invest much in what happens to him. Neither is Walton's Louise. Their acting is broader than it needs to be on such an intimate stage. At the same time, even with a cast of just six, the show feels too large for the low ceilinged space, as if with a bit more air it might be able to breathe. There's some fine acting, though, notably by Jay Armstrong Johnson as Paul, a sweetheart of a human being who is growing weary of getting Harry out of alcoholic scrapes. Mixing drinks at his bar, Standards, Paul is a genuine charmer, as pleasantly soothing as the covers that Harry sometimes plays on the upright piano there. "The idea," Harry tells Louise, "is any night you walk in, someone's playing a tune you know and love. It creates a certain mood." That's apparently the idea, too, behind Zaitchik's score, which feels familiar yet not derivative, channeling an old time texture into fresh new music, like the spirited bar anthem "Party Hat" or the effervescent almost title song, "Grenadine." A buoyant toast to the teetotal life, that number comes as something of a surprise if, like me, you interpreted the ambiguously staged final moment in Act I to mean the opposite of what Zaitchik intends. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
There are a few key things to know about the new Audi A3 compact car, which for 2015 is being offered in the United States for the first time as a sedan, not a hatchback. First and foremost, it's one of those cars, the kind that seduces you into driving harder and faster than you should. Never owned a car like that? It tends to tempt the driver into excessive behavior, like heading to the freezer to sneak a couple of spoonfuls of Phish Food, only to devour the entire pint. Second, don't confuse small with inexpensive. My test car, with a retail price of 37,195, didn't have keyless ignition, a rearview camera, sport seats, an upgraded Bang Olufsen sound system or adaptive cruise control. While an A3 with front wheel drive starts at 30,795, a version with quattro all wheel drive can zoom past 42,000. Ouch. That's serious money for a car that some critics have mistakenly called a gussied up Volkswagen Jetta. And really, the A3's closer cousin is the latest 2015 VW Golf, because both use the same MQB architecture. The A3 redeems itself with an interior that upholds the standards for which Audi is known. An LCD display that rises from the dash will impress passengers. And the A3 looks much like the A4, which looks a lot like the A6, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the A8. Stylish? Yes. Creative? Not so much. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
At the height of its popularity, t he 1990s TV show "Baywatch" was bringing in 1.1 billion worldwide weekly viewers. It made Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra famous, revived (again) the career of David Hasselhoff and inspired a 2017 movie. Now the series can be handily retrieved on Amazon Prime and Hulu in high definition and with 350 new original songs a dded to the score to help draw in millennial viewers. But what about "Baywatch" is most memorable, lasting and important? Of late Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, Hailey Bieber and Jennifer Lopez have all posted snapshots wearing "Baywatch" esque suits on social media feeds, inspiring fans to swap their bikinis for maillots. Brian Davis, designer of Magicsuit swimwear, created the Scuba Blake one piece, a modern twist on the Baywatch suit for the 2019 swimwear season. He said it has sold briskl y, priced at 168. "As a swimwear designer it is impossible not be inspired and influenced by the iconic 'Baywatch' swimsuit," Mr. Davis said. "Who can forget the image of Pamela Anderson and Yasmine Bleeth running down the beach, hair flying in the wind, clad in that hot cherry red one piece?" The suit has been trending for at least two years. Ashley Graham's Swimsuits for All released an ad to promote its 2017 summer line, which featured Ms. Graham and the models Niki Taylor and Teyana Taylor as lifeguards. The company offers its customers myriad variations of one pieces, many of which encompass the high leg opening and scoop neck that defined the "Baywatch" look. Chromat also showed several versions of a red one piece in its lifeguard themed "Pool Rules" campaign, which promoted the company's inclusive sizes and styles. Also in 2017, a high waisted suit called the Pamela Sunny Suit made by Sunny Co Clothing and priced at 99.99 had 50,000 orders in 29 minutes after an Instagram giveaway campaign, according to the company, since selling over 100,000. People understandably thought the name was a nod to Pamela Anderson, the most famous star of "Baywatch." But Alan Alchalel , Sunny Co Clothing's founder and C.E.O., insisted this was not so. The official "Baywatch" swimsuits were inspired by those worn by real lifeguards on beaches in Southern California. Greg Bonann , a creator of the series and lifeguard himself, enlisted TYR , a competitive swimwear company, for help with the design. "I wanted them to be real and practical and actually work in the surf," Mr. Bonann said. The company created a red one piece bathing suit as the wardrobe's template, then took measurements of each actress playing a lifeguard. The goal, Mr. Bonann said, was to flatter each star's body for example, putting Alexandra Paul' s athletic frame "in a high neck suit with bare shoulders," while shorter cast members like Erika Eleniak , Ms. Packard and Ms. Electra , were given higher cut legs to fake the appearance of height. The suits were then outfitted with official "Baywatch Lifeguard" patches. "The red bathing suit has absolutely no meaning whatsoever without a patch on it," Mr. Bonann said. "As far as the real lifeguard is concerned, that is the iconic thing." Michael Berk , another creator of the show, said. "We never tried to be sexy intentionally. It was all about athletics and functionality." This was also the case with the famous slow motion run, an idea that came from Mr. Bonann after he filmed the Olympic hundred yard dash runners in slow motion to show off their athleticism. "When we did our original music video that we did to sell 'Baywatch,' we were filming the lifeguards sprinting to the rescue in slow motion to build up the tension," Mr. Berk said. "And suddenly it became this very sexy thing." Throughout the years, the "Baywatch" suits took on many different iterations; Speedo , JAG and Kiwi Swim all contributed designs. Necklines got lower, legs got higher and versions appeared with variations like zippers in the front. "We stuck with the authentic style but we tweaked it and made it more exciting than what is standard wear for the lifeguard," said Karen Braverman Freeman, a costume designer for the show. Almost three decades after the show's premiere, the "Baywatch" cast looked back fondly in phone interviews on their days in the red suit. Ms. Eleniak said she's been a "one piece girl" since her time on "Baywatch." "I haven't worn a bikini in probably 30 years." Ms. Electra laughed as she remembers her initial encounter with the swimsuit, which she had admired as a fan of the series before landing the role of Lani McKenzie in 1997. The actress had no idea she'd be asked to put the suit on during her audition read with Mr. Hasselhoff, and having rushed over from the set of MTV's "Singled Out," she admits to having slipped into the suit with unshaved legs. "I was like, 'Oh, I hope they don't see that!'" she said. Ms. Packard became a regular later in the series, when she says the suits had transitioned from a traditional lifeguard look to "a swimsuit that was barely covering anything." After struggling to keep the back from riding up while filming, she was directed to an on site trailer to pick out another suit, settling on one that Ms. Paul had previously worn. Ms. Anderson said modesty was not an issue for her but confirmed that the suits were pretty fitted. "Some people bring me bathing suits to sign autographs on and they are these big bathing suits and I say, 'Listen, my bathing suit was tiny. It just stretched and pulled onto your body,'" she said. And while Nicole Eggert , who played Summer Quinn , recalled that wearing the Baywatch wardrobe made her feel "proud and powerful," there was a downside: the tan lines. It was as if "I wore a white one piece when I was naked all the time," she said. Those involved with "Baywatch" said they were thrilled to see suits inspired by the show on beaches today. Ms. Anderson is proud to still fit in her original suit and admits to slipping into it every now and then, if the mood strikes, surprising whomever she's dating. "I jump in the shower with a bathing suit and then jump on them wherever they are in the house, soaking wet," she said. Deeming the suit's shade of red a powerful and heroic hue, Mr. Berk said that he's working with Pantone, the color standards company, to make "Baywatch Red" a proprietary shade. And while waistlines of two pieces may rise and fall, Ms. Eggert thinks the "Baywatch" suit's particular cut will never go out of style. "It's a little bit more interesting than your average bikini. It's not just about the body," she said. "It's sexy without being too revealing so it works on all body types." Ms. Packard said, "The fact that it's still a trend to wear a one piece speaks volumes because prior to 'Baywatch,' I think there was this notion that to look sexy, you had to wear a string bikini." Ms. Anderson suggested that "maybe it was the people in the bathing suit that made it more exciting," before noting that the show represented a time of youth and innocence that the suit continues to embody. "And we were kind of the California dream." Mr. Bonann, who today serves as an instructor to junior lifeguards, says his charges are given both a red one and two piece and much prefer the one piece. "One of my girls just got a job as a real lifeguard and was telling me how excited she was to be wearing her red one piece bathing suit and that she had worn it all day around her house that day," he said. "So the red one piece bathing suit is still iconic. Even to the real lifeguards themselves." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
"I Am Woman," a pleasant, yet disappointingly trite biopic of the singer Helen Reddy, has a flatness that's difficult to ascribe to any one element. As Reddy, Tilda Cobham Hervey has warmth and gumption; the 1960s 80s production design is impeccable; and the cinematography, by the celebrated Dion Beebe (the partner of the director, Unjoo Moon), is richly textured. Yet there's a rote quality to Emma Jensen's ultraconventional script, a ticking off of obstacles and triumphs that feels shallow and rushed. In short order, we see Reddy arrive from Australia in 1966 with her small daughter, nab a New York City apartment, suffer rejection from record companies and befriend the noted music journalist Lillian Roxon (Danielle Macdonald). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
SAN FRANCISCO More than a second before a self driving car operated by Uber struck and killed a pedestrian in March, the vehicle's computer system determined it needed to brake to avoid a crash. But a built in emergency braking system had been disabled while the car was in autonomous mode to ensure a smoother ride, according to the preliminary report of federal regulators investigating the crash. The initial findings, released on Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board, confirmed early police reports about the episode, which was the first known pedestrian fatality involving an autonomous car. The report also affirmed what many experts on self driving cars said in the days after the crash: Uber's cars are loaded with sensors and cameras that should have detected a pedestrian with plenty of time to stop. But this one failed through a combination of a computer system not responding properly to the pedestrian's presence and a distracted safety driver. The fatal crash has raised questions about the safety of testing self driving cars on public roads and whether companies, in their rush to be among the first to deploy this breakthrough technology, are taking enough precautions to prevent harm to other drivers and pedestrians. It has also dampened some enthusiasm for self driving cars as a technology that researchers believe could eventually save lives because robot drivers, unlike humans, don't get distracted or tired and obey traffic rules. The New York Times reported that Uber's cars had been struggling to meet reliability standards in Arizona before the crash. Its cars required human drivers to intervene much more frequently than those of its competitors. Uber was also asking safety drivers to do more driving solo instead of in pairs even though the cars were still performing erratically. The safety board said the Uber car's computer system spotted 49 year old Elaine Herzberg pushing a bicycle across a road at night in Tempe, Ariz., six seconds before impact. The system classified Ms. Herzberg, who was not in a crosswalk, first as an unrecognized object, then as another vehicle and finally as a bicycle. But it did not slow down before barreling into her at 39 miles per hour. The car's software system is not designed to alert the driver of an object in the road. The Uber car, a Volvo XC90 sport utility vehicle equipped with Uber's sensing technology, comes with an automatic emergency braking system from the manufacturer. But Uber disabled that function as well as other safety features to "reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior," according to the report. This put the onus on the safety driver to intervene to avoid a crash if necessary. The agency said Uber's safety driver, who was not impaired, grabbed the steering wheel in an attempt to swerve at the last second but did not start braking until after impact. The vehicle's operator, who was seen on dashboard cameras looking down and away from the road before the crash, told investigators that she had been monitoring the self driving car system in the center of the car's dashboard. A toxicology report for the victim came back positive for methamphetamine and marijuana, investigators said, though they did not say drugs played a factor in the crash. While the safety board's preliminary report did not determine fault, it pointed to instances where Uber's testing system failed to prevent the crash. "The circumstances of the crash was certainly damning, and this report documents it," said Bryant Walker Smith, an assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina, who specializes in technology and law. "Many of the issues raised in the report lead right back to Uber and Uber's testing program as a legitimate target of criticism." Mary Cummings, an engineering professor at Duke University who studies the interaction between humans and autonomous vehicles, said there was "a lack of maturity" in Uber's testing program because it was asking the drivers to do too much. The company made it hard for them to focus on their primary task: ensuring safety. Sarah Abboud, an Uber spokeswoman, said the company had worked closely with investigators over the last two months. It has started a review of its self driving car program and plans to announce changes to its safety procedures in the coming weeks. Uber has brought on Christopher A. Hart, a former chairman of the safety board, as an adviser on its "overall safety culture." Immediately after the crash, Uber suspended testing of its self driving cars and has not yet returned to the road. On Wednesday, the company said it was shutting down its testing operations in Arizona and laying off 300 employees, saying it wanted to move testing closer to its engineering hubs in Pittsburgh and San Francisco. Uber also said it hoped to return to the road in Pittsburgh by the summer. The company has not said when it hopes the autonomous cars will return to San Francisco. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Disney unveiled a new poster on Saturday for "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," and news of its appearance spread on Twitter with the speed of the Millennium Falcon doing the Kessel Run. The revelation, at D23 Expo, Disney's largest fan event, was one of several major announcements for fans of "Star Wars," Marvel and Pixar. New footage gives hints about new movie When the director J.J. Abrams and his team took the stage at the expo in Anaheim, Calif., on Saturday, the audience stood and applauded. Mr. Abrams, who launched a new era for the franchise in 2015, revealed a new poster for "The Rise of Skywalker," which will premiere in December and be the conclusion to the nine film saga that began in 1977 with "Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Now lives In a two bedroom apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with his fiancee, the product designer Sam Anderson, and a roommate. Claim to fame In 2014, Mr. Wolfond founded Good Thing, a design company that makes pared down, utilitarian housewares that are as on trend as they are affordable. The line includes steel dustpans ( 29), cylindrical bookends ( 16) and silicone dipped stainless steel mirrors ( 19.50 to 34) in standout colors like powder pink, mint green and cobalt blue. "You get the more useful version of the thing, and it also becomes a piece of decoration," Mr. Wolfond said. Big Break After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013, Mr. Wolfond established a studio in New York but was dismayed by the design scene. "I was so sickened and angry about the amount of opulent brass and moody glass lighting," he said. "I was going to go in this other direction, and make things that were affordable." When efforts to license his designs soured, he recruited other emerging designers and began manufacturing products on his own. "I realized, 'Oh, if you have these other designers and yourself, you can call it a manufacturing company,'" Mr. Wolfond said. Products by Good Thing are carried by museum stores across the country, including the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Walker Art Center. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Portland, Me., has transcended the D.I.Y./Etsy aesthetic to become a mecca for high quality, crafted accessories, clothing, leather goods and more. It is locals who are driving this artisan movement in neighborhoods like the Old Port district, in the heart of the city, where streets lined with 19th century brick buildings house stores, restaurants and bars. While the waterfront strip and the thoroughfares off the Old Port district are packed with pedestrians, Middle Street and a few streets around it see less foot traffic and are shopping gems. Yes, there are some chain stores here, but the locally owned boutiques, selling handmade wares from Maine, are the standouts. Go down a flight of stairs and enter what the owner, Kazeem Lawal, describes as a "general store which sells a little bit of everything." For Mr. Lawal, that means men's and women's clothing from independent designers, home goods, beauty products, shoes, vintage books and even cookware. But these aren't your ordinary looking items everything has flair, and it's easy to see why Mr. Lawal has a large and loyal following that includes both locals and customers who live elsewhere in the United States and abroad. From 5. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
In the nearly seven weeks since Roger Ailes left Fox News in the aftermath of a sexual harassment lawsuit, the drama has barely subsided. In that time, multiple women have come forward accusing Mr. Ailes of harassment, and Mr. Ailes has moved on to advise Donald J. Trump in his preparation for the coming presidential debates against Hillary Clinton. On Tuesday, Fox News's parent company, 21st Century Fox, publicly apologized to Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox News host who filed the lawsuit against Mr. Ailes on July 6 that led to his swift departure. Ms. Carlson received 20 million as part of the settlement, and 21st Century Fox provided settlements to at least two other women who also said that they were harassed by Mr. Ailes, according to a person briefed on the settlements. Also on Tuesday, the prime time lineup Mr. Ailes painstakingly built over his two decades as chairman of Fox News took a hit when the network abruptly announced that the host Greta Van Susteren was leaving, effective immediately. Mr. Ailes's undoing began roughly two months ago, when Ms. Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him that blindsided the network, and turned what was poised to be a banner year into a moment of crisis. Executives were proudly preparing for the network's 20th anniversary in October, and Mr. Ailes's network had never seen better ratings, thanks to increased interest in this year's presidential election. But as Mr. Ailes's legal team quickly rallied to move the case out of court and into arbitration, there were signs that 21st Century Fox was taking a different approach. Fox News's parent company retained the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton Garrison to investigate allegations made by Ms. Carlson and a number of other women including one of the network's stars, Megyn Kelly who also accused Mr. Ailes of sexual harassment. His departure was announced on July 21, just 15 days after Ms. Carlson filed her suit. About a week after Mr. Ailes's departure, Ms. Carlson's lawyers spoke to Paul, Weiss investigators and told them that their client had been tape recording him in meetings for some time, and that most of the quotes in her lawsuit were taken directly from the recordings. Officials at 21st Century Fox began settlement talks shortly thereafter, and a deal was reached in mid August. Mr. Ailes still faces litigation. Andrea Tantaros, a former Fox News host, filed a lawsuit two weeks ago, accusing him of sexual harassment, and other executives of marginalizing her after she complained about harassment at the network. Mr. Ailes has denied the accusations, as has Fox News. While Mr. Ailes is out of the media business his 40 million exit agreement from Fox came with a noncompete clause he has provided advice to Mr. Trump, especially before his first debate with Mrs. Clinton on Sept. 26. And he will have to watch from afar what happens to the prime time lineup on Fox News. Ms. Van Susteren's 7 p.m. show was turned over to Brit Hume. In the meantime, Bill O'Reilly suggested this summer that he was considering retirement, and Ms. Kelly, the anchor in the 9 p.m. hour, has a contract that is set to expire next year. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
The 'Peace Pentagon,' an Activist Office in NoHo, Is Forced to Move For decades, members of left leaning groups have used a pale brick building in Lower Manhattan as a base to work on campaigns and plan protest rallies. But a recent meeting concerned a different sort of logistics. Members of the War Resisters League, Global Revolution TV and other groups that rent offices there gathered in a top floor office to discuss boxing their possessions and soon leaving for good. "A lot of things about the move are still up in the air," said Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the nonprofit AJ Muste Memorial Institute, which had owned the building at 339 Lafayette Street. "We should all be purging and packing." The three story, 9,789 square foot structure at the corner of Bleecker Street, in NoHo, is known as the Muste building and often referred to as the Peace Pentagon because of the activists it attracts. It has provided low priced offices to dozens of groups, including the Granny Peace Brigade and the Socialist Party USA, since 1968, when the War Resisters League began leasing it. The War Resisters bought the building in 1974, and the Muste Institute, which focuses on peace efforts and social justice projects, bought it four years later. The building's future is expected to be much different. In October, unable to afford desperately needed repairs, the Muste (pronounced MUS ty) Institute sold the building for 20.75 million to 337 Lafayette L.P., owned by the developer Aby Rosen. 339 Lafayette Street, known as the "Peace Pentagon." Pablo Enriquez for The New York Times Cushman Wakefield, which handled the transaction, said the price, about 2,120 per square foot, set a high for commercial real estate in NoHo. Zoning allows for roughly 16,000 square feet of commercial, hotel or live work development at the site, Cushman said, adding that several developers of nearby projects had obtained variances to build condominiums. Over the last several years NoHo, between the East Village and Greenwich Village and just above SoHo, has changed rapidly, with high rise buildings sprouting up and industrial buildings being converted into luxury residences. Commercial rents in the neighborhood range from 200 to 400 per square foot, said Michael K. Davis of Corbett Dullea Real Estate. Mr. Davis said that ground floor rents along Broadway from Houston Street to Great Jones Street are about 300 per square foot, with similar rates on the Bowery and slightly lower rates on Bond Street. Sheldon Werdiger of RFR, Mr. Rosen's main company, said 339 Lafayette Street could hardly be a better location, adding that the area was improving and "very cool, very hip." Plans for the building are still being evaluated, he said. Last summer, another limited partnership owned by Mr. Rosen paid 26 million for a former women's shelter at 348 Lafayette Street, planning to use it for retail space. The popularity of the area carries a price, though, said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. "We're certainly chagrined by some of the changes we are seeing," he said, noting that many artists and activist groups had left the area. The red door to the War Resisters office. Pablo Enriquez for The New York Times The Muste Institute's board had little familiarity with commercial real estate in Manhattan when it decided to sell the building. The War Resisters League bought the property for 60,000, and the institute, which is named after Abraham Johannes Muste, a pacifist who opposed the Vietnam War and advised the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., bought it for 91,000 in 1978. In recent years, the building provided a measure of continuity while similar spaces in Lower Manhattan including the Brecht Forum, an institute that held lectures and exhibitions focused on the political left, and 9 Bleecker Street, a countercultural hub moved or closed as the area gentrified. A weakened support column in the Muste building was discovered about a decade ago and presented a nagging problem, however. Repairs were estimated at more than 1 million, exceeding what the owner could easily manage. Many in the institute were reluctant to move, cherishing the building's history and worrying that selling it would be selling out. But after years of debate, the board unanimously agreed to sell. Ms. Boghosian, the executive director, had previously led the National Lawyers Guild and felt her way through the process, negotiating with potential buyers and helping the board evaluate whether it made more sense to buy or rent new headquarters. The building's buyer agreed that the institute and its tenants could remain there at no cost through May. The institute's board considered buying a building in East Harlem until discovering that a covenant created by a previous owner forbade advocacy of abortion rights or euthanasia from taking place there. The board was also interested in a space above the Strand bookstore because of its proximity to Union Square, the site of many political rallies, but it was too expensive, Ms. Boghosian said. Buildings with security measures that required visitors to show identification were ruled out because that could rankle activists. In December, the board agreed to a five year lease for 35,000 a month on a 6,000 square foot space on the top floor of a building on Canal Street. All of the institute's current tenants will move with it, Ms. Boghosian said. The institute plans to eventually buy a building. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Adventure Canada passengers on an excursion to explore the Nachvak Fjord in northern Labrador, one of the cruises that offers mental fodder with sightseeing. The efforts of cruise lines to meet consumer demand has exploded into an expansive array of vacation options, from intimate yacht like departures to floating family friendly theme parks. The 63 cruise company members of the Cruise Line Industry Association estimate passenger volume will grow to 23 million this year, up nearly a million over 2014. Most of the traffic circulates in the Caribbean, but the following trends signal growing wanderlust among cruisers. River cruises, like AmaWaterways' Jewish Heritage departure featured in an article in this issue, often weave in historical themes based on their destination focus. But a few ocean bound vessels also take a long look back, especially in Europe. The Australian based company Unlock the Past offers a series of history and genealogy itineraries, including a 14 night Baltic sailing in July with Celebrity Cruises. During its five days at sea, Unlock the Past offers 52 sessions with genealogists from the United States, Australia and Britain. Closer to home, Un Cruise Adventures offers a series of weeklong summer sailings on the Columbia and Snake Rivers via an 88 passenger steamer replica, round trip from Portland, Ore., that highlight pioneer history. Four departures, beginning in May, focus more intensively on the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, accompanied by the historian Todd Weber, a specialist in the subjects. History is just one ship launching theme. Sail with fellow foodies on Windstar Cruises' 10 day "Culinary and Wine Delights of Spain and France," which sails in June and again in September, featuring visits to port wine warehouses in Portugal, Asturian cider orchards in Spain and wineries in Bordeaux. Other themed departures highlight musical guests, such as the band Crosby, Stills and Nash performing three concerts and appearing at Q A and autograph sessions aboard a Cunard trans Atlantic sailing in September. In a similar vein, Carnival Cruise Lines will offer live concerts from the likes of Rascal Flatts and Smokey Robinson this year. The Cy Young Award winning pitcher Ferguson Jenkins and Ed Kranepool, a former New York Met, will join MSC Cruises' April 11 baseball cruise in the Caribbean. And the Seattle Seahawks are the subject of a June fan cruise to Alaska with Princess Cruises, promising meet and greets with undisclosed players. Distancing themselves from the shallow stereotypes of hedonistic cruises, a new category of departures targets those who want some mental fodder with their sightseeing. Adventure Canada bills its July 5 Newfoundland and Labrador departure as the first book club at sea, featuring the authors Doug Gibson, Kathleen Winter and Terry Fallis leading discussions of their works. Oceania Cruises' new Culinary School Immersion Program, taking place on several itineraries, includes two full days of cooking classes that culminate in a "Top Chef" style team competition. In a new partnership with the Discovery Channel, Princess Cruises will offer science focused wildlife watching excursions and guided shipboard stargazing on select departures. Tauck extends its link with BBC Earth to its Galapagos cruises, allowing guests to try the kinds of underwater cameras, microphones and other field equipment used by the nature documentary filmmakers. Both river and ocean cruise lines are expanding their operations in Asia. For river operators, ships offer commodious bases for exploring regions with few upscale hotels, including the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar where the 42 passenger Sanctuary Ananda from Sanctuary Retreats and the 56 passenger AmaPura from AmaWaterways both began service in November. On the Mekong River in Vietnam and Cambodia the 36 passenger Avalon Siem Reap from Avalon Waterways launched in January and the 124 guest AmaDara from AmaWaterways will begin sailings later this year. Uniworld will begin operations on the Ganges River in India next January. Ocean operators aim to offer experienced cruisers more exotic destinations, while also luring Asian passengers on board. Princess will station the 2,670 passenger Diamond Princess in Japan beginning in April for four months of sailings between Tokyo and Kobe. Crystal Cruises will run two cruises from Bali next winter, and the new Quantum of the Seas is bound for its home port in Shanghai this summer. In total, C.L.I.A. members report more than 1,000 Asian cruises this year, with a capacity of nearly 2.2 million passengers. If whiz bang features like on board surfing and water parks sell larger ships, smaller ones aim to fortify their strength easy port access by increasingly offering insider outings. Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection's new "Do as the Locals Do" programs include such excursions as having coffee with a resident of a Franconian village in Germany or visiting a food market in Budapest. Azamara Club Cruises organizes "insider access" tours to private homes and farms, including an Andalusian horse ranch in Spain, an artist's workshop in Dubrovnik and a visit with a Middle Eastern scholar in Haifa, Israel. A new seven day Iceland cruise with Lindblad Expeditions promises a "hangout with a changing cast of interesting Icelanders," including artists, musicians, politicians, scientists and writers. Even if you don't meet a local, you can eat like one, as the locavore movement sweeps through shipboard galleys large and small. Princess's new regional program features Alaska seafood on Alaska itineraries, and serves dishes designed by popular local restaurants, including crab cakes from Tracy's King Crab Shack in Juneau. It also serves regional menus in the Mediterranean and Hawaii. Among smaller ships, Oceania's cooking schools will offer regional cooking classes based on where its ships are located. Cruising is growing at both ends of the industry, boutique and behemoth. Among the latter, the new 4,180 passenger Quantum of the Seas from Royal Caribbean International launched in November, with new attractions including a sky diving simulator and a glass enclosed capsule that swings out over the side of the ship for panoramic views from 300 feet above sea level. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have long been in the cross hairs of conservative critics. So let's consider what would happen if Donald J. Trump as president finally made their dreams come true. Will Congress approve his plan to eliminate the full range of programs from grants that have drawn criticism to those that have been more widely embraced? Here is a tour of the debate that reignited this winter when The Hill newspaper reported that the Trump administration was considering eliminating the art and humanities agencies and defunding the nonprofit public broadcasting corporation as part of a wider program of federal budget cuts. A raft of organizations immediately condemned the idea, including the Association of Art Museum Directors, the American Alliance of Museums, Americans for the Arts and PEN America. Others have long applauded any effort to strip the funds, suggesting, among other things, that public television and radio promoted agendas out of step with much of America. "The new conservative administration and congressional majority coming in have a responsibility to the conservative base not to continue to fund a 'public broadcaster' that leaves half the nation feeling ignored," wrote Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, in a Jan. 21 article. Not since the days of Ronald Reagan and later Newt Gingrich has the debate over federal arts spending seemed to roil so feverishly. Here are some of the questions being raised that are driving the debate: If these dots represent federal spending, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . then the combined budgets of the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be the size of the period in this sentence. Annual funding for the two endowments lags behind where it was in the early 1990s after controversies over money for provocative arts projects like Andres Serrano's urine immersed crucifix created a climate that led to budget cuts. The two endowment agencies each receive about 148 million a year now. The budget for public broadcasting, currently 445 million, has been more consistent over the years. Together they still account for only 741 million, or much less than one tenth of 1 percent of the United States' annual federal spending, an amount supporters say is too small to make a difference. Conservatives suggest it will take many small cuts to roll back uncontrolled federal spending. Criticism was also recently directed at another project, this one designed to create a video game based on Henry Thoreau's "Walden Pond," and funded by 450,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Supporters of federal arts funding say the selection process includes an expert, independent panel and that the money has underwritten important work for decades. It was a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that helped pay for the "Treasures of Tutankhamen" exhibition to travel to six American cities from 1976 79. That groundbreaking exhibition, heralded as one of the first museum blockbusters, drew 1.36 million visitors to the Metropolitan Museum alone. Such work continues, supporters say, pointing to the National Endowment for the Arts funds that helped underwrite the Met's recent "Jerusalem 1000 1400: Every People Under Heaven." "It is the mark of a great democracy to support the arts, which are an expression of what makes us human," the Association of Art Museum Directors said in a statement on Jan. 19. "The NEA Is Welfare for Cultural Elitists," the Heritage Foundation declared in a 1997 paper, "Ten Good Reasons to Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts." "A radical virus of multiculturalism," the foundation wrote," has permanently infected the agency, causing artistic efforts to be evaluated by race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation instead of artistic merit." More recently, The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, in 2015 criticized a 10,000 grant to a San Francisco theater company to help support "Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays," a collection created, according to the grant proposal, "in response to the ongoing battle for marriage equality throughout the United States." The newspaper suggested the award represented advocacy and gave the arts agency its Golden Hammer Award for "using tax dollars to fund a project that many Americans would find offensive." The National Endowment for the Arts said that the plays were worthy on their merits, regardless of their stance on issues. It has emphasized the extent to which its support for projects is apolitical and meant for all kinds of people. The agencies are particularly proud of programs they run to benefit veterans, such as the National Endowment for the Arts' creative arts therapy project for military personnel at a hospital at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. In the program, which is expanding to 12 centers around the country, patients use exercises, like painting masks, to overcome traumatic brain injuries and psychological problems. "The patient is the one controlling it," said Jackie Jones, a creative arts therapist who has worked with 270 military personnel since the project began three years ago. "They wind up gaining control over what used to control them." The organizations say that question is unfair. Some 40 percent of the arts and humanities agencies' budgets go directly to state and regional arts councils across the United States. So the people of Utah or Massachusetts are then free to use the funds as they wish. The National Endowment for the Arts says it funds projects in every congressional district of the country. It acknowledges that it broadened its portfolio of communities partly in response to criticism in the 1990s. Among the places that benefit is Whitesburg, Ky., an Appalachian town of 2,100. Federal money there supports Appalshop, a center for local filmmaking, theater and a community radio station. Caroline Rubens, the center's archivist, said National Endowment for the Humanities money helped create a climate controlled archive where films, audiotapes and photographs about the region are preserved. "Appalshop serves the rural and underrepresented population of central Appalachia," Ms. Rubens said. Should the government fund the arts? Many of the largest arts organizations in the United States survive with just a smidgen of federal financial help. Critics of public funding for the arts say that is as it should be, that as a matter of principle support for the arts should not be a function of government. "These agencies can raise funds from private sector patrons, which will also free them from any risk of political interference," said a Republican congressional budget proposal in 2014. Supporters of public arts funding point, on the other hand, to a host of educational and economic benefits, like tourism, that are often fostered by the projects they finance. Beyond that, they say, for every Metropolitan Museum of Art, where federal support is minimal, there are many other organizations that simply could not survive without public funding. Take KRSU TV, the public television station in Claremore, Okla. It broadcasts to 1.2 million homes in Tulsa and rural northeastern Oklahoma, and its station manager, Royal Aills, said the federal funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting make up close to 70 percent of his budget. "Without C.P.B. funding, I don't have a staff," he said in an interview. "It pays for our staff and programming. They are the glue for us." To be sure, most of the 1,500 radio and television stations that receive some funding from the corporation do not rely on federal subsidies to anywhere near that extent. But the corporation said that dozens of stations did rely on the federal money for 40 percent or more of their operating revenues. "The federal investment in public media is vital seed money especially for stations located in rural America," the corporation said in a statement last week amid the speculation about its future. Similarly endangered, advocates say, would be many art exhibitions that entertain the country, sometimes stopping at small and large museums. The cost of insuring the art shown in these exhibitions can be offset by a federal indemnity program administered by the National Endowment for the Arts. So when the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati staged "Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh: Impressions of Landscape," the most expensive project it had ever put on, the indemnity program paid for most of the insurance cost of bringing 54 on loan paintings (out of 55 in the entire exhibition) to Cincinnati. Visitors from 44 states and eight foreign countries visited the show, said Deborah Emont Scott, the museum's director, and without the federal financing, "It would not have happened." Of course, the shuttering of some other arts organizations does not seem a looming catastrophe if you view the art they are producing as hopelessly banal. If you last visited the Washington headquarters of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2014 and returned to say hello today you might be surprised. Both agencies moved out of the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue to make way for a new tenant: the Trump International Hotel. It opened last fall after a renovation that cost more than 200 million, which, of course, is more than the budget of either of those agencies. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Our columnist, Sebastian Modak, is visiting each destination on our 52 Places to Go in 2019 list. He arrived in Las Vegas straight from Ontario, Canada, where he visited the ice caves. In the 1950s, Las Vegans looking to decompress would head to Atomic Liquors on Fremont Street, order an "Atomic cocktail" and head to the roof to watch mushroom clouds rising from the nearby Nevada Test Site. A mile and a half away, the notorious mobster Eddie Thrascher was dealing with a problem customer at his bar who would get drunk and punch in the same section of wall night after night, by putting spikes behind the drywall. Both places still exist: Atomic Liquors's red and yellow sign still points the way to its retro interior. And Thrascher's spot has, since 1962, been Dino's, which today calls itself "the last neighborhood bar in Vegas." It's easy to be blinded by the bright lights of Las Vegas, deafened by the constant noise of chiming slot machines and roadside hustlers advertising strip clubs. But right alongside the place obsessed with the transient and shiny, is another one that's enamored with the past and anchored by a nostalgia for a "Golden Age" that may not have even existed. Then, through a chance encounter, the kind that only happens when traveling solo, I was introduced to the neighborhood of Paradise Palms, a planned development from the 1960s that feels like a time warp. Midcentury modern houses fan out on a curvilinear street pattern, each putting individuality on full display with brightly painted facades and classic muscle cars parked in driveways. I met two siblings, Will and Yocelin Lizarraga, 36 and 32, who invited me into their homes, outfitted in period appropriate refrigerators, stoves, art, and couches. Will fronts a rockabilly band called Will and the Hi Rollers, and Yocelin moonlights as DJ Maybelline, specializing in sets of '50s and '60s music played exclusively on 45 rpm vinyl. "Vegas is an extreme version of the throwaway culture: it's constantly out with the old and in with the new," Will told me while I sat in his house, a classic 1963 Mod 2A home. "We're an exception. I found some kid's homework stuffed into the wall here when we moved in, dated from 1963. He's probably an old man now. How cool is that?" After a round of whiskey sours, expertly prepared by Will's wife, Olga Carrera, (in period appropriate glassware of course), we piled into a car and headed south of the city to the M Resort. A friend of theirs, Lance Lipinsky, was in Vegas on tour with his band Lance Lipinsky and the Lovers. He took the stage, decked out in a glittering shirt under a glittering jacket, hair gelled into a Jimmy Neutron pompadour. To a mostly older crowd, the band rocketed through classics from a time gone by, replete with all the piano bashing boogie woogie energy of the 50s. At one point, the Lizarraga siblings took to the stage too, twirling with such elan I had to remind myself repeatedly that these are people in their 30s and that this is 2019. To make the time travel complete, we ended the night at Vickie's Diner. It's open 24 hours a day and outfitted in bright pink and chrome. The burgers drip with grease and the old man stationed at the grill engages in the kind of idle chatter that's been endangered since the invention of the smartphone. Having found one wormhole to a seemingly golden point in Vegas's past, I started seeing even more as I ventured further from the casinos. I went to Atomic Liquors and Dino's twice each. At the beautifully arranged Neon Museum, I toured the "boneyard," filled with neon signs from the city's past, each with a story of its own. Some of those artifacts carry a dark history like the sign for the Chief Hotel Court, topped with the lit up profile of a stereotypical Native American in a Hollywood war bonnet that had absolutely no relationship to the actual Native Americans who lived on a reservation mere miles away from where it stood. Other signs exemplify the city's spirit of boldness and revolution, like the Martini glass marking Red Barn, the first openly gay bar in the city or the space age sign for La Concha, a hotel designed by Paul Williams, the well known black architect who, the story has it, learned to sketch and write upside down because white clients wouldn't want to sit next to him in meetings. All these stories were told to me by a guide who channeled the same nostalgic pride I had witnessed in Paradise Palms. None The Park MGM, where I stayed, was a little underwhelming, but it is home to Best Friend, a cheeky take on Korean BBQ from Los Angeles food truck pioneer, Roy Choi. Though it's a bit of a tragedy to charge for banchan, the side dishes that are customarily free at Korean restaurants, the menu is fun, tasty, and bold. I especially recommend the Bibimboombap (get it?). None Another favorite was the Velveteen Rabbit, a cozy and classy bar run by two sisters in the heart of the Arts District. The cocktail menu is constantly rotated and on the chilly night I went there were options aplenty to warm me right up. None Just a 30 minute drive from the Strip is a natural wonder, the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area: A set of staggeringly tall rock formations the color of burned copper, it is a paradise for rock climbers and hikers. I drove the 13 mile scenic loop through the park in a single afternoon, going for short strolls along the way. I spent a rainy afternoon inside the Pinball Hall of Fame, a 10,000 square foot warehouse packed with playable pinball machines dating back to the 1950s. It's a nonprofit institution run by volunteers. There were tourists there too, but the vast majority of visitors seemed to be local families, the children running from machine to machine with their allotted bag of quarters to battle it out on games as old as their parents. That's not to say that everything old in Las Vegas is great and everything new is boring. I was impressed by the rapidly expanding Arts District, with its galleries and burgeoning cocktail scene. I also toured the Palms Casino Resort, a once tired establishment just off the strip that is in the final stages of the most expensive renovation in Vegas's history. I had been put off by some of Vegas's in your face glam, but it's hard not to be excited when walking through a hotel you encounter Warhol, Basquiat, Murakami, and more Damien Hirst than you'd find at most contemporary art galleries. (The Palms also has a collection of massive suites with amenities that include a bowling alley and a basketball court.) Then there are the shows, with residencies playing a huge role in shaping the culture of the Strip. It's not just nostalgia acts like Celine Dion or Blink 182 (millennials can be nostalgic too). Lady Gaga has a residency at the Park MGM. Cardi B is heading to KAOS, the newly built club at Palms Casino Resort, this spring. Both are new spins on an age old Vegas tradition dating back to Liberace. I wasn't around for Cardi or Gaga, but in an attempt to do something really Vegas, I did attend a burlesque show put on by X Burlesque at the Flamingo Hotel, where I was the only man by himself in a room of couples and groups, on Valentine's Day might I add. Not comfortable. But it was also an example of the way the city is innovating. The show has all the elements of traditional burlesque the red curtained theater, the stand up comic interlude, the overt sexiness but the soundtrack is hip hop, heavy metal and country, and the dancers were just as comfortable hanging upside down on a pole as they were doing the can can. The best drink I had in Vegas was at the Laundry Room, a hidden speakeasy tucked into the back of an expansive bar called Commonwealth in Downtown Las Vegas. Reservations are by text message only, there are no photos or phone calls allowed once you're in, and guests are reminded that this is a "speak easy," so "use your inside voices." The bartender took my order by asking for flavors I liked no specific spirit requests or drink comparisons allowed. "Smoke, pickles, and chili peppers," I said. The drink tasted like all those things and more. My evening disappeared into hushed conversation in the small, Prohibition style space, filled with dark leather, ornate accents, and gold tasseled table cloths. Is this really what Vegas 70 years ago felt like? Probably not. All the recreations and interpretations seem a little too clean, too consistent. In a city whose raison d'etre has for decades been to create monumental experiences for tourists, performance is a habit that's hard to break. But the effort behind it feels genuine. When you look past the artifice and give yourself over to the experience, it's a lot of fun. And, in the end, isn't that the point of Las Vegas? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Homeowners with federal flood insurance will get some unwelcome news when they receive their next policy renewal notice. As of April 1, new rates took effect under the National Flood Insurance Program that increase individual policy premiums for homeowners in high risk areas by as much as 25 percent. Plus, policyholders will see new surcharges, 25 for owner occupied primary homes and 250 for second homes. Standard homeowners' insurance policies don't cover flood damage, so consumers must buy special coverage to add that protection. The average premium for flood insurance is 650 a year, according to the federal flood insurance program. But rates for some properties in high risk areas can be much higher. About 5.2 million people have flood insurance policies, and the premium increases will affect about one million of them, said a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers the flood program. The new rates are part of a plan to put the flood insurance program on sounder financial footing. Congress created the program nearly 50 years ago to help protect properties from floodwaters in coastal and inland areas. While flood insurance isn't mandatory, homes and businesses in flood prone areas must carry flood insurance to qualify for federally backed mortgages. That means flood insurance is basically a requirement for many homeowners. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Sometimes, it's best to cut one's losses and move on. For Rod Wade, the Australian automotive adventurer whose cross country run last month in a 1930 Model A Ford was abbreviated by a broken crankshaft, cutting his losses wasn't in the cards. It was time to move on; all the way across the United States. After sending the car back for a new crankshaft to New Jersey from Amarillo, Tex., where it broke last month, Mr. Wade came back to the United States from overseas with Michael Flanders, his co driver, determined to achieve his goal of crossing the country in less than 60 hours in an 83 year old car. His perseverance paid off, and on Nov. 23 the car clattered into Los Angeles from Staten Island after 50 hours, 20 minutes and six seconds of travel time. There were other challenges on this trip namely very cold weather but this time the car's 40 horsepower 4 cylinder engine held up just fine. Mr. Wade said the car got about 15 miles per gallon throughout the trip, and with an extra 24 gallon fuel tank in the back, it kept well ahead of the 1988 Plymouth police interceptor that was following as a support car. But Mr. Wade said in an interview that because the car was not equipped with a heater, he and Mr. Flanders had to stop every 10 miles when the weather deteriorated in order to keep ice scraped off the windshield. "We put new rubber seals around the doors to keep the cold out, but in those old cars it's impossible to keep it all from coming in," he said, adding that he wore two thermal layers, a neck roll, gloves and thermal socks. "When the rain hit the windscreen, it went to ice, so we had to keep stopping to chisel ice off the screen. It was hard to see very dodgy driving." The going got especially tough around Amarillo where tragedy had struck on the last run when a winter storm hit and turned the roads into icy tracks. Mr. Wade said he couldn't feel his feet at times. The men drove in shifts that lasted about 400 miles each. "It was like driving a toboggan without steering through Amarillo, but the engine did not miss a beat," Mr. Wade said. "We would have made it in the 40s, but the weather was tough." Mr. Wade says his car holds the record for driving a pre World War II car across the United States. He's not averse to giving it another go if he feels the need. "I think you could do this trip in an A Model Ford in about 47 hours," he said. "So if someone knocks off our record, we'll come back and give it another shot." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Cats can infect each other with the novel coronavirus, but they may not have any symptoms, researchers reported on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The report follows earlier laboratory research and cases of domestic cats, as well as tigers and lions at the Bronx Zoo, that tested positive for the coronavirus. In several cases, those cats showed mild symptoms, but the six cats in the new experiment didn't get sick at all and cleared the virus from their bodies on their own. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine and Peter Halfmann of the University of Wisconsin Madison, along with other researchers from both the United States and Japan, conducted the study, in which three domestic cats were inoculated with the virus and three additional uninfected cats were put in cages, one with each of the inoculated cats. First the cats that had been given the virus tested positive. Then their cage mates also caught the virus. None were sick, and all were virus free after, at most, six days. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Treading wearily on the heels of last year's "Finding Your Feet" and this year's "Poms," Simon Hunter's "Edie" is the latest in a creaky line of fogey fulfillment narratives. Yet, because the cantankerous title character is played by the marvelous Sheila Hancock one of the true grandes dames of British entertainment I allowed myself to hope. That lasted for about 15 minutes, during which we meet the newly widowed Edie, an abrasive octogenarian, and learn exactly how much she had loathed the disabled husband she had spent 30 years caring for. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
