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The ambition of "La Susanna," a 17th century oratorio reimagined by two opera companies for the MeToo era, is so explicit, it's announced with a sign. "Our Bodies, Our Stories: Reclaiming the Narrative for Feminism," it says above the stage at BAM Fisher, where Heartbeat Opera and Opera Lafayette are offering Alessandro Stradella's 1681 work as a staged production through Sunday. The sign establishes a meta narrative that the biblical story of Susanna will be framed as an academic lecture about it and sets the tone for an evening that will end, quite literally, with the toppling of the patriarchy. That's because this production, directed by Ethan Heard without some of the graceful subtlety that made his "Fidelio" with Heartbeat Opera so powerful last season, takes its aim at the men who tend to co opt Susanna's tale: Daniel, who in the Bible is depicted as her savior; Stradella, who puts her story in the mouths of male narrators and performers; artists, who have painted scenes of her, front and center and often nude, while clothed men look on hungrily. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Ms. Blanchett, who made her Broadway debut this season in Chekhov's "The Present," will play the role made immortal by Bette Davis in the 1950 film: Margo Channing, an aging Broadway star whom the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther described as an "acid creature with a cankerous ego and a stinging tongue" who "is the end all of Broadway disenchantment." The director Ivo van Hove after winning a Tony in 2016. He has been adapting films for the stage. Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times Dissatisfied characters have long been Ms. Blanchett's metier onstage: She was previously on the West End as Susan in a revival of David Hare's "Plenty" in 1999, and has also starred in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" and Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler." Mr. van Hove, who won a Tony last year for his minimal, visceral staging of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge," recently directed "Hedda Gabler" at the National Theater in London. Previous screen to stage adaptations have included theater productions of John Cassavetes's 1977 "Opening Night," which ran at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2008, and Ingmar Bergman's 1973 mini series "Scenes From a Marriage," at New York Theater Workshop in 2014. The film "All About Eve," written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, received a record setting 14 Academy Award nominations which was tied this year by "La La Land." They both won six, although (as you may have heard) "La La Land" did not win best picture. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Republicans promised a middle class tax cut. So far, they have created mostly middle class confusion. Both the evolving House bill and the emerging Senate plan would slash taxes for businesses and many wealthy individuals. What they would mean for the middle class, however, is less clear. The plans feature a spider web of intersecting and offsetting changes to the tax code that many taxpayers and even many tax accountants are struggling to untangle. This much is clear: Either version of the bill would be bad news for residents of high tax, high cost states, most of which tend to elect Democrats. Both bills would eliminate the deduction for state and local income and sales taxes not a big deal in low tax states such as Florida and Texas, but a potentially huge difference for many taxpayers in high tax California and New York. The Senate bill would go further by also eliminating the deduction for state and local property taxes. That would be especially hard on states such as New Jersey that have high housing costs and that rely heavily on property taxes to fund their governments. (States won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 accounted for two thirds of state and local tax deductions in 2015. They accounted for half of total income.) Michael Gottlieb, a 32 year old health care lawyer who lives with his wife and two children in Fair Lawn, N.J., said he believed that his family would pay more in taxes based on the proposals being floated. "You add all of this up and I am taking a hit," he said. "I don't know if it is a drastic hit, but I am coming out behind, not ahead." His property tax and mortgage interest combined total 24,000 a year, while he estimates his state income tax would total another 10,000, for a total of 34,000 in itemized deductions. But under the new tax system, he would probably take only the standard deduction, which is 24,000 for a married couple filing jointly. Taxpayers across the country were making similar calculations this week. Most analysts agreed that the tax bill would cut taxes for the middle class on average, but would raise them on millions of families. A New York Times analysis this week found that the original version of the House plan would raise taxes on nearly half of middle class families by 2026. Other independent estimates likewise showed that a significant minority of middle income taxpayers would pay more under the House plan than they would under current law. That conclusion posed a political problem for Republicans, who have repeatedly promised a middle class tax cut. Some Republicans, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, criticized the House bill for doing too little to benefit families. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, promised over the weekend that "nobody in the middle class is going to pay more" under the Senate plan. The Senate bill the full text of which was released Thursday probably falls short of that promise. But some economists said the bill would most likely be better for the middle class on average than the House bill. The Senate version keeps most of the provisions of the House bill that would have helped middle class families, such as the doubling of the standard deduction, and would make others, such as the child tax credit, more generous. It would also preserve some tax breaks that the House bill initially would have eliminated, including a deduction for medical expenses and a tax credit for families who adopt children. Some of those provisions, including the adoption credit, had been restored by the House Ways and Means Committee, which approved a revised version of the bill on Thursday. Still, the tax cuts in the Senate bill would probably be modest for most middle class families, especially compared with the far larger tax breaks for businesses and some high income individuals. "The tax cut will still be a large windfall for very high income people and a very small tax cut for low and middle income families," said Elaine Maag, who studies tax and spending policy for the Urban Institute. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Tax preparers across the country said they were fielding nervous calls from clients wondering how the changes would affect them. Caitlin Campbell, president of Tower Financial Partners in Colorado Springs, said many of her clients had been excited about the prospect of tax cuts until they began to hear details. The House bill would increase the tax credits given to families with children, but also eliminate the personal exemption given to every taxpayer. Those offsetting provisions would leave some larger families worse off. "They are surprised," Ms. Campbell said. "They thought it was going to be a good deal. They thought it was going to reduce their taxes, and they are surprised that they might not do as well." That kind of uncertainty could pose political challenges for Republicans as they try to round up the 50 votes needed to pass the bill in the Senate. Vanessa Williamson, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution who has studied public opinion on taxation, said the recent Republican approach to tax overhaul differed sharply from the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush. The Bush tax cuts were simple to explain, easy to quantify and lowered taxes for just about everybody, she noted. This time, the Republican approach is much less simple. "People are relatively risk averse," Ms. Williamson said. "So if there's uncertainty about the benefits that you would receive, that's problematic." Deana L. Parsick, who runs a tax preparation company in Springfield, Mo., said clients had been calling her, too, but less out of anxiety than anticipation. Most of her clients have incomes of 25,000 to 35,000 a year, she said. They would benefit from the higher standard deduction and increased child tax credits. "So for my clientele, I haven't seen anything that would affect them negatively," Ms. Parsick said. "They're excited about the possibility, very excited." For many, the offsetting provisions in the bill are difficult to figure out. Amy and Ben Powell, who live in Louisville, Ky., with their toddler son, collectively earn roughly 80,000. Mr. Powell is a choir teacher at a local middle school, while Ms. Powell works part time at a local coffee shop. They both work on the weekend, in their church, for extra cash: He is the music director and she leads the choir's altos to make sure they are on key. The couple generally prepare their tax return together through TurboTax, which she said makes it pretty clear which tax breaks help them the most: the child tax credit, their mortgage deduction, student loan interest, the credit for teachers who buy supplies for their classroom, and charitable giving. "Last year was our first year of claiming a dependent, which gave us a nice chunk back on our return," Ms. Powell said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
"The Souvenir" is one of my favorite movies of the year so far, but I almost want to keep it a secret. Partly because it's the kind of film we all have a collection of these, and of similar books and records, too that feels like a private discovery, an experience you want to protect rather than talk about. A direct message like this, beamed from another person's sensibility into your own sensorium, isn't meant to be shared. That other person, in this case, is Joanna Hogg, who wrote and directed. (Her previous features are "Exhibition," "Archipelago" and "Unrelated," all very much worth seeking out.) But there's also something specific to the manner, mood and subject of her tale of amour fou and artistic aspiration in early '80s London that invites discretion. "The Souvenir" feels like a whispered confidence, an intimate disclosure that shouldn't be betrayed because it isn't really yours. There's an interesting paradox here: a movie that feels like it was meant for you alone and also like none of your business. Watching the oblique scenes unfold, at first mysteriously and then with ever greater force and clarity, you might believe yourself more of an eavesdropper than a confidant, as if you were sitting at the next table at the ridiculously fancy tearoom where Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) and Anthony (Tom Burke) have come on a date. Are we sure they're dating? (Julie's mother, played by Byrne's real life mother, Tilda Swinton, persists in supposing otherwise.) What exactly is their deal? Julie's is that she's a film student, trying to put together an ambitious, somewhat vague sounding thesis set in the northern port city of Sunderland. It's about a boy named Tony who loses his mother, though the more we hear about the project the less clear it seems. This is partly because the fictional Tony is often competing for Julie's attention with the actual Anthony. We surmise that Anthony is at least a few years older than Julie and also different from the relaxed, racially and sexually diverse group of friends and schoolmates who gather at her apartment to drink, smoke and listen to records. Anthony seems, at least at first glance, to be from what the British would call a rather posh background. His ironical, world weary way of talking and his chalk striped suits and monogrammed slippers suggest a privileged upbringing. Julie, by contrast, puts out a decidedly middle class vibe, including the way she self consciously checks her own privilege in conversations with her professors. But these first impressions are soon revealed to be completely backward. Anthony's father (James Dodds) is a former shipyard worker and an art school graduate who lives with the rest of the family in cozy, rural Bohemian dishevelment. Julie's parents, meanwhile (the marvelous James Spencer Ashworth plays her father), reek of old, landed money, with aristocratic manners, solidly but not stridently conservative views and enough cash to subsidize their daughter's student lifestyle in a comfortable Knightsbridge duplex. Anthony claims to work for the Foreign Office. A note of skepticism is in order for the simple reason that, as Julie slowly discovers, he has a habit of lying about nearly everything. It's not his only habit. I hesitate to mention this less because of spoiler sensitivity than because of a strange impulse to protect the privacy of fictional beings but he's also a heroin addict. And now, like Julie, I'm inclined to make excuses. Not to deny or minimize the increasingly obvious fact of Anthony's drug use as Julie does for as long as she can but to dispel certain false impressions that the mention of it might leave behind. There is a way of describing "The Souvenir" at the level of plot that makes it sound interesting and absorbing but also conventional: another chronicle of addiction and codependency, another cautionary fable of a smart woman making a foolish choice, another period drama celebrating a wilder time. It sort of is all of that, but it is also emphatically not that at all. The title refers to a small, exquisite painting by the 18th century French artist Jean Honore Fragonard that Anthony and Julie behold on one of their maybe dates. It depicts a young woman, sharply scrutinized by her pet dog, carving letters into the trunk of a tree. "She's very much in love," Anthony says with suave certainty, and perhaps he's right. But there's a lot more going on in the picture and in the moving picture that shares its name than that simple declaration would suggest. The woman is making a mark and putting down a marker, declaring her own presence with a mixture of shame and audacity, impulsiveness and deliberation. Julie isn't quite so bold, or so embarrassed. She does love Anthony, of course, and she sacrifices a great deal for him without quite realizing what she's doing. Over the span of the film it's hard to know exactly how much time is passing, which is of course exactly how the passage of time can feel her friends slip away, and the work that had seemed so urgent feels a bit more remote. But the interplay of forces in Julie's life is subtle, as is the balance, in her own temperament, between decisiveness and passivity. Byrne is a revelation, and Julie is an embodiment of the awkwardness and heedless grace of young adulthood almost without precedent in the movies. Byrne is, of course, the child of one of the greatest actresses alive, but her own talent is of an entirely different order. The point of Julie is that she's a half formed creature who we're watching take shape, partly through the development of her own nature and partly under the influence of external forces. With her soft features and hesitant diction, Byrne gives Julie's confusion a sensual, almost metaphysical, intensity. For the duration of "The Souvenir," nothing in the world is more important than what will happen to her. Or, to adjust the grammar a bit, what will turn out to have happened. This movie is a memory piece, after all (with a sequel in the works), set at a time of I.R.A. bombings and ascendant Thatcherism. It's also a coming of age story, implying a backward looking perspective of maturity. The grain of the film (David Raedeker is the director of photography) shrouds the action in a delicate caul of nostalgia, communicating an ache that Julie can't yet feel but that we can see forming inside her. This is one of the saddest movies you can imagine, and it's an absolute joy to watch. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Although workers have begun returning to restaurants, retailers and other businesses hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, layoffs are seeping through sections of the job market that previously escaped major damage. On Thursday, the Labor Department said more than 1.5 million Americans filed new state unemployment claims last week the lowest number since the crisis began, but far above normal levels. A further 700,000 workers who were self employed or otherwise ineligible for state jobless benefits filed new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal aid program. The overall number of workers collecting state benefits fell slightly in the most recent seasonally adjusted tally, to 20.9 million in the week ended May 30, from a revised 21.3 million the previous week. "We're slowly seeing the labor market recovery begin to take form," said Robert Rosener, an economist at Morgan Stanley, pointing to an "initial reopening bounce." But, he added, "there's still an enormous amount of layoffs going on in the economy." On Monday, BP said it would lay off 10,000 people worldwide, mostly office based workers. The entertainment promotion giant AEG told employees that it would carry out layoffs, furloughs and salary reductions on July 1. Job losses were announced this week at the University of Denver, the nonprofit group UJA Federation New York, and the city of Peoria, Ill., among others. California, which has paid 26.2 billion in benefits since the beginning of the pandemic, said Thursday that its Employment Development Department was trying to fill 4,800 positions in the coming weeks to deal with the continuing flood of jobless filings. The weekly report on unemployment claims comes after the government reported that jobs rebounded last month and that the unemployment rate fell unexpectedly to 13.3 percent. Correcting for a classification error, the actual rate was closer to 16.4 percent still lower than in April, but higher than at any other point since the Great Depression. Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, warned on Wednesday that the economic pain could last for years and that there would be "a significant chunk" millions of workers "who don't get to go back to their old job, and there may not be a job in that industry for them for some time." Unemployment remained below 4 percent for much the year before the pandemic began. Reopening efforts will quickly reinstate a third of the workers who lost their jobs, said Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist at S P Global. Hiring efforts, like a recent push by the broadband and cable company Charter Communications to fill thousands of positions, will help nudge the jobless rate down. But a return to the labor market conditions that preceded the pandemic is unlikely before 2023, Ms. Bovino said. "We're expecting a long haul," she said. "When people start talking about a V shaped recovery, it's like claiming success with the patient still on the table." From March through May, 30 percent of lost jobs came in the food service industry, Ms. Bovino said. Ten percent stemmed from retailers. But as states try to stoke the economy by gradually lifting restrictions on those businesses and others, the shock of the pandemic is increasingly reverberating through sectors like manufacturing and professional services. With the Labor Department's latest report, more than 44 million people have applied for state jobless benefits since mid March. In addition, as of May 23, 9.7 million people were collecting Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits. Unlike the figure for state claims, the number for pandemic assistance is not seasonally adjusted. According to a survey of 7,700 U.S. businesses by the employment agency ManpowerGroup, seasonally adjusted hiring plans for the third quarter are the weakest in a decade. And economists worry that as small businesses exhaust the funds they received through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, more layoffs could ensue. 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. "These knockdown effects are starting to ripple through industries that initially seemed more secure, but are now facing a second wave of job losses," Ms. Bovino said. Some companies let employees go recently after suddenly losing major contracts. Others laid off workers who were furloughed and had expected to return to their jobs. The construction engineering firm in Boston where Christian Lecorps was an electrical engineering contractor spent much of the spring operating as if the pandemic would end quickly, even mulling whether to hand out bonuses and raises, he said. But work slowed in recent weeks. On Friday, Mr. Lecorps, 29, was laid off over Skype. On Tuesday, he dropped off his laptop at the office and began preparing to file for unemployment benefits. Hunkered down in his mother's home in Brockton, Mass., he hopes to use his spare time raising money for his start up, which aims to bring renewable energy to developing countries. But investors do not appear to be in a spending mood. He fears that if he is unable to quickly replace his income, his credit may suffer. "The funds I have will only last me until the end of this month," he said. "Repairing this situation is going to take a lot longer for people like me, who are trying to get back on their feet." Some jobless workers are not represented in the government count, which skips people who have tried to apply for benefits but failed, as well as those who were out of work but did not file for aid. Many states are still working through a backlog of claims, leading some desperate workers to submit multiple applications. Others, like Artemus Whitmore, feel guilty asking the government for help at all. Mr. Whitmore, 45, was furloughed on Sunday after his employer, which makes paper for surgical gowns, disinfectant wipes and corporate offices, ran out of orders. He expects to return on Tuesday, though he is worried that his job might be jeopardized by slumping demand as more clients move to remote working arrangements. "I've always been the provider, and I want to make sure I can keep that up," said Mr. Whitmore, a father of four who lives in Port Huron, Mich. "That's where the guilt comes from I understand that I've paid into the system, and so has my company, but is it really going to hurt me to lose a week's pay when others need it?" While companies are bringing back workers like Mr. Whitmore in anticipation of new business from the reopening efforts, other employees will have far longer to wait, as their employers adapt to changing consumer habits and working arrangements. "Even if restrictions are lifted, people are still going to be reluctant to engage in