In one of her first acts as a start up investor, the actor Priyanka Chopra recently toured the San Francisco home of her new portfolio company, a coding education company called Holberton School. The campus resembles a WeWork more than a school, with open plan rows of desks, decorative neon lights and meeting rooms named after famous people. The school uses projects and group learning, instead of more traditional courses, to teach software development. "You just hang out and you're learning," Ms. Chopra said. "It's amazing." Ms. Chopra, 36, has been doing a lot of hanging out and learning in technology circles lately. In between presenting at the Emmys, sitting in the front row at New York Fashion Week, celebrating the birthday of her fiance, Nick Jonas, in Texas, and darting to her native India to act in a movie, she has squeezed in meetings with start up founders and lined up future investments. "Geeks are taking over the world," Ms. Chopra said. "If they haven't already," she quickly added. There's no shortage of celebrities investing in tech start ups. So far, deals from male actors, athletes and musical artists have garnered much more attention than those from famous women. Ashton Kutcher is a regular at tech conferences; Carmelo Anthony and Nas have their own funds; Leonardo DiCaprio has been an adviser to at least three venture firms. Tyra Banks, Beyonce and Demi Lovato have participated in start up deals. But few women have built robust portfolios. Ms. Chopra said she did not yet know how many deals she would do or how much money she would invest, but she does plan on building a portfolio. On Wednesday she announced her second investment, in Bumble, a dating and social media app founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd, one of the most prominent start up founders in tech. Ms. Chopra plans to help promote Bumble's launch in India in the coming months. Ms. Chopra was introduced to tech investing by her manager, Anjula Acharia, a founder and angel investor who spent time as an entrepreneur in residence and partner at Trinity Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Ms. Acharia has worked with Ms. Chopra since 2010. Ms. Acharia was the first investor in ClassPass, a fitness booking start up; she made a return on the company's most recent round of funding. She has also invested in Bulletproof Coffee, Health Ade Kombucha and The Muse. She said Jimmy Iovine, a mentor who backed her entertainment start up, DesiHits, had taught her how to anticipate cultural trends. Ms. Acharia, who has straddled Hollywood and Silicon Valley, said that, as an Indian woman, she was a rarity in both worlds. On weekends, at the Hollywood parties she has frequented with Ms. Chopra, Ms. Acharia noticed they were often the only South Asians in attendance. Then, on weekday meetings with entrepreneurs and partners at Trinity Ventures, she was often the only woman. "I was always a minority," she said. With their involvement in Holberton, Ms. Acharia and Ms. Chopra are making an effort to help change the tech industry's gender disparity. After the musical performer Ne Yo invested in Holberton and began to promote the school to his fans, applications from underrepresented minorities increased. Now, two thirds of Holberton's students are people of color, and 30 percent are women. Ms. Chopra plans to promote the school to her fans as well. "If one day, because of Priyanka, it became 100 percent women, I'd be cool with that," Ms. Acharia said. Founded in 2015, Holberton teaches students to code without charge, then charges 17 percent of their paycheck for three and a half years after they graduate. All of its graduates have found jobs. Ms. Chopra's investment is part of an 8.2 million round of funding for Holberton that closed in April. She will join the company's board of advisers. Ms. Chopra emphasized her support for Holberton's mission to educate people from underprivileged backgrounds. Her investments will skew heavily toward companies with an element of social impact, and companies founded by women. "I don't want to just be one of those people who's like, 'Yeah, I want to be on the tech bandwagon how are they making so much money,'" she said, surveying the Holberton work space in a cream pantsuit and snakeskin stilettos. "It's not about that." Ms. Chopra has worked with Unicef to advocate for children since 2006, focused mostly on developing nations. But a dinner conversation with Ms. Acharia around the time of the 2016 election turned to education in America. That led Ms. Acharia to introduce Ms. Chopra to the Holberton School's founders. "I think Holberton was the gateway drug for Priyanka," Ms. Acharia said. Mr. Kutcher's venture firm, Sound Ventures, is often cited as the most successful example of a celebrity's investing in tech start ups. Mr. Kutcher's investments, made while he was working alongside talent manager Guy Oseary, include several of this tech wave's most successful start ups, like Airbnb, Uber and Spotify, as well as hot up and comers like Bird and Casper. At a recent conference, Mr. Kutcher was asked to offer advice to the scores of celebrities and athletes joining the tech investing fray. He said he dedicated a lot of time to becoming a credible venture capitalist, including attending every Y Combinator demo day for the past decade. "If you want to have a job, you've got to do the work," he said. "It takes time, and a ton of mistakes." "I'm extremely open to listening, learning and absolutely dedicating a part of my life to this," she said. Ms. Acharia plans to keep presenting her with new investment ideas. "Maybe we're the new Ashton and Guy," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Tom Thibodeau, the Minnesota Timberwolves' coach and president, was abruptly fired on Sunday night after a 22 point victory. Following a 108 86 rout at home against the LeBron James less Los Angeles Lakers, Minnesota announced that it had ousted Thibodeau with two and a half seasons left on his five year contract, and less than two months removed from the trade of the longtime Thibodeau favorite Jimmy Butler to the Philadelphia 76ers. Ryan Saunders, son of the former Timberwolves coach Flip Saunders, was elevated to interim coach with the Wolves at 19 21 two games behind the eighth seeded Lakers in the Western Conference. Saunders, 32, will be the N.B.A.'s youngest coach. Thibodeau is the third N.B.A. coach to be fired this season, joining Fred Hoiberg of the Chicago Bulls and Tyronn Lue of the Cleveland Cavaliers. It was widely presumed that Thibodeau would be in trouble at season's end if he failed to secure a playoff berth after the headline making deterioration of Minnesota's relationship with Butler since the end of last season. The timing of this change, though, suggests that the Timberwolves felt a need to create two prime vacancies before Hoiberg finds a new job. The New York Times reported in December that the Wolves would probably be the only N.B.A. team to consider hiring Hoiberg to coach after his unsuccessful stint in Chicago, because of Hoiberg's close relationship with the Timberwolves' owner, Glen Taylor. ESPN reported Sunday night that the Wolves, though, are determined to keep the coaching and personnel roles separate in the future, meaning Hoiberg or anyone else they hire would have to choose one or the other. Thibodeau's dismissal leaves San Antonio's Gregg Popovich as the only coach in the 30 team N.B.A. who also holds personnel power as team president. But even Popovich does not operate in that manner, delegating virtually all of his personnel power to the team president, R. C. Buford. The Timberwolves ended a 13 year playoff drought last season by posting a 47 35 record, with Butler and the young center Karl Anthony Towns emerging as All Stars. Butler, however, rebuffed Minnesota's offer of a contract extension in July in the first hint of his discontent. He ultimately asked for a trade days before the start of training camp in September despite a long association with Thibodeau dating to their days in Chicago. Butler maintained that he had made his desire to leave Minnesota in free agency clear to the Wolves for months. But Thibodeau and his general manager, Scott Layden, did not begin to seek trades for Butler until training camp was underway and ultimately dealt him to Philadelphia on Nov. 12 for a package headlined by Dario Saric and Robert Covington. The team was 4 9 at the time. "I said let's let it go and see how things worked and I think now, we've gone up through halfway through the season and I don't think we're where we thought we would be or where we think we should be," Taylor told The Minneapolis Star Tribune. "I'm just looking at the results. The results are that I don't think we should've lost against Phoenix or Detroit or New Orleans or Atlanta. Maybe one of those games. We just lost against a bunch of teams that we're a better team." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
"It was fantastic," said Erika Wagner, Blue Origin's payload sales director, who was in West Texas. "We were watching across the valley and watching the rocket climb up." Tucked under the collar at the top of the booster on Tuesday's launch were prototypes of sensors that could help NASA astronauts safely reach the lunar surface in a few years. It is part of NASA's Tipping Point program, which seeks to push innovative technologies. "Although not identical to a lunar lander, it is representative in that full flight profile of approaching at a high rate of speed, and then throttling up an engine and doing a propulsive landing," said Stefan Bieniawski, who leads the Blue Origin side of the partnership with NASA. "In fact, I think we're actually at slightly higher speeds than you would be approaching the moon. So it gives a little bit of a stress test for some of these sensors." Unlike NASA's Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, which visited different parts of the moon, the space agency's current Artemis program aims to make repeated visits near the lunar South Pole, where eternally shadowed craters contain large amounts of water ice. That will require the ability to land close to the same spot again and again. A second NASA system aboard Tuesday's launch was a test of what is known as terrain relative navigation. Because there are no global positioning system satellites orbiting the moon, a spacecraft has to rely on its own smarts to determine its exact location. With this navigation system, a computer compares images taken by a camera with those stored onboard to determine its location. The navigation system was turned on close to where the New Shepard booster reached its highest point. "The terrain navigation does not sit there and say, 'Hey, I see a crater,'" Mr. Bieniawski said. "It's really looking for contrasts in the scene. And in that way, it really doesn't care whether it's on the moon or whether it's here on Earth." NASA paid Blue Origin 1.5 million to mount its systems on two flights of New Shepard. The second flight will add another lidar instrument that will create a three dimensional map of the landscape below in order to identify and avoid obstacles. "Our goal is to ready a plug and play precision landing system that NASA and industry can use based on a mission's specific need," Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, said in a statement. "This integrated New Shepard test will put us on that path, giving us unmatched intel about how the sensors, algorithms, and computer work together." While there were no people in the New Shepard capsule on Tuesday, it was not empty. It carried NASA financed science experiments as well as experimental cargo from private companies. New Shepard flights have already carried more than 100 payloads to the edge of space. He is trying to develop a system that can scoop up samples of dirt from an asteroid. BORE II contains crushed up material that is similar in composition to certain carbon rich asteroids. During the weightless portion of the flight, a tetrahedron shaped collection device, which Dr. Durda called a starfish, will unfold. Magnets mounted on the outer triangles the arms of the starfish should attract and hold onto some of the crushed rocks. The device will then fold up again, trapping the material. "It's kind of a biomimicry thing if you think about it," Dr. Durda said. "The way starfish feed is they kind of extrude their stomach out and they pull them back in and collect what they're doing. That's kind of what we're doing here." By testing the design on a suborbital flight, Dr. Durda can find out how much material can be collected and whether the apparatus operates without jamming. In the past, scientists wanting to study something in a weightless environment had other methods, but they all had drawbacks. They could drop an object off a tower, offering a few seconds of zero gravity or put an experiment on an airplane flying a path of an object in free fall, which provided about 20 seconds of floating. The luckiest experimenters could endeavor to be selected among the few projects sent to orbit, first on the space shuttle and now to the International Space Station. Vehicles known as sounding rockets also headed to about the same altitude as New Shepard goes, but because they flew only once, they were much more expensive. Tuesday's New Shepard vehicle has launched and landed seven times. With the new suborbital vehicles that fly repeatedly, the price of getting to space is much lower for NASA as well as for academic and private scientists. The most popular option, Mr. Smith said, is what Blue Origin calls a single storage locker. "That starts around 100,000 for about 25 pounds and something the size of, let's say, a microwave," he said. "But we also have many payloads that we use with students that go as low as 8,000." The suborbital research is a also sign that Blue Origin is making a turn to becoming a profitable business as it prepares to sell tickets to space tourists. It has yet to announce a date or price for those flights. "It's been a lot of growth in facilities personnel actually trying to understand how do we run this much more like a business as opposed to a research organization," Mr. Smith said. "We've also gone from virtually zero revenue to now making hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue annually." The company has competition for the market of sending experiments to space. Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which also plans to send space tourists on suborbital jaunts, has been flying experiments during its test flights. One from University of Florida scientists, for example, tested imaging technologies that capture the reaction of plants what genes are turned on and off to the stresses of spaceflight. (The same scientists had another iteration of the experiment aboard Tuesday's Blue Origin flight.) Virgin Galactic's space plane, known as SpaceShipTwo, is flown by two pilots, so it has carried people to space, but it will not fly paying passengers until next year. "The whole view of using these vehicles for research purposes has moved into the mainstream, and NASA has now been funding a lot of that kind of work." said S. Alan Stern, associate vice president of the space science and engineering division at Southwest Research Institute who has been selected by NASA to accompany his research on a future Virgin Galactic flight. Dr. Stern will operate a lowlight camera, used previously on the space shuttle, to test how well SpaceShipTwo can be used for astronomical observations. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
YAMHILL, Ore. The West has been burning, and one forest fire reached about five miles from the Most Beautiful Farm in the World, where I grew up here in the rolling hills west of Portland. I told my mom to get ready to evacuate in a hurry. She replied that the important things to save weren't documents but our farm dogs one of whom is wary of vehicles for fear that the next stop will be the vet. In the end the local fire was extinguished because of the heroic work of a local fire department made up mostly of volunteers. They were bolstered with a deluge of food, drinks and gratitude from the community. This was the best of rural America, and it was followed on Thursday night by what seemed the best sound in the world: rain pattering on the roof. Still, the fires fill me with disquiet for three closely related reasons. First is the fear that these fires and their accompanying smoke represent the new normal. Researchers estimate that air pollution in China causes 1.6 million deaths a year, and smoke from fires in the West may eventually cause respiratory diseases that claim more lives than the fires themselves. Second is frustration at the federal government's paralysis. Just a couple of months ago, President Trump rushed to send in unwanted federal agents to deal with protests and trash fires in downtown Portland, but he seems indifferent when millions of acres and thousands of homes burn across the West. "It'll start getting cooler," he advised, and that seems to be his strategy for fires, just as "it'll go away" was his strategy for managing the coronavirus. Third is the reaction of so many ordinary citizens here in Oregon and around the country: Instead of seeing these mammoth forest fires as a wake up call to the perils of a warming planet, they believe and spread wild conspiracy theories suggesting that these fires were the work of shadowy leftist arsonists. Trump and Fox News, along with various right wing websites, have nurtured a panic about the anti fascists known as antifa, so now we have groundless rumors that forest fires are being set by antifa or Black Lives Matter protesters. The climate, and the world, are changing. What challenges will the future bring, and how should we respond to them? What should our leaders be doing? Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, finds reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency. What are the worst climate risks in your country? Select a country, and we'll break down the climate hazards it faces. Where are Americans suffering most? Our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths in the U.S. What does climate devastation look like? In Sept. 2020, Michael Benson studied detailed satellite imagery. Here's the earth that he saw and the one he wants to see. These conspiracy theories aren't just coming from fringe figures. Michael Cross, the Republican nominee for attorney general of Oregon, alleged in a Facebook post: "I've heard of at least 14 people involved in starting these fires and this is just in the last 12 hours. ... Sounds to me like domestic terrorism." Likewise, a failed Republican Senate candidate in Oregon, Paul J. Romero Jr., falsely tweeted that six antifa activists had been arrested for arson. Let's be clear that there is zero evidence that political extremists have set any fires. The F.B.I. called the reports untrue and pleaded with the public not to spread rumors that "take valuable resources away from local fire and police agencies." Three sheriff's offices in Oregon issued similar statements. "STOP. SPREADING. RUMORS," begged the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, which added that "our 9 1 1 dispatchers and professional staff are being overrun" with calls based on false reports. There should be no mystery about what actually caused the fires to become so dangerous: dry conditions exacerbated by climate change coupled with an unusual windstorm. (At least 13 Oregon fires were started when the windstorm downed power lines, Willamette Week reported.) The scientific consensus is overwhelming: Higher temperatures dry out forests, creating a risk that we are entering an age of "megafire." Back in 2000, the First National Climate Assessment warned that the Northwest faced increased risk of fire danger, and it is one of the most discussed consequences of climate change. The conspiracy theories create real perils. Some citizens in Oregon set up armed roadblocks to stop cars and look for arsonists. A couple photographing fires in the town of Molalla somehow provoked rumors of antifa arsonists, prompting gunmen to search for them. "Apparently I came very close to being shot by a group of 'vigilantes,'" the woman, Jennifer Paulsen, tweeted afterward. I've seen militias set up armed checkpoints in countries like Yemen and Sudan, but I never expected to see them in my beloved home state. In Multnomah County, the sheriff warned that people could be arrested for setting up illegal checkpoints, and on Tuesday, sheriff's deputies issued criminal citations to three men for establishing a roadblock. This is an echo of something I wrote about in June: a hysteria in rural towns that they were about to be attacked by antifa, leading citizens to pull out their guns and gather to fight back. When the invaders never showed up, the vigilantes sometimes regarded this as vindication: They had scared off the attackers. All this rumormongering leaves me feeling that the social fabric is unraveling, as if the shared understanding of reality that is the basis for any society is eroding. The ugliness also raises a question: If we see this unraveling now when the science is clear and the rumors are so manifestly groundless, then what might happen in November if the election results are close? Brace yourselves. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
The actor Billy Dee Williams has been the very embodiment of cool charisma for decades in real life and as the smooth talking, cape wearing smuggler Lando Calrissian in the "Star Wars" universe (a role he's reprising for the first time since 1983 in the upcoming "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"). And while Williams's brand of cool has been synonymous with masculinity who can forget the slightly cringey machismo in those 1980s Colt 45 ads? in reality, Williams straddles the gender binary, according to a recent profile in Esquire magazine. "I think of myself as a relatively colorful character who doesn't take himself or herself too seriously," Williams said. When Esquire points out that Donald Glover, who played a young Calrissian in the "Solo" released in 2018, talked about the character's sexual and gender fluidity, "Williams lights up" and responds: "Really? That kid is brilliant." Last year, shortly after Jonathan Kasdan, a writer on "Solo," confirmed that Calrissian was pansexual (being attracted to people regardless of gender or sex), Glover said: "How can you not be pansexual in space?" While Williams, who has been married to Teruko Nakagami since the 1970s, did not outright claim to be gender fluid or otherwise, his/her embrace of gender fluid pronouns is part of a greater revelation in Hollywood and beyond though among celebrities who have recently opened up about their pronouns and gender, Williams is among the oldest. In September, the Grammy winning singer Sam Smith, 27, who identifies as genderqueer and nonbinary, publicly announced their pronouns. "Today is a good day so here goes," Smith wrote in an Instagram post. "I've decided I am changing my pronouns to they/them after a lifetime of being at war with my gender I've decided to embrace myself for who I am, inside and out." The nonbinary actor Asia Kate Dillon, 35, a star on Showtime's "Billions," talked to The New York Times earlier this year about their pronouns: they/them. "I can release she/her pronouns, I can use they/them," Dillon said. "This is who I am." And in an interview with Out Magazine in June, the "Queer Eye" star Jonathan Van Ness said that he identifies as nonbinary while retaining he/him pronouns. "I'm gender nonconforming," he said. "Like, some days I feel like a man, but then other days I feel like a woman." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
In terms of adult unemployment rates, the most recent figures for the United States (6.1 percent) and Britain (5.7 percent) are not that far from Germany's figure of 5.1 percent. The major difference is in youth unemployment, which is above 16 percent in the United States and above 20 percent in Britain. What accounts for that difference? Some of the credit goes to Germany's education and employment system for young workers, and to German policies that encourage employers facing downturns to reduce working hours rather than fire workers. In Germany, students are separated into different career tracks, with many put into a system that leads to apprenticeships rather than to college degrees. But that is not the entire story. The euro zone's troubles have helped Germany's export oriented economy. The weak euro has made Germany's exports more competitive against those of countries with which it competes, most notably the United States and Japan. Since the end of 2007, the euro is down about 10 percent against the dollar and about 20 percent against the yen. Were the euro zone to break up, there is little question that the value of a new German mark would rise sharply, while the currencies of many other members of the zone would fall relative both to the mark and other international currencies. That would depress German exports. The charts reflecting Germany's unemployment rates, if they were the only evidence available on world economic trends, would seem to indicate there was a mild downturn in 2009 that soon ended, with the economy recovering the next year. The United States charts would indicate a more severe downturn, followed by a recovery that began in 2010 and may now be gathering strength. In Britain, there has been much less progress since unemployment peaked in 2011. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
The Week in Tech: Big Brother May Be Watching, but for How Long? Each week, we review the week's news, offering analysis about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here. Hi, I'm Jamie Condliffe. Greetings from London. Here's a look at this past week's tech news: Reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement analyzed millions of motorists' photos using facial recognition without their knowledge outraged privacy advocates. And an outcry erupted in Detroit over the use of the technology on data from the city's prolific closed circuit television system. Proponents of facial recognition by government and law enforcement argue that it's an important security tool. But critics keep getting louder and more numerous. They contend that facial recognition is a fundamental invasion of privacy and that it is inaccurate and often biased against minorities. They also argue that the longer it's used, the more entrenched it will become, making it harder to stop in the future. "I think this has created a perfect storm for people to realize that substantive change is required," said Evan Selinger, a philosophy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Mr. Selinger, along with his colleague Woodrow Hartzog, last year called for an outright ban on the use of the technology by government and law enforcement. On Tuesday, the digital rights group Fight for the Future announced its own push for an outright ban. But how realistic are such proposals? There's some wind at their backs. Many lawmakers from Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Democrat of New York, to Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio think something must change. "It's time for a timeout," Mr. Jordan said Tuesday on National Public Radio. "Let's figure out how we can put in safeguards that protect our fundamental liberties." But in a House hearing on Wednesday examining the Department of Homeland Security's use of facial recognition, some lawmakers rejected the idea of a ban. It would be "an easy way to avoid hard questions," said Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Alabama. Judith Donath of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard said arguments about security were "likely to override" concerns about the technology. And "Congress has historically been reticent to influence state and local policing," said Alvaro Bedoya, director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University Law Center. If no full ban, though, then what? Three routes stand out. First, a moratorium, like the one that civil rights advocates sought from the House Committee on Homeland Security on Tuesday, when they asked for the Department of Homeland Security to "immediately suspend" use of facial recognition. Then there's a growing trend for local governments to introduce bans: San Francisco was the first city to restrict use of facial recognition by city authorities, and then Somerville, Mass., did something similar. A quasi national ban could bubble up if many more follow suit. Professor Donath argues that it may be easier to regulate through limits on how facial recognition data can be collected, stored and used by law enforcement and government. It looks increasingly as if Big Brother's gaze is destined to be limited. The questions now appear to be how, and by how much. Are we thinking about 5G all wrong? Stop me if you've heard this before: We're losing the 5G race to China, Huawei's dominance in the technology around the globe is a threat to national security, and we had better clamp down on it. But Tom Wheeler, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, explained that things were more nuanced. It's a wide ranging (often technical) analysis of the broader 5G policy landscape, and it's worth a read if you have the time. I chatted with him about it, and here are a few of his points about the China situation that I thought were interesting: Coming first may not be important. President Trump has said that "the race to 5G is a race that we must win," but it's not clear what that means. What might winning look like? "The U.S. wasn't first in any of the G's, and yet it's the dominant force in the wireless ecosystems," Mr. Wheeler said. "I believe that winning is dominance over the things that use the network," he added, as opposed to simply having the network in place first. Railing against Huawei could undermine the United States' dominance. The Trump administration has been trying to cut off Huawei from American tech, most recently by blocking American companies from selling to it. (That has softened a little, but the effect is unclear.) "My concern is that these trade policies are forcing the Chinese to develop their own alternatives" to United States technology, Mr. Wheeler said. The danger: that the resulting products and services are not just good but made widely available, and cheaply, too. "That will have an impact on our ability to lead," Mr. Wheeler said. So, now what? "There is a need for a policy strategy," Mr. Wheeler said. "We've got to define winning, and then do it!" Imagine you wrote some software that you thought was kind of naughty but also interesting, and you then made it publicly available. Then people were like: Sure, interesting, but not naughty intrusive, distasteful and dangerous. So you decide to take it down! Only, people who had downloaded it then uploaded it, putting it on code hosting websites like GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft. Policing what is on those code hosting sites is nearly impossible. Once software is published online, there's no getting it back, really, because there are so many corners of the web to put it in. GitHub is banning code from DeepNude, the app that used A.I. to create fake nude pictures of women. Motherboard, which first reported on DeepNude last month, confirmed that the Microsoft owned software development platform won't allow DeepNude projects. GitHub told Motherboard that the code violated its rules against "sexually obscene content," and it's removed multiple repositories. So, the horrors of nudifying A.I. are on the loose. Forever. Twitter backed off a broad overhaul of its policies on speech, focusing on removing hate against religion instead of all "dehumanizing" content. Mr. Trump hosted a social media summit. Facebook and Twitter weren't invited, but a long line of pro Trump influencers were. How democratic! Huawei's state ties remain under scrutiny. A study of leaked resumes said there was "strong evidence" of "a deep and lasting relationship between Huawei, its employees and the Chinese state." The Pentagon's cloud contract was hit by more controversy. The Wall Street Journal reported on a 2017 meeting between Jim Mattis, who was the defense secretary, and an Amazon executive. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Milwaukee has gone by many nicknames over the years: Cream City, Brew Town, the German Athens. But a lesser known, more local handle Smallwaukee may best capture the personality of this Wisconsin city of 600,000, which can feel like a small town in big city clothing, embodying the advantages of both. The fortunes of the Bucks and Brewers are followed in unpretentious taverns that wouldn't feel out of place on a rural crossroads, and traditional meat and potato eateries are as patronized as the latest farm to table restaurant. The sleek new Hop streetcar line can take you to the Milwaukee Public Market, with its array of local foodstuffs, or within walking distance of the Santiago Calatrava designed Milwaukee Art Museum, one of the most beautiful repositories of art in the world. Smallwaukee will grow very large indeed next July when the Democratic National Convention descends upon the city, with downtown's new Fiserv Forum as its epicenter. The convention's choice is sneakily apt. Terms like progressivism and democratic socialism, which add crackle and spark to today's national political conversation, are not academic concepts here. The city elected Socialist mayors for 38 of the last century's 100 years, and sent the first Socialist, Victor Berger, to the House of Representatives in 1910. And, rest assured, they were the kind of politicians you could have a beer with. Five dollars will gain you access to the curious new National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, which opened in February, but is already home to more than 10,000 bobbleheads, the jokey plastic figurines with oversize, spring loaded heads. A good percentage of those came from the collections of the museum's co founders, Phil Sklar and Brad Novak, but many more have been donated. Most are sports oriented, as you might expect, but there are outliers, like the casts of "Duck Dynasty" and "Home Alone." Next year will bring a political exhibition, with bobbleheads representing every president (bobbing Martin Van Buren, anyone?) and many of the candidates seeking the nomination. If you have a car, take the Daniel Hoan Memorial Bridge to the popular Bay View neighborhood. The 1977 span, named after Milwaukee's longest serv ing Socialist mayor, is the city's most visible tribute to its progressive past. The Serbian restaurant Three Brothers, which opened in the 1950s, predates the recent resurgence of Bay View by several decades, but remains a vital member of the community. It is situated inside a tavern that was once tied to the Milwaukee based Schlitz brewery, and seems to rise up out of nowhere at the end of a quiet residential block. (Check out the Schlitz "belted globe" symbol on the roof). Inside, ceiling fans slowly spin over a small collection of tables and a long, mural backed bar. An Old World atmosphere and pace prevail. You are advised to leave your rushed schedule behind, as many of the traditional dishes take time to prepare. These include many menu items accompanied by the phrase "served with potato dumplings" and the signature burek ( 19.50), a flaky pastry, filled with beef or cheese or spinach. Both waiters and regulars said it can't be finished in one sitting. Said one diner recently, "I've got a few lunches here." Drive along Interstate 94 through Milwaukee and you can't miss the looming dome of the Basilica of St. Josaphat. It was finished in 1901, using materials carted up from the structurally unsound Chicago Post Office and Custom House, and served what was then a largely Polish neighborhood. It has been a prominent part of the skyline ever since. It's worth getting off the highway to tour the vast ornate interior. A detailed brochure leads you through the highlights, including the ornate, white marble pulpit and the dazzling gold leaf covered baldacchino above the high altar. Just across the street from the basilica is the unassuming El Salvador Restaurant, which is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and makes a fine pupusa, a thick cornmeal tortilla with various fillings (most are just 2). Grab a few to go and stroll along the large pond that dominates nearby Kosciuszko Park, just one piece of Milwaukee's excellent public park system. The system was the brainchild of Charles B. Whitnall, a former florist who helped form FTD, served as the city's first Socialist treasurer and was secretary of the Milwaukee County Park Commission from its beginning in 1907 until 1941. Frank Lloyd Wright is Wisconsin's favorite architectural son, and Milwaukee has its share of Wright works. One block on Burnham Street boasts a whole row of them, modest homes that are examples of the architect's stab at affordable housing. These six houses were essentially built as model home showpieces. The one at 2714 Burnham is fully restored; tours are on the half hour, starting at 12:30 p.m., on Saturdays in the fall (adult admission: 15). Another is actually available as a rental. For something more elaborate, check out Wright's Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in nearby Wauwatosa, a circular spiritual spaceship whose large, blue dome mirrors the sky above when the weather cooperates. (To see the interior, your best bet is to visit on Sunday during services.) Fiserv Forum, the undulating new home of the recently ascendant Milwaukee Bucks, will serve as home base for the Democratic convention. Within a stone's throw away are two very different drinking options. Right across the plaza, in the newly coined "Deer District," is the Drink Wisconsinbly Pub. The bar grew out of a popular T shirt slogan that has become the state's cheeky unofficial motto. It's a goofy, fun loving joint. There's a lot for sale, including T shirts, hats and glassware. Brandy old fashioneds are dispensed from a bubbler (Wisconsinese for drinking fountain), and the men's room is adorned with photos of famous Wisconsinites, including Willem Dafoe, Orson Welles and, er, Kato Kaelin, an actor who was a witness in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. A few yards south on Vel R. Phillips Avenue, which was renamed in 2018 after the Wisconsin politician and civil rights activist is the much older Turner Hall. It was built in 1882 by the Turners, a progressive German athletic, cultural and political association. All three of Milwaukee's Socialist mayors were Turners. ("A sound mind in a sound body" was the group's motto.) The grandly dishabille upstairs ballroom may have inspired the still remembered 1891 pop hit "After the Ball." The building still performs its original function, but has recently been given contemporary relevance by some snazzy new signage and the arrival of Tavern at Turner Hall, where, if you're looking for a filling snack, you can order the Milwaukee Mac, a mash up of bratwurst and macaroni and cheese. Be sure to inspect the bar's 19th century murals depicting moments in Turner and Milwaukee history. There is no need to peruse the food menu at Sobelman's, a brunch institution in yet another old Schlitz house. Just order a bloody mary; your meal arrives in the form of a garnish as large as the drink (from 9 to 60) . The Baconado, for instance, includes a skewer of bacon wrapped jalapeno cheese balls. The Bloody Beast, served in a large Bell jar, comes with a whole fried chicken balanced atop it. Don't send back the "schnitt" of beer the bartender sets down. That's not a mistake. Any Milwaukeean would feel shortchanged if their bloody didn't come with a sidecar of suds. Milwaukee's done a decent job of preserving its old structures. But its most ancient building, by far, is this medieval oddity, slipped snugly into the Marquette University campus. There's a long story behind the tiny church's journey in 1926 from the Rhone Valley to the Long Island estate of a Joan of Arc fixated railroad heiress to Marquette in 1966. And the quiet stone refuge, simply adorned with tapestries that predate the building, and stained glass that postdate it, provides just the atmosphere to take it all in. A short walk away is the beautifully preserved mansion of the Schlitz rival, Captain Frederick Pabst. If the Flemish Renaissance Revival structure isn't enough to tell you how well the father of Pabst Blue Ribbon did for himself back in the day when he was one of the nation's leading citizens, a tour of the august, dark wood interior will clinch it. Take note of Pabst's well appointed study, which contains an enormous humidor to hold the Captain's beloved cigars, and secret panels used to stash liquor, documents and whatever else a beer baron might want to hide. (Adults 14). The Ambassador Hotel (2308 West Wisconsin Avenue) is a recently refurbished Art Deco gem from 1927. There's a restaurant, cafe and cocktail bar called the Gin Rickey on site. Liberace was the house pianist in the 1930s. And Kennedy and the Beatles visited in the 1960s. Rooms start at around 80. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Google Earth has unlocked the gates to ancient mysteries around the world. For years, amateur and professional archaeologists have used the search engine's satellite imagery to discover mysterious earthworks in Kazakhstan, Roman ruins, a forgotten fortress in Afghanistan and more. In the past decade, Google Earth also has helped identify thousands of burial sites and other "works of the old men," as they're called, scattered across Saudi Arabia. Now, archaeologists have uncovered nearly 400 previously undocumented stone structures they call "gates" in the Arabian desert that they believe may have been built by nomadic tribes thousands of years ago. "We tend to think of Saudi Arabia as desert, but in practice there's a huge archaeological treasure trove out there and it needs to be identified and mapped," said David Kennedy, an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia and author of a paper set to appear in the November issue of the journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. "You can't see them very well from the ground level, but once you get up a few hundred feet, or with a satellite even higher, they stand out beautifully." Since 1997, Dr. Kennedy has flown planes and helicopters over Saudi Arabia's neighbor Jordan, photographing the angular and wheel like structures scattered over its lava field or harrat. Not much is known about the people who built the edifices, but they are thought to have constructed them at least 2,000 years ago and maybe as far back as 9,000 years ago, according to Dr. Kennedy. They are believed to be the ancestors of the modern day Bedouin people in the region. The most well known of the basalt boulder structures are the "kites," which were first identified by air pilots in the 1920s. Each looks like a child's kite, complete with strings and long fluttering tails that are two dimensionally flattened into the ground. Archaeologists think ancient nomadic tribes used the kites, which can be more than a mile long, for hunting. The structure's two long converging walls would funnel stampedes of gazelles into the body of the kite, where they would be slaughtered. But the lava fields extend beyond Jordan's borders into countries like Syria and Saudi Arabia. So do their mysteries. Saudi Arabia in particular offers a wealth of harrats that are just out of Dr. Kennedy's reach. "We would have loved to fly across into Saudi Arabia to take images. But you never get the permission," he said. "And then along comes Google Earth." In 2004, Dr. Abdullah Al Saeed, a neurologist and founder of the Desert Team, a group of amateur archaeologists in Saudi Arabia, explored the bleak lava field known as Harrat Khaybar. He saw walls of stones stacked about three feet high, but said that he did not appreciate their unique design at that time. Then in 2008 he returned to the same spot from his desktop computer. "When I saw the updated images of Harrat Khaybar from Google Earth, I was literally stunned and could not sleep that night," Dr. Al Saeed said in an email. "Flying like a bird all over the Harrat from one enigmatic structure to another! How come we passed by these structures without appreciating their design?" He spoke to his colleagues, and they set out to investigate the most striking structure they saw in person. The Harrat Khaybar was more than 550 miles from Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. So they took a plane to a nearby city, rented a car and set out for the volcanic domes. In order to navigate the rocky terrain, they had to do much of their exploration on foot through the lava field. "The question we always discuss while investigating them is, why here? Why in this stony, frightful, rugged land?" he said. He snapped several photos and sent them along with the Google images to archaeologists like Dr. Kennedy for feedback. "Absolute bafflement." That's what Dr. Kennedy said he felt when he first saw the satellite images. Suddenly, he was confronted with structures quite different from anything he had ever seen before. He called them gates because when looked at horizontally, they resemble a simple fence with two thick upright posts on the sides connected by one or more long bars. For nearly a decade, he has painstakingly cataloged nearly 400 gates. In 2011, his work was featured by Google in a video (for which he was paid). The longest gate he had identified was more than 1,600 feet long, though most were between 160 and 500 feet long. Sometimes the posts were as thick as 30 feet. One gate is intertwined with a kite. Next he hopes to get accurate dating of the gates, which he suspects may in some cases be older than the kites, and perhaps the oldest man made structures in the landscape. He invites armchair archaeologists to search the harrats online and share any finds with him. "More will be found as more people get involved in scouring the landscape from satellite imagery," he said. Stephan Kempe, a retired professor of physical geology at Technische Universitat Darmstadt in Germany, who was not involved in the paper, called the gate structures interesting and said that the new study was one of a series of papers describing previously unnoticed structures in the Saudi Arabian lava fields. "There are many other features that have only recently been understood as forming classes of prehistoric 'geoglyphs' that were widespread in an area thought to be very barren and devoid of human impact," he said in an email. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