the kinds of activities they engaged in before, and that's going to continue to be reflected in our economic statistics for a long time," said Cathy Barrera, founding economist of the Prysm Group. "The more quickly companies can adapt, the quicker the recovery will be." As businesses weigh their options, many workers are nervous about picking up where they left off. Semaj Watts, a recent college graduate in Las Vegas, was starting to take on more responsibility as a social media coordinator for the Girl Scouts of Southern Nevada when she and her colleagues were told to work from home. Work began to dry up, and in April, she was furloughed. With coaching from her roommate, who was then unemployed, she applied for and received state benefits, which she supplemented with money she had saved for a car. She spent her days gardening, watching television and worrying that her unemployment might stretch into the fall and damage her career momentum. Until the furlough, she said, "I had finally done everything that I'm supposed to I graduated college, I moved out, I had a real job, I was starting my life." When Nevada businesses began to reopen. Ms. Watts, 24, got her hair and her nails done. In the last week of May, she returned to the office. But her relief at getting her job back was tainted with horror. Dealing with social media for work meant that Ms. Watts, who is African American, was repeatedly exposed to the video of the killing of George Floyd, who died while a white police officer knelt on his neck. The resulting unrest around the country, and the violence that sometimes accompanied it, left her terrified to leave her apartment. "I went from being so excited to being so scared, and that's a lot," she said. "It's been the most emotionally draining, scariest time in my life by far." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
WASHINGTON Europeans may discover this week that the debt crisis is not only threatening the euro zone economy and the integrity of the common currency, but also diminishing Europe's influence in world affairs. For a second consecutive year, Europe's problems are the major preoccupation as government officials and monetary policy makers gather in Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which run through Sunday. Europe is the "epicenter" of potential global storms, said Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the I.M.F. and a former French finance minster. On Thursday, in advance of the meetings, she expressed support for the measures that European leaders have taken to stem contagion. But she also called on European leaders to spark economic growth and to be willing to use the region's bailout fund to recapitalize banks, while predicting that nations would contribute more money to the I.M.F. to build a "stronger global firewall" to contain further crises. The failure of European leaders to convince the rest of the world that they have a grip on the crisis is more than just embarrassing, some policy makers said. It may also give them less weight in debates on other issues and hasten the shift of power away from developed countries and toward cash rich and fast growing emerging nations, like China, India and Brazil. "Certainly the crisis in Europe has unveiled a structural shift of power," said Thomas Mirow, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which lends to countries in the former Eastern bloc as well as newly democratic Arab nations. "This is one of the big themes of the 21st century." Outside Europe, there remains concern that the Continent's problems are undercutting world growth, and that there are shortcomings in the response by European policy makers. In a measure of how widespread the concern is, one question at an I.M.F. briefing this week came from a reporter from Jamaica who asked whether Europe's problems could spread to the Caribbean, where Spanish companies own many hotels. The monetary fund and the World Bank have repeatedly chastised European leaders for acting too slowly to quiet markets and for cutting budgets too quickly, weakening economic growth around the world and contributing to an unemployment crisis across the Continent. European elected officials do not seem to be enjoying the attention being directed at them, or the advice that comes with it. Olivier Blanchard, the I.M.F.'s chief economist, said this week that euro zone members should consider issuing bonds backed by all members, a proposal unpopular among Germans who do not want to underwrite borrowing by countries like Italy. Ms. Lagarde is pressuring Europe to make changes to its bailout fund so that it can lend to financial institutions, not just countries, as I.M.F. economists warn that rapid deleveraging by banks might destabilize financial markets in the next 18 months. The bailout fund, as currently structured, "could actually help in terms of recapitalization anywhere in the euro zone," Ms. Lagarde said on Thursday. "What we are advocating is that this be done without channeling through the sovereigns." Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. Bank regulators released a 'road map' for crypto regulation that is short on details. German representatives, in particular, are likely to hear unwelcome advice in Washington. They will be told that they should moderate their insistence that euro zone countries like Spain and Greece adhere to strict austerity programs. Traditional stimulus programs are probably out of the question because most governments simply do not have the money, many economists and officials said. A senior German finance ministry official, speaking with reporters in Berlin on Tuesday, dismissed the notion that Europe needed a stimulus. "We don't see the need that perhaps other countries see to stimulate growth through further spending increases," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, in keeping with ministry policy. German officials plan to point out what they believe are policy failings by the United States and other powers. For example, the senior official said that Germany would urge other nations to stay the course on the regulation of banks and financial markets. But Europe may have less moral authority to press its views on such issues given that it is also asking the I.M.F. for more money to protect against a deepening of the euro zone crisis. This winter, the I.M.F. agreed to raise new lending resources but only if European leaders bolstered the euro zone bailout fund comparably. In March, European leaders agreed to increase the lending capacity of their fund. That opened the door for other countries to contribute new resources to the I.M.F., with the goal of raising 400 billion for loans to ailing countries in the euro zone and other trouble spots in the world. Countries in the euro zone had already pledged about 200 billion. This week, other I.M.F. members, including Japan, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, joined them. Big emerging economies are expected to make contributions as well. That is a sharp break from past practice, when emerging countries were usually borrowers from the I.M.F. and richer countries were the lenders. It will inevitably sharpen the debate about the role of emerging nations in managing the I.M.F. and the World Bank, both of which have traditionally been dominated by the United States and Europe. "It will be impossible to have this discussion without thinking about broader governance," said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. Cash rich emerging economies like China and Brazil have withheld new contributions to the I.M.F. firewall, believing that new money should come with increased voting power. Europe has made progress since the I.M.F. and World Bank meetings a year ago. Then, some officials spoke of the euro zone's being on the brink of dissolution. There was fear of a chaotic default on Greek debt or the collapse of a major bank. Greece has since agreed on a debt reduction plan with creditors, and the European Central Bank has eased concern about banks by lending them 1 trillion euros ( 1.3 trillion). But other problems have grown worse, like the unemployment rate, which is at a record 10.8 percent in the euro zone. "Compared with autumn last year, there has certainly been a gradual improvement," Mr. Mirow said. But compared with early 2011, he said, "things have not improved and maybe have even darkened." The crisis has spread further into Eastern Europe because most banks there are owned by hard pressed Western European institutions. The unemployment problem can be fixed by increasing the potential for countries like Spain and Italy to grow and compete on world export markets. Europe's allies understand that remaking an economy takes time, said Mr. Kirkegaard, but they can be expected to push the Continent to pick up the pace of change. "There is an increasing realization that the kinds of issues the Europeans are dealing with are not something you can fix in a couple of months," he said. "That doesn't mean the Europeans won't be told they need to do a lot more to improve the short term growth outlook." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
BETHLEHEM, N.H. The fascination and affection Chris Seely, 16, feels for the 1967 MGB he rebuilt and drives daily were hand me downs. "My Dad, when he was in high school, had a TR6," Mr. Seely, a senior at Profile high school here, said in a telephone interview. "When I was growing up, he would always talk to me about this little British car, the TR6, that was just amazing." So Chris began checking out British cars and decided he best loved the look of the MGB. Then, one day, he saw one for sale in nearby Milan, N.H. It was in bad shape, but he paid 600 for it and towed it home. That was about 18 months ago. He said he wasn't sure that he could fix the MGB alone, but was helped and encouraged by his father, John. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was asked at a congressional hearing on Thursday who was in charge of making sure that people can be tested for Covid 19, especially health care workers. Was it he, the vice president or someone else? Dr. Robert Redfield, the C.D.C. director, replied that his responsibility was only to ensure that state public health laboratories have access to the test. Pressed further, he said he would look into who was in charge. If he didn't know, that's a problem. On Friday morning, President Trump took a belated but welcome step by designating Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health, to be responsible for the government's testing response. There's no reason the testing infrastructure can't be up and running in seven days so that every person in America who needs a test can be tested. The president should demand it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