A huge flock of purple martins is using Nashville as a staging ground for the fall migration and bringing music back to the city's shuttered symphony center. NASHVILLE At first they circle high in the evening sky. But as night descends, they, too, begin to descend, bird by bird, one at a time, and then all in a rush: 150,000 purple martins swirling together, each bird calling to the others in the failing light as they sweep past the tops of buildings in the heart of downtown Nashville. To anyone watching from the ground, they look like one great airborne beast, one unmistakable, singular mind. Their music grows louder and louder as the circles tighten and the birds swing lower and lower, settling in the branches of sidewalk trees, or swerving to take off again as new waves of birds dip down. They circle the building and return. They lift off, circle, reverse, settle, lift off again. Again and again and again, until finally it is dark. Their chittering voices fall silent. Their rustling wings fall still. It is not like Hitchcock: Watching these birds is nothing at all like watching crows and sea gulls and sparrows attack the characters in "The Birds," Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film. The purple martins that have been gathering here the past few weeks are merely doing what purple martins always do this time of year: flocking together to fatten up on insects before making the long flight to South America, where they will spend the winter. That's not to say the birds aren't causing problems. The place where they have chosen to roost this time is Nashville's Schermerhorn Symphony Center, which was already having a terrible year. With all scheduled programming canceled or postponed by the pandemic and so much of the symphony budget based on ticket sales, the organization had no choice but to furlough all the musicians and most of the staff and hope for better days. What the Nashville Symphony got instead was a plaza full of bird droppings and elm trees so burdened by the weight of 150,000 birds alighting in them night after night that whole limbs are now bent and hanging limp. The folks at the Schermerhorn at first assumed the birds roosting in their trees were starlings. Downtown Nashville is home to a large number of European starlings that live here year round, and they have been a nuisance in years past. It's easy to mistake a flock of purple martins for a flock of starlings, especially when actual starlings join the martin flock from time to time. Starlings are an invasive species, introduced during the early 1890s by Shakespeare enthusiasts determined to bring to the United States every bird ever mentioned in Shakespeare. All 200 million starlings now living in North America are descended from a few dozen birds unwisely released into Central Park during the late 19th century. Thanks to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, it is against the law to kill native songbirds. It is perfectly legal to kill starlings. The transcendently beautiful Schermerhorn is built of limestone, which is highly porous. "The sheer amount of bird poop was causing a massive amount of damage," my old friend Jonathan Marx, the interim chief operating officer of the Nashville Symphony, said when I called him to ask about the purple martins. "But we never had any intention of killing the birds. We just wanted them to move on." The plan was to disperse them by fogging the trees with grapeseed oil. Purple martins have been roosting in the Nashville area for years at least since 1996, according to Melinda Welton, the conservation policy co chair of the Tennessee Ornithological Society though always before in much smaller numbers. Among birders, word quickly got around that the purple martins had settled in at the Schermerhorn this year, and in far, far greater numbers than ever before. "It's a pretty remarkable roost definitely one of the larger ones in the country," Joe Siegrist, the president and chief executive of the Purple Martin Conservation Association, said on the phone last week. Which is why Kim Bailey, Kim Matthews, John Noel, Anne Paine, Ms. Welton and Mary Glynn Williamson went into action as soon as Mr. Noel noticed a pest control truck on the symphony plaza. It was, as Mr. Marx put it, "a collision of people who are taking care of their property with people who are staring in awe and wonder at the birds." Purple martins are already in trouble from virtually every angle imaginable. Climate change has intensified hurricane season, making the fall migration even more perilous. Deforestation has destroyed the birds' natural nesting sites, and aggressive nonnative species like starlings and house sparrows have claimed most of those that remain. Like other swallows, purple martins are insectivores, but pesticides have made food scarce. One reason the birds chose Nashville as their migration staging ground may be its proximity to the insect rich Cumberland River. That night, while Ms. Bailey, who works as a staff naturalist at the Warner Parks Nature Center, explained to the exterminators that purple martins are a federally protected species, others in the group starting calling and texting and messaging everyone they could think of who might be able to help: News Channel 5, the mayor's office, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, and local conservation nonprofits like the Tennessee Wildlife Federation, the Nature Conservancy in Tennessee, and the Nashville Wildlife Conservation Center. Those folks reached others, who in turn contacted others still. With phones ringing and emails flying and social media on fire, the exterminators hastily decamped. The group stayed put, Ms. Bailey told me in an email, until they received assurances from a T.W.R.A. officer that he had contacted the pest control company and the truck would not be returning that night. And now, like a flock of purple martins, this story veers in an unexpected direction. A tale of conflict becomes instead the story of human beings who listened to one another and then came up with a plan that benefits everyone involved, and the birds most of all. Mr. Marx heard from a number of conservation groups that evening and others the following day. Each time he explained that the symphony staff had no idea they were hosting purple martins and, now that they knew the truth, would never harm or harass the birds. But he also pointed out that the flock had already caused significant property damage: The cost of power washing the front of the building alone is at least 10,000, and that's not even addressing the rest of the building or the damage to the trees. "As soon as we heard that, we started trying to think of ways in which we could work together," Terry Cook, the state director for the Nature Conservancy in Tennessee, told me. "One, we wanted to mitigate the current impact of the roost, but, two, we wanted to think about long term opportunities to either make the site less preferable to purple martins in future years or to embrace this as a unique Nashville event." Within hours, the Tennessee Wildlife Federation and the Nature Conservancy in Tennessee had joined forces to start a fund raising campaign to help with cleanup costs. "In the conservation community, we felt like we needed to rally around this problem so the symphony wouldn't have to carry this burden alone," said the Tennessee Wildlife Federation's Kendall McCarter, who hosts a nesting colony of purple martins in his own yard every year. "Especially right now, when they're in a very difficult place because of Covid." The initial campaign to pay for power washing the Schermerhorn's facade was fully funded within hours, but the appeal is ongoing, and any extra money it raises will be used to treat damage to the trees, to replace trees that can't be saved, and to help with costs that arise during future purple martin migrations. Because the birds, which seem to prefer well lighted roosts, will most likely be back. In one way of looking at it, this rescue operation mimics the long relationship between human beings and purple martins themselves: Even as we are responsible for the birds' troubles, we are also responsible for their survival. The population east of the Rocky Mountains, where 98 percent of all purple martins live, "is completely reliant on people putting up bird houses for them to reproduce in," said Mr. Siegrist. "If people didn't do that, the bird would go extinct in the majority of its range. Each one of those birds putting on that spectacular display in downtown Nashville exists because people cared enough to put up a bird house. Each one of those birds came from somebody's backyard." "We're so thankful to have community partners who are willing to help us deal with this completely unexpected situation," said Mr. Marx, "because we need to be putting our focus on the fund raising that's going to allow us to bring our musicians back to work. This is a time when so many people are under so many forms of duress, but one thing we know is that music is one of those things that brings people together." Until then, this collaboration between naturalists and the symphony is, for everyone involved, a happy ending at a time when people are desperate for happy endings. "I'm so excited about how it's been handled there in Nashville," Mr. Siegrist said. "I think it can be a blueprint for other communities." I find myself dreaming of a time when the musicians of the Nashville Symphony are back in that beautiful space, perhaps even playing a sunset concert, the doors of the Schermerhorn thrown wide to the music of purple martins swooping down from the sky. What a glorious sound that would be, after this year of silence and fear. What a gift to gather together and hear that music the music our own species makes and the music of the birds. Both at once. You can donate to the campaign to pay for purple martin cleanup at this Tennessee Wildlife Federation website, and support the Nashville Symphony, here. Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the book "Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
You tweeted that you're putting your career in jeopardy with "Cardinal." Why? I think my career is in trouble because all careers are always in trouble. It's an ebb and flow of stuff. You've got to take a realistic look at the stuff that you've done and made and not all my things have been super successful, so that's where the joke comes from. Seriously, what is your level of nervousness right now? My level of nervousness is high. I'm not a super nervous guy in general. I don't live a ton of my life in my head. Every day, working on this is like being in Europe. Things are just slightly off and you have an intuition of how it would work but you don't know. You still know how to exist but it's just everything is a little bit different. 'The outlets are different. O.K., I just have to get a new adapter.' Everything takes a little more time, so it makes me nervous. You've focused primarily on sitcoms and indie films in the last several years, so why suddenly turn to theater? I'm turning 36 and I really want to be good. I really want to be good at what I do. I've been doing this for like 10 years and when you start out it's a passion and it's fun and it's kind of loose, the way I viewed it. Jobs would come and go and I knew that stuff would be there and not be there. And I just hit this point where I felt like I really wanted to be really good. And I didn't know how to do that. You don't think you were good on "Happy Endings" and "The Mindy Project"? I think I am good but I think I can be better. You only have a short time to do all this stuff because of your age. Everything is constantly changing. I really wanted to make sure that I was thought of as one of the best. I think the only way to do that is to start making sure that you've touched everything. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Last week, the Dave Matthews Band and Kids See Ghosts, the latest Kanye West project, released new albums and competed to be Billboard's next No. 1. Kids See Ghosts ended up with 10 times as many streams, yet Dave Matthews Band sold three times as many copies of the full album. Which one took the top spot? Demonstrating the strange math of the current music industry, in which streaming is king but a healthy week of CD and download sales can upend the charts, the winner is the Dave Matthews Band. The group's new "Come Tomorrow" (RCA) opened at No. 1 with 285,000 copies, but had just 9.4 million streams about what an album by Mr. West or Post Malone streams on an average day. Yet according to the formula that Nielsen and Billboard use to compile chart positions, an album sale counts far more than a stream, so a big seller can easily top a big streamer. With this calculus, "Come Tomorrow" was credited with the "equivalent" of 292,000 album sales, while Mr. West and Kid Cudi's "Kids See Ghosts" which had 92 million streams but sold just 79,000 copies as a full album had only 142,000 equivalent sales. Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. Complicating the issue further is the fact that the Dave Matthews Band benefited from a bundling deal that included the album with the cost of a concert ticket a strategy that artists like Pink, Shawn Mendes, Arcade Fire and Bon Jovi have all used for help in reaching the top of the chart. "Come Tomorrow" is the Dave Matthews Band's seventh No. 1 album. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
A federal jury in New Hampshire said a former college professor and her son defrauded a Wall Street titan by selling him a series of fake paintings they claimed were by the modern artist Leon Golub. After deliberating for about two hours, the civil court jury in Federal District Court in Concord on Thursday ordered Lorettann Gascard, 70, formerly of Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire, and her son Nikolas Gascard, 36, to repay Andrew J. Hall, a trader and a prolific art collector, 465,000. The lawyer for the Gascards, William B. Pribis, had no comment and said no decision had been made about an appeal. But the finding seemed to end a saga that began when Mr. Hall, who had amassed a fortune with canny trades in oil markets, started building a personal art collection, including many works by Golub, an American postwar painter whose art explored dire political conditions with expressionistic, heroic scale figures. Mr. Hall believed Golub's work was undervalued and due to appreciate. Read more about the case. From 2009 to 2011, Mr. Hall bought 24 paintings from the Gascards, including several at Christie's and Sotheby's auction houses in New York, one on an online auction site, and 16 directly from the Gascards after Nikolas Gascard reached out and made contact with Mr. Hall. A foundation established to promote work by Golub and his wife, the artist Nancy Spero, examined the paintings and found problems, including no record of the Gascard Golubs in the foundation's database and "a number of unusual formal characteristics during in person examinations of the paintings," according to court papers. The Gascards denied the paintings were fakes. Ms. Gascard said that she had gotten to know Golub while attending his classes at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J., in the late 1970s, and that they had become close friends until his death in 2004. She and her son told the court that Golub had given her some works and that members of her family who lived in Germany had separately collected Golubs, which the Gascards found and retrieved following their relatives' deaths. Mr. Gascard did admit to making up titles and dates for some of the paintings, saying in a deposition that he had arrived at the dates based "on my research and the style of painting," according to The Keene Sentinel. Mr. Hall's lawyer, Ted Poretz, called to the stand a Golub expert, Jon Bird, a professor emeritus at Middlesex University in London, who testified that the works Mr. Hall was sold demonstrated clear differences with Golub's style. Showing some of the works to the jurors, Professor Bird said that the dates of the works did not match Golub's style at that time and that they did not appear to have been made with Golub's familiar scraping technique. Instead, the paint had been layered on, Mr. Poretz said. Professor Bird also said the depiction of human forms did not share the same nuance that Golub was known for, Mr. Poretz said. At Franklin Pierce, Ms. Gascard taught undergraduate art history and drawing and supervised the college art gallery. An artist herself, practicing a technique called rust art, she often walked around campus wearing white gloves and dark glasses, faculty colleagues said. She left Franklin Pierce in 2015 after an unrelated dispute with the administration. Ms. Gascard said that she did not paint, but a former neighbor came forward at the last minute, testifying at the trial that she had often smelled paint and had seen painting tools and unfinished paintings in the basement she shared with Ms. Gascard, Mr. Hall said. In an interview, Mr. Hall said that even though some people wondered why he had wanted to draw attention to the fact that he had been tricked, he said he was glad he had pursued the case and now felt vindicated. "People thought maybe I was rash and should put it down to one of life's rich experiences," he said. "But people defrauding other people, especially in the art market, should not be allowed to get away with it." Mr. Hall said that though he was satisfied because he was getting his money back, "I am even happier for Leon Golub and his legacy that was being impaired by this whole business." "I hope it's cleared the air," he said. Mr. Hall earned his fortune making large bets in commodities markets. In 2009, at the helm of Phibro, part of Citigroup, he was set to receive a 100 million bonus. That became a flash point for national anger over executive pay at a time when Citigroup had accepted bailout money from the federal government after the financial crisis. In the interview, he said he did not know what he was going to do with the Gascard paintings. "Probably have a big bonfire," Mr. Hall said. The jury found for Mr. Hall's claim against Nikolas Gascard for fraud, and against both Nikolas and Lorettann Gascard for conspiracy to defraud. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Single Payer Health Care in California: Here's What It Would Take If wholesale opposition to President Trump is one litmus test for progressive Democrats, another as the governor's race in California is proving is health care. All the leading Democratic contenders in the June 5 primary have pledged support for a single payer system run by the state. The front runner, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco, has made it the centerpiece of his campaign. "There's no reason to wait around on universal health care and single payer in California," he has declared. Even beyond California, many Democrats are hoping to energize supporters by taking a cue from Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign, which embraced a single payer system, "Medicare for All." But the idea primarily functions as a rallying cry. "Voters are thinking about the fundamental values associated with single payer," said Kelly Hall, an independent health consultant who works with the Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers in California, which has endorsed Mr. Newsom. "Almost zero voters have thought about the policy implications." In this case, "implications" could be another word for booby traps. Even a state as big, wealthy and liberal as California with the world's fifth largest economy and nearly 40 million people would find itself hamstrung by money, a legal and regulatory thicket, and highly motivated opposition. "You're talking 20 percent of California's economy," said Dana Goldman, the director of the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California. "The savings you're going to get are going to come out of someone's pockets." Even Mr. Newsom sounded a cautious note recently, conceding it could take years to erect such a system: "It is not an act that would occur by the signature of the next governor." A bigger stumbling block comes from employer plans, which cover roughly 43 percent of Californians. Federal law, in effect, prohibits states and localities from dictating how private employers that self insure should structure their plans. So employers unwilling to take part in a California run insurance system wouldn't have to. Officials could try to persuade them by offering cheaper coverage and fewer administrative headaches. But if, say, Google and Disney want to stick with the coverage they have, they can. Changing that law would require an act of Congress. The phrase 'higher taxes' is less popular than 'single payer.' Let's, for the moment, magically eliminate the legal and regulatory roadblocks: Poof! California transfers its share of Medicaid and Medicare money to its own single payer system, and it convinces every private employer to drop its existing coverage and join. Where is the rest of the money to cover the uninsured going to come from? The state could look to cut costs: eliminate intermediaries, including insurance companies; reduce administrative costs; negotiate lower prices for drugs; and pay hospitals and doctors Medicare rates rather than higher private plan prices. Broader health coverage could also help reduce pricey emergency room visits and improve preventive care, which could head off more serious illnesses and higher costs down the road. Still, expanding coverage costs more for a reason: When people have it, they use it. The total price tag would depend on what's covered, but eliminating deductibles and co payments, as a recent California bill proposed, further raises costs. A legislative analysis of that bill, which offered free medical care for every resident including undocumented immigrants, estimated the final tally would be about 400 billion a year more than double the state's budget. About half that sum could come from existing Medicare and Medicaid dollars, according to the analysis. What employees and employers currently spend would cover another 100 billion to 150 billion. But the remaining 50 billion to 100 billion would require new taxes such as a 15 percent payroll tax on earned income. A separate analysis put the bill's cost at 331 billion, accounting for savings achieved through efficiencies and preventive care, among other things. Whatever the figure, even supporters concede that it would require a higher sales tax and increased taxes on large businesses. Ardent proponents, like the California Nurses Association, are undeterred. "It really is about the political will," said Catherine Kennedy, a longtime nurse who lives in Carmichael, outside of Sacramento. "We can find the money." Democrats overwhelmingly favor single payer plans in polls, but the phrase means different things to different people. To some, "single payer" is just a way of saying coverage for everyone. To others, it means eliminating the profit motive from health care. Or it represents simplicity an end to paperwork, deductibles, co payments and preapprovals. "I do support a single payer system," said Steven Cohen, a retired engineer, who lives with his wife, Terri, a retired schoolteacher, in Valencia. Even though he is on Medicare, Mr. Cohen, 71, said a recent switch in his medication for rheumatoid arthritis caused his out of pocket drug costs to rise sharply. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries now have too much clout, he said. When asked if he would still support single payer if it meant higher taxes, however, Mr. Cohen said no: "Raising taxes to offset the cost of health insurance is not the best approach." And he is unwilling to trade his Medicare coverage for a state based version, "unless it changes for the better." A nationwide Kaiser Family Foundation survey last September found similar sentiments. A majority favored the idea of a single payer national health plan. But when those surveyed were told that the role of employers in health care would be ended, that governmental control would grow, or that people would have to trade in their existing coverage, support fell below 40 percent. Consider what happened in Colorado. In 2016, surveys showed wide support for a single payer plan, but when an initiative was put on the ballot, it got just 21 percent of the vote. Of course, changing the message and the details can similarly drum up support, or flop those who previously flipped, but the variability shows how quickly voters can turn. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
COMPANY STEFANIE BATTEN BLAND at East River Park (Aug. 10, 8 p.m.). In a new work, "Patient(ce)," Ms. Batten Bland pairs her high powered movement with music by the multifaceted jazz funk ensemble Burnt Sugar. Giving everyone a chance to sweat, the evening, part of the City Parks Foundation's SummerStage series, opens with a free contemporary movement class for all ages and levels, led by the fitness instructor Calvin Wiley. cityparksfoundation.org MALPASO DANCE COMPANY at Rumsey Playfield (Aug. 9, 8 p.m.). Cuba's leading contemporary dance troupe, directed by Osnel Delgado, offers this night of dancing outdoors in Central Park. Selections from the company's repertory share a program with the jazz musician Dayme Arocena and the D.J. and producer Nickodemus. The show, a SummerStage presentation, follows a 6 p.m. panel discussion on Cuban music and dance. And for those who want to pick up some Malpaso moves, the group is hosting Afro Cuban modern dance classes, also presented by City Parks Foundation, on Monday and Tuesday at the Ailey Extension school. cityparksfoundation.org aileyextension.com | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Halfway through what was ambitiously billed as a wide open season featuring more potential champions than usual in the N.B.A., three teams have separated themselves. The Milwaukee Bucks and the co tenants of the Staples Center in Los Angeles LeBron James's Lakers and Kawhi Leonard's Clippers are in a tier of their own at the top. That's the more realistic way to look at the league after it passed the 615 game mark on Thursday on a regular season schedule that features 1,230. To fully sort out the N.B.A.'s 1 to 30 landscape, as is customary here at this juncture, I have reconvened what is known as the Committee (of One) to assemble a team by team progress report in the form of N.B.A. Power Rankings. What used to be a weekly endeavor for me is only a once a season undertaking every January now. But the committee's mission is the same as it has been since it was founded for the 2002 3 season. The aim is to produce a more up to date and detailed assessment than the standings do, measuring what is happening in the present against each team's big picture outlook with dollops of subjectivity and whimsy thrown in. Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein's weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. So much for the notion that this team can't prove anything to its critics until the postseason. Milwaukee has managed to stay uber focused anyway, riding its No. 2 offense and No. 1 defense to establish a 70 win pace and, more important, hush much of the speculation about Giannis Antetokounmpo's future. The Bucks are an obvious No. 1, while a better than ever Antetokounmpo closes in on a second consecutive Most Valuable Player Award despite playing only 30.8 minutes per game. Apart from a four game losing streak in December and some Kyle Kuzma trade speculation, Lakerland has largely been devoid of drama for as long as the committee can remember. The worry, of course, is that the Lakers are relying too heavily on two players, but LeBron James and Anthony Davis look every ounce the dream pairing they appeared to be on paper while Frank Vogel has stepped into a coaching caldron as gracefully as he could have hoped. The committee has been pushing for the ever deliberate Nuggets to liven up a sleepy trade season by trying to swing a splashy deal for a difference maker like New Orleans guard Jrue Holiday. The counter to such requests: Denver believes Michael Porter Jr., who finally appears healthy enough to take on a regular role, may provide the jolt the Nuggets need to threaten the Lakers and Clippers even with Nikola Jokic gradually emerging from his slow start. The N.B.A.'s defending champions rank among this season's leaders in games lost to injury. Toronto also happens to be on a 54 win pace despite its injury issues and the departures of Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green to Los Angeles, which have only enhanced the reputations of Pascal Siakam, Kyle Lowry and Coach Nick Nurse. Although the Raptors would surely take it as disrespect in the wake of their title run, Canada's team is on this season's list of pleasant surprise teams. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have overcome the disappointment of a humbling seventh place finish with U.S.A. Basketball at the FIBA World Cup in China last summer to play their way into All Star contention. And Kemba Walker has allowed Boston to smoothly move on from the messy end of the Kyrie Irving era. In few corners, though, are the Celtics considered a legitimate title threat. Thus, it'll be interesting to watch how (Trader) Danny Ainge proceeds. Jimmy Butler and the Heat were right: He has been a perfect fit on South Beach. Butler, who described himself in an October interview as "a little extra at times," has given Miami a true foundational player alongside the surprise All Star candidate Bam Adebayo. The Heat still have roster holes and some of their success owes to a fortuitous 6 0 record in overtime games but they're making a bid for the East's No. 2 seed that no one saw coming. The Jazz are 10 1 since trading for Jordan Clarkson and have picked up the pace after a 12 10 start largely because Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert have been playing at an All Star level. The problem: Mike Conley (hamstring) missed 19 of 20 games before returning Saturday against the Sacramento Kings and was struggling to adapt to his new surroundings when he did play. Is Salt Lake City, specifically the Jazz offense, big enough for Conley and Joe Ingles? Utah's postseason success may ride on the answer. Nate McMillan must figure prominently in any coach of the year discussion for helping steer the Pacers into a 53 win pace without Victor Oladipo, his All Star guard, who is finally scheduled to return on Jan. 29 after needing more than a year to recover from a torn quad tendon in his right knee. Indiana should get at least one All Star Malcolm Brogdon or Domantas Sabonis as a reward for being so good without Oladipo. The (theoretical) rules of stardom say we can't call Luka Doncic a true superstar until we see him in the playoffs. The reality is that Doncic, in his second season, has consistently been one of the league's six best players alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden, LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Kawhi Leonard. The 20 year old has revitalized the Mavericks, who have done the same for the Knicks castoff Tim Hardaway Jr. while trying to nurse Kristaps Porzingis back to top form. Admit it: James Harden and Russell Westbrook, as collaborators for the league's No. 2 offense, have meshed better than expected in their reunion on the Rockets. That hasn't been enough, mind you, to prevent the sort of regression that Rockets fans feared was coming after the Chris Paul for Westbrook deal. Houston's problems are depth, defense and age with little for an ever aggressive front office to peddle in search of trade upgrades. Remember when we were all so curious about which team would finish No. 3 in the East because Milwaukee and Philadelphia seemed so certain to occupy the top two spots? The Sixers' road woes (7 14 before Saturday's game against the Knicks) and lack of dependable perimeter shooting have consigned Joel Embiid and Co. to an underwhelming sixth seed. That has spawned a much more unflattering question: Will the Sixers even have home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs? In a season filled with surprise teams, the Thunder are right up there with Miami, Indiana, Dallas and Memphis. With Chris Paul proving he remains an elite player and Shai Gilgeous Alexander quickly moving toward that level, Oklahoma City's season is reminiscent of its 47 35 campaign in 2016 17 after losing Kevin Durant in free agency. Maybe the Thunder will trade Steven Adams, Danilo Gallinari or Dennis Schroeder. Or maybe they won't and will instead gear up for an unexpected playoff run. I said so the other day on Twitter and it bears repeating: Not a soul predicted, when Memphis allowed Andre Iguodala to wait at home while it tries to trade him to a contender, that the Grizzlies themselves would join the playoff race. Huge credit goes to Ja Morant, the runaway favorite for the Rookie of the Year Award, and Grizzlies Coach Taylor Jenkins, Morant's fellow rookie, for considerably speeding up this historically plodding, Grit n' Grind minded team. Just when it seemed safe to finally write off the Spurs, one playoff berth short of a record 23rd in a row, San Antonio turned its season around by persuading LaMarcus Aldridge to embrace the 3 pointer. The resultant uptick in Aldridge's game, as well as in that of DeMar DeRozan, suddenly has the Spurs looking capable of rising out of the deepest plague of mediocrity to infect the Western Conference in more than 20 years and seizing the No. 8 seed. The Wizards can't trade their highly coveted shooting guard Bradley Beal until the off season, and they insist they are unwilling to trade their highly coveted sharpshooter Davis Bertans before the Feb. 6 trade deadline. With the star guard John Wall still recovering from a torn Achilles' tendon, that leaves little to discuss in the nation's capital from a pro basketball perspective. That is, apart from Beal's recent outburst in which he suggested he would "keep blowing up" unless Washington starts "changing our culture." Jarring as it is to see Golden State down this far, after five consecutive trips to the N.B.A. finals, rival teams better enjoy it while they can. Stephen Curry (broken left hand) and Klay Thompson (knee surgery) will rejoin Draymond Green next season, with the Warriors happily focused now on developing prospects like Eric Paschall and Damion Lee while letting the new Chase Center serve as the star attraction and waiting to see how high they finish in the draft lottery. The Cavaliers gave Kevin Love a contract extension that makes him difficult to trade. Then they gave their new coach, John Beilein, an even longer contract that compels them to stick with the former Michigan man even though Beilein has predictably labored to connect with N.B.A. players after making the jump from college to the pros at age 66. There is some young talent here, but it's difficult to get past the two major conundrums Cleveland faces. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
The first thing I did with my 2013 Lamborghini Aventador LP 700 4 Roadster, the half million dollar beast of a sports car I was recently allowed to possess for five days, was drive it to pick up my daughter from detention. She'd been busted for talking in Biology. I pulled the car it resembles a growling alien insect into her high school's parking lot, and I half accidentally revved the engine as I came into view. The resulting snort of sound made six dozen pairs of eyeballs swivel in our direction. The only way I can describe this blast is to borrow a phrase from the rock critic Lester Bangs: "imperative groin thunder." I felt like an idiot. But I went with it. I am not, it's safe to say, the sort of person who guns car engines especially trophy car engines. I dislike flashiness out of temperament, and also out of fear that I can't pull it off. No one wants to be the kind of person a comedian once described this way: a hopeless outfielder who wears a paisley glove. I've mostly owned rusted out Jeeps and Volvos, the nondescript Carhartts and Levi's of the automotive world. I've long assured myself that I don't really care what I drive. But then I put Hattie, my daughter, into the Aventador's passenger seat and we roared home along the roads of rural western New Jersey, where we live. At the tap of the gas pedal, the landscape turned into a smear. So this is what a 691 horsepower engine feels like. The sensation was akin to (as another writer has put it) horizontal bungee jumping. Here's an itch, I recall thinking, I could get used to scratching. This roadster, a two seater with removable carbon fiber roof panels, is a slight revision of the original Aventador, first issued in 2011. (Like most Lamborghinis, it is named after a fighting bull.) Over the engine bay, there are two futuristic hexagonal windows. These allow the engine to cool, and for oglers to ogle. The automotive press has fallen hard for the Aventador in both of its iterations. Motor Trend said the original was "the friendliest V12 supercar in the world." Car and Driver called the roadster "the best Lamborghini ever." The guys on BBC's "Top Gear" didn't just name the original Aventador the best supercar of 2011, they raced it down a runway against an F 16 fighter jet. (The car won.) They taught viewers how to grill sausages on the blue flames that you can make come out of the exhaust. Recommended cooking time? "Five blips at 8,250 r.p.m. for 15 seconds." This vaguely satanic conveyance was delivered to me on Halloween day, driven out from Manhattan by Michael Lock, who at the time was Lamborghini's chief operating officer. He's a witty Briton who resembles an early middle age version of the cartoon character Speed Racer. He has the kind of sheepishly happy countenance that porn stars and wine critics also tend to have, guys who are aware they've got it good. (Lamborghini terminated his contract a few weeks after he lent me the car. I hope these events are not related.) I live on a village street that was about to be flooded with some 400 candy seeking children in costumes, and the first thing I asked Mr. Lock was: Is this thing safe to park here, right in front of the house? To my surprise, he said yes. Sports cars that cost more than the average American makes in a decade don't seem, circa 2013, to engender class acrimony. It's different in parts of Europe, he explained, where social tensions bite the surface of everyday life. The Aventador, Mr. Lock predicted, would simply make people happy and it did. Photo flashes popped all Halloween night as people posed with the white insect. New Jersey's motto is the Garden State, which is ridiculous; this is the Gearhead State. We got used to the attention. When you drive an Aventador, a car that goes from zero to 60 miles per hour in 2.9 seconds, you leave smartphone camera flashes popping in your wake almost wherever you go, often from cars that weave dangerously behind or alongside you. This frantic attention is as close as you will ever come, you think, to understanding what it felt like to be Gina Lollobrigida in 1955. The attention, sad to say, is mostly from men. High performance sports cars are a bro thing. Men will scamper across six busy lanes of Interstate (as two did while I was pulled into an A W burger stand) just to run over to pull at their crotches and ask you about the transmission. Women mostly wince as if they've caught a whiff of your Axe Body Spray. Having an Aventador parked outside your house makes you ask questions you don't normally ask yourself, such as: What would Charlie Sheen do? It's difficult to think about Lamborghinis without calling to mind the kind of guys who've owned them. Donald Trump and Guy Fieri, for example. (Mr. Fieri's was recently stolen.) Also Chris Brown, the rapper with anger management problems, who had his Aventador painted to match his Nike sneakers. Justin Bieber reportedly got six speeding tickets while driving an Aventador in Dubai. What did Tom Cruise's heartless yuppie do for a living in "Rain Man"? He imported Lamborghinis. On the other hand, Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis were once upon a time Lamborghini owners. And rappers have uttered some delicious lines about them. In his song "To the World," Kanye West declares: "Pulled up in the A V entador / And the doors, raise up, like praise the Lord / Did the fashion show, and a tour, and a movie, and a score / This a ghetto opera, Francis Foreign Car Coppola." Francis Foreign Car Coppola. That line sticks in your mind the next morning as you open the scissor doors by sliding them up, so that they resemble the wings of a fly, and climb into the low slung cockpit. To start the engine of an Aventador, you don't insert a key and turn clockwise. Instead, you flip open a small red lid on the center console and punch a fat hexagonal button. This doesn't resemble starting a car. This resembles launching a nuclear strike. There's a sense of apocalypse, now. The motor's ensuing k boom adds verisimilitude. The Aventador is not made for rattling around town. The ride is jerky on nonpristine roads. At times it felt as if I'd put 25 cents into a toddler's bucking bronco ride. At low speeds, the engine whines like a wedge of pit bulls kept on a choke collar. Another reason you don't want to drive this car around town is that there's little visibility to the sides and rear. Although Lamborghinis are made in Italy, in this respect they are the paradigmatic American car they permit no retrospection. You would not want to parallel park one. A road trip, clearly, was called for. I tend to ask myself, in moments of indecision, not what Charlie Sheen would do, but what Willie Nelson or Christopher Hitchens would do. They are imperfect heroes, but heroes nonetheless. This is why I set off to drive a few hundred miles west with my son, Penn, to catch a Merle Haggard show in Wilkes Barre, Pa. At 76, the Hag has still got it, though his fan base now seems to consist of ornery granddads with patchy Elvis sideburns. Willie would be picky about the road music. I made sure the (sweet) new Shonna Tucker and Eye Candy album was downloaded onto my iPhone. From there we headed, the next morning, two hours south to Harrisburg to visit (for the Hitchens aspect of the trip) the palatial Midtown Scholar used bookstore, one of America's largest academic used bookstores. A visit here is an essentially religious experience. Vaut le voyage, as the Michelin guides like to say. On the way, how fast did we drive? (The car's maximum speed is 217 m.p.h.) Faster than I am willing to admit. Fast enough, if only for short bursts and only when the highway was clear, that I could imagine either A) being Tasered by a state trooper or B) blasting off into low orbit over the Monongahela Valley. Airliners take off at 140 to 180 m.p.h. It's not a joke to suggest that this car, which does 200 m.p.h. without thinking hard about it, could get airborne. The Aventador is an intuitive monster to drive. I got the hang of it almost immediately. It has paddle gear shifters on either side of the steering wheel. The all wheel drive grips the road the way a lizard grips the side of a tree. The car's three driving modes Strada, Sport and Corsa adjust the engine settings for increasing velocity. The car rides low, and there's a hydraulic nose lift that raises the front suspension, for moments when you're worried about scraping the tarmac. It's impossible to use this lift to get the Aventador bouncing the way the cars do in Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" video. Not that we didn't try. Stopped at intersections, the engine quickly (and unnervingly) goes to sleep. As you prepare to pull away it instantly restarts, using high performance capacitors known as supercaps to awaken the engine. That engine is in the rear. A minuscule front luggage compartment has room for perhaps a squash racket, a laptop and a few bottles of Piper Heidsieck. That's about it. Your valet can follow in a separate car with the rest of your baggage. And with your children. Plutocrats are unlike you and me in another way, beyond not traveling with their own luggage. They apparently don't drink coffee in their cars. The Aventador has no cup holders. Danica Patrick, the Nascar driver, got at this issue and others when she told a British interviewer: "In the Lamborghini, I have to avoid certain roads because of potholes, and there's nowhere to put my drink, no cup holder. And I'm not going to lie, it looks pretentious. I used to think it was cool to, like, drive it to dinner. Now? Like I really need to be looked at anymore." You do feel safe in the Aventador. It fits snugly, almost the way Robert Downey Jr.'s carapace does in the "Iron Man" movies. Still, you can't help but think about something Clive James said of Formula One cars: that a good smash will "still do to a driver what it would do to an egg in a steel box, no matter how tightly the box fitted." Most of the metaphors that blindingly fast cars call to mind are sexual. (All that torque and thrust.) I'll save these for my therapist. But there's a strong sense of tantric self control when driving a high performance car at poky legal speeds. This kind of self control is exhausting. I collapsed in hotel rooms at the end of each day's drive. My neck muscles had also been clenched, I realized, from worrying about speed traps. The Aventador will not help you get a date with a member of the Natural Resources Defense Council. It gets about 12 m.p.g. in combined city highway driving. A 2013 survey found it to be the most fuel inefficient car on the planet. The annual gas bill was estimated at more than 5,000. The novelist Kingsley Amis once wrote that a surefire hangover cure is a short flight in an open cockpit airplane. I suspect that a brief spin in the Aventador would accomplish the same thing. I'd never own one, even if I could. But I miss it already. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
MANY 20 somethings with a business idea or a gap between their income and their living expenses turn to the bank of mom and dad for help. This is hardly new, even if the numbers are increasing. But a subset of parents, many quite wealthy, is responding not with handouts but with loans that children apply for and that require approval by parents, relatives, or even people outside the family, as they would at a bank. These families are working to support their children's interests without robbing them of motivation, causing rifts among their siblings or even running afoul of the Internal Revenue Service, which may wonder whether these loans are really gifts. "My advice is to start early and small and allow it to grow," said Warner King Babcock, chairman and chief executive of AM Private Enterprises, a registered investment adviser in New Canaan, Conn. Mr. Babcock, a chemist by training, knows whereof he speaks. When he was in his early 20s and working for his father's engineering and construction materials company in Greenwich, Conn., he got an idea for a type of waterproofing that would work in extreme conditions. His father backed the idea financially, and Mr. Babcock patented and began selling the coating. The company sold its high performance coatings to clients like zoos and nuclear power plants. But seven years into the venture, Mr. Babcock told his father that he was leaving, even though the company was doing well. Today, he chooses his words carefully so as not to offend his siblings. "I felt early on that I had a lot of freedom and I was empowered to grow the firm," he said. "As time went on, I felt that there was more involvement in the key decisions, and it got to a point where that caused friction. If there was an outside board that could have acted as a buffer, that would have helped." That experience informed his later work as an investment adviser to large, wealthy families. Mr. Babcock is trying to share the benefits and perils of what is often called the family bank with a wider audience. In this, he is part of a small group of advisers that sees formal lending in a family as a way to invest in ideas from younger generations, provide financing when real banks may be hesitant and teach lessons about stewardship and responsibility. Here's some of what families of more modest means can learn. HOW TO DO IT RIGHT Parents hardly need to be told that their children are having trouble supporting themselves after finishing school. But a recent report from Junior Achievement and the Allstate Foundation said that the number of high school students expecting to be financially dependent on their parents into their late 20s had more than doubled in the last two years, to 25 percent from 12 percent. According to the report, parents have also resigned themselves to offering some level of financial assistance through those years. The parents cited the poor job market and economy, and changing societal norms. This is where loans in a family may be a way of supporting a child's idea without making it seem like a handout. Whether a family is making a 10,000 or a 1 million loan, the most successful lay out criteria for lending. They could say that loans will be made for business ventures, investments or a mortgage on a house, but not for living expenses or travel. They could require everyone to submit a business plan. "If you have a family bank set up where there is a system or a process for asking the family for loans, it cuts out all the issues of people asking for money and saying you like my sister better," said Mindy Rosenthal, president of the Institute for Private Investors, an organization that recently hosted a seminar on the Web about family banks. "All the processes and procedures cut out all this family dynamics." From there, the loan should include language explaining that it must be repaid and what will happen if the endeavor fails. Mr. Babcock said he knows of one family that requires collateral before making a loan. Others, he said, require periodic updates on the business and reserve the right to offer advice or renegotiate loan terms if the business is struggling. If the loan can't be repaid, Mr. Babcock said a family that had documented it could write it off the way a bank would. HOW IT GOES WRONG As with anything in a family, there are many ways that lending money to relatives can end badly. Mr. Babcock said he would never advise a highly dysfunctional family to create a family bank. If family members could not communicate civilly, then lending money would just add to the conflict. There are also legal requirements. The I.R.S. has guidelines on how much interest needs to be charged, depending on the length of a loan. Known as the applicable federal rate, or A.F.R., the interest is low about 1 percent for loans from three to nine years but the I.R.S. expects parents to collect it. These guidelines cover documentation, too. If there was not a real loan agreement or interest charged, the I.R.S. could say that the loan was really a gift and levy gift taxes, interest and penalties on it, or it could say that a loan that was forgiven when a business failed was actually income for the recipient. "The I.R.S. assumes intrafamily loans are disguised gifts," said Thorne Perkin, managing director at Papamarkou Wellner Asset Management. "You need to document these things. You need to set up a payment schedule. You need to use something above that A.F.R. rate." Mr. Perkin said parents often use their annual gift exclusion, now 14,000, to forgive interest, and many loans are structured to be interest only with the principal due at the end. Still, it is important to have documents in place. Another risk is that such low rates for intrafamily loans push parents to make loans without thinking about the consequences. "We generally make sure that the client can afford to lose the liquidity of the assets, and that they're working with their accountant and attorney and understand the tax consequences of doing so," said Ann D. Bjerke, senior wealth strategist at UBS Financial Services. The interest on the loan, for example, needs to be claimed as income by the lender. LESSONS BEYOND THE LOAN Helping children is at the heart of these loans. But if done right, they can do a lot more than provide low interest financing that a bank might not approve. One is increasing children's understanding of finance and lowering their sense of entitlement, said Richard Orlando, president and chief executive of Legacy Capitals, a family consultancy. "Raising their financial I.Q. helps the next generation apply for loans, put together business plans and pay back loans," he said. "It also teaches them about being responsible, doing their homework, and collaborating with other members to get loans." Just as important, a family bank with set lending criteria can help parents step out of the process so that their children have to present their plans to a board that might consist of family attorneys and advisers. The board could challenge the children without stirring up family resentments. Mr. Babcock said parents can also decide to create a soft bank with an intent to educate their children. Whereas a hard bank would manage the loans for profit, almost as alternative investments in a family's portfolio, a soft bank would look at the loans as a way to develop the human capital of their children. One way might to be invest in a child's floral shop, with an understanding that it could fail but would teach business lessons along the way. "Money can do a lot of things," he said. "But the last thing parents want it to do is create bad behavior patterns from a young age." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Manhattan's housing market sharply downshifted in 2018, especially at the high end and in new development, as rising inventory and other factors kept homes on the market longer and forced more sellers to readjust both prices and expectations. But while brokers, developers and industry observers forecast more of the same for 2019, they aren't too concerned. The overall market remains healthy, they say, as does the local economy. "The word of the year is reset," said Jonathan J. Miller, who runs the Miller Samuel appraisal firm in Manhattan. The past year was more of a "normalization of the market," he said, after record activity in recent years, highlighted by New York City's single most expensive closing (for now), in early 2015: a 100.5 million penthouse at the pinnacle of the One57 skyscraper. Pamela Liebman, the chief executive of the Corcoran Group, agreed with that assessment. "Since 2009, the market has gone on a very aggressive ride, and I think it's normal that we see a bit of a slowdown." Comparatively speaking, "sales are not low they are just not unusually high," Mr. Miller said. "It's like we came off the autobahn: It feels very slow relative to the last three to four years, but historically it's not." Indeed, the average price for a condominium in Manhattan has risen 58 percent since 2008, according to CityRealty, which tracks unit sales, and the average price per square foot is 35 percent higher. During 2018, six apartment sales broke the 50 million mark, and nearly three dozen more closed above 25 million (though some were "legacy contracts," signed during construction when the market was stronger). "That's remarkable by any objective measure," said Daniel Levy, CityRealty's chief executive. The year's biggest closings were two similarly configured duplexes at the just opened 520 Park Avenue tower on 60th Street. The priciest property sold for nearly 74 million to James Dyson, the founder of the British home electronics maker Dyson. The other duplex at 520 Park sold for 62 million. And downtown (which CityRealty defines as south of 30th Street) posted a record with the 59 million sale of a penthouse at the new Getty building at 503 West 24th Street, in Chelsea. Brokers say demand continued at all price levels, if not quite as insistently at the super high end. But largely absent were the bidding wars of recent years and the rushed purchases from floor plans. Many buyers became more discerning as inventory, particularly in new developments, expanded. Others were more hesitant because of higher mortgage rates (which hurt the starter market in particular) and uncertainty about the new tax law. By Mr. Miller's account, there were 12 percent more housing units for sale in Manhattan than there were in 2017. As a result, developers have had to be more strategic to stay competitive. "You need to build in the right neighborhood for the right buyers, or offer something totally unique and in great demand," said Kenneth S. Horn, the founder of Alchemy Properties. He said sales at 250 West 81st Street, one of several new projects, have gone especially well because "it was a new condo and there are not many new condos in that area." Individual sellers, however, were slower to adapt to the changing marketplace, and saw their properties linger. As of the fourth quarter, it took an average of 152 days for a listing in Manhattan to go into contract, up from 101 days the same period in 2017, according to Garrett Derderian, the director of data and reporting for Stribling Associates. Over all, the average Manhattan apartment price slid nearly 5 percent from 2017, to 2.06 million from 2.16 million, according to a year end market report by CityRealty. (The drop would have been steeper without the pricey new development sales.) Closed transactions for all condos and co ops were projected to total 10,354, the report said, with sales reaching 21.3 billion. That's down from the 13,295 transactions and 25.7 billion in sales in 2017. "The larger story is volume," Mr. Levy said. "While it's down, it's not falling off a cliff." Several luxury condominiums filled up in 2018, though the pace of sales and the average closing price declined significantly from the year before. "Purchasers have more opportunities to select among many properties they know they have choices, so they're taking their time," said Susan M. de Franca, the chief executive of Douglas Elliman Marketing. Developers also had to contend with fewer international buyers, who in past years were active in the new construction sector. Some foreign buyers now face tighter restrictions for moving money out of their home countries, particularly in China. To help facilitate sales, developers were more willing to negotiate prices. "When the inventory level was tight, you would never hear the word 'negotiation' in the development market," Ms. de Franca said. The CityRealty report projected that in 2018, 1,050 units would be sold in Manhattan's two dozen or so new developments, reaching 5 billion in total sales a drop from the 1,848 units and nearly 9 billion in sales in 2017. The average price fell to 4.54 million from 4.79 million in 2017, and a record 5.16 million in 2016. Among the year's most active developments was 160 Leroy Street in the West Village, where nearly all 57 residences sold. Its priciest sale was to Michael Rubin, the chief executive of the e commerce company Kynetic. He bought a penthouse for 43.5 million, which was below the 51 million list price. Also, One West End Avenue, on the Upper West Side near 60th Street, saw more than a quarter of its 246 units sell. Notable buyers included the actor Bruce Willis and the New York Yankees pitcher Aroldis Chapman; each acquired a four bedroom for more than 7 million. Three new limestone condos designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects 70 Vestry Street in TriBeCa, 520 Park on the Upper East Side, and 220 Central Park South in Midtown saw a flurry of late year closings. At 70 Vestry, a penthouse sold for 56 million, and 520 Park had several 20 million plus closings in addition to the year's two biggest sales. But 220 Central Park South, near Columbus Circle, is likely to be 2019's superstar. Already, nearly 85 percent of its units are spoken for, according to the developer, Vornado Realty Trust, and the building is expected to surpass all city rankings with the sale of a penthouse listed for 250 million. While many top sales in 2018 were at brand new developments, there were several pricey closings at buildings that have been around for a while. A penthouse on the 85th floor of One57, at 157 West 57th Street in Midtown's Billionaire Row, sold for nearly 54 million though below its original 70 million price from 2017. At 432 Park Avenue, also on Billionaires' Row, between 56th and 57th Streets, two separate buyers, including the prominent art collector Hillel Nahmad, each paid a total of 60 million for pairs of half floor apartments, presumably to combine them. The building, completed in 2015, remains the city's most expensive building, with the average price per square foot at nearly 6,000. And at 15 Central Park West, another Robert A.M. Stern limestone condominium, a duplex owned by the British musician Gordon Sumner, a.k.a. Sting, sold for 50 million, after a year on the market and an 11 percent price cut. (Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, are reportedly buying a place at 220 Central Park South.) Among other celebrity closings: The rocker Jon Bon Jovi sold a duplex at 150 Charles Street for 15 million, and the comedian Seth Meyers sold an apartment at 302 West 12th Street for 4.4 million. Both are in the West Village. For all of Manhattan, the average sale price for an existing condo unit fell to 2.91 million from 3.05 million in 2017, according to CityRealty's projections (though it's still more than 1 million above the average 10 years ago). Co ops, which make up a major chunk of Manhattan's housing stock, also saw weakened sales volume in 2018, although average prices were slightly higher than the previous year. None Testing the Limits: Only three of New York's 25 tallest residential buildings have completed safety tasks required by the city. The Downside to Life in a Supertall: 432 Park faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high rises may share its fate. Luxury Developers' Loophole: Soaring towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city's labyrinthine zoning laws. An Evolving Skyline: The high rise building boom has transformed the city's skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come. Hidden Feats: Our critic looks at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks. A total of 5,838 units were expected to close through the end of the year, according to CityRealty, a 15 percent drop from the 6,267 closings in 2017. The average price was 1.40 million, up from 1.37 million. Kirk Henckels, the director of Stribling Private Brokerage, said co ops were better positioned in 2018, after price adjustments the previous two years. "They came down roughly 15 to 20 percent," during that time, he said. "They were increasingly a value compared to the condos." The year's most expensive co op sale was at 995 Fifth Avenue, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at 81st Street. An apartment encompassing the 15th floor was sold for 35 million by Joseph J. Plumeri, the vice chairman of the board of directors at First Data, a financial services company. There were numerous other notable closings. At 1 Fifth Avenue, near Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village, the Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards sold a 9 million duplex, while the actress Jessica Lange was poised to create one after paying 3.3 million for a unit above her apartment there. On the Upper West Side, Mr. Willis sold a duplex at 271 Central Park West, at 87th Street, for 17.8 million. And across town, the record and film executive David Geffen sold a unit at the Park V, at 785 Fifth Avenue, between 59th and 60th Streets, for 24.5 million. The Beresford, at 211 Central Park West, between 81st and 82nd Streets, also saw plenty of activity. The hedge fund manager William Ackman deeded to his former wife a duplex valued at 15 million, as part of an apparent property settlement. And Bob Weinstein, the younger brother and business partner of the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, sold a duplex for 20.5 million. Some of the year's most expensive closings were at townhouses, but like condos and co ops, many of the transactions came with discounts. Brokers saw strength in new Brooklyn condos, too. Ms. Mack of Corcoran Sunshine noted, for example, that Cobble Hill House, one of several new projects in the Cobble Hill neighborhood, was 60 percent sold just two months after sales began in September. Emerging markets like Bushwick and Greenpoint are also showing strength, added Rory Golod, the New York general manager for Compass, and are likely to rise in value in future years. Looking ahead to the coming year, the market will "continue a slow price correction," said Gregory J. Heym, the chief economist of Terra Holdings, parent of Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property. At the same time, he said, New York City should remain fiscally sound with low unemployment, as it enters a 10th consecutive year of economic growth. Amazon's new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, will also help bolster the economy and residential market, Mr. Heym said, as will Google's planned downtown campus. CityRealty forecasts that average apartment prices in Manhattan will rise slightly in 2019, to around 2.2 million, based on units under contract and anticipated closings in buildings like 220 Central Park South. Several other much anticipated condominiums will officially open, among them: 15 and 35 Hudson Yards; Waterline Square; One Manhattan Square; and 111 West 57th Street. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Many ballet dancers, after retiring, go on to start their own schools. Jacques d'Amboise, who had a celebrated career of almost 35 years with New York City Ballet, found his second calling even before he left the company, when he established the National Dance Institute in 1976. This is no elite ballet academy but a far reaching nonprofit that teaches kids about the joy of movement (something that strict classical training can't always claim to do). The real lessons, of course, are in areas like self confidence and teamwork. That may sound like hollow arts in education speak, but on Monday at the institute's Harlem headquarters, 75 youngsters (just a fraction of the thousands that the organization serves) demonstrated otherwise. The members of the NDI Celebration Team, ages 10 to 14, were the unexpected stars of a one off benefit program, "Jacques' Art Nest: The DNA of Choreography," which also featured seven principal dancers from City Ballet (and a superb pianist from the company's orchestra, Susan Walters). You can't really go wrong with kids dancing. But the students of the Celebration Team transcend cuteness. They are remarkably musical, with rock solid rhythm, as individuals and collectively. They are uninhibited but self possessed, present in their own bodies while connecting with the audience in a way that professional dancers might envy. In an introductory number inspired by Chinese folkloric dance (the institute is partnering this year with schools in Shanghai), they flooded the stage with brilliantly unified steps. Their audacity and unguarded warmth brought depth to even the most basic combinations of running and leaping. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Box office sales for "Natasha, Pierre the Great Comet of 1812" have slumped since Josh Groban left the company, and a recent casting uproar has resulted in even more uncertainty over future ticket sales. On Monday, the Broadway League announced that the show's ticket sales last week totaled 905,514, only slightly down from 923,571 a week earlier, and still solid for a Broadway show. But it's considerably lower than the roughly 1.2 million "The Great Comet" typically earned with Mr. Groban, who departed from the lead role of Pierre on July 2, as scheduled. In anticipation of the loss of Mr. Groban's star power, the producers have sought to add more celebrities to the cast: The pop singer Ingrid Michaelson is currently onstage as Sonya, and the "Hamilton" veteran Okieriete Onaodowan was brought in as Mr. Groban's replacement. But last week the producers announced that Mr. Onaodowan would "make room" for the Broadway veteran Mandy Patinkin to step into the role of Pierre from Aug. 15 through Sept. 3. The move prompted outrage online, with some people taking issue with the phrasing "make room" to describe a white actor's taking over for a black one. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
It's no coincidence that "Plastic," one of Maria Hassabi's most successful ventures in her mission to place bodies in extreme states of slowness, occurred not in a theater but at the Museum of Modern Art last winter. Somehow, by placing her dancers in a landscape of stationary art and normal people moving at a normal pace, her work gained greater intensity. Few of her theatrical endeavors exploring sculptural slowness, including her latest, have felt as satisfying. On Tuesday, Ms. Hassabi returned to the Kitchen for the premiere of "Staged" presented by the Kitchen and the Crossing the Line Festival a work for Simon Courchel, Hristoula Harakas, Oisin Monaghan and herself. As usual, it is a group of beautiful people inhabiting a beautiful space. The floor is covered in carpet, which at first looks red and, as the piece goes on, seemed to transform into a rosy pink. The audience surrounds the performers as the lighting, by Zack Tinkelman and Ms. Hassabi, brightens and dims throughout. Dancers, lounging on the carpet, move incrementally: Stretching out an arm, rising to sit and then melting onto the floor, they merge into one form before disengaging. Ms. Hassabi's work, to its detriment, can feel like a fashion shoot, and this one, especially, blurs the line between fashion and art. Wearing clashing prints and pointed white loafers the on trend "outfit design" is credited to Victoria Bartlett "Staged" could have been called "Runway." While there is beauty, there is too little risk. At best, "Staged" reveals the effort and commitment to Ms. Hassabi's physical practice, which we witness in quivering flesh. But what does it build to? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Dearly beloved. We are gathered here today to contemplate the nuptials of Jimmy and Kim, and to ask this question as they commence their life of matrimonial bliss: The pair seem to have talked themselves into this union purely with professional upsides in mind. Under the law, a wife can't be compelled to testify against a husband, and vice versa. Fine. Thing is, nobody is compelling Kim to testify against Jimmy. Maybe one day she will, and then she'll save Jimmy from a long stint in the pokey. But this marriage seems conceived by two people who want to get married and have collaborated on a cold, unromantic rationale for doing so. They even hash out the full disclosure rules of their wedded life outside a courthouse, like two lawyers negotiating a plea deal. For workaholic lawyers, this might be what passes for a bended knee and a diamond ring. Jimmy can't even get a post nuptials lunch. "Sorry, I just can't get away," Kim says, off to a meeting. Jimmy is soon face to face with Lalo Salamanca, newly arraigned and facing murder, arson and other charges. After he's denied bail, Lalo asks about the monogram on Jimmy's briefcase, unaware that they are his lawyer's initials from his native incarnation. Now it's his motto, "Justice matters most." "Time to get yourself a new motto," Lalo says cheerfully, after explaining that Jimmy is about going to become a friend of the cartel. "'Just make money.'" This seems like a good time to ask what exactly Jimmy wants from his new name and career. Riches would delight him but more than anything, he seems dead set on winning esteem. Even before he has earned a penny from the cartel, he appears to be drunk on the stakes of coming legal battles he might have to fight on its behalf. How else to explain his explosive, unhinged reaction to Howard at the end of the episode? With remarkable restraint, Howard asks Jimmy to explain why he's recently vandalized his car (with bowling balls) and his reputation (with confrontational prostitutes, who implied he's a chiseling john). Jimmy doesn't confess to these pranks, but he does admit that he blames Howard for his brother Chuck's death. Let's leave aside that Jimmy has accused a man of homicide in a case that was clearly a suicide. What's noteworthy is Jimmy's explosion, which goes supernova when he senses that Howard is patronizing and pitying him. Jimmy would rather face another near death ordeal in the desert than be pitied. "I travel in worlds you can't even imagine!" he shouts at Howard. "I'm like a God in human clothing!" This might be Jimmy's version of "I am the one who knocks," Walter White's memorable affirmation of lethal power in "Breaking Bad." Walter was overstating matters a bit there were other players who knocked just as hard, and harder but Jimmy's monologue seems lunatic. He hasn't even spent a full day as the lawyer for a cartel honcho, and he is already likening himself to Zeus. Only someone steeped in resentment could come up with an analogy like that. This tirade aside, "JMM," as this episode is titled, is essentially a series of sales pitches. The finest of them occurs after a meeting of fast food chief executives, who have assembled at the Houston office of Madrigal Electromotive, the German conglomerate and equipment manufacturer. Welcome back, Peter Schuler, the Madrigal executive who was last seen trying out "Franch" dressing in a test kitchen in Season 5 of "Breaking Bad," then killing himself as the feds moved in to arrest him. Herr Schuler played by Norbert Weisser, a name I have been hoping to see in the opening credits since the debut of "Better Call Saul" is an anxious mess, and this is long before the authorities have started circling. We see him fretting that his multimillion dollar, off the books construction aid to the meth superlab is going to end his career. "It's a miracle I haven't been caught," he moans to Gus and Lydia during a hotel room meeting. "Last year, the auditors came this close!" Cue the talented Mr. Fring, whose gifts include sweet talking terrified upper managers. The heart of his soliloquy is an appeal to some unknown history. "Do you remember Santiago?" Gus asks. "The two of us, our backs to the wall. You are still the same man." This is the second reference to a momentous event in Santiago, presumably the city in Chile. (In Episode 1 of this season, Lalo referred briefly to an incident in Santiago, though with glee in his voice.) Max Arciniega, Gus's deceased partner, hails from that city, and perhaps it's there that they started both their meth making and chicken cooking. Apparently, Schuler was present, too, and it was obviously the Salamancas who had his and Gus's backs to the wall. Maybe there's an epic flashback in our future. It won't be dull. Kim gets to make the most nuanced sales pitch of this episode. She persuades Kevin Wachtell that she and her firm didn't fail Mesa Verde he failed the firm by not heeding the firm's advice. Kevin buys this spiel, which is rooted in truth. Kim simultaneously demonstrates that she is roughly three times nimbler on her feet than her boss, Richard Schweikart. Meanwhile, Mike shows up at Jimmy's with a win bail for Lalo kit, complete with people who will appear at a hearing and pretend to be family. This is quite a tactical 180 on Gus's part, given that he had just instructed Mike to use the police to put Lalo behind bars. Apparently, Gus didn't grasp that even there, Lalo could make trouble like ordering the torching of a Los Pollos Hermanos. But why spring Lalo now? Is he less of a threat to Fring's operation outside of the justice system? Is there something that Gus could do to Lalo as a free man that he could not do while the guy is in prison? The logic of this move seems elusive. Lalo could order even more of Gus's restaurants burned to the ground once he makes bail, couldn't he? None To the extent we're going to get an explanation of Mike's decision to rejoin Team Gus, it comes during his meeting with his daughter in law. "Decided to play the cards I was dealt," he says. This would seem downright Buddhist if it didn't mean working for a murderous drug kingpin. None I would like to dine at a restaurant called the Luftwaffle, a chain represented at the Madrigal meeting. I imagine the writers' room laughed themselves silly when they came up with that one. Details like that put this show on another level. Another worth pointing out: the otherworldly music that plays while Gus and Nacho burn down a Los Pollos Hermanos. It's "Chuncho (The Forest Creatures)," Shazam says, by the Peruvian singer Yma Sumac. None In closing, a mystery. During Nacho's one on one meeting with Mike, he asks for help. He wants Mike to save the life of his father, who lives under a death threat by Gus, if Nacho has to flee. "You got a way," he says to Mike. He does? What way? Killing Gus? Calling the Disappearer? Nacho has something in mind. Please tell us what you think it is in the comments section. None And finally, please celebrate avocadomania. It's been a smashing success in participating restaurants. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Gordon H. Bower, a research psychologist who spent more than half a century studying how the brain learns and remembers, as well as a host of related subjects, and who was among the leaders in his field, died on June 17 at his home in Stanford, Calif. He was 87. Stanford University, where he taught for almost 50 years, announced his death. The cause was complications of pulmonary fibrosis. When Dr. Bower joined the Stanford faculty in 1959, he became part of a psychology department that was already highly regarded. His work over the next half century made it even more so, "I consider him the experimental psychologist par excellence," Herbert Clark, another noted member of that department, said in the university's announcement. "He had that golden touch in thinking up, carrying out and writing up experiments that were clever and theoretically relevant." To show that chaining concepts together improved the ability to remember them, Dr. Bower and a colleague, Michael Clark, had one group of students take lists of 10 nouns and construct stories around them, while a control group just tried to memorize the 10 words. The story constructors were later able to recall seven times as many of the words as the mere memorizers were. In another experiment, students were asked to recall either a happy or a sad event, then were hypnotized to capture that emotion and asked to memorize lists of happy and sad words. The students who had started the memorization in a happy mood later remembered more of the happy words, and the sad students remembered more of the sad ones. The mood we're in, Dr. Bower concluded, affects how we remember a past event. So, he told The Chicago Tribune in 1986, a person in a bad mood who is trying to decide whether to get married will recall a disproportionate number of bad things about the prospective spouse. The message: Try to be in a neutral mood when making important life decisions. Mark A. Gluck, who studied for his Ph.D. under Dr. Bower in the 1980s and is now a professor at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University Newark, said Dr. Bower's research also encompassed how we reorganize memory during learning, how we understand and remember simple narratives, how mnemonic devices work, the role of mental imagery in memory and more. "Gordon, throughout his career," Dr. Gluck said by email, "would identify a critical unsolved problem, make seminal contributions that established a new area of research, attract many other people to this new fertile domain, and then move on to do it all over again in some completely different area of learning and memory research." Dr. Bower wrote numerous books and scholarly papers, but he was also quick to point out practical applications for his findings. Over the years he was quoted in news articles about vanity license plates, how to remember the name of someone you've just met, how New Yorkers' facial expressions and body language changed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and more. In a 1973 article in Psychology Today, after discussing how memory can be improved through mnemonics and other techniques, he urged people to put such knowledge to use. "Our schools," he wrote, "should teach memory skills just as they teach the skills of reading and writing." Gordon Howard Bower was born on Dec. 30, 1932, in Scio, Ohio, to Clyde and Mabelle (Bosart) Bower. Scio was a small village in east central Ohio near an even smaller village called Bowerston. "My father and grandfather came from Bowerston, where approximately three quarters of the people are named Bower," he said in a 2011 episode of the Association for Psychological Science interview series "Inside the Psychologist's Studio," "and the other one quarter of the people are named Gordon. So I am Gordon Bower, a true son of that region." His parents owned a small store, Bower's Merchandise Mart, and his mother was a substitute elementary school teacher. Dr. Bower was a fine athlete, particularly in baseball, so much so that the Cleveland Indians subsidized his studies at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) in exchange for first rights on a professional baseball contract. Instead he continued his studies after earning a bachelor's degree in 1954, securing a fellowship at the University of Minnesota and then enrolling at Yale University, where he earned a master's degree in 1957 and a Ph.D. in psychology in 1959. At Yale he studied under Neal Miller, a noted experimental psychologist, though not all of the projects he assisted on proved fruitful. One involved injecting cats' brains with tiny amounts of salt water; his job was to then try to get the cats to navigate a T maze, an exercise that proved to involve a certain amount of futility. "So, with great relief, I was allowed to abandon the project," he wrote in an autobiographical sketch, published as part of a series called "A History of Psychology in Autobiography." "This taught me early on that it was OK to abandon unproductive lines of research!" After earning his Ph.D. he joined the Stanford psychology department in the fall of 1959, and he remained there his entire career, taking emeritus status in 2005. He taught numerous students who went on to impressive careers. One was Stephen Kosslyn, who became an expert in mental imagery and has held posts at Harvard, Stanford and elsewhere, and who recalled his first encounter with Dr. Bower's Friday seminars, where graduate students would summarize their research. "When it was my turn, he was very direct, honest and highly critical," Dr. Kosslyn said by email. "I was devastated, and went to see him afterwards. He interrupted what he was doing to explain to me that 'a lick and a promise' isn't good enough; you need to be ready to unpack what you do and be prepared to defend it. "He set a high bar, and it probably never occurred to him to let us duck beneath it." Dr. Bower, who received the President's National Medal of Science in 2005, married Sharon Anthony in 1957. She survives him, as do their children, Lori, Tony and Julia, and five grandchildren. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Joe Diffie, who went from working in oil fields and foundries to becoming one of the most commercially successful country singers of the early and mid 1990s, died on Sunday in Nashville. He was 61. His death, from complications of the coronavirus, was announced by his publicist, Scott Adkins. Mr. Diffie had revealed on Friday that he was being treated for the condition. At the dawn of the 1990s, country music was embarking upon a great, rollicking party period, and Mr. Diffie, with a touch of aw shucks wryness to his performances and a robust head of blond hair that shot back from his head like wispy flames, was suited to the moment. As a singer, he had a crisp, sentimental voice, which he deployed on ballads like "Is It Cold in Here" and "Home," his debut single from 1990; it topped the Billboard country chart, the first of his five No. 1 country singles. He placed a dozen more songs in the country Top 10. But he was also given to a playful, plucky rowdiness, and that animated his biggest hits. His third and fourth albums, which leaned heavily in this direction "Honky Tonk Attitude" (1993) and "Third Rock from the Sun" (1994) both went platinum. Two of his other albums went gold. "Pickup Man," from 1994, was his most successful song, topping the Billboard country chart for four weeks. It was also the song that best took advantage of his various talents: On the one hand, it was a gently funny song about sexual attraction, but, on the other, it was also an emphatically boisterous statement of pride about boys and the trucks that boost their egos. When he sang "Pickup Man," he alternated between plain and direct singing, humorously dipping and bending his syllables for emphasis. "You can set my truck on fire and roll it down a hill/and I still wouldn't trade it for a Coupe de Ville," he sang, adding, "I met all my wives in traffic jams/There's just something women like about a pickup man." The title track from "Third Rock From the Sun," which went to No. 1, was a lighthearted catalog of rural misadventure. His 1995 Christmas album included a honky tonk anthem, "Leroy the Redneck Reindeer." Joe Logan Diffie was born on Dec. 28, 1958, in Tulsa, Okla., to Joe and Flora Diffie. His father held various jobs and later drove a tour bus for the country superstar Toby Keith; his mother was a schoolteacher and owned a flower shop. His family moved frequently before settling back in Oklahoma, where Mr. Diffie attended high school and college. As a child, he played with his aunt's country band, and later as part of rock, gospel and bluegrass outfits. He began writing songs in the 1980s, and one of them, "Love on the Rocks," was recorded by Hank Thompson. Soon, Mr. Diffie moved to Nashville, where he spent a few years writing songs and singing demos. After singing background on a Holly Dunn recording of one of his songs, he signed with Epic Records in 1990, and before long had his first No. 1 country hit. Even in his performing era, Mr. Diffie continued writing songs, including ones recorded by Tim McGraw ("Memory Lane") and Jo Dee Messina ("My Give a Damn's Busted"). In 1998, Mr. Diffie won a Grammy for best country collaboration, with vocals for "Same Old Train," a multistar collaboration. He released albums throughout the 2000s and 2010s, and last year began hosting a radio show on KXBL, a country station in his native Tulsa. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
BROKEN PLACES 10 p.m. on PBS. (Check local listings.) This documentary from the writer director Roger Weisberg looks back over his decades of work about at risk children, weaving in the voices of researchers like Dr. Nadine Burke Harris and Dr. W. Thomas Boyce. Both pediatricians, Harris and Boyce have been recognized for their work with children whose development is affected by adversity. Through a series of interviews, these experts present hypotheses about why some people may be better equipped to overcome the challenges presented by their upbringings than others. Bobby Gross, 35, is one of the subjects who had been filmed when he was young, at age 5, in this effort to track people confronting adversity. ANTIQUES ROADSHOW: TREASURE FEVER 8 p.m. on PBS. (Check local listings.) This longstanding collectors' classic will air a timely segment, "Treasure Fever," continuing the tradition of appraising historical items with auction house experts. This time, the focus is on the history of medicine. The antiques include a doctor's bag from the Lakota Sioux and the sword of a Civil War medical officer. PIXOTE (1981) Stream on Criterion. The Portuguese word "pixote" roughly translates as "peewee" or "small child" but the title character of this movie has a persona that is anything but. Though Pixote is a child, the streets of Sao Paulo as well as its bars, brothels and juvenile detention centers have left Pixote looking "about 60 years old," Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The New York Times. The movie follows its protagonist who, after breaking out of detention, must survive in the city with the help of his new friends and includes resorting to stealing and killing. "Pixote" is the third film by the director Hector Babenco, who "looks at his juvenile vagrants at eye level, in closeup," Canby added, "as if he were one of them, making no judgments on their behavior, seeing no further into the future than they do." INDIA SONG (1975) Stream on Mubi. A comment from the director Marguerite Duras on ennui, or "leprosy of the soul," "India Song" is a meticulously arranged film about an unsatisfied woman who has come to an unfortunate end. Most of the movie takes place in the French Embassy in Calcutta, where the French ambassador lives with his wife, Anne Marie (Delphine Seyrig). Anne Marie is pictured in a red evening dress surrounded by her lovers and suitors whom she has grown tired of in a drawing room cut off from the rest of India. In what is perhaps a stylistic representation of Anne Marie's condition, the film's dialogue is disembodied from its images, Canby wrote in his review for The Times, adding that "the movie looks and sounds like something shot underwater." DEADWATER FELL Stream on Acorn TV. The actors David Tennant and Cush Jumbo star in this British mystery drama making its North American debut. After the suspicious killings of some members of a Scottish family, everything the characters know about each other is questioned. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Bill Cosby on Thursday after he was found guilty in his sexual assault retrial in Norristown, Pa. A jury found Bill Cosby guilty Thursday of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home near here 14 years ago, capping the downfall of one of the world's best known entertainers, and offering a measure of satisfaction to the dozens of women who for years have accused him of similar assaults against them. On the second day of its deliberations at the Montgomery County Courthouse, the jury convicted Mr. Cosby of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, at the time a Temple University employee. Mr. Cosby's case was the first high profile sexual assault trial to unfold in the aftermath of the MeToo movement and many considered the verdict a watershed moment, one that reflected that, going forward, the accounts of female accusers may be afforded greater weight and credibility by jurors. The Montgomery County district attorney, Kevin R. Steele, asked that Mr. Cosby's 1 million bail be revoked, suggesting he had been convicted of a serious crime, owned a plane and could flee, prompting an angry outburst from Mr. Cosby, who shouted, "He doesn't have a plane, you asshole." "Enough of that," Judge Steven T. O'Neill said. He did not view Mr. Cosby as a flight risk, he said, adding that he could be released on bail but that he would have to remain in his nearby home. The judge did not set a date to sentence Mr. Cosby on the three counts, all felonies and each punishable by up to 10 years in state prison. The National Organization for Women called the verdict a "notice to sexual predators everywhere." Rose McGowan, one of the women who has accused Harvey Weinstein of assault, tweeted a thank you to the judge and jury and to "society for waking up." Gloria Allred, the lawyer who represented many of Mr. Cosby's accusers, hailed the decision as an important breakthrough. "After all is said and done, women were finally believed," she said outside the courtroom. The impression of change was evident within the trial itself when the defense attacked the credibility of five women who had testified that they, too, believed Mr. Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted them. Kathleen Bliss, one of Mr. Cosby's lawyers, called one of the women a failed starlet who slept around. She branded another a publicity seeker. The remarks inflamed Kristen Gibbons Feden, a prosecutor on the case. She called the attacks filthy and shameful and the sort of criticism that had long kept sexual assault victims from coming forward. Ms. Feden's colleague, M. Stewart Ryan, described Ms. Bliss's approach as "the last vestiges of a tactic not to get to the truth, but to damage character and reputation." Their boss, Kevin R. Steele, the Montgomery County district attorney, referenced the broader significance of the case when he thanked Ms. Constand for taking part in not one, but two trials. "She has been a major factor in a movement that has gone in the right direction, finally," he said. The first trial ended with a hung jury after six days of deliberations last summer. When the jury announced its decision Thursday, Mr. Cosby sat back in his chair and quietly stared down. Several women who have accused him of abuse, and attended the trial each day, briefly cheered. Ms. Constand, who had been quiet throughout, stood up and was hugged by supporters, including her lawyer. Did the MeToo movement have an effect on the Bill Cosby jury? Mr. Cosby did not comment as he left the courthouse, but his lead lawyer, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., said his client would appeal. "We are very disappointed by the verdict," he said. "We don't believe Mr. Cosby is guilty of anything." In recent years, Mr. Cosby, 80, had admitted to decades of philandering, and to giving quaaludes to women as part of an effort to have sex, smashing the image he had built as a moralizing public figure and the upstanding paterfamilias in the wildly popular 1980s and '90s sitcom "The Cosby Show." He did not testify in his own defense, avoiding a grilling about those admissions, but he and his lawyers have insisted that his encounter with Ms. Constand was part of a consensual affair, not an assault. The verdict now marks the bottom of a fall as precipitous as any in show business history and leaves in limbo a large slice of American popular culture from Mr. Cosby's six decade career as a comedian and actor. For the last few years, his TV shows, films and recorded stand up performances, once broadcast staples, have largely been shunned, and with his conviction, they are likely to remain so. At Mr. Cosby's retrial, in the same courthouse and before the same judge, a new defense team argued unsuccessfully that Ms. Constand, now 45, was a desperate "con artist" with financial problems who steadily worked her famous but lonely mark for a lucrative payday. The prosecution countered that it was Mr. Cosby who had been a deceiver, hiding behind his amiable image as America's Dad to prey on women that he first incapacitated with intoxicants. During closing arguments Tuesday, Ms. Feden told the jury: "She is not the con. He is." The defense's star witness was a veteran academic adviser at Temple who said Ms. Constand had confided to her in 2004 that she could make money by falsely claiming she had been molested by a prominent person. Mr. Cosby paid Ms. Constand 3.38 million in 2006 as part of the confidential financial settlement of a lawsuit she had brought against him after prosecutors originally declined to bring charges. The Bill Cosby case: A timeline from accusation to conviction. But Ms. Constand said she had never spoken with the adviser, and prosecutors rebutted her characterization as a schemer. Perhaps most damaging to Mr. Cosby, was the testimony from five other women who told jurors they, too, were Cosby victims. The powerful drumbeat of accounts allowed prosecutors to argue that Ms. Constand's assault was part of a signature pattern of predatory behavior. Mr. Cosby's lawyers had tried to block the additional women from testifying, arguing their accounts would be prejudicial. They noted that the scrutiny of sexual assault had heightened, and recently had ensnared a group of high profile men, but they said it was only Mr. Cosby who was on trial in this instance. "Mob rule is not due process," Ms. Bliss told the jury. None of those accusations had resulted in prosecution. In many of the cases, too much time had passed for criminal charges to be considered, so Ms. Constand's case emerged as the only criminal test of Mr. Cosby's guilt. But Mr. Cosby has been sued by several accusers, some of whom said he or his staff defamed them by dismissing their allegations as fabrications. The suits are likely to draw momentum from the guilty verdict. Many of the accusers celebrated the verdict with laughter and tears. Patricia Steuer, 61, who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her in 1978 and 1980, said she and her husband were in a pharmacy at Lake Tahoe when the news arrived by text. "We just collapsed in each other's arms," she said. "We were just crying." Mr. Cosby returned to the suburban mansion where, in the evening, his spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, said Mr. Cosby planned to appeal on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct and to also assert that the statute of limitations had expired before charges were filed in December 2015. "God puts certain situations in your life, not to destroy you but to build you," Mr. Wyatt said. "We build from here." "I was kind of jolted awake and felt Mr. Cosby on the couch beside me, behind me, and my vagina was being penetrated quite forcefully, and I felt my breast being touched," Ms. Constand said. "I was limp, and I could not fight him off." In Mr. Cosby's first trial, only one other accuser had been allowed to testify. At the retrial, the five additional witnesses included the former model Janice Dickinson, who told jurors Mr. Cosby had assaulted her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982, after giving her a pill to help with menstrual cramps. "Here was America's Dad on top of me," she told the courtroom, "a happily married man with five children, on top of me." The defense suggested that Ms. Dickinson had made up the account, pointing to her memoir, which recounted the meeting without mentioning any assault. But Ms. Dickinson's publisher testified that she had shared her account of rape and that it was kept out of the book for legal reasons. "He was lonely and troubled and he made a terrible mistake confiding in her what was going on in his life," Mr. Mesereau said. Under cross examination, Ms. Constand explained the lapses in her accounts as innocent mistakes, and said her contacts with Mr. Cosby after the incident were mostly cursory, the unavoidable result of her job duties. Mr. Steele told the jury that Mr. Cosby took away Ms. Constand's ability to consent with the pills he gave her, and that their later contacts were irrelevant. When Ms. Constand's mother called to confront Mr. Cosby about a year after the incident, the prosecution argued, his apology and his offer to pay for her schooling, therapy and a trip to Florida were evidence he knew he had done something wrong. Mr. Steele, the district attorney, also worked to rebut the defense claims. He said that Mr. Cosby, a member of Temple University's board of directors at the time and the university's most famous alumnus, set his sights on Ms. Constand, an employee in the athletic department who considered him a mentor. "This case is about trust," Mr. Steele had told the jurors. "This case is about betrayal, and that betrayal leading to a sexual assault of a woman named Andrea Constand." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