LONDON Regardless of whether you're a multibillion dollar investment banker, or someone who wants to spend just a few hundred on something nice to hang on the wall, it's difficult not to be intimidated by the art market. But surely the digital revolution has brought some much needed transparency to this most opaque of luxury businesses? Presumably, by now, paintings and drawings are being bought online as routinely as music and books? If only. Last year's Hiscox Online Art Trade Report (this year's edition will be published in April) estimated that online platforms accounted for about 3.75 billion of sales in 2016, representing just an 8.4 percent share of the overall market total. The previous year, it had been 7.4 percent, according to the report. Even so, every month seems to bring new developments in the art world's digital sector. On Tuesday, for example, it was announced that the online auction house Paddle8 had merged with a Swiss tech company, The Native, and would create an auction that accepts bitcoin, a virtual currency. On Thursday, Sotheby's said it had bought Thread Genius, a startup specializing in taste based image recognition and recommendation technologies But while other industries, such as music and publishing, have been transformed by online retailing, the needle has been slower to move in the art market. "Art is at the very top of the luxury pyramid," said Sebastian Cwilich, co founder of Artsy, an American online platform for learning about and collecting art, which this month expanded by opening an office for 20 workers in London. Mr. Cwilich makes the obvious but inescapable point that paintings and drawings are unique items that are a lot more expensive than mass produced songs and books. A six figure price tag tends to deter digital impulse buys. Prints, photographs and design objects, which generally exist in multiples, are better suited to online sales platforms, but even here, concerns about condition, authenticity and provenance can be a deterrent. "The online space is most active in the sub 100,000 category," Mr. Cwilich said. "The art market is opaque and intimidating, but the internet does give more people a chance to participate." The internet also gave trading more "velocity," he said. Artsy, which is based in New York, hopes to speed things up even more by opening a 3,500 square foot hub in the Whitechapel district of London. The team in the British capital will oversee the company's partnerships with galleries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. More than 2,000 galleries pay monthly subscriptions of, typically, 400 to 1,000 a month, to advertise works on Artsy, according to Mr. Cwilich, who started the company in 2012 with Carter Cleveland. Artsy generates further revenue by arranging and administering online bids at live auctions, for which it receives a 5 percent commission on successful sales. Privately owned, the company doesn't report revenues, profits or losses. Prices remain a major hurdle for the expansion of the digital art trade, not just because they are often so high, but because of their lack of availability. Consumers looking to buy, say, a shirt online can browse numerous fashion websites where thousands of items are clearly labeled and priced. But all too often, prices on art dealers' websites and in their galleries and booths at fairs are "on application," a process that can be both laborious and forbidding. That remains the norm at Artsy, but some dealers are becoming more open. Mr. Cwilich said that about a third of the works on the site carried prices. Even Gagosian, an international gallery giant that is traditionally secretive about how much its art costs, is now showing prices for works selling for less than 100,000 by artists such as Damien Hirst and Ed Ruscha. Ms. Doshi said she preferred to purchase contemporary art online from Paddle8. "You see the price, then you just bid," she said. "Artsy isn't very buyer friendly. All the numbers aren't there." From a consumer perspective, dedicated online only auctions, with clear price structures, enjoy a definite edge over dealer transactions in the digital sphere. Since May, Christie's website has listed results from its online only auctions, which last year had an average lot price of 7,305, up from 6,047 the year before. Competitors such as Sotheby's and Paddle8 do not make this information available. According to Marc Sands, Christie's chief marketing officer, "As a potential consignor or buyer, it's important to look at what has happened to interpret value." Results achieved for artworks resold at live auctions can be viewed at subscription websites such as Artnet and Artprice. But the "primary market" prices that galleries charge for new works by contemporary artists remain offline, with many dealers regarding them as trade secrets available only to insiders. A free app, Magnus, which started in 2016, aims to rip through this veil of exclusivity. Smartphone users simply point their device at an artwork in a gallery or fair and visual recognition technology (most times) quickly supplies dealer and auction prices for the relevant artist. In that way, Magnus works for art in a similar fashion to that in which Shazam, the popular song identifying app, works for music. Magnus's database contains about 10 million prices, compiled through crowdsourcing. About 10 percent of those are from the primary market, according to the app's founder, Magnus Resch, a German entrepreneur based in New York. "We are disrupting the art market by making it more transparent," Mr. Resch said in an email. "My generation wants all information immediately, and not go through a beauty contest while waiting for the director of the gallery to come and check me out." Not surprisingly, some in the art world have resented those efforts. Late in 2016, Magnus was withdrawn for five months from the Apple app store, after accusations that data had been taken from rival platforms and from individual galleries. But the app, with contested information removed from its database, is now available again and is still free, although Mr. Resch said he was "in the process of developing innovative features and additional services for professional users for which we can charge." Mr. Resch said the app was "particularly strong" at art fairs, estimating that it revealed around 80 percent of the prices at events such as Art Basel. But for the moment, business at those fairs continues to be dominated by an older generation of market savvy buyers who have cultivated personal relationships with gallerists. "Why would I use Artsy or Magnus? I have access to the prices," said one of those, Alain Servais, 54, a Brussels based collector who attends at least 20 contemporary art fairs per year. "If you bring too much transparency to the market, you risk harming the mythmaking machine that makes the prices so high," Mr. Servais added. "You are not longer part of a clique. Art becomes a common thing." Myths and mystique might be keeping prices high at the moment. But sooner or later, the art business is going to have to find a way of engaging the next generation of buyers. And that generation is digital, not analog. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
In South African parlance, things happen at two speeds: "Just now" which could be anywhere from 10 minutes to two weeks to who knows when or "now now," which means, well, now. Judging by the pace at which Johannesburg is evolving these days, you need to get there now now. The City of Gold originated as a dusty mining center; though it might not have the natural majesty of coastal Cape Town in its court, beneath Johannesburg's grit there's a kinetic urban energy: Big money deals are made in the metropolis's financial hubs and creative collaborations are unveiled in quirky arts centric enclaves. While travelers en route to places like Kruger National Park or Cape Town and the Winelands have long treated Johannesburg as an in and out stop, many are finally discovering that there are plenty of reasons to extend stays and find out what this lively city is all about. Large parts of Johannesburg's city center can still feel gritty urban decay led to many companies abandoning downtown in favor of the newer financial hub of Sandton in the 1990s. But while crime remains an issue, recent years have seen locals reclaiming their inner city . Historic neighborhoods are being revitalized at breakneck speeds, luring citizens back to streets lined with iconic architecture, much of which dates to the city's late 19th and early 20th century origins as a gold rush boomtown. Explore them while on a walking tour with Past Experiences. Depending on which itinerary you spring for, a knowledgeable local guide (some of them are also artists, musicians and historians) might lead you through neighborhoods like Chinatown, Ferreirasdorp, Newtown, Braamfontein or Fordsburg, directing your attention to easy to miss landmarks or sharing the inspiration behind vivid street art installations. Stops could include Nelson Mandela's former office, or a little known mine shaft museum 100 feet below the Standard Bank headquarters. Private tours are 100 rand, or about 8.25, for up to three people; scheduled group tours range from 180 to 400 rand. Most of South Africa's culinary accolades go to restaurants in Cape Town and the Winelands, but Johannesburg chefs have lately been stepping it up in a big way. Case in point: Urbanologi, a stylish restaurant that shares its cavernous, industrial space with the Mad Giant Brewery in the 1 Fox development. There, the chef Jack Coetzee turns out modern, Asian inspired shared plates like yakitori chicken with chimichurri, venison tataki with sriracha emulsion and kumquat ponzu, and a ginger heavy take on a classic South African dessert, malva pudding. Plan to spend around 600 rand for two, including house brews. For many, South African history is synonymous with apartheid, the oppressive institutionalized system of white dominated racial segregation that governed the nation from 1948 to 1991. An 85 rand admission fee to the Apartheid Museum will randomly assign you a blanke (white) or nie blanke (nonwhite) ticket, and you'll enter the museum through separate routes depending on your classification. Once inside, visitors tour powerful exhibits on the origins of apartheid, explanations of its divisive laws and photographs and narratives that offer glimpses of life under its constraints. Then take a cab to Constitution Hill: The country's Constitutional Court was built on an erstwhile jail site (where Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Joe Slovo and Albertina Sisulu all served time). It's also a museum, and visitors can explore the court, the old fort and jail Number Four, where Gandhi was a prisoner. A one hour tour is 65 rand. To market, to market that's where locals go to eat, drink and unwind on the weekends. Neighbourgoods, an offshoot of a popular Cape Town market, operates every Saturday morning from a parking garage in Braamfontein. Make a quick stop, hopping from stall to stall to pick up dishes like grilled cheese with maple bacon, Korean corn dogs or carrot cake you can have brunch for around 100 to 150 rand, all the while soaking in live music and fun vibes. Soweto an acronym for South Western Townships was formed as a settlement for black South Africans who were forcibly removed from areas designated for whites. It's now called home by more than a million people, and has counted the likes of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu among its past residents. While the sprawling suburb can be overwhelming to navigate, an easy way to explore it is by tuk tuk. Lebo's Soweto Backpackers offers two hour rickshaw tours, and you don't have to be a guest at the hostel to book a spot; tours are 460 rand, and pick up and drop off can be arranged for an extra cost. The price also includes a buffet lunch after the tour you might try South Africa's famous street food favorite, bunny chow: a loaf of bread stuffed with curry. A stretch of the upscale Rosebank suburb has recently been recast as the Keyes Art Mile, lined with boutiques, galleries and cafes