If there ever were a moment in the history of capitalism for the work of women to be fairly valued around the globe, that moment is now, as the coronavirus pandemic rages. In "The Double X Economy: The Epic Potential of Women's Empowerment," Linda Scott tells powerful stories about how "equal economic treatment for women would put a stop to some of the world's costliest evils, while building prosperity for everyone." By costly evils, Scott, a professor emeritus at Oxford and the founder of the Global Business Coalition for Women's Economic Empowerment, has in mind the cycle of poverty evident in countries that fail to keep girls in school, since girls who complete high school are not only better able to compete in the work force but tend to have their first child later and have fewer children over all, thus slowing population growth. They also are more likely to keep their children in school longer, feed them better and provide them with adequate health care. (Moreover, girls who stay in school are less likely to be victims of human trafficking.) But the pandemic and subsequent recession are crises made worse by existing impediments to women's economic participation, obstacles that have resulted in a "shadow" or unacknowledged system of female labor what Scott calls the "double X economy." Scott has been writing about women's issues for many years, publishing some of the earliest studies on the role multinational corporations can play in improving women's economic autonomy, such as her examination of Avon's initiatives in developing countries. Her research has taken her to some of the world's poorest regions, where, often in collaboration with local nonprofits and global companies, she has studied how to help women become entrepreneurs and be recognized and compensated for their work. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos and anything else that strikes them as intriguing. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once a week blast of our pop music coverage. David Byrne's 2018 tour put his whole band in choreographed motion, a spectacle that rivaled the Talking Heads' 1983 extravaganza filmed as "Stop Making Sense." One rave review "' ... The Best Live Show of All Time' NME" supplies the title for an EP recorded live in Brooklyn. Even without visuals, "Everybody's Coming to My House" sheds the nervous, paranoid overtone of the studio version on Byrne's 2018 album, "American Utopia." While the lyrics envision ceaseless surveillance and interaction, the sheer funkiness makes it sound like one big house party. JON PARELES An arrestingly beautiful lead single from the forthcoming third album by American Football, lonely titans of 1990s emo. Mike Kinsella sings like a nudge, a suggestion: "What's the allure of inconsequential love?" he wonders, at a low enough volume that you know he doesn't know the answer. All around him, bells peal and guitars swarm and the song gets tense, but only in an internal way. From the outside, there's no sweat at all. JON CARAMANICA It's been a challenging ... five(?) years for Robin Thicke: that Miley performance, the dissolution of his marriage, the death of his father, the crumbling of his claim to celebrity. Just this week, he was ordered to pay restitution to the family of Marvin Gaye as part of the final resolution of the "Blurred Lines" lawsuit that accused him and Pharrell Williams of pilfering the key elements of that song from Gaye's "Got to Give It Up." After all that, a retreat from the spotlight for good would be understandable, and perhaps advisable. But now comes "Testify": gentle, self lacerating, studiously vulnerable. A rather lovely acoustic guitar ballad one that moves him toward adult contemporary R B, a natural new home "Testify" is essentially a litany of failures, shortcomings, disappointments. He lists them sweetly, not defiantly. They are who he is now. These are his confessions. CARAMANICA Not to be confused with Ella Mai, Ego Ella May is a singer and songwriter from London who's on the jazzy side of the neo soul spectrum, with a fine line soprano and a penchant for zigzag chromatic melodies. In "Table for One," she works through the loneliness and disorientation of a breakup "I try to reprogram my mind/there's no change" to eventually decide "I don't mind at all/I'll be fine on my own." Her backup band is live and improvisational in the studio, suddenly stirring up gusty, slightly cluttered crescendos and then settling back down, turning the song into an unfinished narrative. PARELES Knobs, keyboards, monochrome monitors galore. Analog synthesizer geeks should thrill to this video of "All Hail the Silence" by the duo of the keyboardist and producer BT (Brian Transeau) and the singer and songwriter Christian Burns, whose mission is to record electronic pop without computers. This is the synthesizer version of recording with vintage guitars and tube amps; what once was futuristic now seems homey. PARELES A sturdy and concise pop soul number masking as a country song, "Heart's Having a Hard Time" is a sharp introduction to Filmore, a rising country singer with a voice that never flirts with tension. Instead, he's a gentle mope, peaceful in his resignation to hurt, even though his words capture a sadness that's potent and pained: It shouldn't be so tough for me to change my lock screen but it's sinking in that I don't get to kiss that smile no more Jason Palmer is one of the great, fine tuned improvisers of his generation, but the 39 year old trumpeter, who lives in Boston, remains underrecognized by the jazz public. His newest album, "Fair Weather," probably won't correct the issue: It's out on Newvelle Records, a label that operates entirely on a subscription model, requiring buyers to purchase a full year's worth of records in order to receive anything. But this video for the title track a skating, five beat retrofit of the old ballad "Moonlight Becomes You" offers a sense of Palmer's powers: his way of quietly recasting the harmonies of a tune, and gently pulling a rhythm section together around him as he improvises. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO The Canadian songwriter Jean Sebastian Audet released a 2017 album under the name Un Blonde; now he's recording as Yves Jarvis. The disorientation only begins there in "Fruits of Disillusion," a wispy, wavery, deliberately ambling three minutes of low fi psychedelia. The track begins as a gentle drone with feedback woven in, offers a spoke sung verse that suddenly sprouts harmonies and wanders off to an unsteady beat. It's a rumination on "constant change" that's secure in its own fragility. PARELES Triptych Myth was a trio led by Cooper Moore, a lion of the downtown music scene, in the early 2000s, when he'd just ended a yearslong hiatus from playing the piano. "Finding Fire," recorded in 2005 but not released until this week, is the band's third and ostensibly final album, and it is a continental statement: widely varied in terms of textures and tones, unfolding like an epic novel, with various stories converging into one. The album finds Triptych Myth featuring Tom Abbs and bass and the ever potent Chad Taylor on drums in tender, slowly mutating dialogue with Cale Brandley, a reeds player and vocalist. On "Sunset Park, After the Sun Sets," Brandley starts on the ney, a Middle Eastern flute with a chalky tone, and moves to the alto clarinet, improvising in miniature filigrees and small, tumbling phrases as the trio creates a pebbly path below him. RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Not long ago, Jordan Rodman, a 23 year old publicity assistant, was paying her respects at a shiva on the Upper West Side when her online dating life became a topic of conversation. "Someone came up to me and was like, 'Oh, Jordan, I know this guy and he saw you on JSwipe and I think you x ed him but he thought you were really beautiful,' " she said. Ms. Rodman shrugged. She had plenty of other takers on her favorite new app, JSwipe, which blends the Jewish exclusivity of JDate with the romance by swiping proficiency of Tinder. Started last April (during Passover), the app is a faddish take on the age old desire to marry within the tribe. Instead of attributes like favorite movies, users indicate their degree of Jewishness (among them: Just Jewish, Orthodox and Willing to Convert). Swipe right and a Star of David with a happy face appears; swipe left and it wears a frown. When a couple match, animated figures appear doing the hora. The similarities to Tinder are not by coincidence. "As soon as I touched Tinder, I was like, 'Oh my God, this is the next step that needs to exist in the Jewish community,' " said David Yarus, a 28 year old entrepreneur who said he made the app "kind of as a joke." But he is taking it seriously now. "I've unlocked this alignment of truth in my life where my passion and my profession and my expertise is all the same thing right now," he said. Mr. Yarus describes typical JSwipe users as "millennial Jews around the world whose grandparents and mothers are saying, 'When are you going to marry someone Jewish?' " He counts himself among the target audience. Though Mr. Yarus grew up in an observant Jewish household in Miami Beach and attends a synagogue in the tradition of the Carlebach spiritual movement in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, he calls himself "post affiliation." ("I don't do labels," he said.) The app, Mr. Yarus said, currently has 250,000 users in 70 countries, with the bulk of users in New York, Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. He hopes to reach a half million by Passover next year. (Tinder, by comparison, reportedly has about 50 million users.) "We're like, young punks working out of a factory that are trying to make love free for the Jewish community," Mr. Yarus said. Much of the growth has been through word of mouth. "I'm going to Florida in like two weeks to visit my bubbe" Yiddish for grandmother "in Boca, and obviously she's going to love it," said Ms. Rodman, who uses the app a few times a week. "It'll be a really good bonding activity." She is also curious to see what kind of men will appear, as the app makes suggestions based on location. For example, on the Upper West Side, where she lives, "You'll get the Shulis, the Yonis, all the guys dressed in their I.D.F. uniforms," she said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. "As you head more downtown, you get the Alexes, the Joshes and the Bens, and they have all their Birthright pictures in the desert." One guy she won't meet is Michael Brand, a 39 year old risk vice president at J.P. Morgan, who visited Boca Raton, Fla., last summer and downloaded JSwipe there for the first time. "To be perfectly frank, I really didn't take the app too seriously," he said. But soon, he matched with Samantha Rudnick, 26, a marketing strategist in Florida, though they didn't talk until her 3 year old niece commandeered her phone and sent him a string of garbled messages. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Hometown: Born in Shreveport, La., she grew up in Harlem (where her mother lived) and Trenton, N.J. (where her father lived). Now lives: A two bedroom apartment in Venice Beach, Calif., with her best friend. Claim to fame: Ms. Merk is a fashion model and singer songwriter whose guitar soaked melodies and candid lyrics about drugs, mental illness and trauma describe the darker side of young adulthood. Her modeling career took off at 14, when she and her cinnamon colored shag landed modeling campaigns with Pat McGrath Labs, Gucci and Fenty. Rihanna "was obsessed with my bangs," Ms. Merk said, referring to a shoot with Fenty. "Every time I would brush my hair out of my face she would be like 'Oh my god, no! The bang has to be perfect.'" Big break: When she was a high school freshman in Manhattan, Ms. Merk was recruited by a classmate and future influencer, Luka Sabbat, for a modeling gig that he couldn't reveal. "I didn't even know what it was until I got an email from Kanye's people asking, 'Can you fly out tonight?'" she said. She ended up in Arizona to model in Kanye West's Yeezy Season 2 zine. "I didn't see myself as model material at the time," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Trade War Has Damaged U.S. Chip Industry in Ways a Deal May Never Fix SAN FRANCISCO Alex Lidow has sold semiconductors in China for decades, starting at a company, called International Rectifier, that his father and grandfather founded in the Los Angeles area in 1947. Now Mr. Lidow runs Efficient Power Conversion, which makes chips that manage electrical power in cars and other products. Efficient Power has a strong foothold in China, but has lately run into resistance from customers there that he traces to moves in Washington. Mr. Lidow is among the semiconductor executives in the United States who have become concerned that the trade war with China particularly the Trump administration's ban on selling chips to some prominent Chinese customers won't just squeeze current revenue. He fears that recent events have convinced Chinese companies that American component makers can no longer be seen as dependable partners and are permanently shifting away from them. "In my 40 years in this business, I've had friends in China that viewed me as a trusted supplier," Mr. Lidow said. "They can't now." His experience is part of the fallout affecting the American chip industry, one of the tech sectors hardest hit by the tit for tat between the United States and China over trade and national security. In May, President Trump ordered American companies on national security grounds to stop selling components to companies like Huawei, China's big maker of mobile phones and networking equipment. And the administration placed five other Chinese entities on the same blacklist this month, including the computer maker Sugon and three subsidiaries. China has responded by saying it would put together its own "unreliable entities list," including many American tech companies. Even if a new trade deal eases tensions Mr. Trump is set to meet with President Xi Jinping of China in Osaka, Japan, on Saturday American chip executives and others said lasting damage had already been done. They said Chinese officials and companies would step up efforts to design and make more chips domestically. And Chinese customers seem likely to turn to vendors from countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan if no homegrown chips are available. "The U.S. is in danger of becoming the vendor of last resort for China," said Walden Rhines, chief executive emeritus of Mentor, a unit of Siemens that sells software for designing chips. To ease the blow, Micron appears to have found a workaround. It said it had recently resumed some shipments to Huawei based on its interpretation of the Trump administration's restrictions, noting that some goods produced by American companies overseas are not always considered American made. Broadcom, which makes chips for smartphones and networking equipment, also recently pointed to the Huawei sales ban as the biggest factor in a reduction of about 2 billion in its annual sales forecast. Broadcom had been on track to sell more than 1 billion of components to Huawei in its current fiscal year, analysts said. Yet even beyond Huawei, customers have begun cutting their chip inventories and are putting off new orders because of general uncertainty over the ban, Hock Tan, Broadcom's chief executive, said in a conference call with analysts on June 13. "We'll see a very sharp impact," he said, calling the situation a compression of the electronics supply chain. "And it's broad based." The disruption has been even more dramatic at smaller companies. One is NeoPhotonics, a maker of optical components for communications, which cut its financial guidance last month after the Huawei ban. The Silicon Valley company drew nearly 46 percent of its revenue in 2018 from Huawei, said Alex Henderson, a senior analyst at Needham Company. Though NeoPhotonics has a factory in Japan that may allow it to do some business with Huawei, Mr. Henderson estimated that its third quarter revenue would drop 40 percent. NeoPhotonics, which has presented a plan to analysts for cutting costs and is evaluating its options, declined to comment. Another example is Semtech, which makes communications chips for smartphones and optical components used in networking. The company, based in Camarillo, Calif., revealed last month that business with Huawei in its latest quarter was 16 percent of its total revenue. But with the restrictions now in place, Mohan Maheswaran, Semtech's chief executive, predicted that sales would be roughly 7 million lower in the current quarter. Semtech declined to provide additional comment. Few executives were willing to discuss how they are coping with the restrictions, fearing retribution or criticism from American or Chinese officials. "Everybody is laying low. No one wants to be on the radar," said Jodi Shelton, a co founder and the president of the Global Semiconductor Alliance, which represents American and foreign chip companies. Not all the news is dire. Many American chip makers are experiencing strong sales to customers other than Huawei. Over time, they also expect to pick up more sales from Huawei's rivals as those companies increase market share. And some analysts predict a new trade pact with Beijing in coming months. "I really think it's an 85 percent probability," said Pierre Ferragu, an analyst with New Street Research. Nor do all semiconductor veterans see lasting harm from the China sanctions. T. J. Rodgers, who led Cypress Semiconductor for 34 years before leaving the company in 2016, said the impact would be temporary and was a reasonable price to pay if China could be compelled to trade more fairly. "I don't think it's a big deal," Mr. Rodgers said. "There is always somebody to whine." Mr. Lidow built Efficient Power, starting in 2007, around the idea of making chips with gallium nitride, a semiconductor widely used in LED lights, on silicon wafers to handle jobs like converting voltage in automotive radar, wireless battery charging and infotainment systems. The company, which uses factories in Taiwan, originally projected it would get 70 percent to 80 percent of its revenue from China, he said. Mr. Lidow said it still might reach that goal eventually, but he expects revenue from China to decline about 20 percent this year because of the trade tensions. One major sign of trouble, he said, is that some customers in China have backed away from plans to ask Efficient Power to customize its chips to meet their specifications. They are still buying some standard products, he said, but have decided to avoid technical relationships that would cause a longer term dependence on his company. Customers in China believed "up to now that the U.S. democratic process was a force that couldn't be compromised by an individual," Mr. Lidow said. But not now, he said. "You can never regain that confidence," he added. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The trumpeter Roy Hargrove died last week at 49. He was a highly regarded performer who managed to be perceived simultaneously as one of the musicians most responsible for keeping jazz history alive and relevant, and also one of the artists most comfortable putting jazz in dialogue with contemporary music. He released moving versions of old standards, composed his own affecting additions to the contemporary jazz songbook, and led fusion projects with R B musicians and Afro Cuban luminaries. Outside of jazz, he was one of the animating forces on a trio of albums released in 2000 D'Angelo's "Voodoo," Erykah Badu's "Mama's Gun" and Common's "Like Water for Chocolate" that were high water marks for the Soulquarian movement of earthy, historically minded hip hop and soul. Mentored by Wynton Marsalis when he was still in high school, Mr. Hargrove went on to become a relentless nurturer of young talent, collaborating on recordings and bandstands across the world, and providing space for upstart performers at the Jazz Gallery in New York. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. KIRILL GERSTEIN at Zankel Hall (Feb. 20, 7:30 p.m.). Gerstein has emerged in recent years as one of our most thoughtful pianists, beyond his immense technical ability, and this recital is a perfect example of his gift for programming. Much of it is rooted in folk music, particularly pieces by Haydn, Brahms and Liszt; some is contemporary, including a handful from Gyorgy Kurtag's "Jatekok" and an arrangement drawn from Thomas Ades's "The Exterminating Angel"; and the whole lot is balanced by works demanding the utmost virtuosity, above all Liszt's Sonata. 212 247 7800, carnegiehall.org NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC at David Geffen Hall (Feb. 20, 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 21 22, 8 p.m.). Jaap van Zweden conducts Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 in these subscription concerts, but the real action comes before that. As if Renee Fleming singing Bjork were not enough, there are also two songs by Anders Hillborg and the premiere of "When the World as You've Known It Doesn't Exist" by Ellen Reid, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for music last year. 212 875 5656, nyphil.org ORCHESTRE REVOLUTIONNAIRE ET ROMANTIQUE at Carnegie Hall (Feb. 19 20, 8 p.m.; through Feb. 24). John Eliot Gardiner and this ensemble released one of the more consequential recordings of the Beethoven symphonies ever made back in 1994, one that remains notable for its sleek, fast period instrument approach. They reprise that effort over five concerts here, in the first and likely the more interesting of two Beethoven cycles at Carnegie this season. Wednesday's performance puts the Symphony No. 1 in the context of works like "The Creatures of Prometheus" and excerpts from the opera "Leonore"; the other four concerts pair the remaining eight symphonies in numerical order. 212 247 7800, carnegiehall.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Stream Netflix's behind the scenes documentary on the failed Fyre Fest, and the Season 5 premiere of "Grace and Frankie." FYRE: THE GREATEST PARTY THAT NEVER HAPPENED on Netflix. The viral unraveling of Fyre Festival became a big punch lines of 2017. What was originally billed as an ultraluxury music festival in the Bahamas organized by the entrepreneur Billy McFarland and the rapper Ja Rule, and promoted by supermodels like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid in fact involved soggy tents and deconstructed cheese sandwiches upon the arrival of hundreds of festivalgoers. The documentarian Chris Smith, who directed "Jim Andy: The Great Beyond," dives into what went wrong, and how millennial revelers were duped, by talking with festival organizers. Absent from Netflix's documentary is an interview with McFarland, who was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud in October. He gave an exclusive interview to Hulu, which released its show about the festival, "Fyre Fraud," days before the Netflix release. In his review of both films, Wesley Morris of The New York Times says, "You watch both movies in a kind of fascinated horror at how easy it was for McFarland to create a network of what appears to be unwitting co conspirators to help him plan an experience that wound up losing 24 million." CARMEN SANDIEGO on Netflix. Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? You can find her on Netflix in that streaming service's new animated show, voiced by Gina Rodriguez. The 10 episode series is based on the globe trotting criminal mastermind of the late 1980s educational video games, but aims to uncover more about the title character's back story, from her time as a student at V.I.L.E. Training Academy for Thieves through to her transformation to a crook who steals valuable artifacts from other crooks. Finn Wolfhard, of "Stranger Things," stars alongside Rodriguez in the series as her trusted sidekick, Player. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Cyberpunk 2077 Was Supposed to Be the Biggest Video Game of the Year. What Happened? The hype around Cyberpunk 2077 had been building for nearly a decade. When CD Projekt Red, the Polish studio behind the video game, announced the title in 2012, it was billed as a gripping, free flowing saga that would immerse players in a lifelike sci fi universe. Since then, fans have been treated to impressive teaser trailers, buy in from celebrities including Keanu Reeves, Grimes and ASAP Rocky, and headlines heralding it as the most anticipated title of the year, if not the century. The game is set in a dystopian future where digital nomads navigate a high stakes world of corporate espionage (with Mr. Reeves as their guide) and augment their bodies with high tech weaponry. Players, especially those using next generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft, were promised a revolutionary experience, with extensive character customization options and an expansive world to explore. Eight million people pre ordered copies, sight unseen, ahead of its December release. In July 2018, as anticipation for the game neared a crescendo across Twitter, one user tweeted at the official Cyberpunk 2077 account: "Will there be memes in the game?" The account responded: "Whole game is going to be a meme." The tweet was somewhat prescient but not in the way developers had hoped. Since the release of Cyberpunk 2077 on Dec. 10, thousands of gamers have created viral videos featuring a multitude of glitches and bugs many hilarious that mar the game. They include tiny trees covering the floors of buildings, tanks falling from the sky and characters standing up, inexplicably pantless, while riding motorcycles. These videos depict a game that is virtually unplayable: rife with errors, populated by characters running on barely functional artificial intelligence, and largely incompatible with the older gaming consoles meant to support it. Fans are livid. So many gamers demanded refunds from distributors this week that they overwhelmed Sony's customer service representatives and even briefly took down one of its corporate sites. In response, Sony and Microsoft said they would offer full refunds to anyone who purchased Cyberpunk 2077 through their online stores; Sony even pulled the title. Cyberpunk's rollout is one of the most visible disasters in the history of video games a high profile flameout in the midst of the holiday shopping season by a studio widely considered an industry darling. It shows the pitfalls gaming studios can face when building so called Triple A games, titles backed by years of development and hundreds of millions of dollars. But it is also a tale that insiders said they saw coming for months, based on CD Projekt Red's history of game development and warning signs that Cyberpunk 2077 might not live up to its sky high expectations. CD Projekt Red was founded in Warsaw in the 1990s by two high school friends, Marcin Iwinski and Michal Kicinski, during a time of transformation and growth in the gaming industry. (CD ROM discs were a novel innovation back then.) The two began importing games from the United States, and essentially repackaging and republishing them in Poland. Still, the Witcher series gained the studio an early following and fan base. The studio received the most acclaim for The Witcher 3, which won awards for its detailed universe and rich storytelling. Like earlier titles, it was buggy from the outset, frustrating players. But most fans accepted what they saw as a kind of test and release culture around CD Projekt Red games: a willingness to put out projects that were not yet problem free. Smoke and Mirrors on the Marketing Front Then came Cyberpunk 2077. First announced in 2012 and based loosely on a tabletop role playing game created in 1988, the title was CD Projekt Red's first attempt at creating a new, futuristic world. It was to be set in Night City, a darkly dystopian megacity where humans and machines were fused together and repackaged as mercenaries, carrying out sabotage missions against evil corporations. The game would combine elements from some of sci fi's greatest hits: Strange Days meets Blade Runner meshed with The Matrix. To hammer that point home, CD Projekt Red cast a familiar famous face in the game: Keanu Reeves. At a development conference in 2019, the actor burst onto the stage in a cloud of smoke after a video revealed his character. "Let me tell you, the feeling of being there, of walking the streets of the future, is really going to be breathtaking," Mr. Reeves said at the event. (A spokeswoman for Mr. Reeves did not respond to a request for comment.) Inside CD Projekt Red, it was a very different story. Developers were increasingly concerned with some of the grand promises being made by management on the promotional marketing tour. Far into the game's development, former employees said, the hyper customizable and endlessly explorable world being sold to players was nowhere close to manifesting. By 2019, chatter began to circulate in Polish game development circles that CD Projekt Red was way behind schedule with Cyberpunk 2077, even with a release date set for the following April. Some saw the departure of top executives including key board members as major warning signs. On Glassdoor, a site where people can rate their previous employers, current and former CD Projekt Red workers said there was chaos behind the scenes: Office rumors spreading on Discord servers, misleading deadlines set by managers, infighting among the company's top brass, and incompetence and poor planning leading to unnecessary "crunch," a term for overworking employees to produce games under a tight deadline. Longtime engineering staff left the company as a result of overwork. "The owners treat the company as a machine to earn money, and do not see employees as people but more like data in the table," one former employee wrote on the site. This January, CD Projekt Red tweeted that the game's release had been delayed until Sept. 17, because there was "still work to be done." Then, in March, the coronavirus pandemic caused CD Projekt Red to send its work force home. Though the company said remote work would not hurt Cyberpunk's chances of a September release, executives eventually announced further delays. The game was pushed to Nov. 19 in order to "fix a lot of bugs." It was the same story in October, when the game's release date was pushed to Dec. 10, at the height of the holiday shopping season. Inside CD Projekt Red, as executives and communications staff geared up for a wide release, the problems were evident. While developers had created a functioning game for PC users, Cyberpunk was glitchy and crashed frequently on next generation consoles like the PlayStation 5 and the new Xbox devices. Even worse, the game barely ran on older consoles like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Typically, game developers send early copies of new titles to reviewers with ample lead time. But CD Projekt Red kept Cyberpunk 2077 under wraps for as long as it could. The company only shared advance copies of the PC version with gaming publications and news organizations, previewing the best possible version of Cyberpunk to reviewers who would post their ratings online just days before the game's release. Eager fans were thrilled to finally be playing the game for the first time. Ashley Shoate, a D.J. in Northville, Mich., said she was amazed at the detail on her PlayStation 5, and loved the ability to customize her character, literally, to the teeth. Then came the bugs. Ms. Shoate said it was impossible for her character to complete basic tasks like running, dodging and picking up weapons. Steering a car was so challenging that she felt like she was "drunk driving." On one mission, Ms. Shoate had to sneak up and kill an enemy with a katana sword. "I'm bringing a knife to a gunfight, so I've got to be on my P's and Q's. I can't even do that," she said. "It's almost unplayable." For the time being, she's shelved the game. "I really thought it was going to be to that level of top three game ever on a new console," she said. "It's very disappointing." Billy Marte, an account executive at a software company in Austin, Texas, said he bought into the high expectations and the commercials with Mr. Reeves. Playing on his PC, he loved the story line and missions, but was often frustrated by glitches that made his character stand up while riding a motorcycle, or forced him to backtrack to an earlier saved game. Some of his friends, he said, had decided to return Cyberpunk. "There was so much there, but they just didn't pay attention to the details," he said. "It's evident that this game was rushed." Most players, though, are pretty unhappy. On Thursday, Sony said it would refund players who wanted to return the game and pulled Cyberpunk from the company's digital storefront. A PlayStation spokesman said the company had nothing further to add beyond its decision. Microsoft also said on Friday that it would issue refunds, but did not remove the game from its online store. CD Projekt Red said Friday that it would refund disappointed players "out of our own pocket if necessary." The company's stock has dropped 41 percent since early December. Ms. Bayer, the company spokeswoman, declined to comment on a detailed list of questions provided by The Times. Inside the studio, there has been infighting and finger pointing. In a contentious meeting with board members on Thursday, CD Projekt Red staffers pressed executives on the game's unrealistic deadlines and false promises. Management was tight lipped about its tense discussions with Sony, Bloomberg reported on Friday, though people at Sony are upset at CD Projekt Red's initial handling of the situation, people close to the company said. The immediate future looks dark for Cyberpunk's makers perhaps even darker than the future they built in Night City. Refund requests are pouring in by the thousands. Lawyers and investors in Warsaw are circling the situation, contemplating a class action lawsuit against the company for what one attorney described as potential criminal "misrepresentation in order to receive financial benefits." Many gamers are swearing off playing Cyberpunk entirely until the company fixes all of the problems. The coming weeks will determine whether CD Projekt Red can make good on a promise it made back in 2017, when players wondered whether the title would ever come out. "Worry not," the company tweeted, assuring fans that Cyberpunk 2077 would be "huge" and "story driven." "No hidden catch, you get what you pay for." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
That New Alzheimer's Drug? Don't Get Your Hopes Up Yet None Biogen, the drug company, said on Tuesday that it would ask the Food and Drug Administration to approve an experimental drug, aducanumab, to treat people with mild cognitive impairment and the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease. About 10 million Americans might qualify for treatment if the drug were approved, according to Michel Vounatsos, the company's chief executive. Even so, it is not quite time for these patients to celebrate. The company has not published the most recent analyses, and experts are mostly in the dark as to how well the drug works. It neither prevents nor cures Alzheimer's; the company claims only that aducanumab may slow cognitive decline in some patients. In fact, Biogen announced in March that it was halting two large studies of aducanumab for treatment of Alzheimer's disease because data showed the effort was likely to be futile. The company resurrected the drug after additional analyses suggested it might have some effect at higher doses. ("Just in time for Halloween, aducanumab has risen from the dead," one drug industry analyst said in an email.) Here are some takeaways from Tuesday's announcement. What is this drug? Drug companies have spent billions of dollars on failed trials for Alzheimer's drugs. So frustrating have the findings been that some have decided to abandon the search altogether. Aducanumab is a monoclonal antibody, an expensive type of drug that attaches to specific proteins in order to disable them. The drug clears a key protein in Alzheimer's disease beta amyloid that accumulates in plaques in patients' brains. Aducanumab is given as an intravenous infusion once a month. The hope was that if patients were treated early in the course of the disease, their brains might recover or the disease's progress might be slowed. What did the studies find? Each study had about 1,600 patients, and brain scans in patients showed that the drug reduced the amount of beta amyloid in the brain. In one study, cognitive decline also slowed; in the other, patients experienced no clinical benefit. But the company changed the design of the second study midway through in order to give one group of patients a higher dose. As of March, the change had brought no clinical benefit. But as more data came in, officials say, the picture changed. Biogen now has data from twice as many patients, from both clinical trials, and executives used those results to justify seeking approval. But the findings have not been published in a peer reviewed journal, and experts have plenty of questions about whether aducanumab actually works, and if so, how well. The company plans to present its analyses at a scientific meeting in December. If the drug was deemed a failure, why are we talking about it? Some 5.5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, not including those in the very early stages, and there is no effective treatment. The consequences for patients and caregiving families are devastating. Biogen officials contend the additional study data showed a slower cognitive decline in the subgroup of patients who got the highest dose. That finding, plus the somewhat positive results from the other study, may be enough to convince the F. D.A. that the drug works. Biogen met with agency officials on Monday, and they told the company that it was "reasonable to file" for approval, Mr. Vounatsos said. An F.D.A. spokesman said the agency does not comment on investigational drugs or on drug approval applications. First, Biogen has provided only a summary of its data and analyses. When Alzheimer's specialists see the details in December better yet, when there is a peer reviewed published paper they may not be convinced the drug has meaningful benefits. Second, the new analysis of patients receiving high doses is a risky one. In a so called subgroup analysis, it is too easy to slice the data to justify a conclusion that's why large randomized trials with defined end points are so valuable. Ordinarily, a subgroup analysis is considered a way to generate a hypothesis, not a way to test whether it is true. Dr. Ronald Petersen, an Alzheimer's researcher at the Mayo Clinic who consults for Biogen, pointed out that the company had not yet convinced the F.D.A. of the drug's efficacy. "They are just allowed to file no guarantees on approval," he said. "But it gives the drug a chance." What if aducanumab actually works? If it succeeds, the drug would be a triumph, "the dawn of a new era," said Dr. Michael Weiner, an Alzheimer's researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. Still, "this is not a cure," he added. "It is a slowing of decline. The practical impact on patients remains to be seen." An approval would mean a windfall for Biogen. If aducanumab were approved, it could bring in 10 billion or more in annual sales, according to Guggenheim Securities. But with so little data released by the company, researchers are cautious. "Looks very encouraging, but I would need to see more details," said Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, an Alzheimer's expert at Duke University. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Liz Alderman, who wrote "My Paris: Seduced by History," offers an insider's guide on places to eat, drink and visit in the Marais district of Paris. In the Haut Marais, Mancora Cebicheria (16, rue Dupetit Thouars, 33 1 43 48 47 65), with its colorful ceviche oriented menu, is a trendy destination for dinner. Go early, they don't take reservations. It's best to reserve at Les Chouettes (32, rue de Picardie, 33 1 44 61 73 21), a French fusion gastro pub serving inspired cuisine in an Eiffel Tower style setting. Le Loir dans La Theiere (3, rue des Rosiers, 33 1 42 72 90 61) dishes hunks of homemade dessert and quiche for brunch. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The Communications Workers of America union has learned to appreciate corporate consolidation. When AT T tried to purchase the rival wireless company T Mobile five years ago a deal that was ultimately blocked as anticompetitive the union called the proposal "good for American consumers and good for American workers." Three years later, it argued that AT T's acquisition of DirecTV "provides substantial public interest benefits for consumers, workers and the U.S. economy." The union offered concrete reasons for its support, not least that the deals could increase the ranks of unionized workers. In 2010, it opposed the merger of the cable giant Comcast and NBC, which was ultimately waved through by antitrust regulators, partly on the grounds of Comcast's hostility toward unions. These days, yet another media leviathan is in the making. If it is approved by regulators, the proposed 85 billion combination of AT T and Time Warner will merge one of the nation's biggest wireless networks, which also owns a satellite television system, with studios that make some of the most popular movies and television shows. The Communications Workers' leadership is now mulling over whether to support the proposition a spokeswoman said the union was evaluating the merger, but she would not comment further. This time the union might want to change its tune. The latest deal may pass muster when viewed in isolation. But collectively, mergers at this scale are reconfiguring the American economy in ways that seem to be tilting the scales toward the interests of ever larger corporations, to the broad detriment of labor. As Senator John Sherman, the principal author of the nation's core antimonopoly law, put it more than a century ago, a monopoly "commands the price of labor without fear of strikes, for in its field it allows no competitors." Stumped by an economy where wages have gotten stuck for all but the most highly educated, where too many men in their prime working years struggle to stay in the job market, and where women's long march into the work force has stalled, some economists are turning their attention anew to the role that diminishing competition might have in causing workers' plight. "I think it is an underappreciated part of the problem," said Jason Furman, President Obama's chief economic adviser. Competition policy can no longer be understood in the narrow terms of protecting consumers from higher prices. Three years ago, the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz proposed that increasing profits from companies managing to avoid normal competitive forces what economists refer to as "rents" appeared to be an important factor in the rising share of the nation's income flowing toward corporate profits and top executive pay in recent years. He surmised that weak labor unions which represent barely over 7 percent of workers in the private sector did not have the clout to protect the workers' share. Since then, several other studies have presented various channels through which a lack of competition between employers could keep wages down. In a report published last month, the White House Council of Economic Advisers, led by Mr. Furman, laid out the case. What happened on Day 2 of Elizabeth Holmes's testimony. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. In a competitive market, companies will vie with their rivals to hire the best workers, lifting wages up to workers' "marginal product," the last cent where their employers could still turn a profit. As productivity grows, wages will be bid up further. Prosperity will spread. But when there are few or no rivals in a labor market, employers will pay much less. This kind of power doesn't even require employers to hold absolute monopolies. Employers can collude more easily when there are few competitors. They can more easily impose tough contractual restrictions that make it tough for workers to shop for better jobs. Competition in product markets does not necessarily translate to competition in the labor market an exporter that sells into global markets but hires domestically may experience a lot of the former yet little of the latter. Waning competition in employment can muck up the economy in more ways than one. It slows wage growth, of course. Lacking outside options, workers are much less likely to leave a job. But economic output and employment will suffer, too, because fewer workers will be willing to work for the lower wage. Not everybody agrees that a lack of competition is having a big impact on the job market. "There is evidence of market power," acknowledged Michael Strain, a moderate conservative at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. But "pending further research, my current view is that big macroeconomic forces like technological change and globalization are significantly more important." The main reason for falling wages and declining employment is simply that demand for less skilled work is falling. Still, American markets have been growing more concentrated. Since the late 1990s, the share of revenue accruing to the top 50 firms has been rising in most industries. The average age of firms is rising, as fewer new firms have been entering many markets. In some sectors, like health care, there is clear evidence of monopoly profits. And there is direct evidence that big employers are interested in limiting their workers' options. Hospitals in several metropolitan areas have been accused in court of colluding to reduce nurses' pay. In a better known case, some of the titans of Silicon Valley were sued by the Justice Department for agreeing not to poach one another's engineers. Employers have other tools to limit competition in hiring. The Treasury Department has discovered, for instance, that 18 percent of workers are covered by noncompete agreements. They aren't all high end engineers with trade secrets in hand. The list includes fast food workers. Policy makers can push back against employers' market power. Strengthening labor unions, of course, would give workers more leverage against dominant employers. Raising the minimum wage would provide a higher wage floor. But it seems there is an opportunity to rethink the nation's approach to antitrust law, too. It should not be seen exclusively as a tool to protect consumers from sticker shock. In a speech in September, Renata Hesse, the Justice Department's acting assistant attorney general for antitrust, argued forcefully that "the antitrust laws were intended to benefit participants in the American economy broadly not just in their capacity as consumers of goods and services." Antitrust enforcement efforts, Ms. Hesse said, "also benefit workers, whose wages won't be driven down by dominant employers with the power to dictate terms of employment." Christopher Shelton is the president of the Communications Workers of America. Maybe he's listening this time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
This year's nominees for the New York Dance and Performance Awards more commonly known as the Bessies, the dance world's version of the Oscars or Tonys have been announced. One change has come for the Bessies, which are to be presented on Oct. 8 at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at N.Y.U.: The award for "emerging choreographer" has been renamed "breakout choreographer," "in order to more clearly recognize an artist who has made an exceptional leap in their visibility," Lucy Sexton, who oversees the awards, said in a statement. That winner has already been chosen: Mariana Valencia, whose recent works have blended movement, music and speech in a kind of performance analogue to scrapbooking. The citation for her award noted that she was picked "for seamlessly blending ethnography, memoir and observation of cross cultural identities." Another award that has already been decided is the Juried Bessie Award chosen by a committee that includes Robert Battle, Stephen Petronio and Ana Garcia (known as Rokafella) which is to be given to the choreographer Kyle Marshall. His work, according to the citation, is notable "for exploring important ideas around race and sexuality in dances that embody rather than illustrate complicated issues," and "for drawing on a variety of movement styles." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Every few years, one of the big video game companies comes out with a new box that it wants consumers to make space for in their living rooms. These systems, known as game consoles, invariably promise wondrous new twists that enhance the experience of playing games better graphics, online matches, innovative methods of interacting with games. Thunderous hype machines accompany these new devices. The boxes that hit all the right notes become spectacular hits that often are nearly impossible to find in stores, creating lines whenever new shipments turn up. The arrival on Friday of the Nintendo Switch console could be a moment for another game frenzy or not. Nintendo has been making games longer and is more focused on the category than either of its chief rivals, Sony and Microsoft. Reviews of Switch have been generally positive, but Nintendo's last console was a dud in terms of sales, and the company seems to be more vulnerable to competition from smartphone games than its rivals. Technical details of the hardware are shared with an audience of industry insiders and gamer press who build buzz for new products among fans. Retailers fiddle with their marketing and merchandising plans. At this stage, game publishers have already privately gained access to crucial details that allow them to begin developing games for the new consoles. A handful of them usually show short demonstrations of those games, as do in house studios that the console makers control. This kind of eye candy, not the hardware on its own, is what gets gamers excited about buying a new system. Nintendo ditched the usual playbook with Switch. E3 takes place in late spring, and new consoles usually go on sale either that fall or the subsequent one so they arrive in time for the holiday gift giving season. Nintendo surprised everyone by releasing a three and a half minute video online showing Switch for the first time last October. The trailer raised almost as many questions as it answered. What were the technical specs for the system? How much would it cost? What games would be available for it and when? Nintendo stayed mum, though it said Switch would be released in March missing the holiday season last year. Instead, the video showed the basics of how Switch can alternate between being played at home, where it can be plugged into a television through a dock, and on the go, where it functions more like a tablet with dedicated controls. The months leading up to the day when a console lands on stores' shelves usually follow a predictable battle plan. Console makers keep up a steady drumbeat of media coverage. They dole out exclusive cover stories and behind the scenes tales of how the machines were created to gamer and tech publications. Their executives show up to do demonstrations on late night talk shows, especially with the host Jimmy Fallon, an avid gamer. Console makers will also do grass roots marketing to get their new systems into the hands of consumers. Nintendo is a big believer in this approach, in part because the twists it introduces with its new consoles often involve how games are played rather than improvements in graphics, the forte of Microsoft and Sony. In 2006, for example, in the months before the release of the Wii, the first console to introduce motion controllers to a mass audience, Nintendo organized house parties across the country to show how the system worked. With Switch, Nintendo again did something different by hosting a game event in Japan less than two months before the new console went on sale to provide details about how much the system would cost ( 300) and to showcase various games under development. That presentation, which was webcast, led to a sharp jump in web searches for Nintendo, as did the Switch video the company released in October. All of the hype is designed to make a big splash on the day a new console finally goes on sale. This is also when one of the most persistent conspiracy theories about game console launches gathers steam. If the teams at console makers have done their job by designing a compelling product and marketing it effectively, Day 1 demand for the systems is very high. Millions of die hard gamers who are willing to take risks when buying new technology are begging console makers to take their money. But new console supplies are rarely sufficient to match that demand. Lines form outside stores where retailers are said to be getting fresh stock. Scalpers begin reselling hard to find systems at huge markups on eBay. Accusations start to fly that the shortages are deliberate, an attempt to artificially create a frenzy for the sake of publicity. The problem with this theory is that there is no evidence for it, and the shortages are not in the financial self interest of console makers, who are after all in the business of selling as many of their systems as possible. Console makers have to decide months in advance of a launch how many systems they or their partners are going to manufacture. An overly bullish plan could easily detonate their balance sheets. As companies start to make new boxes, manufacturing is at its most inefficient, said Robbie Bach, a former senior Microsoft executive who oversaw the introduction of the first two Xbox consoles. There may be new chips and other parts that are in short supply because they've never been made before. Testing of new consoles can turn up manufacturing defects that require tens of thousands of units to be reworked. Finished units usually have to be sent from Asia on ships across the ocean because faster air shipments are too costly, Mr. Bach said. Nintendo had a notoriously difficult time keeping up with demand for the original Wii. Demand was so high and supplies so scarce that lines formed during the second holiday season for the system. (Nintendo ultimately sold more than 100 million Wiis, one of the biggest game successes ever.) According to a former Nintendo executive, who asked for anonymity to avoid conflict with the company, Nintendo was cautious about making new systems because its prior console, the GameCube, had not sold well. With the March launch of Switch, Nintendo has missed peak shopping season. And while a new game in the popular Zelda series is being released for Switch at launch, a new Mario game always a big draw for Nintendo fans will not be available until the holidays. "Supply and demand should be closer to being balanced," said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
On Tuesday , Feb. 26, t he second day of Paris Fashion Week, the city will wake up to 4,000 posters of Carine Roitfeld. The placards show her completely naked, looking out a window and making a peace sign with one hand. They will be placed in hot spots all over the city. No model, fashion editor or tourist will be able to escape them. A team has been hired to put up new posters if the first ones are vandalized or covered up. Ms. Roitfeld, 64, has long been a ubiquitous force during the shows here. As the editor in chief of Vogue Paris for 10 years and, later, the founder of CR Fashion Book, she was a front row regular. Her parties are known for being the most exclusive and elaborate, attracting celebrities like Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian West. But in those roles she was still somewhat in the background: an editor and influencer, not the main event. Now that's about to change. The posters are intended to introduce, teasingly, Carine Roitfeld Parfums, a collection of seven "genderless" fragrances inspired by seven fictional lovers from seven cities around the world. "We had to build everything ourselves, to make the juice," Ms. Roitfeld said. "Usually people do this as a collaboration but I didn't. I hope people buy it." They will retail for 285 apiece on Net a Porter beginning Monday, May 6 (coincidentally the same day that her rumored longtime rival, Anna Wintour, hosts the Met Gala). Ms. Roitfeld hopes the perfumes will be the beginning of a long line of products that will perpetuate her personal brand and legacy. Tell us about the teaser posters. Are you ready for your nude photo to be all over Paris? The photo was actually taken as a joke. It was two years ago, and my daughter was just taking photos of me for fun. But then I thought it might be perfect for this. I asked my son and business partner, Vladimir, if it was O.K., because sometimes I go too far. I like to push. I'm not afraid. I'm following in the footsteps of some notable perfumes. Opium by Yves Saint Laurent. To call something Opium today would be forbidden. Look at Tom Ford; he had naked people in all of his pictures. A lot of people refused to put it in the magazine, but with French Vogue we did. I love the aesthetic. What is the best and worst thing somebody could say about it? The best thing somebody could say about it is you have a good body or you are fearless. If they say "I don't like your butt," I don't care. When you become a public figure you get so many butt comments on Instagram. But I don't want anyone to think I'm pretentious. Of course I'm a bit of an exhibitionist; that I will accept. But if someone says: "Who do you think you are?" That I would not like. Do you have a favorite Paris Fashion Week memory? For the 90th anniversary of Paris Vogue we held the first masked ball. I copied it after the Truman Capote ball, and I tried to be at that level; I think we beat it. The girls wore the most eccentric dresses. It was a dream, dream, dream party. Lara Stone had a huge mask on for the cover of the issue, and Philip Treacy left with a big poster of her at 2 a.m. Then when I launched CR Fashion Book at Raspoutine, a nightclub, we had a vampire ball. It was so exciting because everyone came for me not just because I was with Vogue. It made me happy because you don't know if you will disappear. I remember John Galliano called me on the phone before the party and said he can't be there, but he might be the vampire that comes and bites my neck at midnight. But of course Paris has changed a lot, and it's now very young and international. Before people looked like they were attending a meeting of Congress. Now the new kids come in crazy dressed, and it's much more fun to look at. Why did you decide to do a perfume? I did a lot of collaborations, a lot of magazines, but it was always something transient. If you don't like a magazine, thank God, there is another one coming out in three weeks. But for me perfume is a way to have a legacy. Like Miss Chanel. Chanel No. 5 has been around for almost 100 years. I've always been very sensitive to smell. I entered a competition one time to test hundreds of vodkas blindly. I knew which one was which based on the smell. Why are they modeled after seven lovers? I worked 10 years with French Vogue, and I knew with advertising it was really hard to talk about perfume. If you show the bottle you look like an advertisement. If you talk about the smell, it's very difficult to understand smell with words. So with this perfume we decided to have a story behind the perfume. Seven is also my lucky number. If I get an extra lover somewhere I didn't expect I guess I will have to do more, but this is a starting point. The lovers of the perfume are just fantasies; I came up with them with my cup of tea in bed. I'm much more boring than people think I am. I would love to be like that, to be fun, but I'm really not. Are any of them named after real people? Kar Wai is the perfume for Hong Kong. I'm lucky to know Wong Kar Wai, the filmmaker who made the film "In the Mood for Love." I told him two days ago that he was going to have a perfume named after him. He said, "Why?" and I said, "Because I love your name." He said, "I have to tell my wife!" I told him not to worry, that it's just my pretend world. Lawrence, the Dubai perfume, is named after "Lawrence of Arabia." I discovered all the ways to protect from the sun from that movie. It's my favorite. Was making perfume harder or easier than you thought? I thought it would be cool to make a perfume, but it's not cool. There are so many rules and regulations to make sure it doesn't burn your skin. And they change across countries. In some places you can't use alcohol, but George has weed base in it. This interview has been edited and condensed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Canada Is in an Economic Slump, but Some Investors Are Hopeful OTTAWA An array of factors makes Canada seem like a less than attractive place to invest these days. The global collapse of prices for oil and commodities that come from mines and forests have hurt an economy that depends heavily on natural resources. A surge in factory production that was expected or at least hoped for after the Canadian dollar shrank in value has not really materialized. Economic growth has lagged behind that of the United States, and Canadian financial markets have posted only about half the growth of their American counterparts since the dark days of 2008. But Kiki Delaney, the founder and president of Delaney Capital Management, is undeterred. "Why don't I talk about some of the reasons to be hopeful about Canada because it seems popular not to be," she said by phone from Toronto, where her company is based. "I actually am relatively optimistic about Canada." Like all Canadian investors, Ms. Delaney, whose firm manages about 2 billion in investments, has to deal with the fact that "the Canadian market is not necessarily reflective of the Canadian economy." By her estimate, about two thirds of Canada's equity market is made up of shares in banks and other financial institutions, oil and gas producers and mining companies. So some of Ms. Delaney's optimism rests on a less grim situation for Canada's oil industry. "The price of oil is not going to go back to 26," she said about the price around which oil bottomed out. "I also don't think it's going back to a 100 and something either." "But if OPEC is really serious about cutting back a little bit, the price of oil will climb a little further from here," she added. Any price increase, she said, will amplify the effects of spending cuts throughout the oil industry. Kiki Delaney, the founder and president of Delaney Capital Management. Canada's oil sands industry was not able to shut down production to wait for better prices, unlike many conventional oil projects elsewhere. But the expansion of current oil sands projects and the development of new ones may now largely be history, which might not entirely be a bad thing, Ms. Delaney said. "There were too many projects being built at the same time, and that was really having a diabolical impact on costs," she said. The other source of Ms. Delaney's optimism was the election last year of the new Liberal Party government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and not because of Mr. Trudeau's status as a global social media celebrity. "I don't know if that is necessarily translating into a massive flow of money into the Canadian capital markets," she said. Instead, she is focused on Mr. Trudeau's plan to jump start economic growth by running a budget deficit to fund sweeping spending on roads, schools, bridges, hospitals and other infrastructure. "That is one thing which is really differentiating us from other countries," Ms. Delaney said. "If you want to encourage growth, fiscal spending is what's got to happen. The central banks, they've done what they can do." Nearly three decades after Canada signed a free trade agreement with the United States that was eventually transformed into the North American Free Trade Agreement, relatively few publicly traded manufacturing companies remain based in Canada, and Ms. Delaney is skeptical about the ability of Canadian plants to compete against operations in Mexico on a cost basis. And while BlackBerry and, before it, Nortel Networks were Canadian technology giants that became global forces before flopping, Ms. Delaney said that the Canadian tech sector still had major success stories like CGI, an information technology services provider based in Montreal. It's "a huge company, an unbelievably successful company," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