aplenty. Stop by before dinner to browse modern art at galleries like Circa, Everard Read and Whatiftheworld (some close earlier on Saturdays, but you can often make an appointment in advance to visit outside regular hours). There are also cute cafes, like the colorful vintage Afro chic Milk Bar and the burger joint BGR, but save your appetite big dinner plans lie ahead. Ever since its opening in 2016, Marble has been attracting the city's most discerning diners by the droves. Part of that might be because of a dearth of restaurants of its caliber in the city; but more likely it's because David Higgs is Johannesburg's premier chef, and news of his plans to open a temple to meats cooked over an open fire was met with excitement. If you come early enough to the top floor space in the Trumpet building on the Keyes Art Mile, you can catch sunset views with a cocktail by the bar; afterward, settle in for a feast of sea bass with orange and leek sauce (285 rand), tandoor quail with charred sweet potato chutney, coriander yogurt (215 rand), or the game of the day (options might include blesbok or kudu). More markets! The Maboneng Precinct is one of Johannesburg's most thriving examples of urban revival; the ever expanding neighborhood is teeming with galleries, restaurants and boutiques frequented by an eclectic crowd. And come Sunday, the Market on Main is a great place to scrounge for burgers, paella, crepes, and more as well as souvenirs there are stalls selling clothes, handbags and T shirts from local designers. For a really cool add on, book a Picnic in the Sky. Meet in the market at 11 a.m. and collect your picnic basket and blanket from the organizers, then spend half an hour filling your basket with provisions at the stalls, before heading up to the 50th floor of the Carlton Center the tallest building in Africa for exactly what the name suggests: a picnic in the sky. Tickets are 250 rand per person, not including whatever food you pick up at the market. The University of the Witwatersrand Wits, for short is home to the Wits Art Museum, which is renowned for its collection of African art. Browse works by the likes of South African masters Gerard Sekoto, Walter Battiss, Irma Stern and William Kentridge, as well as emerging talents like Gabrielle Goliath, Nandipha Mntambo and Zander Blom. Admission is free. An eco friendly spread in the suburb of Melrose not far from the Melrose Arch shopping development the Peech Hotel (61 North Street, Melrose; 27 11 537 9797) has 16 rooms clustered around a lush garden. Tribal masks, animal hide rugs and patterned armchairs add warmth to the hotel's industrial chic look. Doubles from 3,350 rand. With Johannesburg's inner city booming in recent years, the only thing missing was a luxury hotel catering to high end travelers not keen on staying in the tony suburbs. Last year's opening of the Hallmark House (54 Siemert Road, New Doornfontein) changed that: The 46 room hotel, which occupies two floors of a building designed by David Adjaye, has stellar skyline views and is close to all the action in the Maboneng Precinct. Doubles from 940 rand. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
The city boasts an extensive road network, but driving into the city is strongly discouraged on Thursday, especially in Center City, as many roads will be closed and extensive parking restrictions will be enforced. Bicycle lanes along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Broad Street will be largely closed to the public. If you're traveling into the city for the parade, the best option is to use public transportation. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA, connects the city and surrounding Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties through a combination of subway, trolley, bus and train services. On Thursday, the SEPTA Market Frankford and Broad Street rapid transit lines will both have free admission for all riders, and trains will run every 5 to 7 minutes beginning at 5 a.m., with additional service to accommodate the expected surge in ridership. Individual stations are subject to closure on Thursday if crowd sizes overwhelm surrounding streets. Other SEPTA services will continue to charge their regular fares. For fans from the Philadelphia suburbs and Delaware, SEPTA Regional Rail service will only operate inbound trains into the city on Thursday morning, with service becoming outbound only after the parade is finished. Regional Rail service from Philadelphia will run from 2 p.m. until 9 p.m. Many stations will not be open, and Center City access via Regional Rail will be available at Jefferson Station and the 30th Street Station. Suburban Station will be closed on Thursday, along with the University City and Temple University stations. Only weekly, monthly and one day passes will be accepted for Regional Rail service. Prepaid one day Independence passes to access Regional Rail trains will cost 10 and are currently available for purchase. Cash fares will not be accepted on Thursday. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is one of the busiest stations on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, which runs from Boston to Washington. It also is a stop on the high speed Acela Express service. The Amtrak Keystone Service is also available from Harrisburg, the state capital. Seats are still available on some Amtrak trains, but tickets are very limited. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Ask Michael Goldstein what attracted him to Edgemont a community in Westchester County, east of Ardsley and west of Scarsdale and his answer is as predictable as the return of "Cats." "It has a really good school system," he says. Edgemont takes the old bromide of location, location, location and boils it down to schools, schools, schools. The 2.6 square mile community, which has winding streets, mature trees and flashes of deer, sits within an unincorporated part of the town of Greenburgh, though most of the approximately 2,900 households have Scarsdale addresses. The community's boundaries are roughly aligned with the school district (they also closely resemble those of the fire district, known as Greenville), and 60 percent of property taxes go to support the schools, said Jeffrey Sherwin, head of the Edgemont Incorporation Committee. In its most recent analysis, Niche, the educational review website, ranked the Edgemont Union Free School District 17th out of 677 in New York State. Convenience is another sweetener. In 2015, Mr. Goldstein, 40, a vice president at Mastercard, and his wife, Lindsey, 40, a lawyer, paid 1.156 million for a 1951 house about a 25 minute drive from Mr. Goldstein's office in Purchase, N.Y. Ms. Goldstein has a choice of trains in neighboring Scarsdale or Hartsdale (both within three miles of her home) for the 40 minute trip to Manhattan, where she works. The couple is seven minutes by foot from the elementary school attended by their 8 year old daughter, and soon by their 5 year old son. Of course, one can find excellent schools and easy commuting in other parts of Westchester not least, Scarsdale. What sets Edgemont apart? Alice Ma Wu, an interior designer in her mid 40s who moved to Edgemont with her family four years ago from nearby Eastchester, said the small school system was the ultimate decider. Whereas Scarsdale has five elementary schools, Edgemont has two. Scarsdale's high school graduating classes number about 400 students; Edgemont's, about 150. "Also, the community is very international," said Ms. Wu, who is Chinese American. Her neighbors are transplants from Spain, Japan, France and Greece. Several languages float through the air, and her two young children ask for lunches packed with food they learned about from their school friends. Other residents praise the bonds that are formed in a community defined by education. Among other initiatives, citizens have banded together to found a multifaceted recreation program and a scholarship council to help fund college studies for high school graduates in need. Even when residents are able to move to lower tax communities after their children leave home, they often stay. "Thirty percent are empty nesters," said Andrea Weiss, a broker for Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty, who lives in Edgemont. "It's a community where people feel very comfortable." A local spirit of self sufficiency has helped propel a push for Edgemont's independence. In 2017, a petition with more than 1,400 signatures called for a referendum to vote on incorporating Edgemont as the seventh village in the town of Greenburgh. Pointing out that Edgemont residents pay a disproportionate amount in town taxes while having meager electoral sway, supporters of incorporation seek to control their planning and zoning, and to take over municipal services including the police and public works. (Edgemont has its own fire department; the village boundaries would be those of the Greenville fire district, which are similar to those of the school district). The referendum has yet to take place. Greenburgh's town supervisor, Paul Feiner, has challenged the validity of the petitions and the legitimacy of the proposed village boundaries. Following two court battles, a second petition with 1,740 signatures was rejected last month. The petitioners filed a new lawsuit in late August. Mr. Feiner maintains that incorporation is neither in Edgemont's nor Greenburgh's best interest. "I think the taxes are going to go up and the services are going to go down," he said. A community based website, Keep Edgemont, supports this position. "The experience of comparable villages in Greenburgh proves him false," Mr. Sherwin, 42, a management consultant in the tech industry, said in response, pointing to information available on the Edgemont Incorporation Committee's website. Mr. Sherwin, who moved to Edgemont for the schools even before he and his wife, Amanda, had their two children, sees Edgemont's pursuit of autonomy (or at least a vote about it) as one of many reflections of grassroots vitality. The effort, he said, "is yet another example of the community coming together." Edgemont sits between the Sprain Brook Parkway to the west and the Bronx River Parkway to the east, about 20 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. Central Park Avenue (or Central Avenue, as the locals call it) runs parallel to the parkways, bisecting the community from Hartsdale down to Yonkers. 58 WALBROOKE ROAD A four bedroom, three and a half bath bungalow in Old Edgemont, built in 1924 on 0.14 acres, listed for 1.199 million. 914 391 5183 The area east of Central Avenue is zoned for the Seely Place Elementary School and therefore known as the "Seely side" of Edgemont. West of Central, where Greenville Elementary School is located, is called the "Greenville side" These districts have their own neighborhoods , like the Cotswold section of Tudor style, slate roofed homes dating to the 1920s, and the neighborhood of Old Edgemont, with Crane's Pond, a popular duck pond used by ice skaters in winter. Both are on the Seely side. The Greenville side has the "alphabet streets," a midcentury development near the eponymous school, with roads that run from A (Anadale) to J (Juniper). The Edgemont Community Council, an umbrella organization that dates to 1947 in its current incarnation, represents no fewer than eight neighborhood associations. About a third of housing is in the form of co ops, condos and rental units, most along Central Park Avenue, Mr. Sherwin said. These provide the cheapest entry points for the school district and contribute to a degree of economic diversity, especially compared with other parts of Westchester. According to 2014 housing data, 26.4 percent of the homes in Edgemont were valued under 500,000. In Chappaqua, 15 miles north, that figure was 13.4 percent; in Scarsdale village, it was 4.4 percent. 3 ROXBURY ROAD A six bedroom, four and a half bath colonial in Old Edgemont, built in 1920 on 0.42 acres, listed for 1.65 million. 917 836 2717 Businesses along Central Park Avenue include megabrands like Walgreens, Buy Buy Baby and Red Lobster, as well as small operations like Candlelight Inn, a popular purveyor of pizza and chicken wings. About half of Edgemont's homes are within walking distance of Scarsdale's well stocked commercial district. Hartsdale, to the north, also has shops and restaurants near its train station. Green spaces thread through the hilly region. Some Edgemont houses back onto golf course fairways. The middle school and high school occupy a leafy enclave. The Greenburgh Nature Center is a preserve set on 33 acres with trails, live animal exhibits and an array of school programs. Last month, the Sprain Ridge pool complex reopened in Yonkers, near Edgemont's southern border, after an extensive renovation funded by the county. It includes a 50 meter long competition pool that can accommodate 500 swimmers, plus an activity pool and spray deck for children. At about 3.2 percent, Edgemont's property taxes are high, even for Westchester. "You're looking at 30,000 on a million dollar house, Ms. Weiss said, adding that Scarsdale's taxes are closer to 2.3 percent. (She noted that these percentages are not consistent across the board: "It's always house by house and you might get lucky and find a house a bit under assessed.") But Ms. Weiss and other real estate agents point out that Edgemont's houses tend to cost less than Scarsdale's, especially at the high end. "It's basically a wash in terms of monthly outlay," said Laura Miller, a broker with Houlihan Lawrence in Scarsdale. 9 LONGVIEW DRIVE A three bedroom, two and a half bath colonial on the Greenville side, built in 1948 on 0.16 acres, listed for 725,000. 914 921 9400 According to data supplied by Janey Varvara, an Edgemont resident and broker at William Raveis's Scarsdale office, the median sales price of single family homes was 1.17 million in July 2019, a year over year decrease of 6.9 percent based on 81 sales. Ms. Varvara said the reduction is more indicative of month to month fluctuations in a small community than the overall health of Edgemont's market, which she said she finds strong. As of Aug. 26, Zillow listed 49 properties for sale in Edgemont. The least expensive was a 700 square foot, one bedroom unit in a 1969 condominium complex on Central Park Avenue, priced at 148,000 with a monthly 53 homeowner's fee that includes property taxes. The most expensive was a 7,746 square foot, five bedroom colonial built in 2012 on 0.77 acres, listed at 2.799 million. Ms. Wu finds parts of Edgemont reminiscent of Europe. Her neighborhood, Old Edgemont, is "built into a hill. The streets are not wide; they're winding and weaving," she said. "There are old stone walls and gates." Many streets lack sidewalks, but residents are outside anyway, walking dogs, riding bicycles and shooting baskets through driveway hoops that are as common in these parts as hydrangea. Whether one takes the train from Scarsdale or Hartsdale depends on where one lives in Edgemont. Residents qualify for parking permits at the Metro North station in Hartsdale, and can take a bus (or in many cases walk) to the Scarsdale station. The ride from either Scarsdale or Hartsdale to Grand Central Terminal takes an average of 43 minutes at peak times; tickets purchased in advance cost 12.75 each way. A monthly ticket is 278. The name Edgemont was first used in the 1890s to describe a development west of the Scarsdale train station, one of several communities in Greenburgh's unincorporated area that have been subsumed within the Edgemont of today. Crane's Pond takes its name not from the bird, but from Colonel Alexander Crane, who fought in the Civil War and was a local landowner. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Winnipeg Jets right wing Patrik Laine honed his powerful right handed shot as a youngster in his backyard in Tampere, Finland, where he would fire pucks at soda cans after watching YouTube clips of his childhood idol, the Washington Capitals' Alex Ovechkin. And like Ovechkin, Laine has found offensive potency on the power play. Since the start of last season, Laine, 20, leads the N.H.L. in man advantage goals even if his powerful shot has become detrimental to special teams practice in morning skates. "It's why we rarely work on our power play in practice, because we have three guys run away from the net, and rightfully so," Jets Coach Paul Maurice said. "The goalie sometimes, too." Aggregate power play success rates in the N.H.L. have been on the rise over the last five seasons, peaking at 20.2 percent a year ago. That number and this season's 20 percent mark so far are the highest since the 1989 90 season. With more than half of this season completed, four teams are on pace to rank among the top 50 single season power play rates in league history: the Tampa Bay Lightning (29.5 percent, sixth), the Boston Bruins (27.2 percent, tied for 25th), the Florida Panthers (26.8 percent, 34th) and the Jets (26.0 percent, 46th). "It used to be the young guys would come in, and they'd play on your fourth line," Capitals Coach Todd Reirden said. "Now these guys are running the power play, playing on the half wall, and have huge responsibilities on teams. And the skill level they have is so much different than it was 10 years ago." Laine embodies the prevailing explanations for a leaguewide rise in power play success: highly skilled young players armed with more sophisticated video scouting and stacked in an aggressive four forward, one defenseman lineup in a 1 3 1 formation liberally borrowed from the Capitals. Blake Wheeler quarterbacks Winnipeg's power play from the right boards while Laine looks to find open shooting space on the other side. Washington's Nicklas Backstrom does the same for Ovechkin. "It's nice when Washington plays a team before us, because how they handle Ovechkin usually is starting the trend of how they're going to handle Patty," the Jets assistant Jamie Kompon said, referring to Laine. When Adam Oates became Washington's coach in 2012, he introduced the 1 3 1 formation that the Devils had used when he was an assistant there. Oates was dismissed after two seasons, but his system stayed under the direction of the assistant Blaine Forsythe. Since the start of the 2012 13 season, the Capitals have led the N.H.L. in total power play goals (371) and efficiency (23.5 percent), with the Pittsburgh Penguins just behind in both categories (367, 22.7 percent). Ovechkin's 128 power play goals in the past seven seasons are nearly 50 more than any other player has scored; Backstrom's 169 power play assists in that time also lead the league. The 1 3 1 is dependent on a marksman on one side (Ovechkin) and a playmaker (Backstrom) on the other, with one defenseman playing center ice point (John Carlson), a slot player who can take quick shots and create space (T. J. Oshie), and a net player who assists puck movement down low and pursues rebounds (Evgeny Kuznetsov). Ovechkin at times has been so tethered to the left face off circle that the area has been called his office. "For us, it doesn't matter how they play," Ovechkin said. "We all know they're going to play different ways, and we know exactly what we have to do." Devils goaltender Cory Schneider said the unifying thread of the N.H.L.'s best power plays was a strong one timer shot from the back side of the play. "The hardest thing, I think, for a goalie to stop is the lateral play," he added. "The shot from the top is still effective, but I think it's option B or C now." Devils Coach John Hynes said the power play was less about point shots and perimeter play than crowding around the net. "The puck, almost all the time, is in dangerous, dangerous areas, which is right around the blue paint, high tips, second chance, rebounds," he added, "and it's difficult to defend." Tyler Dellow, a former analytics consultant for the Edmonton Oilers who now writes for The Athletic, noted in an article early in the season that the incidence of four forward, one defenseman power play formations had risen to 75 percent this season from 55 percent in 2016 17. The trade off of the four forward lineup is that power play teams are more susceptible to short handed goals, but that corresponding increase is less than the uptick in man advantage scores. There also are not as many power plays as there used to be. Power play opportunities are being granted at lower rates in each of the past 10 seasons than in any other on record. That fact, and the increase in high end offensive skill players, has affected personnel decisions, de emphasizing good penalty killers. "I think teams are more committed to having four lines that can score now, and maybe there's not as much emphasis on having two or three extra guys who can kill," said Penguins center Sidney Crosby, whose 187 power play points since the 2012 13 season rank him behind only Backstrom, Philadelphia's Claude Giroux and Ovechkin. Penguins Coach Mike Sullivan said there were not as many checking lines in the league or as many roster spots reserved for players who excelled in that aspect of the game. And the proliferation of video scouting and analytics means there are fewer defensive surprises for power play units. "It's more than just passing and shooting," Carlson said. "It's how you set it up and certain plays that we do over and over that we know what we're going to do, but we're disguising what we do." He added, "We just make sure we're ahead of the curve and think about things that, maybe on their first and second adjustment, we already know that that's probably their Plan B or C." The evolution of Winnipeg's power play unit is emblematic of the league as a whole. When Kompon began leading the power play in the 2016 17 season, he said, the individual skill level was not right for a 1 3 1 formation. As players matured, the Jets' coaches introduced it. "All the big guns in the same power play, I kind of knew right away that it was going to work," Laine said. "Good players can always play with each other." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