YEREVAN, Armenia Taking shelter in a hospital basement, 19 year old George Alexanian can hear the suicide drones buzzing overhead in the city of Stepanakert. A few days ago, he said, one of them headed toward the hospital but was struck down before it could explode. Yet being there, he told me, is better than staying home, where every strike felt like an earthquake. His sister is a doctor, working upstairs and sleeping in the hallway because the beds are all full. "We get used to it," he said. "But it's hard to live not knowing if you're safe." Workers hurry out of other basements for a few hours, then rush back down to shelter. Eleven days into an escalating fight between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Stepanakert is being pummeled with missiles and drone fire. One building that still stands is the home of the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh, a country that has never been recognized by the wider world. Known internationally as Nagorno Karabakh, the tiny Armenian separatist enclave in Azerbaijan is at the center of a dangerous conflict that has drawn in Turkey and Russia and claimed hundreds of lives. Without engagement from the United States, whose attention to the region has slipped, the situation could spiral out of control. The conflict is an unresolved leftover from the Soviet Union. In 1923, Communist rulers placed Nagorno Karabakh and its ethnic Armenian majority within the borders of Soviet Azerbaijan, giving it special status with a high degree of self rule. As the Soviet Union was collapsing in 1991, the region declared its own independence, setting off a war that lasted until a cease fire in 1994. That held for 26 years, though clashes have broken out over the past four years. This round of hostilities, which started on Sept. 27, is different. What had previously been theoretically possible but highly improbable military actions Azerbaijani drones flying within 20 miles of Yerevan, Armenia's capital, or an Armenian strike on a military base in Azerbaijan's second city, Ganja were quickly carried out. The next targets could be oil and gas facilities in Azerbaijan, or Yerevan and Azerbaijan's capital, Baku. The threat of mutually assured destruction was supposed to be a deterrent that kept each side in check. Now it risks becoming reality. Azerbaijan, encouraged and materially supported by Turkey, has vowed to fight until its control of Nagorno Karabakh is assured. Armenians, for their part, have vowed to give their last drop of blood to maintain the region's independence. The fighting has expanded beyond anything seen in the past few decades. If it develops into an Azerbaijani attack on Armenian soil, it would be likely to bring the direct participation of Russia, which is treaty bound to protect Armenia. At that point, with Turkey and Russia on opposing sides, the wider region could be engulfed by war. It was the United States that once led the effort to avoid such a disaster as one of the co chairs of the Minsk Group, the body created by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to negotiate a settlement to the conflict. After the cease fire in 1994, the group began intense rounds of diplomacy, including the promising peace talks at Key West, Fla., in 2001, overseen by a sharp cast of American diplomats. But America is now practically absent from the peace process. Its meeting in Geneva on Thursday with France and Russia, the other co chairs of the group, comes after nearly two weeks of inaction. No major proposals or initiatives have emerged from the group since 2007. The United States' interest gradually dropped away. "They've been taking a step back for mostly a decade," Stefan Meister, the head of the Heinrich Boll Foundation's office for the South Caucasus, told me. "They have left it to Russia to solve this conflict, or at least negotiate a cease fire." But the group is designed for American leadership. It reflects the power structure and political will of the 1990s, when the United States was committed to peace and development in the former Soviet Union. As Washington disengaged, it didn't call in another country to replace it or rejigger the format. The structure stayed the same; the peace process just went quiet. Azerbaijan's leaders have said that's why they lost patience and moved to resolve the issue by force. Now, with Turkey's overt assistance on the Azerbaijani side its drones are some of the deadliest flying over Stepanakert few countries other than the United States stand a chance of halting the violence. "The U.S. can act as a spur for better diplomacy," said Salman Shaikh, an expert in conflict resolution. America still has the relationships, leverage and strategic assets needed to move the process forward. But without a strong American presence, the peace process will lack critical heft. The consequences could be grave. Playing the world's policeman may have proven too expensive for America's taste and too expansive for its capabilities. But active diplomatic engagement appointing a special envoy or assigning a senior State Department official the job would be a relatively low cost way for America to prevent loss of life and the devastating consequences of a regional war. Azerbaijanis say they have the right to control all the territory within their United Nations recognized borders and want restitution for those displaced by the 1990s war, some 600,000 people. Armenians say the inhabitants of Nagorno Karabakh have the right to democratic self determination. They also fear being slaughtered if they come under Azerbaijani rule. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
VALLEJO, Calif. The adolescent patient turned sullen and withdrawn. He hadn't eaten in 13 days. Treatment with steroids, phenobarbital and Valium failed to curb the symptoms of his epilepsy. Then, on Sept. 18, he had a terrible seizure violently jerking his flippers and turning unconscious in the water. Cronutt, a 7 year old sea lion, had to be rescued so he didn't drown. His veterinarian and the caretakers at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom began discussing whether it was time for palliative care. "We'd tried everything," said Dr. Claire Simeone, Cronutt's longtime vet. "We needed more extreme measures." As oceans warm, algae blooms have become more widespread, creating toxins that get ingested by sardines and anchovies, which in turn get ingested by sea lions, causing damage to the brain that results in epilepsy. Sea otters also face risk when they consume toxin laden shellfish. The animals who get stranded on land have been given supportive care, but often die. Cronutt may change that. "If this works, it's going to be big," said Mariana Casalia, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, who helped pioneer the techniques that led to a procedure that took place a vet surgery center in Redwood City, Calif. That procedure was done by three neurosurgeons at U.C.S.F., who ordinarily operate on humans. During the operation, they bored a small hole in Cronutt's skull, inserted an ultrathin needle into the hippocampus of the sea lion's brain, then implanted embryonic brain cells extracted from a 35 day old pig. These so called inhibitory cells tamp down the electrical activity in the brain that leads to seizures, a process identified by Scott Baraban, a professor of neurosurgery who runs the lab where Dr. Casalia works. Over a decade, their technique has proved effective in curing epilepsy in mice. Dr. Ryan Kochanski, left, Dr. Mariana Casalia and Dr. John Andrews perform the procedure on Cronutt. Dr. Casalia developed the cells and procedure used in the transplant. Cronutt, the first higher mammal to get the treatment, emerged from the surgery and anesthesia midday and was breathing on his own, a first step. Whether the surgery successfully reverses his condition won't be known for several weeks. Pig cells are important because they have properties of higher mammal species, including the sea mammals succumbing to epilepsy. And sea lions and sea otters are increasingly at risk for the disease. The widely documented phenomenon, first discovered in 1998, led to a surge in beaching of sea lions in 2002, another in 2015, and annual summer beachings. By now, thousands of sea lions have been poisoned by the toxin, called domoic acid. It depletes inhibitory cells that ordinarily help offset excitatory cells in the brain's electrical system. When those cells get out of balance, seizures result. The same phenomenon has led to the closure of crab fisheries to prevent people from eating domoic acid laden crabs and contracting a condition called amnesic shellfish poisoning. In sea lions, scientists have used brain imaging to document how the toxins also lead to degradation to a part of the brain called the hippocampus that is involved in memory, navigation and other functions. When sea lions show up on Pacific Coast beaches in the summer, some exhibiting seizures get rescued and are given supportive care, but they often die. Researchers first discovered Cronutt after he ran aground in November 2017 in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and walked into a parking lot where he was deemed a "traffic hazard." He didn't seem sick. They tagged him for future reference and released him a few weeks later. Shortly after, a bit farther north in Marin County, he was identified on a beach where he walked up to several residences, and climbed on porches and tables. This time, he took himself back out to the water, and then a week later was found on Ocean Beach in San Francisco, disoriented. "A member of the public reportedly tried to feed him a burrito," according to a written chronology provided by Dianne Cameron, the director of animal care at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Ms. Cameron would ultimately become his caretaker after Cronutt named for the pastry that is a combination of croissant and doughnut showed up again on a beach in January 2018, this time in Sonoma County. He stood in front of a public beach bathroom, blocking access. Shortly after, at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif., he was deemed un releasable because he wasn't eating, and had showed up multiple times on land. Then he had a grand mals seizure. The researchers couldn't find a zoo home for the damaged animal. The National Marine Fisheries Service called Ms. Cameron at Six Flags and asked if she'd take him in because the park has facilities to care for rescues and a history of adopting animals with medical issues. She didn't hesitate. "He's such a sweet boy," she said. At Six Flags, he didn't perform as most of the others sea mammals there do, like Pirate, a harbor seal, or the 500 pound Wyland and Shark Bite, both sea lions. Cronutt kept having seizures and intensifying and more frequent cycles where he'd just stop eating for awhile and grow particularly inattentive, behavior that the vets attributed to damage to his brain. His weight fell from a high of 255 to 175 pounds. After his latest terrible bout, on Sept. 18, Ms. Cameron "went home and prayed that he'd make it through the night." In the ensuing days, she and Dr. Simeone began discussing whether it was time to euthanize Cronutt. "Then my husband said, 'You've got to call Scott!'" Dr. Simeone said. Her husband, Dr. Shawn Johnson, also a vet, was referring to Dr. Baraban, the researcher at U.C.S.F. His lab had previously been in contact with the couple and the Marine Mammal Center because they knew about the problem in sea lions and felt they were ready to move up the food chain with their experiments. Dr. Baraban said the surgery, even if successful, wouldn't help people with epilepsy anytime soon because of the challenges of using pig cells in human brains as well as other factors. "My immediate hope is to help the sea lions and sea otters," he said. On Monday, the day before the surgery, Cronutt appeared to be entering another difficult phase. His appetite had fallen sharply, despite energetically throwing his red ball, and splashing in the water. She reflected on the upcoming surgery, the results of which won't be known for 30 days when researchers see if his behavior bounces back as it has with mice and rats in prior work. "Even if it doesn't work, and there's a chance it won't work," Ms. Cameron said, pausing and starting to cry before gathering herself, "maybe Cronutt's purpose is to educate that there are toxins in our water and our ocean needs our attention." On Wednesday morning, the day after surgery, Cronutt still seemed to have no appetite at first. Then he started barking. Ms. Cameron approached with food, and Cronutt devoured two pounds of herring over the course of the morning. "He ate, followed me all around, was super engaged, and really alert. I think he feels really good, considering he had a drill in his brain just yesterday," Ms. Cameron said. "His eyes look beautiful." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
SISTERS AND REBELS A Struggle for the Soul of America By Jacquelyn Dowd Hall In 1974 Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, a young oral historian, went to Virginia to interview two elderly writers. One occupied a ramshackle rural house and spoke bitterly about the ruin of her literary career. The other, living comfortably in Charlottesville, was immersed in her final work, a biography of the renegade abolitionists and women's rights advocates Sarah and Angelina Grimke, despite a publisher having deemed them "minor figures." Hall's interview subjects were likewise sisters and pedigreed white Southerners who broke radically with their caste. Now, four decades after finding Grace and Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, Hall has delivered an epic, poignant biography of siblings "estranged and yet forever entangled" by the South, each other and their haunted family saga. Hall's narrative, "Sisters and Rebels," encompasses a third sister, though she mainly serves as a marker of how far her rebel siblings traveled. Elizabeth Lumpkin was the eldest and favorite of their father, a resentful ex Confederate from a once prominent slaveholding family in Georgia. After the Civil War, he joined the Klan and fervidly embraced the cult of the Lost Cause, also ensuring that his children were "dipped deep" in this white supremacist ideology. Elizabeth, born in 1881, became a celebrated orator on the Confederate circuit, extolling aging veterans as "grand old men who guarded with your lives the virgin whiteness of our Georgia." She married a wealthy doctor at a "Confederate wedding" with a Rebel honor guard, and remained an "eternal loyalist," ending her long life writing nostalgic fiction about a faithful slave and his "saintly" master. Her sisters imbibed the same creed as Children of the Confederacy, a civic organization dedicated to the Lost Cause. But they were more than a decade younger than Elizabeth and came of age in the early 20th century, amid the Progressive Era and expanded opportunity for white women raised in genteel poverty. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. One strength of Hall's work is her nuanced portrayal of the Jim Crow South, as neither "solid" nor walled off from social currents roiling the nation. At a women's college in Georgia, the younger Lumpkins absorbed the teachings of John Dewey and the Social Gospel, a liberal Christianity that had particular influence on Katharine. She went to work for the Y.W.C.A. and joined black women in seeking to desegregate youth programs. Their achievements, though modest, are a reminder that the civil rights triumphs of the 1950s and '60s followed decades of lonely struggle by a dedicated cadre that included Southern women of both races. The Lumpkins also challenged the South's plantation and emerging industrial class by championing workers and left wing agitators. Grace, the more outwardly radical of the sisters, wrote on labor issues for organs like The New Masses, joined picket lines, was arrested at a protest supporting the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, and published a piece in a black newspaper titled "Why I as a White Southern Woman Will Vote Communist." Her novel about a Southern textile mill strike, "To Make My Bread," overcame the scorn of doctrinaire male Marxists, who viewed "proletarian regionalism" as small bore and feminine, winning praise from The New York Times and making Grace, as Hall puts it, "a left wing literary star" of the 1930s. Katharine confronted crushing condescension as she went North to earn a Ph.D. and become a "social economist" at a time when academic jobs were monopolized by men and many Northerners had, as she put it, "been taught to see us Southerners with horns and forked tails." She studied displaced workers and child laborers, traveled to the Soviet Union and is best known for "The Making of a Southerner," a scholarly memoir that draws on her family's slave inventories, Klan records and her childhood horror at watching her father brutally beat the family's black cook. There's more much more as the sisters cycle through a shifting cast of associates and upheavals, most dramatically the Red scare after World War II. Katharine came under F.B.I. surveillance, while her companion was outed for supporting suspect causes and forced from her job at Smith College, like others branded "Red ucators." In an even darker turn, Grace Lumpkin, having renounced her communist ties, became an informer for the F.B.I. She wrote to Joe McCarthy, named names and claimed that Katharine's partner had been a Communist Party member while her sister was "still a 'fellow traveler.'" These are just snapshots of a densely braided biography spanning eight decades, not counting the Lumpkins' forebears and the rediscovery of the sisters' work by late 20th century feminists. The book also draws together the strands of Hall's own career as a distinguished historian of Southern labor and an activist on behalf of women and civil rights. Hall is a herculean researcher whose sources include security files she sued the Department of Justice to access. Her interviews with the elderly Lumpkins, and reflections on why and how she tracked the sisters over decades, lend an appealing journalistic and personal touch to what might otherwise be an unleavened diet of detailed scholarship. She is forthright about what she lacks. In person, Katharine revealed little of herself, and "purged wide swaths of her adult life from her papers," particularly passages on her partner, McCarthyism and estrangement from her family. Grace's paper trail is thin, too. Her late life diary, found by a nephew who ignored Katharine's instruction to destroy it, represents "one of the very few intimate, revealing sources that either sister left behind." To Hall's great credit, she sticks to the material she's doggedly uncovered, while giving it context. She vividly documents the same sex couplings, or "crushings," common to women's colleges in Katharine's youth, and, later, the discreet cohabitation of female scholars at schools like Smith. But she doesn't imagine her way into Katharine's bedroom or state, definitively, that her long term attachments were physical. It's hard, however, for Hall to balance this relative dearth of private detail on the Lumpkins with her exhaustive research on their public careers. The narrative brims with plot and theme, but the central characters don't come fully alive, instead appearing almost Zelig like in the many great dramas of the 20th century: suffrage, the Scottsboro Boys, the New Deal, the world wars, civil rights. The list goes on, and the sisters are there for all of it, even black power, which Katharine supported, writing to Stokely Carmichael while simultaneously sending monthly checks to the penniless Grace, who railed against integration and "other evils" and could no longer find a publisher apart from the press of the John Birch Society. "I came to see the sisters as the most intimate of strangers," Hall writes, referring not only to Katharine and Grace but also to Elizabeth, who never rebelled but was remarkable in her own right. Widowed with four children, she became a lawyer in her 50s, studied creative writing in her 80s and was forever united with her siblings in "mutual obsession with a region they imagined and reclaimed in utterly different ways." In the end, the sisters remain intimate strangers to the reader as well, and perhaps that's fitting. Hemmed in during their youth by racial and sexual taboos, and Confederate and Klan ghosts, the Lumpkins kept their secrets close and turned out to the world. Hall expertly gives these extraordinary sisters the recognition they deserve, just as Katharine sought to do in writing about the Grimkes, so called "minor figures" of an earlier era she recognized as pioneers of her own. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Rory McIlroy stroked the clinching shot in Sunday's uber quirky charity golf match the first televised competitive men's golf in more than two months but it was Dustin Johnson, McIlroy's teammate in the event, who won the day. Heading down the first fairway, Johnson ignored the sophisticated technology of the modern two strap golf bag and had his clubs facing backward over one shoulder, as if he were lugging a sack of laundry. Last week, Johnson conceded he couldn't remember the last time he carried his own clubs. But he knew it took only one strap. Then, on the first green, Johnson used a golf tee to mark his ball. He couldn't have channeled the everyday golfer ethos any better, unless perhaps he had used a bottle of beer. Best of all, Johnson played faster than fast, hitting less than 10 seconds after someone else's shot. It occasionally looked as though Johnson had somewhere else to be late Sunday afternoon. On one tee, as Rickie Fowler was getting ready to hit last, Johnson had already marched at least 40 yards toward the hole. It was moments like these, when some of the world's best golfers seemed like just another weekend foursome replete with the attendant idiosyncrasies that the TaylorMade Driving Relief event came alive. Or as Bill Murray, who NBC interviewed during the broadcast, said, "They look almost human." In the buildup to the match, it was often suggested that a televised round of golf, an activity that is easy to engage in while adhering to social distancing guidelines, would be a welcome distraction for action starved sports fans. But across roughly four hours on Sunday when the McIlroy Johnson team defeated Fowler and the PGA Tour newcomer Matthew Wolff, and more than 5 million was raised for coronavirus relief the competition didn't appeal as much as the camaraderie and sense of community on display. To golf fans, McIlroy, Johnson and Fowler, and to a lesser extent Wolff, are familiar figures whose exploits are part of a Sunday afternoon routine. Except in the past two months, that is. The attraction answered a couple of questions for those watching at home: What might professional golf look like during a pandemic? Are their golf games as rusty as ours? The answer to the last question was a definite yes. On one hole at the Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla., McIlroy flubbed a greenside chip so badly the ball dribbled only five feet away. But in the spirit of the day, Johnson absolved McIlroy by quickly shouting, "I got you covered, partner." The national refrain is "We're in this together." Golf on Sunday had its little opportunity to exemplify the sentiment. As for what golf during a pandemic will look like, Sunday's match wasn't the perfect setting for predicting the future. If the PGA Tour resumes as planned on June 11 at the Charles Schwab Classic in Fort Worth, the players won't be wearing shorts, as each golfer did on Sunday. Wolff might not wear the psychedelic patterned golf shoes he chose in Florida. There will be caddies, despite how much charm was added to the event every time a millionaire golfer shouldered his own bag and trudged toward the next shot. But truthfully, with those exceptions and a few others, the playing of top flight golf did not look too much different on Sunday. Yes, there were no fans, which is unquestionably jarring and in no way an improvement, but the players rolled with it. When Fowler made a big putt, he waved to acknowledge an imaginary, cheering crowd. After a wayward drive by Wolff ended up far from the other golfers, McIlroy yelped, "Hey Matt, thanks for doing your part to social distance." Minutes later, Wolff answered by trying to get under McIlroy's skin before a short but important putt that McIlroy was sizing up. After his ball dropped in the hole, McIlroy crowed to the 21 year old Wolff: "I think you forget I won two FedEx Cups that totaled at 25 million. That doesn't faze me, youngster." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
SAN DIEGO A year ago, Tiger Woods was ranked No. 647 in the world when he arrived at Torrey Pines Golf Course. He was coming off career threatening spinal fusion surgery, had not won on tour in almost five years and was happy just to be playing after another long layoff. The operation to fuse two vertebrae in his lower back, he said this week, was "the last ditch effort to give me quality of life" even if it did not allow him to compete at the highest level of professional golf again. That is why he had low expectations heading into 2018 and said he was "pleased" to make the cut and finish tied for 23rd at the Farmers Insurance Open. A year later, much has changed, including Woods's expectations. He made his season debut Thursday, again at Torrey Pines, but this time coming off a season of steady progress that culminated in his September victory at the Tour Championship in Atlanta his 80th PGA Tour title, but his first since 2013. He had also climbed to No. 13 in the world rankings. Woods shot a two under par 70 in the opening round on the South Course, putting him eight shots behind the leader, Jon Rahm, in a tie for 53rd, but he seemed anything but discouraged. He has winning on his mind again. "This year, it's totally different," he said. "I have a great understanding of what I can and can't do. There's not the uncertainty that I had going into the year last year, after what I did at the end of last year. I know what I'm feeling, so now it's about finishing a littler better and winning some events." Woods has won eight titles at Torrey Pines as a pro including the 2008 United States Open and one Junior World Championships title as an amateur. It will, however, be a tall order to catch the leaders in a field featuring 12 of the world's top 20 players especially after Rahm, the world No. 7 and the 2017 tournament champion, set a record for the renovated North Course with a 62. One shot back is the world No. 1, Justin Rose, who also played the North Course. Woods said he knew what that meant as he headed to that course for the second round on Friday. "That forces me to shoot a low one, because everybody on the North went low today," he said. Everyone in the 156 player field plays one round on the South Course and one on the North before the 36 hole cut is established. The cut last year was one under par, the score Woods had in advancing to weekend play for the first time since 2015. On Thursday, Woods made five birdies and three bogeys, with three of his birdies coming on par 5s: Nos. 6 (9 foot putt), 9 (15 footer) and 18 (12 footer). He drove the ball well until midway through the back nine, when he missed three consecutive tee shots to the right. He managed to save par from the right rough on the 14th and 15th holes, but he failed get up and down from a greenside bunker on the par 3 16th and made bogey. "Over all, it was a pretty solid day," he said. "I felt I drove it pretty well. Even though I missed a few fairways, they were controllable. My feel was a little off, but that should get better." His best shot of the day was a towering 6 iron on the 215 yard, par 3 11th hole that rolled to a stop 3 feet from the cup. He made the birdie putt to reach two under, but not until he had summoned a rules official to explain that he had accidentally moved his ball while addressing it on the green. "I was about to build my stance, and the ball moved," he said. "So I had to move it back to where it originally was." After his win in the Tour Championship, Woods had played competitively only three times in the Ryder Cup in Paris, where he went 0 4 and was admittedly fatigued after playing seven events in nine weeks; a Thanksgiving weekend exhibition match in Las Vegas against Phil Mickelson; and his annual charity tournament in the Bahamas the first week of December. He said he had used the six weeks off before the Farmers to spend "a lot of time in the gym, trying to get stronger," and to relax, often free diving and spearfishing near his home in Florida hobbies that he said he had missed while dealing with chronic back problems in recent years. "Last year, toward the end of the season, I got really tired because I didn't expect to play that much golf, and I didn't train for it," he said. "But now I feel like my legs are where they need to be. That's why I've been so diligent about training. But there are days when I just don't practice and I don't train. That's probably been one of the lessons I've learned through all of this is there are days where I just have to shut it down and just not do anything and just relax." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
If ever there has been an N.B.A. team that was entitled to tank, to deliberately lose for the mathematical calculation of draft lottery luck, it was this season's Brooklyn Nets as they were on the night of Dec. 5. The latest in a series of harrowing defeats had left them with an 8 18 record, their best performing player (Caris LeVert) down with a dislocated foot and little reason to believe there was much to strive for until the annual springtime game show known as the draft lottery. For a franchise that had disgorged its most recent lottery picks like T shirts shot into a crowd, tanking for a high draft pick in an all out pursuit of Zion Williamson, the supposed one and done savior from Duke, seemed like the classic contemporary N.B.A. percentage play. But the Nets, long a franchise nearly impossible to figure, instead won 20 of their next 26 games to become a prime contender for the Adam Silver Integrity Award, if the league's commissioner, an avowed tsk tsker on tanking, ever inaugurates it. On my way to Boston recently for an overnight road trip with my son to watch the Nets play the Celtics, I reached Sean Marks, the Nets' general manager, by phone on a scouting trip in Slovenia. First question: How the heck did you convince your team, at 8 18, that the remainder of the season would not be a countdown to a 14 percent lottery prayer for the No. 1 pick? "I will tell you that we never had to sit down and say, Hey, guys, we're going to keep playing hard," Marks said "we" meaning he and Coach Kenny Atkinson. "That was player led, strictly character driven." It has been a wishful return on assembling a roster of lower draft picks and reclamation projects, players with "chips on their shoulders," in the general absence of lottery blue chips. "The never ending odyssey in this business," Marks said, "is doing your homework and betting on people, their will and their drive." "There probably are very few people who had careers as long as Sean had while getting as few minutes, and there's a good reason for that," said R.C. Buford, the San Antonio Spurs' general manager, for whom Marks played for two seasons and apprenticed as an assistant coach and front office executive. "In every role he's had, he's been a culture builder," Buford said. Around the N.B.A., that word culture has become like a convenient catchphrase, an opening statement for best intentions. "People use it all the time they're going to work hard, play defense, play for the team but how many actually do?" said P.J. Carlesimo, whose N.B.A. stops in coaching and broadcasting have included San Antonio and Brooklyn. "Because of his time with the Spurs, Sean knows what a good locker room is like." For contrast, take the Knicks. Their new management team also talks up culture creation, but their stylistic approach in Coach David Fizdale's first season has been archetypal Y.M.C.A. choose up. The Knicks' front office claims operational independence from the team owner, James L. Dolan, but can't even call an informal news conference without tailoring the guest list to his petty grievances. In San Antonio, where the Holt family has without question left the basketball people alone, Marks was told in no uncertain terms that he could well be a bridge to a future without Gregg Popovich, the 70 year old head coach and team president. But the blank slate in Brooklyn where ownership is a largely absentee and ambiguously directed partnership between Mikhail Prokhorov and Joseph Tsai presented a clean slate challenge that was more intriguing than daunting. "We knew there were going to be some dark days," Marks said. "But we all gave up good jobs because we thought we had a chance to build something special." Before a culture, first came a core. With a flurry of moves deftly manipulating salary cap space, Marks dealt his way into the lower echelons of the draft and emerged with LeVert, a versatile guard, and Jarrett Allen, a mobile, defensive minded center. Through a trade with the Los Angeles Lakers, he reeled in point guard D'Angelo Russell, the No. 2 pick in the 2015 draft who was recently named an Eastern Conference All Star. Spencer Dinwiddie, a mercurial guard, parlayed a lifeline from the N.B.A.'s developmental league in December 2016 into a 34 million extension two years later. These Nets had climbed to four games over .500 before hitting a recent rut. A hand injury to Dinwiddie hurt a roster already thinned by the loss of LeVert, who could return soon, and Allen Crabbe. Without marquee talent, the season can be interminably long, winding and bruising. Even in the East, the less forbidding of the two conferences, remaining in playoff position for the Nets will require a collective stamina they may not yet have. If they do qualify, Marks could be a candidate for executive of the year for stocking his roster with hope, against the odds. Is there a more difficult projection in team sports drafting than being outside N.B.A. lottery position? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Scientists studying the Amazon rain forest are tangled in a debate of nature versus nurture. Many ecologists tend to think that before Europeans arrived in the Americas, the vast wilderness was pristine and untouched by humans. But several archaeologists argue that ancient civilizations once thrived in its thickets and played a role in its development. Now, researchers have found evidence that indigenous people may have domesticated and cultivated Amazonian plants and trees thousands of years ago, further supporting the idea that ancient humans helped shape the forest. "Large areas of the Amazon are less pristine than we may think," said Hans ter Steege, a tropical ecologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, and an author of a paper published in Science on Thursday. "The people who lived there before Columbus left serious footprints that still persist in the composition as we see today." He was one of more than a hundred researchers who found that domesticated tree and palm species like cacao, cashews, the acai palm, the Brazil nut and rubber were five times more likely to dominate the modern Amazonian forest than nondomesticated plants. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
When you step into St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, you might not know that you're standing on what was once the farm of the Dutch director general Peter Stuyvesant. Or that the balcony in the church sanctuary was once known as a slave gallery. Or that the modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis performed there in 1933, long before it became home to Danspace Project in 1974. You might not know that before 1959, the church had separate Sunday services for black and white congregants, or that in 1970 the Black Panthers held meetings in the rectory basement. And if you're there for a performance presented by Danspace, you might not realize that the church still functions as a church. "Some folks assume that the church doesn't have a congregation or that it's deconsecrated," the choreographer and performer Reggie Wilson said on a recent afternoon. "That's really not true. It's a very active and politically active church." "It's one of these things that's right in front of us, but it doesn't seem like anyone is talking about," Mr. Wilson said about the importance of religious spaces in the largely secular world of contemporary dance. "Considering how prevalent it is in New York, you'd think there would have been a lot more interrogation: the positive and negative relationships, the challenges, why it consistently happens," he said. The program for "Dancing Platform, Praying Grounds," he added, "is about cracking that open." St. Mark's, as dancegoers know, is not the only church in which downtown dance has thrived. The other prime example: Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, where the trailblazing Judson Dance Theater sprang up in 1962, giving rise to postmodern dance, and where Movement Research has hosted free weekly showings for over 25 years. A new partnership in a similar vein has been developing at Cadman Congregational Church in Clinton Hill, home to Brooklyn Studios for Dance since 2015. Mr. Wilson said he was intrigued not just by churches but also by other spiritual sites hospitable to not necessarily spiritual arts, such as the Jewish affiliated 92nd Street Y and the former Sufi mosque in SoHo that once housed Dia Center for the Arts. For Ms. Hussie Taylor, the complex subject always leads back to St. Mark's: "Where are we actually standing?" she said. "What is this place? You could go in a million directions, but that's a question we've returned to again and again." Mr. Wilson, 50, who grew up in Milwaukee and founded the company Fist Heel Performance Group in 1989, has long explored spiritual traditions in his own work, particularly within African and African American cultures. He said his dances are guided by two lines of inquiry: "What is the relationship between postmodern dance and African diasporic culture? And what is the relationship between Protestant Christianity and African diasporic religions? Even if the piece seems like it has nothing to do with either of those, they creep back in there." "Dancing Platform, Praying Grounds" which runs through March 24, culminating in a new work by Mr. Wilson is the latest in the Platform series initiated by Ms. Hussie Taylor in 2010. Each platform, organized by a guest artist curator, revolves around a particular theme or set of questions. Ms. Hussie Taylor approached Mr. Wilson after seeing his 2013 work "Moses(es)" twice, first at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, then at St. Cornelius Chapel on Governors Island. In the afternoon light of the chapel, it struck her differently than it had in the theater. "It makes sense," she said, "that Reggie's work would read and resonate in a church space." Mr. Wilson said that he at first resisted taking on a curatorial role, preferring to stay focused on the time consuming process of creating his own work. But, through discussions with Ms. Hussie Taylor, the idea grew more appealing. While Mr. Wilson led the platform planning, it was Ms. Hussie Taylor who invited him to show a new piece of his own, which will have its premiere March 22. The site specific "...they stood shaking while others began to shout," for eight dancers and three singers (including him), stems from his research into Black Shakers, chiefly the religious activist Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson. "When I first heard about her, I was like, 'a black Shaker!' that's the biggest contradiction I've ever heard," he said. "I just always imagined Shakers as white people, like Puritans." In excavating the history of St. Mark's and its neighborhood, Mr. Wilson and the curatorial team which also includes Lydia Bell and Kristin Juarez worked with Prithi Kanakamedala, a historian and professor at the City University of New York, who assembled a dossier of readings to share with the platform artists. Ms. Kanakamedala, whose research interests include New York's 19th century free black communities, is one of several scholars and artists who will lead walking tours of the East Village and Harlem as part of the platform. "New York City's churches have always been open to far more radical activity than I think people recognize," she said. "We have this very Victorian idea of what a church is. But there's something to be said about churches as radical spaces, in which dance just naturally becomes part of that radicalism." For three nights beginning March 8, five choreographers Beth Gill, Jonathan Gonzalez, Miguel Gutierrez, Angie Pittman and Edisa Weeks will respond to the dossier materials in a program titled "The Dossier Charrette: a series of working dance essays." (A term from architecture, a charrette is an intense period of collaborative problem solving.) The 10 minute works will be followed by discussion among the artists, audience members and Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson laughed at the heft of the dossier which covers "the ice age to the present," he said and described it as "a set of points of departure for the artists to get more obsessed with." Ms. Pittman, for instance, said she was most drawn to writings about precolonial Manhattan and its indigenous people, the Lenape. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
The woman, grievously wounded in the mass shooting at a Walmart, lay on an operating table at the University Medical Center of El Paso as the chief of surgery, Dr. Alan Tyroch , turned her to clean the exit wounds. He knew what to expect, but it was still a horrific sight. She had two gaping holes the size of a man's fist in her side and a third the size of a silver dollar where bullets had burst from her body. Those bullets had also shredded her intestine. Dr. Tyroch hooked her up to a colostomy bag and a feeding tube. And he reached into another wound to pull out a bullet lodged in her shinbone. It had been flattened by its violent impact into a disc the size of a quarter. The tragedy in El Paso on Saturday, carried out by a gunman armed with an AK 47 style rifle, and another deadly massacre on Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, in which the gunman used an AR 15 style pistol modified to act as a rifle, can be measured in death tolls 22 in El Paso and nine in Dayton. But the damage done by such weapons is witnessed most clearly by members of the medical staff who care for the wounded. The story of their lifesaving labors at the El Paso hospital, the only one in a 270 mile radius prepared to treat complex trauma patients, is one of heroics in the face of violence, and of the doctors and nurses, who, once the adrenaline rush died down, struggled to live with the horror of what they had experienced. Some of the patients rushed to the hospital needed more than one operation, like the woman treated by Dr. Tyroch. On Saturday, surgeons had quickly opened her abdomen, cleaned out feces and blood, and sent her, with a temporary patch over her open abdomen, to intensive care, heavily sedated and on a ventilator. They had to work fast, clearing the operating room to make way for other victims. Then on Sunday, Dr. Tyroch spent three hours operating on her, repairing the damage as best he could. Six days after the shooting, doctors were still trying to repair appalling wounds in some of those who survived. The suspect in the El Paso massacre is a 21 year old man from a Dallas suburb who told the police he was targeting Mexicans. Dr. Tyroch had seen wounds from military style weapons before, but he had never seen anything like the number of victims that showed up at his hospital on Saturday 14 in all, most shot more than once. The back to back shootings in Texas and Ohio have led to renewed calls for a ban on assault rifles from some Democratic presidential candidates. On Friday, President Trump called for the passage of laws for "meaningful" background checks on gun buyers. Many American trauma doctors maintain that assault style weapons do not belong in civilian hands, and having far more experience with gunshot wounds than their counterparts in other countries, they have grown all too familiar with the injuries that such weapons can inflict. For Dr. Alejandro Rios Tovar , the ordeal began on Saturday at 10:55 a.m. He had just returned home from a 30 hour shift at the hospital when he got a text from Dr. Tyroch. "Active shooter. Anybody available return to the hospital immediately." Dr. Tovar, a surgeon, sped to the hospital, running red lights, and pulled into the parking lot 15 minutes later. The first patient had already arrived in a police car. A few minutes later, the ambulances began roaring in, bringing one mangled patient, then another and another. Members of the medical staff were arriving, too, for an intense rescue effort that included four general surgeons, a cardiac vascular surgeon, three orthopedic surgeons and three surgeons in other specialties, as well as the housekeeping staff, which hurried to mop blood from floors and to clean operating rooms so patients could be wheeled in one after another. Everyone understood the urgency. One doctor, about to leave for vacation, rushed to the hospital and operated in jeans and a T shirt there was no time to change into surgical scrubs. Dr. Weber stabilized patients as they came in. The mnemonic that emergency room doctors use to quickly evaluate patients is A.B.C. airway, breathing, circulation. The critical care area of the emergency room was just steps from the operating room, allowing doctors to work so quickly that they transfused what they said was a small amount of blood, considering the injuries: 109 units, about the amount in the bodies of 11 people. The fourth patient arrived facedown on a stretcher, "shot through and through," said Dr. Susan McLean , a surgeon and the director of surgical critical care. Another victim's heart had stopped, though she had received cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the ambulance. The doctors shocked her heart into beating and opened her chest to look for active bleeding. Most victims had multiple injuries, often in the torso, with damage to the intestines and chest. Many needed tubes to drain blood from the chest or had air leaking from the lungs. Many had shattered bones in the pelvis, arms or legs. The doctors discovered a small miracle in the carnage: No patient had a brain injury or spinal cord injury. But one victim, shot in the chest, bled to death in the E.R. The others survived, but the initial surgeries were just the beginning. "El Paso has never seen anything like this," Dr. Weber said. The first step for the most seriously injured was damage control: Surgeons operated only to fix the most pressing injuries, not even closing the abdomen before returning a patient to intensive care to wait for a more definitive operation the next day. The doctors at University Medical performed eight surgeries the first day, four of which involved opening patients' abdomens to control bleeding in areas like the intestines and diaphragms. "We had to finish the case and get ready for the next one," Dr. Tovar said. "And the majority of these patients are unstable. We don't want to waste time closing the abdomen." On Sunday, the day after the shooting, three patients returned to general surgery to repair damage to soft tissue like muscles and to repair damage in their abdomens. Orthopedic surgeons took two more people into operating rooms, one of whom had a shattered pelvis. As of Thursday, the operations were continuing, mostly repairs to shattered bones. Eight patients remained in the hospital on Friday, two in intensive care. One was in intermediate care and five on the surgical ward. The days ahead will not be easy for patients. They risk serious complications pneumonia, infections, blood clots. "A complex trauma patient is a complication waiting to happen," Dr. Tyroch said. And the suffering doesn't end when survivors of such shootings go home, researchers have found. "If they leave the hospital alive, we claim we saved them," said Dr. George Velmahos , chief of trauma surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who was part of a team that treated victims of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 . But years later many "still live with devastating pain or other problems, or PTSD. The long term impact is really tremendous." The hospital staff will not be spared, either. As desperate patients arrived, the doctors and nurses set aside their emotions, Dr. McLean said. The next day, as she and Dr. Tovar made rounds and spoke to patients, staff members were in tears. "It's unreal what these patients went through," she said. "It's really shocking." Dr. Tyroch managed to maintain his composure until, driving home, he saw a familiar billboard: El Paso Strong. His emotions welled. Dr. Weber barely made it to the privacy of her car late Saturday afternoon before the sobs came. "There is a sense of relief when they say, 'O.K., there aren't going to be any more victims' that's the first time you take a deep breath," she said. "Then you go home and you cry and you pray and you hug your loved ones." Some of her colleagues may struggle with post traumatic stress, Dr. Weber fears. "Doctors and nurses are not immune," she said. "We see trauma and very traumatic deaths every day. But we don't see 14 people in an hour, thank God." "What has to change?" she asked. "We have to do something. Why aren't we?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
WASHINGTON Hyperloop One, an experimental transportation company that proposes to carry people at speeds of up to 700 miles per hour inside a system of tubes, announced its first partnership with a state government on Thursday. The company and the Colorado Department of Transportation said they had agreed to study the feasibility of a 360 mile route that would connect Denver with Pueblo to the south and Cheyenne, Wyo., to the north. But the joint study will be just the first step in what would be a long process before any of the 4.8 million Colorado residents such a system could serve would see it in action. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
For much of the summer, roof repairs shrouded City Hall in a shimmery coat of white linen like construction netting, barely visible as breezes rippled the sheets. Over the last two centuries, change has often been in the wind for City Hall and its surrounding park, as mayors, agencies, visionaries, grafters and others put forth ideas for an appropriate civic center including getting rid of City Hall entirely. The building attracted naysayers almost from Day 1. In 1805, a couple of years after work on City Hall began, The New York Gazette published a letter from "A Householder" calling it "a bottomless pit," a sentiment echoed in 1826 in The New York Evening Post, which disdained it as "a magnificent palace" that should be "put in a state of preservation and suspended." The City Council began using the building in 1811, and an 1818 review in The Port Folio was no doubt more to its liking: "The brilliant whiteness of the facade, in contrast with the placid verdure of the lawn, in front, produces a luminous and aerial effect that fascinates every spectator." City Hall Park, indeed all city property, also fascinated Tammany Hall, which built the Tweed Courthouse on Chambers Street, completed in 1872, at a moderate price for construction and a huge tab for graft. Tammany eyes swung back to City Hall Park in the 1880s, especially after Hugh J. Grant became mayor in 1889. Although a swallowtail Democrat, meaning a Democrat untouched by machine politics, he was persuaded of the wisdom of Tammany, and the idea of a single large municipal building, encompassing all departments, in City Hall Park became a favored cause. Unfortunately, City Hall would be smack dab in the middle of such a grand project. So it was particularly helpful to the Tammany cause when an independent Democrat, E. Ellery Anderson, testified in a council hearing that City Hall was just "an old building" that "occupies too much room" in the park. The members were meeting to discuss a new municipal complex 300 by 400 feet in size. Of 13 architects interviewed in 1889 by The Real Estate Record and Guide, most thought City Hall could be demolished or relocated "somewhere," a designation that ultimately included Bryant Park, Central Park, Pelham Bay Park and next to the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West. The New York Tribune was bitterly opposed to demolition, and in 1891 accused Tammany of planning a giant municipal project for the sake of plunder. But The New York Times felt it was taking the forward view in promoting, in 1893, "a new City Hall, worthy of the metropolis, upon the site of the old one" that would "be a source of pride to the people for many years to come." A competition resulted in first place for Charles B. Atwood, whose design showed City Hall engulfed by new wings, a rear extension to the Tweed Courthouse, and a central tower, 20 stories tall, for records storage. Around the same time, the Tilden Trust was looking for a site for the library of the late Gov. Samuel J. Tilden. The trust's president, John Bigelow, helpfully suggested that "much as we should regret the necessity of disturbing a structure consecrated to us," it would accept old City Hall and move it to the top of a ziggurat in Bryant Park. The Times repeated its assertion that old City Hall should be demolished or given to the New York Historical Society, as if it were a toaster that could be boxed up and delivered by bicycle messenger. A new Tammany Democrat, Thomas Gilroy, who served as mayor in 1893 and 1894, also jumped in, saying he had seen a project calling for relocating City Hall to the top of a municipal building. The New York Tribune obstreperously maintained "it belongs where it is and ought to be left there," and in 1894 the State of New York passed a law prohibiting the demolition of City Hall. With that, serious attempts to tear it down were at an end too much trouble for the possible gain. Hitherto, it had been gospel not to destroy the Tweed Courthouse because it had cost so much, but a new generation of designs flipped the paradigm, keeping City Hall but anticipating the removal of the courthouse. One 1903 plan foresaw a giant structure rising on Chambers, terminating in a great dome like that atop the United States Capitol. There is something politicians love about dedicating a single structure or complex to government, and visionary proposals for a new municipal building and a civic center kept flowing a 1,000 foot castle like tower behind City Hall in 1929, for instance. But after World War II the whole civic center idea became shopworn, especially as planners began rejecting grand plans. By the 1960s the most elaborate civic center under review was a tall tower on Reade Street connected to City Hall by a plaza with a fountain across Chambers Street, in the best midcentury modern style. But whether motivated by graft or vision, the civic center concept gradually died away. In its stead, we have an endearingly ragtag group of buildings surrounding City Hall Park, where the pristine City Hall will, with luck, endure for hundreds of years. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Hawkins sees himself as a man of taste and refinement. He appreciates Clare's singing, and silences the vulgar catcalls of some of his men when she performs at their mess. He also rapes her, an assault repeated and compounded with acts of savagery that are horrifying but not, in his environment, entirely surprising. Clare survives the attack and decides, against all reason and advice, to seek payback. Without much hope of finding justice through official channels a magistrate vaguely promises to file a report of some kind she takes matters into her own hands, setting out for Launceston with a rifle and a horse. (Hawkins, worried that his promotion is in jeopardy, is on his way there with several of his men.) She also hires an Aboriginal guide named Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), since the trackless forests are too dense and dangerous for a white woman to navigate on her own. Clare's place in the Tasmanian social hierarchy places her above Billy just as surely as it ranks her below Hawkins and his soldiers, and she treats her new companion with high handed, racist condescension. For much of their journey, she addresses Billy as "boy," treating him as a servant or worse even as her survival and sanity depend on him. She keeps him in the dark about the true purpose of their journey. Not that anyone would take them for a posse in pursuit of an officer and his retinue. The long middle of the film switches back and forth between the unlikely hunters and their unwitting quarry, using their mishaps and chance encounters to cast a hard, sharp light on the racial, sexual and class violence that are central, in Kent's account, to the founding of modern Australia. "The Nightingale" is a movie thick with horror and heavy with feeling. Tasmania is in a state of war between what Billy calls "white fella" and "black fella," a conflict waged without mercy or morality. The whites are engaged in a genocidal campaign that justifies itself as a counter insurgency. Hawkins is a monster, but hardly an anomaly, and his increasingly sadistic behavior reveals the true face of British authority. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
El Chapo themed sanitizing gel and face masks in Guadalajara, Mexico, for distribution by the imprisoned drug lord's daughter Alejandrina Gisselle Guzman's clothing company as part of a campaign to help cash strapped elderly people during the coronavirus outbreak. MEXICO CITY The CCTV footage taken just after dawn on June 26 shows a dozen armed men crowded in the back of a truck blocking a road in Mexico City's wealthy Lomas de Chapultepec district. Minutes later, the gunmen fired over 150 rounds at the armored car of the city's police chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch. Three people died in the attack, including two bodyguards; Chief Garcia Harfuch survived gunshot wounds in the clavicle, shoulder and knee. "Our Nation has to continue confronting cowardly organized crime," he tweeted from his hospital bed. The brazen attack has shaken a city easing out of the coronavirus lockdown. Chief Garcia Harfuch blamed the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which the Mexican government has targeted in a joint operation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, freezing thousands of bank accounts linked to the gangsters. Striking near the heart of power could be an attempt to make the Mexican government back off as it reels from the pandemic, which has killed more than 30,000, and a plummeting economy. There is no shortage of losses to mourn in 2020: loved ones dead from Covid 19, jobs, freedom of movement amid lockdowns. But there are winners: certain tech companies and medical suppliers, and drug cartels. As President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico meets with President Trump this week in Washington, they should be looking at the cross border issues of drug and gun trafficking. While restrictions brought by the pandemic have reduced the movement of certain drugs, demand has grown for others. United States Customs and Border Protection has nabbed significantly less cocaine. But seizures of heroin and fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, have remained steady, while seizures of crystal meth have increased, which coincides with a spike in overdose deaths in various United States cities. Health professionals say stress, loneliness and economic hardship all exacerbate drug abuse. "Shelter in place orders have pushed individuals battling sobriety into isolation and have decreased access to treatment and opportunity for distraction from addictions," write Marcelina Jasmine Silva and Zakary Kelly in the American Journal of Managed Care. Americans spent an estimated 150 billion on illegal drugs in 2016, and an iron river of guns flows from the United States. Between 2007 and 2018, more than 150,000 firearms confiscated from criminals in Mexico were traced to U.S. gun shops and factories. While the cartels leave a trail of mass graves and disappearances, they style themselves as benevolent godfathers. They are now handing out boxes of food and supplies, with labels such as "Gulf Cartel," to the poor Mexicans struggling to survive the economic meltdown caused by the pandemic. I traveled to where cartel operatives were handing out food in the ramshackle village of La Loma de Concepcion in the hills of the Mexico State. Ireneo, a 58 year old flower farmer, described how his two teenage nieces obtained some of the food bags, known as "narco despensas." The word came from the gangsters close to nightfall in April and spread rapidly through the village. About 200 residents, many of them teenagers or children, trekked up a dirt path to a clearing and formed in two lines to receive their plastic bags of milk, sugar, soap, rice, beans and other rewards. In some of the bags was a note saying, "Support from La Familia Michoacana, the M Comando," the name of the drug cartel that dominates the area. The handouts have helped the family get through the difficult period, said Ireneo, who asked that his last name not be used. "I believe that if someone comes with support, then you have to take what they give, wherever it comes from," he said as roosters crowed in the background. Others have no illusions about the cartel charity. "They give now what they take later from honest people," said Guadencio Jimenez, a 31 year old farmer in the nearby village of Santiago. "I am against these guys." Cartels also dominate a portfolio of crimes in their turfs, including human smuggling and sex trafficking. They engage in kidnapping and extortion, which hamper business and can cause people to flee their homes. The cartel food relief was boosted by social media and made headlines across the world. But it helps few Mexicans, with the handouts reaching what is probably only a few thousand families. "It's symbolic," said Lorenzo Meyer, a political scientist. "It's taking advantage of the crisis of coronavirus and sensation of emergency to say, 'We're here.'" President Lopez Obrador, who calls himself a leftist, has promised to uplift the poor with generous social programs, handing out fertilizer to farmers and scholarships to students. In April, he criticized the cartels for giving with one hand and killing with the other. "It would help if they thought of the suffering of the mothers of the victims," he said. But official aid has been hampered by a policy of avoiding debt despite the severity of the looming recession. While the government struggles to provide aid countrywide, the cartels focus on small communities. There they buy themselves concentrated support so that they can later hide people or merchandise and recruit smugglers and killers. In another attention grabbing move, cartel thugs enforced quarantine in some areas. In the city of Iguala, they hung out messages saying: "Stay inside your homes. We don't want desmadres partying outside." Meanwhile, videos reported to be from Sinaloa State showed gunmen beating alleged quarantine breakers with a bat marked "Covid 19." This enforcement follows a history of cartels punishing those they accuse of being antisocial criminals, such as thieves and rapists. They have paraded those they judge as guilty stripped naked with signs confessing their sins and have released videos of them beaten or mutilated. "They show them on the street as if they were the authority, like a moral and physical authority," Mr. Meyer said. "They are in dispute with the formal state in exercising acts of authority." The cartels rule in an environment of widespread impunity. One study found that nine out of 10 murders in Mexico are never solved, and even in the most high profile massacre cases, justice is evasive. In such an environment, gangsters win real support with their crude punishments. The creep of cartels into so many aspects of life in villages, barrios and entire cities across Mexico has been a rising problem for decades, predating the current presidency. But it has become a central challenge for Mr. Lopez Obrador, especially amid the pandemic and recession, complicating his promise for "national regeneration." While the president recognizes the problem, he struggles to forge a coherent strategy. He campaigned for ending the war with "hugs not bullets," but on May 11, he passed a decree authorizing soldiers to stay on the streets to fight crime until 2024. The move is supported by most Mexicans, according to a survey by the newspaper Reforma, but sparked condemnation from civil society groups such as Security Without War, which has called for demilitarizing the Mexican conflict. In the past, the police and soldiers carried out various massacres here in the name of the drug war. Mr. Lopez Obrador is also building up a new militarized police force called the National Guard, which will have a permanent presence in the marginalized areas where the cartels thrive. But it has spent much of the last year rounding up Central American immigrants, largely to placate Washington. Perhaps the biggest challenge to fighting cartels is corruption, with gangsters bribing officials from lowly police officers to top politicians, as documented in dozens of court cases and convictions. "A fundamental problem for all the bodies of security in the country is corruption," Mexico's public security secretary, Alfonso Durazo, told graduating federal officers on May 14. "You arrive with clean hands. I hope you will never be tempted." Making headway against such challenges can seem like an impossible task. But as people on both sides of the border push for a changed world after the pandemic, we need to try harder on this issue. In the United States, as many as 90 percent of those who need treatment for drug abuse don't get it, according to the American Medical Association. The same loopholes that allow gangsters to run guns into the cities of the United States allow them to traffic firearms here. In Mexico, the government needs to prioritize addressing impunity and building a more positive presence in poor areas, to close spaces to the cartels. I have witnessed the work of many talented social workers in Mexico's most difficult neighborhoods, but they are usually working with only shoestring budgets. Elsewhere in Latin America, some governments have turned to more hard line policies to fight crime, trampling on human rights in the process. In 2018, Brazilians voted for President Jair Bolsonaro with the slogan, "The only good bandit is a dead bandit." In April, the police in Rio de Janeiro killed almost six people a day, a rate much higher than in the United States. That same month, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said he was "authorizing" the police to use lethal force against gang members, while his government released photos of a harsh prison lockdown, which was sharply criticized by Human Rights Watch. Mexico and the United States need to find a way to reduce the cartels' power by delivering rehabilitation, aid and justice. If we fail here, it could open the door for another strongman promising retribution, this time on the U.S. border. Ioan Grillo, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of "El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency" and, most recently, "Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
SAN FRANCISCO After a weekend when Americans took to social media to debate President Trump's admonishment of N.F.L. players who do not stand for the national anthem, a network of Twitter accounts suspected of links to Russia seized on both sides of the issue with hashtags such as boycottnfl, standforouranthem and takeaknee. As Twitter prepared to brief staff members of the Senate and House intelligence committees on Thursday for their investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, researchers from a public policy group have been following hundreds of accounts to track the continuing Russian operations to influence social media discourse and foment division in the United States. For three weeks, a harsh spotlight has been trained on Facebook over its disclosure that Russians used fake pages and ads, designed to look like the work of American activists, to spread inflammatory messages during and since the presidential campaign. But there is evidence that Twitter may have been used even more extensively than Facebook in the Russian influence campaign last year. In addition to Russia linked Twitter accounts that posed as Americans, the platform was also used for large scale automated messaging, using "bot" accounts to spread false stories and promote news articles about emails from Democratic operatives that had been obtained by Russian hackers. Twitter has struggled for years to rein in the fake accounts overrunning its platform. Unlike Facebook, the service does not require its users to provide their real name (or at least a facsimile of one) and allows automated accounts arguing that they are a useful tool for tasks such as customer service. Beyond those restrictions, there is also an online black market for services that can allow for the creation of large numbers of Twitter bots, which can be controlled by a single person while still being difficult to distinguish from real accounts. Since last month, researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan initiative of the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, have been publicly tracking 600 Twitter accounts human users and suspected bots alike they have linked to Russian influence operations. Those were the accounts pushing the opposing messages on the N.F.L. and the national anthem. Of 80 news stories promoted last week by those accounts, more than 25 percent "had a primary theme of anti Americanism," the researchers found. About 15 percent were critical of Hillary Clinton, falsely accusing her of funding left wing antifa short for anti fascist protesters, tying her to the lethal terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and discussing her daughter Chelsea's use of Twitter. Eleven percent focused on wiretapping in the federal investigation into Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, with most of them treated the news as a vindication for President Trump's earlier wiretapping claims. In the face of such public scrutiny, Twitter has said almost nothing about what it knows about Russia's use of its platform. But Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he would like to know exactly what the company has done to find covert Russian activity and what it has discovered so far about fake accounts including their reach and impact. "I think right now the public is aware of only a subset of a subset of Russian activity online," Mr. Schiff said in an interview. He said Facebook long denied that there had been Russian exploitation of its system, before reversing course on Sept. 6. Mr. Schiff said the tech companies have asked for assistance from American intelligence agencies in trying to find and stop illicit interference from other countries, a request he said he supports. The House Intelligence Committee announced on Wednesday that it would hold a public hearing on the matter of Russian influence next month, and a Senate aide said Facebook, Twitter and Google have been invited to testify at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Nov. 1. This month, The New York Times reported on evidence of Russian operators creating hundreds or thousands of fake Twitter accounts to flood the network with anti Clinton messages during the campaign. The cybersecurity company FireEye identified what it called "warlists" of accounts linked to Russian intelligence that sometimes spewed messages like WarAgainstDemocrats several times a minute. Both DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, which spread the leaked emails and documents and were identified as having been created by Russian intelligence, used accounts that Twitter has not suspended, though they have been dormant for months. In some cases, the Russian exploitation of Facebook and Twitter was linked: "Heart of Texas," a Facebook page advocating the secession of Texas that was identified as one of 470 fake profiles and pages linked to Russia, also had a Twitter feed now suspended called itstimetosecede. Experts on Russia inside and outside the government say President Vladimir V. Putin had multiple goals in last year's campaign of hacking, leaking and stealth propaganda. He hoped to damage, if not defeat, Mrs. Clinton, whom he blamed for encouraging pro democracy protests in Russia and neighboring states. Last week, Facebook said it was turning over more than 3,000 Russia linked ads to Congress. Many of those ads, like the opposing Twitter hashtags on the N.F.L. anthem issue, targeted divisions in American society by simultaneously sending conflicting messages to different users segmented by political and racial characteristics. "What we see over and over again is that a lot of the messaging isn't about politics, a specific politician, or political parties," said Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. "It's about creating societal division, identifying divisive issues and fanning the flames." Her group's web "dashboard" is called Hamilton 68. It is named for No. 68 of the Federalist Papers, believed to have been written by Alexander Hamilton, which warns of foreign meddling in American elections. The tool does not identify the activity of specific Twitter users but highlights the activity of the 600 accounts that researchers believe are either tied to the Russian government or repeat the themes of its propaganda. For its part, Twitter has not said much about what it plans to say in the Congressional briefing. "Twitter deeply respects the integrity of the election process, a cornerstone of all democracies, and will continue to strengthen our platform against bots and other forms of manipulation that violate our Terms of Service," Twitter said in a statement. Twitter has also said it was working to crack down on bots that distribute tweets en masse or that attempt to manipulate the platform's trending topics. Colin Crowell, Twitter's vice president of public policy, government and philanthropy, said in a blog post in June that the company should not be an arbiter of whether a tweet is truthful or not. Because Twitter is open and real time, he said the platform is the best antidote to misinformation, when "journalists, experts and engaged citizens Tweet side by side correcting and challenging public discourse in seconds." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Alexis Adler discusses images she took of the artist Jean Michel Basquiat when they lived together in 1979. Just in time for Valentine's Day, a new exhibition on Jean Michel Basquiat is a love letter of sorts to the artist from a former girlfriend, and to a downtown New York art scene now long gone. "Basquiat Before Basquiat: East 12th Street, 1979 1980," at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, is the first museum show to focus on the work and life of the artist in the brief time he lived with Alexis Adler in a sixth floor walk up in the East Village of Manhattan. It was a period that the exhibition posits as a seminal year of multifaceted creative exploration in the artist's life, before painting took precedence. Ms. Adler, 60, saved more than 100 photos, art objects and ephemera from the era. "Our apartment overflowed with art and love," she recalled on a wintry New York day, in the homey kitchen of the place they once shared. Among the treasures is a sculpture Basquiat made of the carapace of an old radiator he found on the street. In one of her more personal photos, he practices clarinet on the edge of the bathtub in their 400 square foot squat. "We were punk pioneers homesteading in this ever evolving remnant of the neighborhood," she writes in the exhibition catalog. "Art blossomed by feeding off the lawless decay." Ms. Adler, now an embryologist in a fertility lab, was "a Barnard biology grad with a strong hippie streak" in 1979, when she met a 19 year old Basquiat. He was four years her junior, and she and her friends in the club scene had been admiring his street graffiti and SAMO(c) tag all over downtown. Soon, the two moved into a warren of four tiny rooms on East 12th Street. During the months they lived together, while Ms. Adler worked in a lab at Rockefeller University, he transformed the floors, walls, doors and furniture into raw materials for his creative explorations. In his sketches on view in Denver, he has copied diagrams of chemical compounds he borrowed from Ms. Adler's science textbooks. Dieter Buchhart, a curator based in Vienna and New York who has organized Basquiat exhibitions around the world, including one opening on Sept. 21 at the Barbican gallery in London, said the public emergence of the Adler collection "definitely will add to the scholarship because it's a window to this time and a missing link to the drawings from high school and the works in public spaces the SAMO(c) and the graffiti and then it's his transition from work in public spaces to the gallery." Basquiat died at 27 of a heroin overdose, in 1988. "Most of what is known about him comes from art he made in less than a decade," Mr. Lerner said. The museum catalog, however, avoids the scholarly in favor of reminiscences from friends of Ms. Adler and Basquiat, including downtown denizens like Luc Sante, Darryl Pinckney and Sur Rodney Sur, who recall the era's vibe and ethos. On a rainy January day, before art handlers arrived to crate the objects in Ms. Adler's apartment and send them to Denver, she darted about. With her frizzy red hair pulled back, and a radiator clanging against the chill, she stood in her kitchen to fold a careful pile of sweatshirts and other garments Basquiat had painted to sell on the streets of New York. He also painted clothing belonging to her, sometimes unbidden; the day after buying a gold lame coat, she was irritated to discover he had painted all over it in the night. She modeled the now treasured possession. Then she donned white gloves to handle one of the artist's notebooks: "They make me wear these now," she said. To illustrate how he used the apartment as a studio and a canvas, the Denver museum has built a partial recreation of the railroad style flat as it looked when Basquiat lived there, and a reproduction of the building's Basquiat graffitied hallways and stairwells (long since painted over). Although Ms. Adler said that she and Basquiat often shared her bed, the two weren't exclusive. "We shared a lot of love and had an amazing intimacy that came with living together," she said. "We had sex, but each of us had multiple sexual partners and our own room." Basquiat had a long list of lovers in his short life. And Ms. Adler is not the only one who has gone public about their relationship, or exhibited souvenirs from it: Suzanne Mallouk's story is told in the book "Widow Basquiat"; Madonna, who was not yet famous, later spoke publicly about their relationship; and both Paige Powell and Kelle Inman have participated in exhibitions. But "Basquiat Before Basquiat" illustrates what Mr. Lerner called "the weird and interesting stuff that no one knows about Basquiat," especially the artist's extensive exploration of theatrical performance that Ms. Adler's photos chronicle. In one series, he plays with broken eyeglasses found on the street, and creates a horror movie mask with Silly Putty. In another, he goofs around with a football helmet on his head as he tunes a TV that they have absurdly situated inside the refrigerator. And for a series of images of the artist after he shaved his hair to the middle of his scalp, he told Ms. Adler that he wanted to look as if he were "coming and going at the same time." By late 1981, when he moved out definitively, he had turned his artistic focus from the streets to a studio based painting practice. (An untitled canvas he painted the next year sold last May at Christie's for 57.3 million.) But for Ms. Adler, why this show and why now? After attending a panel discussion about the artist at her son's college in 2012, she said she started thinking seriously about how "ridiculous" it was that all this material was in her sole possession. "It was a packed room full of young people hungry for the tiniest morsel of information about Jean," she recalled. Days later, Hurricane Sandy hit New York, flooding swaths of downtown. Ms. Adler anxiously checked the basement level safe deposit box in her bank where she stored many objects from her collection decades earlier. No damage. "But I knew I needed them to find a home where they could be taken care of properly," she recalled. In 2014, Ms. Adler put much of her collection up for auction at Christie's. Two objects excavated from her apartment, a wall mural and a door, sold. But the Basquiat estate, run by the artist's sisters, filed suit, accusing Christie's of false advertising and false endorsement claims. According to court papers, they argued that Christie's catalog suggested the estate had authenticated objects "that had never been submitted to them for review" and noting that it had not had an authentication committee since 2012. Christie's canceled the more extensive online auction of items. Ultimately, the case was dismissed, and the subtle difference between "never authenticated" versus "not authentic" became lost in the headlines. (The Basquiat estate did not respond to telephone and email queries for this article.) "Mostly, I was very disappointed to have to bring these objects back home," she said. "Because I'd looked forward to them being out in the world for people to see." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Amazon executives are also preparing for coronavirus disruptions. An article by Karen Weise and Michael Corkery outlined the measures the company is taking to hedge against the potential that the impact of the virus gets worse. The Everything Store is "making larger and more frequent orders of Chinese made products that had already been shipped to the United States," they wrote. But at the same time, some suppliers are trying to lower demand, cutting back on advertising and promotions so they don't run out of stuff. Speaking of Amazon: Not everyone agrees on where to draw the line between privacy and convenience, sometimes not even everyone in the same house. One couple fighting over whether to keep an Alexa enabled Echo speaker in the home invented their own solution: a bracelet of silence that jams microphones. Wear it and it's like smart home armor. The tale of the couple, two computer science professors, was brought to us by Kashmir Hill. But if you do agree on getting something that records video and listens especially a Ring doorbell there are some privacy best practices, which Brian X. Chen outlined in his latest Tech Fix column. There are many, many steps required, including getting a burner phone number. And his conclusion: "If that all sounds like a lot of effort just to use a security camera, that's because the security concerns make Ring products impractical to own." In Europe, leaders are very good at regulating technology, pioneering responses to issues of privacy and antitrust, but can it build tech giants of its own? My colleagues Adam Satariano and Monika Pronczuk wrote: "As Europe has created a reputation as the world's most aggressive watchdog of Silicon Valley, it has failed to nurture its own tech ecosystem. That has left countries in the region increasingly dependent on companies that many leaders distrust." Now it is trying to change that and reclaim "technological sovereignty." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
'Game of Thrones' Is Ending. But You Can Still Visit Westeros. CUSHENDUN, Northern Ireland The many marvels dotting the dramatic Antrim Coast of Northern Ireland include a cluster of eerily beautiful caves in this tidy village, around 45 miles north of Belfast. Formed by 400 million years of shifting red stone and the surging slate blue Irish Sea, the caves inspire awed reflection upon the raw power of nature and the irresistible imprint of time, among other musings on the mystic. A voice whispered into my ear: "That's where Melisandre gave birth to the shadow monster." So it was I knew it was around there somewhere, as did the dozens of "Game of Thrones" fans surrounding me, feverishly snapping selfies before returning to their tour bus in a nearby parking lot. The voice belonged to my own guide, Flip Robinson, a 6 foot 8, magnificently bearded man who previously parlayed his stature into a gig as a stand in for behemoth characters like Hodor and the Mountain. He waved to a colleague as she led her group away as suddenly as it had arrived, and off toward Braavos or the Iron Islands or some other "Thrones" location down the road. Nowhere is that dynamic more visible and tangible than the production's former home, which, as the series kicks off its final season on HBO on April 14, is poised to serve as the keeper of the "Thrones" flame. "Game of Thrones" has filmed all over the globe, including in Croatia, Spain, Morocco, Iceland and Malta, and other locations have become synonymous with the show, for better and worse. But as the home of not only the production, in Belfast's Titanic Studios, but also Westeros itself, Northern Ireland has been transformed in fact and figment. As the series altered the TV landscape, it also altered actual landscapes: For millions of viewers all over the world, this country has been redefined and remade in the show's image. In the process, Belfast's filmmaking industry has gone from a sleepy endeavor to a powerhouse. "'Game of Thrones' changed everything," said Richard Williams, the chief executive of Northern Ireland Screen, which promotes film and television production in the country. "We are relevant it is basically night and day." The region has also built a tourism economy on the back of the show, especially on the coast, which provided much of the outdoor scenery. This majestic stretch of landscape and its famously scenic Causeway Coastal Route is now crisscrossed with motor coaches bearing "Thrones" pilgrims. Elsewhere, spots like the Castle Ward estate, near Strangford, site of the original Winterfell, have seen crowds swell with thousands of fans each year. All told, "Thrones" has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the region. But the financial benefit might actually pale compared with a more existential one in a place that for decades was known internationally mostly for sectarian violence. "Twenty years ago, you would have been here writing about the Troubles, not a TV show," Gary Hawthorne, one of my drivers, told me during my visit. Robinson said, "Fake violence has helped bring us back from the real violence." "We had 63 locations in 10 years, every single one of them within and hour and a half of Belfast," said Robert Boake, the supervising location manager in Northern Ireland. This became apparent on the afternoon I spent driving with Robinson along the causeway, a twisting roadway that hugs the U shaped glens of the coa st, the Irish Sea on one side and villages and vertiginous green hillsides, strewn with sheep, on the other. In mere hours, we spanned Westeros and beyond, moving from the Wall and Castle Black (Magheramorne quarry), to the stairs where Arya crawled out of the Braavos canal (Carnlough Harbor) to the rocky shoreline in Pyke (Ballintoy) where the Greyjoys did nutty Greyjoy stuff. We also closed the shadow baby loop, strolling around the Stormlands meadow (near Murlough Bay) where Renly made camp until Melisandre's monster got ahold of him. Occasionally we stopped to walk around and by turns get lashed with rain, pummeled by wind and caressed by crystalline sunshine. ("In Northern Ireland, you get four seasons in one day," Robinson told me, which I eventually came to realize is a national slogan.) At Fair Head outside Ballycastle, we parked in a muddy lot, dropped a few pounds in the honor box and walked uphill through a horizontal downpour. About 20 minutes later, the rain was gone and the sun dried our faces as gale force gusts threatened to blow us over the edge of a sheer cliff dropping hundreds of feet to the rocky coast. We'd arrived at Dragonstone, or the dazzling headland the Targaryen family stronghold was C.G.I.'d upon, anyway. To stand where the impossibly green meadow gives way to gray granite cliffs plummeting toward the sea, as you note the spot where Tyrion and Daenerys argued over strategy, where Jon Snow met Drogon, is to feel the frisson of an epic story meeting an epic landscape. This reciprocity between project and place extends beyond the countryside. Another reason the marriage between "Thrones" and the region has been happier than any on the show is that the production's material needs armor, medieval weapons, elaborate costumes and jewelry meshed well with the area's longstanding artisanal traditions. "We're good at that stuff," Williams said. Even when a fight was filmed in a place like Morocco, the spears were almost always built in Belfast. Fans who would like to try on a replica of Cersei's crown can often do so at Steensons jewelers in Ballymena, because that's where the original and other Westerosi finery were designed and made. (Though when I stopped in, I was told that the show had commandeered it for Season 8 spoiler alert, I guess?) This may be one explanation for the general lack of resentment evident in other locations besieged by "Thrones" tourists, like Dubrovnik, the exterior home of King's Landing, which has been almost totally overrun. "There are not many people in this country who haven't been involved in some direct capacity," Boake said. "Their brother made something for the show, or their sister was an extra, or their cousin worked on an episode." As we drove along the coast, Robinson reminisced about his time as Hodor's double, dodging White Walker stuntmen in the Three Eyed Raven's cave as he dragged Bran's double toward a green screen, in one of the show's most famous scenes. "Then Kristian Nairn held the door," he said. "He did the easy bit." Robinson, 52, was a former carpenter laid low by the global financial crisis, working as a tour guide when he applied to be a "Thrones" extra. Soon he was facing off with the likes of Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster Waldau as a stand in for the undead Mountain, a stint that became the hook for his Giant Tours, which takes small groups of "Thrones" fans up and down the coast. The show has done the same for the region's movie industry. A few films had been shot in Belfast's cavernous old ship painting hall, now part of Titanic Studios (so named because it's near where the doomed ocean liner, the city's other most famous export , was built). But since "Thrones" took up residence there, it has turbocharged the business, conferring the credibility that comes from hosting the most elaborate TV series in history and training a generation of crew and craftspeople. Belfast has since added another enormous studio complex, Belfast Harbour Studios, the current home of Syfy's Superman prequel series "Krypton," and postproduction houses like Yellowmoon, which worked on "Thrones," have significantly expanded. Then there's the measurable financial impact: Over eight seasons, "Game of Thrones" has spent more than 275 million in the region, according to Northern Ireland Screen. Of course, two big questions hang over all the success. One involves how Brexit might affect the industry, though Williams notes that for the large scale productions that are Belfast's bread and butter, significantly more production spending comes from the United States than the European Union. The other: What happens now that "Thrones" is over? While everyone is cautiously optimistic that the planned "Thrones" prequel will go forward as a series, especially given the interest HBO's new owner, AT T, will have in extending such a lucrative franchise, they aren't reliant upon it. "We're getting calls every week," Williams said. The most common analogy holds that "Thrones" is to Northern Ireland what the "Lord of the Rings" movies were to New Zealand a pop culture phenomenon that showcased a wondrous land for a global audience. But one difference is that "Thrones" has helped to redefine a city once known as one of the most dangerous places on earth. From the late 1960s to the late 1990s, the Troubles, which pit Protestant paramilitary groups loyal to the Crown against Catholic ones in favor of a unified, independent Ireland, claimed some 3,600 lives in bombings, sniper attacks and bloody street battles that ripped Belfast apart. Old divisions remain and have been infused with new anxiety by Brexit, because its unclear how it will affect the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But the show has helped "continue our peace process," said Conleth Hill, better known to "Thrones" fans as the cunning Varys. As one of the few actors from Northern Ireland in the cast he grew up and still lives in Ballycastle Hill has observed the show's impact from both inside and out. "Before the Troubles, there was loads of tourists coming through my town," he said. "Now they're coming again." A still more immersive wallow in "Thrones"dom awaited me at Castle Ward, about an hour south of the city. The guide William Van der Kells greeted me in full Northern regalia: a black cloak and faux fur collar with a shiny gauntlet on one hand, holding a large sword made of "the finest Valyrian rubber." A longtime National Trust site, Castle Ward added a "Winterfell tour" after the show shot much of the first season on the property, and promptly brought in more than 25,000 additional visitors a year. The Stark castle was based around the 1610 tower house, the same one Bran climbed to discover Jaime and Cersei in flagrante twincestus. We shot arrows on the spot in the courtyard the Stark children did in one of the first scenes of the series, a few yards from where Tyrion smacked Joffrey in one of the show's most GIF able moments. Then we drove through a driving rain to other locations on the property, like the tree where Robb Stark and Talisa fatefully tied the knot, before taking cover beneath an old castle near the site of Walder Frey's (digitally projected) one, where it all ended badly. "Around here you get all four seasons in a day," Van der Kells said. By then, I was wearing the cloak and snapping my own selfies to send to my daughter. The only shadow monster in evidence was the storm cloud dumping rain on me. But as I peered through the gloom and fog at the choppy Strangford Lough, it occurred to me that while I'd come to see how "Game of Thrones" had redefined Northern Ireland, what struck me most was how Northern Ireland had defined it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
"Black Panther" is an official blockbuster at the box office, and its soundtrack is a hit too, opening at No. 1 on the Billboard chart. The soundtrack, put together in part by Kendrick Lamar, features Mr. Lamar, the Weeknd, SZA, Khalid and James Blake, and opened with the equivalent of 154,000 sales in the United States, according to Nielsen. Of that, 52,000 sales were made of the complete album, with streaming numbers dominating the rest. Did you see "Black Panther" this weekend? Talk about spoilers here. The album was released by Top Dawg Entertainment, whose founder (and "Top Dawg"), Anthony Tiffith, produced and curated it with Mr. Lamar, that label's biggest star. Also this week, Justin Timberlake's "Man of the Woods," last week's top seller, fell to No. 2. The soundtrack to "The Greatest Showman," the P.T. Barnum biopic, is in third place; Migos's "Culture II" is No. 4; and yet another soundtrack, to "Fifty Shades Freed" a new entry on the chart, with songs by Sia, Julia Michaels, Rita Ora and Liam Payne rounds out the Top 5. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
"I Am Burning With Fury and Grief Over Elizabeth Warren. And I Am Not Alone," by Sarah Smarsh (Op Ed, nytimes.com, March 6): I am an Elizabeth Warren supporter. I share the grief. But I think the tendency to blame any failure by any woman politician on misogyny is misguided and possibly harmful to the advancement of women as a whole. If every failure is the result of misogyny, then there is no reason to consider the candidate's own actions, choices or other circumstances. There are many reasons Ms. Warren didn't do better. I don't think misogyny was one of them. Ms. Warren proved to be an agile thinker and an articulate orator, and attracted both men and women in pretty equal numbers. But she was largely occupying a slot that Bernie Sanders, with a four year running head start, already occupied. We are ready for a female president. And perhaps Ms. Smarsh's grandmother will live to see it next election. Thank you, Sarah Smarsh, for making me feel a little less alone. I, too, am burning with fury and grief over Elizabeth Warren's fate. The news that she suspended her campaign knocked the air out of me. It is beyond depressing that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are my only options. Oh, I will dutifully vote for whichever one of them wins the nomination, but I may not vote at all in the primary. Toni Morrison once wrote that the persistence of racism in this country seemed inexplicably enduring to her. She was beginning to suspect that there was something fundamentally wrong with the American character. Today I wonder the same thing about our country's misogyny. Despite all the progress, there is something deep in our national psyche that recoils from a powerful woman. The vitriol heaped on Hillary Clinton astounded me. The swift and decisive sidelining of Ms. Warren is like an aftershock less dramatic but still devastating ... and so damn predictable. So here we are now, left with the old familiar feelings of defeat and disappointment and the worrisome suspicion that the old saying may be true. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Please spare me any more tearful, heartfelt columns by young, educated, white, professional women who are crying now that Elizabeth Warren has lost the Democratic nomination because gasp! there's sexism in our party. Speaking as an old, educated, white, professional woman, I can tell you that her loss was not only anticipated, but welcomed by many Democrats like me. We are glad she lost the primaries because we knew she could not have won in November. She suffered from the same flaws as Hillary Clinton most fundamentally, the belief that if only a woman works harder than anyone else, she will get rewarded with the presidency. The belief that the election is a contest over who has prepared the most elaborately detailed plans. The belief that you can come across as an angry woman (I'm sorry, but she did), or an angry gay person, or an angry person of color, or anything other than an angry white man, and still get elected to the highest office in this land. You cannot. That is what Barack Obama understood. It is all about likability. It is about whether voters think you relate to them, care about them, will represent their wishes and dreams once you're in office. Ms. Warren substituted elaborate plans for emotional connection. Blame sexism if you like, but that will not change the fact that she was not the right candidate for our times. So to all those Warren supporters now "burning with fury and grief," stop crying about it. Get to work supporting a female candidate who is manifestly "likable," and we might be able to win next time. As a former supporter of Elizabeth Warren I was surprised to see the reaction to her losses in the primaries as a representation of sexism. I worked for the senator in her state campaigns and supported her run for the presidency early on. I believed she was a good choice for the highest office in our land given the field of candidates. However, when Senator Warren veered to the left to endorse universal health care with no real idea how to pay for it and a 2 percent wealth tax, she lost the majority of moderate Democrats. What I believe finally finished her off was her aggressive assault on Michael Bloomberg on the debate stage. Whether or not one accepts her list of accusations as accurate, her method of attack was uncomfortable for many of us who immediately thought, "Is this the way we want a president to unite us?" Elizabeth Warren lost her place in the election not because she was a woman but because of her political positions and her choice to resort to bitterness and anger. Like Bernie Sanders, she failed to recognize that most Americans are tired of anger and tirades. We want healing and an effort to reunite us as a nation. Thank you for your poignant Op Ed about Elizabeth Warren leaving the presidential race. The last time I felt so gut punched was when Donald Trump won. I am 70 years old and feel as if I won't see a female president in my lifetime. It is too sad. I wasn't "for" Hillary. But Elizabeth really spoke to me. So smart, hardworking and truly kind. I still don't understand why women didn't turn out in droves to vote for her. Sarah Smarsh's article points the finger of blame at the media and at the way women are slighted in society, but ladies, honestly, look to yourselves. Throughout this primary season, I have been continually surprised by my women friends who liked Elizabeth Warren but thought that a woman couldn't win against Donald Trump or that the conservative portions of the country wouldn't support a woman. So, it would seem, the only problem these women had with Elizabeth Warren was that she was a woman. They could have easily supported a man with the same qualifications and same ideas. We will not have a woman president in the United States until women start voting for a woman simply because she is the most qualified. Women are 53 percent of the electorate, and a greater percentage of women than men actually vote. We have only to look at South Carolina, where the black voters paid no attention to the media's depiction of a floundering Biden campaign and voted for their preferred candidate. Women, burn with fury at yourselves and say never again! The political force of gender notwithstanding, a lot more was involved in Elizabeth Warren's defeat. The closest recent comparison to Ms. Warren as a failed candidate is not Hillary Clinton, or Amy Klobuchar or Kamala Harris, but Bill Bradley in 2000. Like Ms. Warren, Mr. Bradley was an effective East Coast senator and Ivy League intellectual with policy plans agonizingly detailed plans for tax reform, health care, manufacturing, etc., that he would drone on and on about. Like Ms. Warren again, Mr. Bradley did well in some predictable liberal enclaves, but had trouble attracting voters neither well educated nor well off. Both were criticized inordinately for lecturing and scolding too much Adlai Stevenson's "egghead" problem again. In the end, both lost to former vice presidents. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