What books are on your nightstand? At the moment there's a great pile of books by friends and colleagues that are just about to see the light of day. I have, of course, promised to read them all yesterday. They include Monique Truong's wonderful "The Sweetest Fruits"; Jeff Gordinier's poetic take on the chef Rene Redzepi, "Hungry"; Kevin Alexander's "Burn the Ice"; and Adam Platt's "The Book of Eating." I'm excited about Mark Arax's "The Dreamt Land"; the excerpt I read last year was an extraordinary piece of reporting. Also on the pile, "Wayfarer," by James S. Rockefeller Jr. (related to Standard Oil on his father's side and Andrew Carnegie on his mother's), which boasts one of the best opening paragraphs I've encountered. And "Autopsy of an Engine," by Lolita Hernandez, a beautiful story collection about the American dream and the dignity of work. "Selected Later Poems," by C. K. Williams, always lives next to my bed; his are words to dream on. What was the last truly great book you read? I'm not sure what makes a book "great" but I just reread "Infinite Jest," and as always David Foster Wallace blew me away. Which writers novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets working today do you admire most? Ann Patchett, who is incapable of writing a bad word. Ta Nehisi Coates, because he said, gorgeously, what had to be said. David Remnick because he's David Remnick. Zadie Smith. Deborah Eisenberg. Preet Bharara. Toni Morrison. Tony Kushner; I'm so glad "Caroline, or Change," which stays with me 16 years after I first saw it, is finally coming back. Helen Rosner, who is not only brave, but has so many interesting things to say. Henri Cole; his poems always move me. Barry Estabrook, Tracie McMillan and Ted Genoways, all great investigative writers who have chosen food as their subjects. What's your favorite thing to read? And what do you avoid reading? I'll read anything, including the back of a cereal box. Why would you limit yourself? You never know when you'll chance upon something wonderful. What do you read when you travel? Fiction. The best way to make a long plane ride bearable is to vanish into someone else's world. On my last trip I took "The Weight of Ink," by Rachel Kadish, and I was actually sorry when the plane landed; I would happily have kept flying till the book ended. 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. Who writes especially well about food? Lots of writers who aren't food writers have beautiful passages about food in their work. Lawrence Durrell. James Joyce. T. C. Boyle ("Sorry Fugu" is one of the great short stories focused on food). And of course Joseph Mitchell, for whom food was a constant theme. But I suspect you're asking me about food writers. Last year, when I edited "The Best American Food Writing," I realized that the current generation is really wonderful. Ligaya Mishan and Tejal Rao are both poets of food. Francis Lam. Mayukh Sen. Michael W. Twitty. Khushbu Shah. Wyatt Williams. As for the previous generation, I'll read anything by Calvin Trillin, A. J. Liebling or Joseph Wechsberg. But to my mind, nobody has yet eclipsed Mary Frances Fisher. (If you don't believe me, go read her passage about tangerines.) What's the most interesting thing you've learned from a book lately? You want something specific here, and I'm not sure I can give you an "aha" fact. But I can tell you that when I'm feeling overwhelmed by current politics I go back to Grace Paley. Her humanity always gives me some new way to find it all bearable. How do you organize your books? I wish I could say I organize my books. But I don't organize much of anything even my photo albums are a crazy quilt of different eras. My bookshelves are a mess. On top of that, there's never enough room for all the volumes, so they tend to be triple shelved and stacked on top of one another. But I enjoy the hunt; looking for one book, I always discover something else I'm eager to reread. What's the last book that made you cry? I'm a crier; there are few books that don't make me cry at some point. Even the ones that don't mean to. But the weepiest thing I've ever read is Gina Berriault's heartbreaking short story "The Stone Boy." The last book that made you laugh? Whenever I need a laugh I pick up Saki and read one of his short stories. My favorite is "The Schartz Metterklume Method." The last book that made you furious? Fury is in large supply at the moment. But reading Michael Lewis's "The Fifth Risk" I found myself constantly throwing the book across the room in fits of rage. What kind of reader were you as a child? I was very lucky; when I was growing up, my father's office was above the Gotham Book Mart and he often took me downstairs so Frances Steloff could babysit for me. "Read this," she'd say, handing me something wildly inappropriate for a little girl. (I think I was 8 when she introduced me to the work of Anais Nin.) I suspect it's because of Miss Steloff that I always had my nose in a book. I was constantly sneaking away from parties to sit on the bed with the coats, completely oblivious to the world around me. Did you ever get in trouble for reading a book? Never! My parents were of the Steloff school; they believed anything I cared to read was probably a good idea. "If it's over her head, she simply won't understand it," I heard my mother explain to a friend who found me reading Henry Miller at the age of 10. Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain? I fell in love with Mary Poppins when I was a little girl because she was so smart, confident and basically badass. She was nothing like the saccharine character portrayed on the screen she did exactly what she wanted and always got away with it. I wanted to be just like her. As for my favorite antihero, I am enthralled with the way Hilary Mantel took one of the most reviled characters in history, Thomas Cromwell, and turned him into a lovable, laudable man. If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? We all know he doesn't read. But I'd give him Ocean Vuong's forthcoming book, "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous." A letter to a mother who cannot read, this extraordinary prose poem examines every issue we're currently grappling with in America. Perhaps it would teach our president something about immigration and compassion. Well, probably not. You're hosting a literary dinner party. Which three writers are invited? And what do you serve them? Only three? There are so many people I want to meet, and since this fantasy meal is only coming my way once, I'm throwing a larger party. Eight is the perfect number around my table, and on this occasion my guest list includes a few of the women writers I admire. The conversation, I know, will be intoxicating. What do I serve? I'll keep it simple. Maybe blini with sour cream and salmon roe to start. Some deviled eggs. Then a big paella cooked over an open fire. A gorgeous salad. Two or three really excellent cheeses. A lemon tart for dessert. And since we're dreaming here, we'll be drinking white Burgundies. What's the one book you wish someone else would write? What's the best book you've ever received as a gift? My father was a book designer, and when he was working on something he really loved, he'd bring the galley home. I think I was 16 when he showed up with "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden." We read it together, as if it were a secret entrance into my mother's world. It is an extraordinary exploration of the alternate universe inhabited by the mentally ill. Better still, it offers hope that they might someday be released. What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet? The list is so long. I bounced from one high school to another, then went to French school and finally skipped a couple of grades, I missed so many of the classics that most people read in their teens. I'm better read in French classics than English ones: I've never read "Beowulf" or "The Canterbury Tales" or anything by Trollope. I keep meaning to, but... What do you plan to read next? I just bought "The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams"; I've always loved his poems. Since I borrowed one for the title of my latest book, I decided it was time I found out more about him. I sent away for a first edition, and when it arrived I was thrilled to discover that my father had designed the book. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
The number of Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits is plunging, a startling reversal of a decades old trend that threatened the program's solvency. It is the latest evidence of a stronger economy pulling people back into the job market or preventing workers from being sidelined in the first place. The drop is so significant that the agency has revised its estimates of how long the program will continue to be financially secure. This month, the government announced that the program would not run out of money until 2032, four years later than its previous estimate last year. Two years ago, the government had warned that the funds might be depleted by 2023. In addition to stronger economic growth, the drop reflects newly tightened standards for eligibility and the increasing number of baby boomers who are leaving the program because they have become eligible for Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare. Fewer than 1.5 million Americans applied to the Social Security Administration for disability coverage last year, the lowest since 2002. Applications are running at an even lower rate this year, government officials say. The Social Security Administration expected the number of applicants to decline after the recession when the total number of beneficiaries topped out, but even government number crunchers were caught off guard by the steepness and duration of the fall. "It has just kept dropping, by a much greater extent than we anticipated," said Stephen C. Goss, the agency's chief actuary. "We're still not done we should have a little bit more good news in 2018." When the economy is strong and growing, there tends to be more lower skilled jobs available that do not require manual labor the kind of work that many people with modest disabilities are best suited for. "When the economy gets better, employers are more willing to look to other labor pools and be more accommodating," said Eric Kingson, a professor of social work at Syracuse University. "Some people with disabilities also have a sense there may be something out there that fits with their needs." Of course, other factors have contributed to the decline in disability applications. As aging baby boomers receive Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare, fewer require disability benefits. People in the disability program receive an average of 1,200 a month and get health insurance through Medicare. What's more, with the expansion of Medicaid in 33 states and the District of Columbia as well as improved access to insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, many experts argue, fewer people see the disability program as a way to obtain health care. Finally, the Social Security Administration has been making it harder to qualify for benefits, according to scholars and advocates. In some cases, just applying has become more arduous, said T.J. Sutcliffe, senior director of income and housing policy at the Arc, an advocacy group for people with disabilities. Budget cuts have taken a toll, she said, with 67 Social Security field offices closing since 2010. A 2017 study by Manasi Deshpande of the University of Chicago and Yue Li of the State University of New York at Albany found that "field office closings lead to large and persistent reductions in the number of disability recipients." Applicants with "moderately severe conditions, low education levels and low pre application earnings" were hardest hit. Applicants also face an increasingly uphill battle appealing rejections, with the administrative law judges who handle these cases taking a much more skeptical stance. Whatever the cause demographic, economic or driven by policy the postrecession narrative of an out of control entitlement program has been upended, said Torsten Slok, chief international economist of Deutsche Bank. "This is a big deal," Mr. Slok said. "We thought the numbers for disability