MEXICO CITY On June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon stood in front of the White House press corps and made his historic declaration of a new type of war. "Public Enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse," he said. "In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it's necessary to wage a new all out offensive." It would be a governmentwide effort, and rally the United States's power abroad to stem the supply of drugs. Among the countries targeted was Mexico, which was home to abundant marijuana production and had been resistant to aerial crop spraying. Nearly 50 years later, the war on drugs has left a trail of destruction. Almost 72,000 Americans died as a result of drug overdoses last year. People of color have been disproportionally hurt by mass incarceration for drug offenses, devastating families and communities. And law enforcement efforts against drug crimes are behind many police killings, including that of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky., in March. Here in Mexico, I have spent the last decade and a half covering what more closely resembles a real war. Much of the nation's armed forces have mobilized against drug cartels since late 2006. In the 14 years since then, Mexico has suffered more than 270,000 homicides, many at the hands of cartel gunmen or the security forces fighting them. And to rub salt in the wounds, some of the very security officials leading this war in Mexico are accused of working with the cartels. The country's former public security secretary, Genaro Garcia Luna, is in a New York jail facing drug trafficking charges. A former secretary of defense, Salvador Cienfuegos, is also accused of working with traffickers; he was indicted in New York but on Wednesday prosecutors agreed to drop the charges and transfer him to Mexico, where the government says the inquiry will continue. But many here wonder if justice really extends to the powerful in this war. Yet along with this record of failure, there is an opportunity to forge a new path on drug policy on both sides of the Rio Grande. In this month's American elections, Oregon voted to become the first state to decriminalize small amounts of hard drugs, including heroin, cocaine and crystal meth. Those caught in possession will have the option of paying a 100 fine, or undergoing treatment. What's more, New Jersey, South Dakota, Montana and Arizona joined 11 other states and the District of Columbia in legalizing recreational marijuana. It's notable these policies are supported across the partisan divide, with 74 percent of Mississippi voters backing legal medical marijuana. And Mexico is poised to create the most populous legal marijuana zone. Following a Mexican Supreme Court ruling in 2019 that cannabis prohibition is unconstitutional, the Senate is working on a December deadline to pass a legalization law. The bill would allow people to possess up to 28 grams (a little under an ounce) and cultivate up to four plants. The leaders of both countries should follow those examples. President elect Joe Biden has promised justice reform but it is unclear what concrete measures he will take. A focus on reforming drug policy could give him some direction. After Nixon declared his war on drugs, he talked in absolutist terms of stopping any drugs being available. "Our goal is the total banishment of drug abuse from the American life," he said in his address to the International Conference on Narcotics Control during his 1972 re election campaign. The offensive was stepped up by his successors in the 1980s and 1990s in cities like Miami and Los Angeles, and countries like Colombia. The ballot measures and surveys show that Americans are now ready to end the war on drugs. A Biden government could move from the fantasy of ridding the world of narcotics to a realistic policy of harm reduction. It could then shift resources from enforcement to treatment, which is in dire need of improvement. A 2019 study by the American Medical Association found that an incredible 90 percent of people with substance abuse disorders were not receiving the help they need. Rehabilitation could cut the amount of cash flowing to cartels in Mexico, which they use to hire killers and bribe officials. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took power calling for an end to the war that has ravaged his country. But amid sky high homicide rates, he has kept the army on the streets, and lacks a coherent security strategy. He would do well to embrace the marijuana legalization and work with the United States in eventually creating a legal market for cannabis across the whole region. If struggling farmers in Mexico's mountains could grow marijuana legally for the United States or domestic markets it could draw them away from the organized crime networks. President Lopez Obrador could redirect police efforts toward more pernicious crimes murder, kidnapping and extortion. Drug policy reform involves a gradual shift in rhetoric, laws and practices. It doesn't necessarily mean legalizing all drugs, but focusing on harm reduction and treatment, while seeing where profitable legal markets can be created. It also isn't a magic bullet that will stop all crime. Police officers on both sides of the border are still needed to fight violent offenses. Mexico's cartels have diversified into a portfolio of crimes from sex trafficking to oil theft, and law enforcement is urgently needed to combat those crimes. But if the gangsters had their drug profits slashed, their power and scope could be greatly reduced. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
GUANGZHOU, China After a sharp economic slowdown through much of last year, China's economy is growing again but not at its previous double digit pace, and with signs that inflation might become a problem again. Shops were crowded this past weekend, construction sites show renewed activity and factories are hiring as exports and domestic demand recover trends all underlined by government data released over the last several days. Further data to be released Friday and Saturday including monthly, quarterly and annual figures for industrial production, fixed asset investment, retail sales and overall economic output are also expected to show that the Chinese economy, the world's second largest after that of the United States, is expanding once again. Many shopkeepers are noticing a rebound in retail sales. Among them was Liu Licai, a merchant in southern China who sells curtains and other household goods. Although some industries, like auto manufacturing, still suffer from bloated inventories, retailers like Ms. Liu are finding their shelves too empty and are starting to place more orders with suppliers, keeping factories busy. "Business has gone up by more than 10 percent in the last several months," Ms. Liu said during a brief lull on an otherwise busy day. Yet the pace of China's expansion may not be fast enough to do much for the rest of the world. China's imports are growing less than half as fast as its exports, making it hard for China to become the locomotive to pull the global economy out of its half decade funk. And overall growth is not rebounding to previous levels. "Our lease was renewed recently and our rent went up by a double digit percentage I feel like I am working for the landlord," she said. Tang Chun, the owner of a factory that makes picture frames in Guangzhou, complained of rising costs for the full range of supplies that she buys, including aluminum, acrylic and glass. But store buyers lack the confidence to accept higher prices, fearing that they will not be able to pass them on to retail customers, she said. "Every possible cost is going up, including raw material costs and my rent, but I can't raise prices. It's all coming out of my profit margins," Ms. Tang said. Part of the increase in inflation reflects rising prices for fruits and vegetables, as extremely cold weather in China over the past couple of weeks has damaged winter crops. At the fruit stand where Zeng Xiandan, 25, was stacking tangerines Saturday, prices had just jumped 10 percent to 20 percent for a wide range of produce, including tangerines, which were up 15 percent. Mr. Zeng said the increases had drawn surprisingly little criticism. "They understand it's because of the cold weather. Customers have not complained," he said. But economists say the overall rising prices reflect broad shifts in the Chinese economy. China is awash in cash, since the government has expanded the broadly measured money supply over the past five years much more rapidly than the United States, even though the Federal Reserve's moves have attracted considerably more international attention. China's money supply is now larger than that of the United States, even though China's economy is half as large. Total credit jumped 28 percent in December from a year ago, led by more corporate bonds and more loans from semi regulated trusts set up by banks. Until the last several years, China seemed to be expanding its factories so fast and workers were moving into cities so quickly that China could sustain rapid growth just by fully using those factories and workers. But an emerging labor shortage, particularly of young workers, has changed that picture. The country's "one child" policy and more years spent in school have meant fewer young people entering the labor force. The Chinese economy remains dominated by manufacturing, and factory overcapacity still exists in some sectors. At the same time, the labor intensive service sector is growing rapidly and has far less overcapacity that can be used without causing inflation. As the Chinese eat out more frequently and as its fast growing population of elderly increasingly enters nursing homes, expansion is taking place in the catering and health care sectors. These sectors, along with education, have had trouble filling numerous but often low paying positions. Rebounding exports and construction have also increased demand for low wage workers. Exports leapt 14.1 percent in December from a year earlier, nearly three times as fast as expected, and were led by surging shipments to the United States, data released Thursday showed. Imports rose 6 percent in December, partly because of an 11 percent jump in iron ore imports as steel production rebounded. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Q. If Windows comes with tools to help someone take control and troubleshoot another PC over the internet, what does Apple provide for long distance Mac to Mac support? A. Apple includes several ways to see and control the screen of another Mac over a network connection. Perhaps the easiest approach for those who don't want to knock around in system settings is to use the Messages chat app. Both Macs involved in the remote assistance operation need Apple ID accounts and must be logged into the Messages app. If you are the one providing the technical assistance, open Messages, select the name of the person you plan to help or send a new message to start the conversation and click the Details button in the upper right corner of the window. Click the Screen Share icon, which looks like two overlapping rectangles, and select "Ask to share screen." (If you're the one needing the help, you can also reach out via a Messages buddy and use the "Invite to Share My Screen" option.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
A roundup of motoring news from the web: General Motors announced Wednesday its new generation of small Ecotec engines that will power the automaker's small cars and crossovers. Displacements will range from 1 to 1.5 liters, some will be turbocharged, and power output will range from 75 to 165 horsepower. The automaker said it would build 2.5 million of the 11 small displacement 3 and 4 cylinder Ecotec variants annually by 2017. (General Motors) BMW plans to increase annual production capacity at its factory in Spartanburg, S.C., by 50,000, to about 350,000 vehicles, the automaker said Wednesday. The aim of the increase, which comes as the company releases 12 new models, is to reach record sales and increase the company's pretax profits by about 10 percent. (Reuters) Jeffrey Lux, a former G.M. executive in charge of new product launches, accepted a position at Chrysler as head of transmission powertrain. Mr. Lux will replace Mircea Gradu, who left Chrysler in January. Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of Chrysler, foreshadowed Mr. Lux's new direction with the company when he said in a news conference last week that the automaker was dedicated to using 9 speed transmissions in its vehicles. (Automotive News, subscription required) Volvo is testing a system that can, through in car sensors, tell if a driver is getting drowsy or isn't paying attention to the road. Although some cars already come with warning systems to alert the driver when the car has been on the road for a while without stopping, Volvo's system can measure the angle of the driver's head and how wide the eyes are open. (Autoweek) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Will the adorable couple adopt a baby in time to celebrate Christmas with Mom and Dad and the neighborhood kids? Sounds like a delightful holiday TV movie. But this is disruptive 2020, so here's the thing: the couple are Brandon and Jake and the channel is Hallmark. "The Christmas House" is one of six new original holiday films released since November with something rare: main characters in same sex relationships. Others include Hulu's "Happiest Season," a lesbian coming out comedy starring Kristen Stewart; "The Christmas Setup," a Lifetime rom com debuting Saturday and starring the real life husbands Ben Lewis and Blake Lee; and "Dashing in December," a drama starting Sunday on the Paramount Network about two men who fall in love on a ranch. More under the radar but still noteworthy are two indies: "A New York Christmas Wedding," a drama on Netflix about a woman who has relationships with both a man and a woman, and the scrappy on demand "I Hate New Year's" (for rent on major platforms), a lesbian romance set on New Year's Eve in Nashville. L.G.B.T.Q. characters aren't new to holiday movies, and six films may not sound like a revolution. But so many leading queer love stories and same sex kisses! is a sea change for Christmas cinema, a conventionally heterosexual universe with more stories about puppies than gay people. "It's the start of something bigger," said Clea DuVall, the director and co writer of "Happiest Season." She added, "Networks and streamers are starting to see the value in telling these stories that have always been there but were not given the platform to get out to wider audiences." According to Hulu, "Happiest Season" is the first holiday rom com about a same sex couple from a major Hollywood studio. Nicole Brown, the president of TriStar Pictures, which sold "Happiest Season" to Hulu in October, called the queering of the Christmas picture "very organic." So what took so long? "Film has always been under the assumption that the safest kind of characters are the way to go," Brown said. "Our studio felt confident that the script and Clea's vision and her ambition were aligned to make a commercial story, and that the quality of her storytelling would bring everybody in. When something's great, it's great." This shift is most seismic for Hallmark, which has become shorthand for "holiday movie." "The Christmas House" is one of 40 new holiday films released this year on the Hallmark Channel and its sister network Hallmark Movies Mysteries, the leaders in the holiday moviemaking machine. What's most striking about "The Christmas House" is that Brandon and Jake, played by Jonathan Bennett and Brad Harder, are unconditionally accepted as part of the family. L.G.B.T.Q. people "work on a lot of these Christmas movies," said Bennett, who is gay but has played straight in Hallmark films before. "For the first time we feel we belong at the holiday table." Last December, the Hallmark Channel faced a firestorm when it pulled four television ads with kissing brides after a conservative group petitioned the network to "reconsider airing commercials with same sex couples" and to refrain from adding L.G.B.T.Q. movies to its schedule. Days later, Hallmark apologized for removing the commercials, and said it would work with GLAAD, the media advocacy organization, "to better represent the L.G.B.T.Q. community." Michelle Vicary, executive vice president of programming and network publicity at Crown Media Family Networks, the parent company of the Hallmark Channel, said in an interview that her chief goal this year was to make "a bigger holiday table where people can see themselves on TV." In 2021, Hallmark "will be moving forward, not backward," she said, with more L.G.B.T.Q. tales at Christmas and during the year. "We are really focused on continuing our commitment to the authenticity in our storytelling for all of our characters, and making sure that everyone can see themselves represented on Hallmark services," she said. "It's the right thing to do." Lifetime, Hallmark's biggest Christmas competitor, has featured original holiday films with L.G.B.T.Q. characters in supporting roles and story lines before; last year for the first time it ran one with a same sex kiss. But "The Christmas Setup" one of 34 new holiday movies on Lifetime this year breaks ground as the channel's first such film with an L.G.B.T.Q. romance front and center. Tanya Lopez, Lifetime's executive vice president of movies, limited series and original movie acquisitions, said having gay leading characters in a film was "an incredible positive." But the real breakthrough? "Remember when we would lower our voices and say a movie has a very special holiday twist?" she whispered. "We're not doing a very special kind of Christmas." Gay characters "being treated normal in storytelling is what feels fresh," she added, "and that's the norm I want to create." Holiday TV movies generally follow a formula a young city gal unexpectedly finds love with a small town handyman or prince in disguise. Viewers show no signs of fatigue with that basic plot, and it's a pretty white world. But while racial diversity has become more prevalent in the genre, if only a little, queer representation has not kept pace with even that minimal progress. Guaranteed, aspirational feel good: that's the name of the holiday movie game, said Joanna Wilson, the author of the Christmas entertainment encyclopedia "Tis the Season TV." "These movies are fantasies where the real world doesn't exist," said Wilson, who also runs the blog ChristmasTVHistory.com. "Families don't worry about different political viewpoints or health care. These are very cautious, conservative stories to begin with. But changes are coming, and that matters." Wilson traces the holiday TV bonanza to ABC's "Carol for Another Christmas," a 20th century "Christmas Carol" written by Rod Serling and broadcast in 1964. Original holiday films blossomed on the networks in the '70s and '80s, and in the '90s, cable TV first marketed them as niche programming, Wilson said. This year, there are an estimated 115 new holiday movies on cable and major streaming platforms, including original films on Fox Nation, the Fox News streaming service. If ratings are an indication, the move toward L.G.B.T.Q. story lines isn't a fluke. Hallmark said "The Christmas House" attracted over two million total viewers in its premiere last month. "Happiest Season" got the biggest audience for any Hulu original film in its opening weekend, according to Hulu. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Re "Tensions in Iowa Over Long Delays in Caucus Tallies" (front page, Feb. 4): The Iowa Democratic Party tried something new Monday night. Instead of simply giving the world one winner, the party wanted all of us to know who was the caucusgoers' first pick, their second pick and, ultimately, the candidate who received the most delegates. That process failed. Was it frustrating? Yes. Was it exhausting? Yes. Was it expensive? Yes. Are people angry? Of course. The new process failed. Is it the end of the world? Not at all. It was human error. And after the years of lies from President Trump, admitting honest human mistakes is almost a breath of fresh air. No one is trying to cover it up, or make up some lie or give some pathetic line. Take a deep breath and be reminded of the words of the humorist Will Rogers: "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." As someone who has developed large scale applications such as were designed for Iowa's caucuses, I'd like to call all of the developers into a room, slap them on the head and ask, "What were you thinking?" Rule No. 1 of designing systems: "Presume It Will Go Wrong. Plan Accordingly." Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." The Russians did not have to hack our systems. We did it ourselves. Over the years, we have been repeatedly told that Iowa voters deserve their privileged position as first in the nation because of how seriously they take the voting process. If that were ever true, the debacle of this year's Iowa caucuses should put an end to what is fundamentally an undemocratic process that disenfranchises those who cannot devote several hours to the process of voting. The caucus method suits a pied piper candidate like Senator Bernie Sanders who can promise free tuition, cancellation of student debt and universal health care to an army of young people who can devote an evening to a party like event. The senator's campaign complicated an already messy process by demanding changes to the reporting of voting tallies after his defeat in 2016. Finally, with the choice of a poorly tested application, the local Democratic Party lost any claim to be first to vet the candidates. The Iowa caucuses are a blessing. It was so great to be in a room of 800 Democrats working for a brighter future. All Democrats should have that experience. It is worth the wait in hearing the results. The rest of the country needs to just chill out. The privileged status of Iowa's caucuses leading off the presidential campaign season has long been criticized as unrepresentative of the Democratic electorate: too rural, too white, too old. But they are also inherently discriminatory against working parents, the elderly, the poor, the disabled and others who may be unable to spend a winter night at a caucus. And now we have the counting fiasco. The Democratic Party should require primaries and do away with caucuses in Iowa and elsewhere. People were outraged about the fact that the media could not report the outcome of the Iowa caucuses Monday night. The campaigns, too, were angry that their candidates were denied the ability to make prime time speeches in which they could spin their outcomes in a way that would portray victories of some kind. But the caucuses were choosing delegates to a convention that is scheduled for mid July. Why does it matter that the results will be known only on Tuesday rather than Monday night? Why is it better to be able to report, breathlessly, on one precinct at a time results as they dribble in, and to speculate on what they imply for the state as a whole, than to have the final statewide outcomes all at the same time, with the same details available? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Lateiki was a tiny island in the archipelagic Kingdom of Tonga, formed in 1995 by an ebullient submarine volcano. Last month, that underwater firestarter decided it was time for some explosive redecorating. An eruption in the southwest Pacific Ocean was first reported on Oct. 14 by a Tongan ship. The Tonga Geological Service then scanned through satellite imagery and noticed the paroxysm, at Lateiki, began a day earlier. Over the next week or so, various vessels, flights and satellites intermittently saw an ashy plume rising from the island. By Nov. 1, it was all over; Lateiki was gone, its remnants swallowed by the volcano's erupting maw. But this loss of Tongan territory was short lived. As quickly as Lateiki self destructed, it was reborn as a new island roughly 400 feet to the west. The new Lateiki, 1,310 feet long and 330 feet wide, is nearly four times the size of the old one. Lateiki is highly practiced in the art of volcanic makeovers. Several of its eruptions reportedly built ephemeral shoal islands in the 18th and 19th centuries, and more definitively in 1967 and 1979. Until 1995, these islands lasted a few months before being chewed up by the waves. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
So here you are, in the thumping nucleus of the 45 billion global art market, home to 250 or more galleries of contemporary art. But why does the floor feel so unsteady? Rumblings of a market correction are everywhere in Chelsea lately, and the one two punch of slowing sales and rising rents note the garish condos rising above your head has begun to knock out galleries large and small. Dealers have decamped downtown (Derek Eller, Alexander and Bonin) and uptown (Anton Kern). And there have been closings, too: Mike Weiss Gallery, Murray Guy and, most shockingly, the stalwart Andrea Rosen Gallery, which was an anchor of this neighborhood's main drag of 24th Street. But Chelsea's still here, and still the best place in town to see lots of art in not a lot of time. This tour visits seven commercial galleries, as well as three of Chelsea's nonprofit spaces, which can sometimes be overlooked. (Happily, the Dia Art Foundation is back; its 22nd Street home, currently hosting Hanne Darboven's titanic installation "Kulturgeschichte," is an essential stop.) When you're done, adjourn to the newly renovated Bottino, the Chelsea art world's unofficial canteen on 10th Avenue. Buy a couple of dealers a drink; they might need it more than you. 303 GALLERY Back in 1996, the astute dealer Lisa Spellman was among the first dealers to relocate from SoHo to Chelsea; now, 303 Gallery makes its home on the ground floor of one of the many brassy towers that have arisen in Highlineville. On view now is a sharp, droll exhibition of exactingly staged self portraits by Rodney Graham, the slipperiest of the half dozen conceptual photographers who came of age in 1980s Vancouver. In large lightboxes, the artist appears as a media studies professor in bell bottom corduroys, smoking in class; as a sleeping antiques dealer surrounded by tchotchkes from British Columbia; and as a private detective peeping from behind a 19th century newspaper. Like all the best wits, Mr. Graham is a tragic figure at heart these photographic performances are all elegies for an age when artists had deeper convictions than we today can muster. TYLER ROLLINS FINE ART Up on the 10th floor, quietly doing its thing for a decade, this gallery specializes in contemporary art from Southeast Asia and is one of the most reliably interesting spaces in Chelsea. "Mats and Pillows and Vessels," its current show, features superb works on paper by the Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak, who uses charcoal, pastel, candle wax and gold leaf to delineate curvaceous forms that could be breasts, bowls or stupas. Some of these dense and alluring drawings recall the best works of Louise Bourgeois and Ms. Pinaree, like her, also has a strong interest in domesticity. A good third of the gallery has been given over to bamboo and rattan mats gathered from across Thailand, on which gallerygoers can chill out for a spell; just make sure to take off your shoes first. (The artist has also installed a large, undulating canopy in the Brookfield Place winter garden, down in Battery Park.) ANDREW KREPS GALLERY The larger of this gallery's two spaces has been dimmed to screen four moving image works by the Ohio born artist Kevin Jerome Everson, whose laconic films explore the quotidian passages of African American life and, more recently, the everyday consequences of the Midwest's economic downturn. In three bluntly metaphorical projections here, dating from 2011 to 2015, he films busted automobiles as they're torn apart for scrap: One is pancaked in a car crusher, while another is gripped by a giant claw and tossed like a rag doll. The more surprising work here is a double projection shot at a lunar observatory. The moon appears, in one frame filling shot, as a riot of pockmarks; in another, it's just a wash of monochrome silver. (Mr. Everson's work is also included in this year's Whitney Biennial, just down the High Line from here.) ALEXANDER GRAY ASSOCIATES The poetic potential of scrap metal has long occupied another African American artist: the veteran sculptor Melvin Edwards, who works in upstate New York but also keeps a studio in Dakar, Senegal. Chains, hooks, locks and horseshoes are welded into dense knottings of steel, which hang from the wall in this gallery like malevolent sconces; skeins of barbed wire stretch from one wall to the next, and are (a little melodramatically) suspended from the ceiling to form a large tent. Mr. Edwards's fiercely welded hunks and chains in this show, titled "In Oklahoma," certainly call forth the history of slavery and discrimination: Many are from a continuing series known as "Lynch Fragments." But they are also careful exercises in abstract form, in harmony with the metal sculptures of his contemporaries Mark di Suvero and John Chamberlain. THE WALTHER COLLECTION In 2011 the photography collector Artur Walther opened this small nonprofit space as a New York satellite to his sizable private museum in southern Germany. African photography has been its principal focus, but the current show, "Body, Self, Society: Chinese Performance Photography of the 1990s," is an excellent tour d'horizon of Chinese photographers, including Ai Weiwei, Zhang Huan and Song Dong. T he last of these photographers is represented by his renowned series "Printing on Water," in which Mr. Song is pictured waist deep in a Tibetan river, futilely stamping the surface with a printing block marked with the Chinese character for water. The Chinese government isn't exactly easygoing about the question of Tibetan sovereignty; Mr. Song's polyvalent performance is a quietly political act of cheek. P.P.O.W. This gallery opened more than 30 years ago in the East Village, moved to Chelsea in 2002 and took over a second floor of its building last September. The principal space features "Virgins," a capacious exhibition by the feminist painter Betty Tompkins, whose soft edged black and white canvases depict, in sometimes murky close up, acts of heterosexual coitus. Their titles are not publishable in The New York Times, but don't be prudish: These pictures of penetration are more forensic than pornographic, and they resolve, when you move toward them, into delicate spumes of blue and gray. Their rigor is further affirmed by the associated drawings Ms. Tompkins shows here, in which ravenous kisses and engorged members are partitioned by the same grid designs used by Renaissance painters. THE KITCHEN This is one of New York's most august venues for performance art and dance, but a less trafficked art gallery, one steep flight up from the Kitchen's black box theater, consistently stages some of Chelsea's smartest shows. The current exhibition, "Yield Point," by the sly Japanese artist Aki Sasamoto, explores various kinds of elasticity: A high definition video features a tensile testing machine that stretches plastic like bubble gum, while a baffling installation displays an upright trampoline and electroluminescent wire stretched across a Dumpster. (There are also walnuts. Search me.) Ms. Sasamoto has been performing within the exhibition throughout the run: Catch her solo this Saturday at 6 p.m., or next week with the polished Sudanese singer Alsarah. MICHAEL ROSENFELD ART Hard by the West Side Highway, this gallery moved here from Midtown in 2012 and is the only significant space in Chelsea that regularly plays background music. One of its focuses is abstraction by African American artists, among them the painter William T. Williams, who's got a mini retrospective, "Things Unknown: Paintings 1968 2017," up now. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mr. Williams made hard edged geometric compositions in which diamonds and S curves intersected in shallow planes. Later, the diamond shapes were absorbed into stuttering, overlapping fields of gray or mauve. If some '80s experiments with drippy handprints went decidedly awry, two fine works from 2007, in which white curlicues disrupt oceans of blue, reassure that Mr. Williams has never stopped exploring. DAVID NOLAN GALLERY The air starts to get thinner once you go north of 26th Street, but one of the few significant galleries in Chelsea's upper stretches is this one, whose mullions are painted an unmissable taxi cab yellow. Up now is an intriguing, biting its own tail show, "All Images From a Book...," by Ciprian Muresan, one of several prominent artists from Cluj, Romania an unlikely new European art capital whose other hometown heroes include the painter Adrian Ghenie and the video artist Mircea Cantor. Mr. Muresan, who's taking part in next month's Venice Biennale, makes allusive "palimpsest" drawings, for which he copies every image from a book of Holbein paintings, or from an issue of Artforum magazine, into dense webs of images and information. But a better and more inventive example of creation through duplication is a cast resin sculpture, with forms that draw on multiple busts and statues in Cluj's art museum, lying on the floor like a casualty of history. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Freeman J. Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., in 1972. He gained public renown as a writer and technological visionary. Freeman J. Dyson, a mathematical prodigy who left his mark on subatomic physics before turning to messier subjects like Earth's environmental future and the morality of war, died on Friday at a hospital near Princeton, N.J. He was 96. His daughter Mia Dyson confirmed the death. His son, George, said Dr. Dyson had fallen three days earlier in the cafeteria of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, "his academic home for more than 60 years," as the institute put it in a news release. As a young graduate student at Cornell University in 1949, Dr. Dyson wrote a landmark paper worthy, some colleagues thought, of a Nobel Prize that deepened the understanding of how light interacts with matter to produce the palpable world. The theory the paper advanced, called quantum electrodynamics, or QED, ranks among the great achievements of modern science. But it was as a writer and technological visionary that he gained public renown. He imagined exploring the solar system with spaceships propelled by nuclear explosions and establishing distant colonies nourished by genetically engineered plants. "Life begins at 55, the age at which I published my first book," he wrote in "From Eros to Gaia," one of the collections of his writings that appeared while he was a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study an august position for someone who finished school without a Ph.D. The lack of a doctorate was a badge of honor, he said. With his slew of honorary degrees and a fellowship in the Royal Society, people called him Dr. Dyson anyway. Dr. Dyson called himself a scientific heretic and warned against the temptation of confusing mathematical abstractions with ultimate truth. Although his own early work on QED helped bring photons and electrons into a consistent framework, Dr. Dyson doubted that superstrings, or anything else, would lead to a Theory of Everything, unifying all of physics with a succinct formulation inscribable on a T shirt. In a speech in 2000 when he accepted the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, Dr. Dyson quoted Francis Bacon: "God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world." Relishing the role of iconoclast, he confounded the scientific establishment by dismissing the consensus about the perils of man made climate change as "tribal group thinking." He doubted the veracity of the climate models, and he exasperated experts with sanguine predictions they found rooted less in science than in wishfulness: Excess carbon in the air is good for plants, and global warming might forestall another ice age. Dr. Dyson's distrust of mathematical models had earlier led him to challenge predictions that the debris from atomic warfare could blot out the sun and bring on a devastating nuclear winter. He said he wished that were true because it would add to the psychological deterrents to nuclear war but found the theory wanting. For all his doubts about the ability of mortals to calculate anything so complex as the effects of climate change, he was confident enough in our toolmaking to propose a technological fix: If carbon dioxide levels became too high, forests of genetically altered trees could be planted to strip the excess molecules from the air. That would free scientists to confront problems he found more immediate, like the alleviation of poverty and the avoidance of war. He considered himself an environmentalist. "I am a tree hugger, in love with frogs and forests," he wrote in 2015 in The Boston Globe. "More urgent and more real problems, such as the overfishing of the oceans and the destruction of wildlife habitat on land, are neglected, while the environmental activists waste their time and energy ranting about climate change." That was, to say the least, a minority position. He was religious, but in an unorthodox way, believing good works to be more important than theology. "Science is exciting because it is full of unsolved mysteries, and religion is exciting for the same reason," he said in his Templeton Prize acceptance speech. "The greatest unsolved mysteries are the mysteries of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe." Freeman John Dyson was born on Dec. 15, 1923, in the Berkshire village of Crowthorne, England. His father, George Dyson, was a composer and conductor. In the family archives is an unfinished novel Freeman began writing when he was 8 years old about an imaginary expedition to the moon to observe the impending impact of an asteroid. (Later in life he probably would have devised, at least on paper, a means of heading off the celestial crash.) The boy's reading included, in addition to Jules Verne, nonfiction by James Jeans and Arthur Eddington, British physicists with a flair for popularization and a literary bent. After finishing high school at Winchester College, where his father taught music, he entered the University of Cambridge, Trinity College, and excelled in mathematics. Looking for a way to serve the war effort while satisfying his pacifist leanings, he took leave in 1943 to work as a civilian scientist for the Royal Air Force Bomber Command. He was charged with using mathematics to plan more efficient bombing campaigns. Years later, in an interview with the physicist and historian Silvan S. Schweber, he agonized over what he saw as his own moral cowardice, comparing himself to Nazi bureaucrats "calculating how to murder most economically." Excited by the theoretical frontiers opened by wartime research on nuclear fission, Dr. Dyson returned to Cambridge and concentrated on becoming a physicist. With a bachelor's degree in mathematics, he entered the graduate physics program at Cornell in 1947, studying under Hans Bethe, who had been a leader of the Manhattan Project. It was while touring the United States the following summer that Dr. Dyson resolved a pressing problem in theoretical physics. While crossing Nebraska on a Greyhound bus, Dr. Dyson was struck by an epiphany: The theories were mathematically equivalent different ways of saying the same thing. The result was QED. Feynman called it "the jewel of physics our proudest possession." By the time Dr. Dyson published the details in 1949, a doctorate must have seemed superfluous. He was appointed professor of physics at Cornell in 1951. Teaching, he soon realized, was not for him. In 1953, he became a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he spent the rest of his career. Dr. Dyson did not begrudge Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga the Nobel they received in 1965. "I think it's almost true without exception if you want to win a Nobel Prize, you should have a long attention span, get hold of some deep and important problem and stay with it for 10 years," he told The Times Magazine in 2009. "That wasn't my style." He preferred to move from problem to problem, both theoretical and practical. In the late 1950s, consulting for General Atomics in San Diego, he helped design the Triga reactor, which is used for scientific research and nuclear medicine, and worked on Project Orion, which aimed to explore the solar system with an enormous spaceship powered by exploding nuclear bombs. With the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, Dr. Dyson's dreams of reaching Saturn by 1970 were put to rest. Despite his disappointment, he came to support the treaty and, sometimes as a member of Jason, an elite group of scientific advisers, consulted with the government on disarmament and defense. But his interests were not moored to the earth's surface. Any advanced civilization, he observed in a paper published in 1960, would ultimately expand to the point where it needed all the energy its solar system could provide. The ultimate solution would be to build a shell around the sun a Dyson sphere to capture its output. Earthlings, he speculated in a thought experiment, might conceivably do this by dismantling Jupiter and reassembling the pieces. In the meantime Dr. Dyson supported more conventional kinds of solar power, but he proposed that astronomers searching for extraterrestrial intelligence keep an eye out for heat radiating from occluded suns. For mankind's own colonial efforts, he suggested the Dyson tree, altered genetically to grow on comets and generate a breathable atmosphere. He also continued with less fanciful work. He and a colleague, Andrew Lenard, won a bottle of Champagne for proving that the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no two fermions (electrons are an example) can occupy the same state, accounted for the stability of matter. In 1965 Dr. Dyson received a Dannie Heineman Prize, often considered the next best thing in physics to a Nobel. Little about the world, profound or mundane, escaped his curiosity. Among his work is a short paper deriving a mathematical equation beautiful in his eyes describing the seam of a baseball. In the late 1970s Dr. Dyson turned full force to writing. Anyone with an interest in science and an appreciation for good prose is likely to have some Dysons on the shelf: "Disturbing the Universe," "Weapons and Hope," "Infinite in All Directions," "The Sun, the Genome and the Internet." He also entered literature in a different way. He appeared in John McPhee's book "The Curve of Binding Energy" (1974), a portrait of Ted Taylor, the nuclear scientist who led the Orion effort, and in Kenneth Brower's "The Starship and the Canoe" (1978). In a memorable scene, Mr. Brower wrote of Dr. Dyson's reunion with his son, George, who had turned his back on high technology to live in a treehouse in British Columbia and build a seafaring canoe. George Dyson later returned to civilization and became a historian of technology and an author. Dr. Dyson's daughter Esther Dyson is a well known Silicon Valley investor. In addition to them and Dr. Dyson's daughter Mia, he is survived by his second wife, Imme Dyson; their three other daughters, Dorothy Dyson, Emily Dyson Scott and Rebecca Dyson; a stepdaughter, Katarina Haefeli; and 16 grandchildren. Dr. Dyson's marriage to the mathematician Verena Huber ended in divorce. She died in 2016. Dr. Dyson's mind burned until the end. In 2012, when he was 88, he collaborated with William H. Press on a paper about the prisoner's dilemma, a mathematical concept important to understanding human behavior and the nature of evolution. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
On Dec. 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake ruptured the ocean floor off the west coast of Sumatra. The resulting tsunami killed nearly 230,000 people in 14 countries, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in history. And it occurred during a full moon. The Sumatra earthquake isn't the only large earthquake to have occurred beneath the moon's bright glare. Both the earthquake that devastated Chile in 2010 and the Great Alaskan Earthquake in 1964 also happened on a conspicuous lunar date making it tempting to argue that more large earthquakes occur during the full moon. But a new study published in Seismological Research Letters finds that the connection is nothing but folklore. To analyze the supposed link, Susan Hough, a seismologist at the United States Geological Survey, scrutinized 204 earthquakes of magnitude 8 or greater over the past four centuries. She then matched those earthquakes to the lunar calendar and found that no more occurred during a full or new moon than on any other day of the lunar cycle. "The lore that the big earthquakes happen during the full moon there's no support for that in the catalog," Dr. Hough said. There is some sound science connecting Earth's temblors and the moon. That's because during full and new moons, Earth, the sun and the moon fall along a nearly straight line. This celestial alignment tugs at our planet, raising tides in the oceans and in the solid earth. "It's not some wild crazy idea," Dr. Hough said. But the gravitational effect is vanishingly small and only occurs under narrow circumstances, so it would never translate into a pronounced force certainly not one that can be seen in a calendar or used to make predictions. In 2004, for example, Elizabeth Cochran, a geophysicist with the U.S.G.S. who was not involved in this study, and her colleagues published a study that did show a slight increase in the number of earthquakes during low tides but only those in deep ocean basins. Two years ago, a study by Satoshi Ide, a seismologist at the University of Tokyo, and his colleagues made headlines when it suggested that the number of high magnitude earthquakes (like the one that occurred in Sumatra) also increases slightly as tidal stresses rise. But again, this effect is so small that the probability an earthquake will occur during any given full moon remains no different than on any other day of the lunar cycle. Such a minute change doesn't help scientists predict when large earthquakes might occur, nor does it help regular citizens and emergency responders. There is simply too little power in the lunar tides. In short, Dr. Hough's study "debunks the prevalent superstition some people have that the moon tells us something about the danger," said John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Southern California who directs the Southern California Earthquake Center and was not involved in the new study. Unfortunately, Dr. Hough doesn't think the superstition will disappear anytime soon. But she hopes that studies like this can slowly chip away at the misconceptions, helping the public eventually realize that, no, the next full moon will not spawn a series of apocalyptic earthquakes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Three parents whose children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 filed a defamation lawsuit on Tuesday against Alex Jones, the right wing conspiracy theorist who has long claimed the shooting was "completely fake" and a "giant hoax" perpetrated by opponents of the Second Amendment. Mr. Jones, the popular radio show host who also operates the conspiracy theory website Infowars, has questioned for years whether 20 children and six adults died in the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. To bolster his false claims, he often cites news reports and video clips from the hours after the shooting that turned out to be incomplete or based on wrong information. Soon after they buried their children, many Sandy Hook parents started to come under fierce attack by conspiracy theorists who have said they are actors in an elaborate scheme to enact stricter gun control laws. The fringe theories still thrive in small forums online but have reached a far greater audience through Mr. Jones, the most vocal propagator. The two lawsuits filed on Tuesday represent the first civil action taken by parents accusing Mr. Jones of defamation. One was filed by Leonard Pozner and his former wife, Veronique De La Rosa, and the other was filed by Neil Heslin. Their sons, Noah Pozner and Jesse Heslin, both 6, were killed at Sandy Hook. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Here's what Democrats can do: Refuse to pass any big stimulus bill unless it includes provisions to ensure that the country can hold a presidential election this fall. That may sound like bare knuckle politics, but preserving democracy calls for toughness. Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, put it well in a message to me on Tuesday: Election bills are notoriously hard to get through Congress. And we don't know when Congress will be able to meet again. The only way a congressionally mandated expansion of voting access for November's elections is going to pass is if it is folded into one of the existing coronavirus bills needed to keep this country going during the crisis. The basics of a bill to protect the 2020 election are straightforward. It should require every state to allow both early voting (with drop off ballots) and voting by mail, and it should include federal funding for a rapid switch to those systems in the coming months. About 30 states already allow something known as "no excuse absentee voting," which is essentially early voting. Another five states Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington conduct elections largely or entirely by mail. Both systems work well, removing many of the hassles, like long waits in line, that can keep Americans from voting. Mail voting has been especially successful at increasing turnout, as I explained in a 2018 column. During a pandemic, voting by mail and early voting have the crucial added benefit of allowing people to cast a ballot with minimal human contact. It's true that there is one downside to early voting: The possibility that new information will emerge in the final few days of a campaign, after some people have already voted. But this downside is quite modest during a general election in our highly polarized country. Not many people will be changing their mind in the final few days. And during a national crisis, there are not perfect solutions to every problem. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden, both Democrats, have written a good starting point bill. It would require all states to hold at least 20 days of early voting, as well as to allow anybody to request a mail in ballot. The federal government would pay for the changeover, which would probably cost around 1 billion, relatively little compared with other emergency bills now being discussed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
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