would go up forever." Mr. Slok said he saw a deeper significance in the falling number of claims he said it suggested there may be more workers on the sidelines than many experts estimate. If he is right, the Federal Reserve might not need to rush to raise interest rates, despite the unemployment rate falling to 3.8 percent in May, an 18 year low. Still, as the labor market tightens, not only are less physically demanding jobs more widely available, but employers are more willing to consider workers they might have overlooked in the past. During boom and bust alike, Christian Borrero always wanted to work full time. Born with cerebral palsy, Mr. Borrero, 31, had been receiving Social Security checks in one form or another for nearly his entire life. A program sponsored by a nonprofit organization enabled him to work at a bank answering phones, but the salary in that part time job was low enough that Mr. Borrero still qualified for disability payments. After he was on the job for several months in 2016, what Mr. Borrero had feared came to pass the Social Security Administration informed him that his disability benefits would soon stop because he had a full time job. Mr. Borrero was so determined to keep working, he resigned himself to finding a second job to replace the 895 a month in disability benefits he would no longer receive. But when Kurtz Bros. got wind of his plan, it gave him additional responsibilities and a raise that made up for the lost money. "Unemployment is down, and it can be incredibly difficult to find good people," said Jackie Repicky, human resources director for Kurtz Bros. "So when we find people who work hard and have a great attitude, we try to keep and promote them." For Mr. Borrero, the experience has been life changing. "It's very, very rewarding," he said. "They treat me like a regular employee. They never baby me." At the bank, he said, "I was never going to move anywhere. They were supportive, but I wanted to move from a supportive environment to a competitive one." "I haven't had an easy life," he said. "But I love the feeling of earning enough money to pay my bills and do what I want to do. I feel very blessed." Other disabled workers may not be so fortunate to find a position that enables them to forgo disability benefits, he added, "but my example shows they can try." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
REYKJAVIK, Iceland Set against a vista of sea and mountains, the city's modern concert hall and convention center, with its kaleidoscopic facade of multicolored glass, averages more than 140,000 visitors each month. The thriving complex, which hosts fans of Bjork and enthusiasts of yo yoing, is a symbol of how the country has recovered from the economic crisis, aided by tourists, whose appreciation for Iceland and whose influx of cash are further helping to spur development. Outside the center, construction vehicles hum, working on a project that will join the event space downtown with the heart of this capital city's center, where restaurants and shopping abound. It is one of several projects in a nearly 680,000 square foot mixed use development known as the Harpa plot, or Austurhofn, meaning East Harbor. This vast area has been decades in the making and is an attempt to transform the neighborhood into a live work play area. Construction of the Harpa concert hall and convention center in Reykjavik began in 2007, but screeched to a halt as Iceland's economy faltered during the global financial crisis. In 2011, the complex finally opened. A regular comedy routine performed there teaches "How to Become Icelandic in 60 Minutes." And next summer, the International Yo Yo Federation will host its annual competition at the site. Mr. Asgeirsson, with his architectural firm T.ark, is now helping to better link Harpa with Reykjavik's historic downtown, less than half a mile southeast, where places like Cafe Loki draw visitors for Icelandic delicacies, including dried fish and sheep's head jelly. Long lines form at the city's many hot dog stands, which sell the beloved lamb based Icelandic dog topped with sauces and fried onions. Clothing stores sell a range of gear to handle the island's quick changing weather, like traditional Nordic sweaters made from local wool. The new project, which T.ark and Mr. Asgeirsson are helping design, will include more than 355,000 square feet of retail and apartments, and a hotel. The upscale Edition hotel is owned and developed by the Boston based Carpenter Company, with the design partner Ian Schrager, and will be managed by Marriott. Riding on Iceland's recovery, the development of the rest of East Harbor is finally moving ahead. The turnaround is a relief for the country, whose three major banks went under in quick succession and whose currency, the krona, tumbled in the global downturn. Shortly after, the government issued capital controls to prevent money from leaving Iceland and further devaluation of the krona. A big driver of this project and the larger construction boom in Iceland has been the deluge of tourists, who have helped Iceland bounce back much more quickly than some of its European neighbors like Greece and Italy. In 2009, Iceland, then a country of about 320,000, had 494,000 visitors, according to the Icelandic Tourist Board. In 2015, nearly 1.3 million people visited, and more than 1.6 million visitors are expected by the end of this year, according to Islandsbanki Research. Promotions by Icelandair offering free layovers in Reykjavik on the way to Europe; the popularity of the television series "Game of Thrones," which has filmed in Iceland; and the eruption of a major volcano in 2010, which brought spectacular photos into the mainstream and counterintuitively drew positive attention from travelers, have played a part in putting the country on the map for tourists. They come to explore the landscape, venture into volcanoes, clamber atop glaciers and dip into steaming geothermal lagoons. Reykjavik draws tourists, said the mayor, Dagur B. Eggertsson, because of its "people, culture, free spirited atmosphere and for being one of the safest cities in the world." Commercial real estate construction has raced to keep up with demand. The number of hotel and guesthouse rooms in Iceland increased 42 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to Statistics Iceland. But that has not been enough to accommodate the crowds. Many locals have leapt into the tourism business to fill the gap. Between December 2014 and November 2015, the number of Airbnb accommodations in Reykjavik jumped 126 percent, according to a report from Islandsbanki Research. Iceland is now slowly lifting the capital controls, which could affect the commercial real estate picture because pension funds now have the opportunity to invest abroad. But the changes may also help attract new money from outside, Mr. Eggertsson said, adding that "Reykjavik is interested in direct foreign investment in hotels and tourism." The planned Edition hotel has a budget of 125 million and will offer 250 rooms when it opens in 2018. The hotel, which will have six floors and a rooftop bar, will tailor its food and drinks to draw both Icelanders and visitors, said Kevin Montano, senior vice president for global development at Marriott. "We want our guests to experience the city like a local," he said. The hotel will harness Iceland's abundant geothermal energy to warm the radiant wood floors, and the restaurant's menu will focus on the country's specialties of fish and lamb. The developer Richard Friedman, of Carpenter Company, says he fell in love with the unspoiled Reykjavik, which he sees as a great place for business meetings between Europeans and Americans. "We want to create a hotel that is simple in an Icelandic way," he said. The adjacent retail space, as well as 100 apartments, will also aim to blend in with the surroundings, Mr. Asgeirsson said. These buildings will resemble the brightly colored connected houses of old Reykjavik. "Every staircase will have a different shape, color and height," he said. Near the planned hotel, construction crews are already laying foundations for another area that has been named Harbor Square, or Hafnartorg. It will include about 80 apartments, as well as office and retail space, and will cover about 250,000 square feet. The anchor tenant for the retail space on the first floor will be the Swedish clothing retailer H M. The move has displeased some, including Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson, a member of Parliament who feels that selecting one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in Reykjavik was "irrational." The banks should "respect that their business is a risky one," he said. "And unfortunately the cost of bankruptcy ends usually with taxpayers' carrying the cost." Runar Palmason, a representative for Landsbankinn, noted that the new headquarters consolidated operations, saving the company about 6 million a year. The building's footprint will be 46 percent smaller than those of the separate offices combined. One of the largest challenges for all of the East Harbor projects is that legally they are considered one plot because they share underground parking. That means they have to coordinate development and design plans, making for a "very complicated ownership structure," said Oli Orn Eiriksson, the head of economic development for the city. "You have so many different parties building on the same plot at the same time." There is also concern about striking a balance between visitors and locals. "The downtown has changed dramatically," said David Mar Sigurdsson, a sales and marketing manager for the Icelandic company TG Verk, which owns the Harbor Square development and has invested 130 million in it. "I feel like a foreigner when I go there. There are so many visitors." While Reykjavik is buzzing with tourism, and construction cranes dot the skyline, it is also feeling the strain of the surge of visitors. The East Harbor developers hope the new offices and apartments will balance out the visitors with locals. The country over all is concerned about the wear and tear from tourists on the natural wonders they visit. And in Reykjavik, the pressure is also felt on infrastructure, said Elsa Yeoman, a city councilor in charge of culture and tourism. "We have been inviting so many guests that it has become expensive to hold the party. Someone has to pay for that," she said. Still, "as locals, we have a more colorful city than ever before." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The model Karen Elson in a photo from her new book, "The Red Flame," from a 2000 issue of the Dutch magazine No. 30. Models are generally thought of as people who are seen and not heard, but every once in a while one of them breaks the sound barrier. Such is the case with Karen Elson, the red haired mannequin who dominated fashion imagery at the turn of the millennium, and who has just written a no holds barred autobiography. "The Red Flame," which will be published on Oct. 13 by Rizzoli, contains more than 130 photographs of Ms. Elson, including one as a '50s movie star swathed in a Donna Karan cream wool coat, oversize shades and stilettos, and squired by the actor John Hawkes as well as her memories of being hospitalized as a child for an eating disorder and fending off unwanted sexual advances as a teenage model. Among other less than glamorous stories. Before the book's release, Ms. Elson sat on a cushioned bed in her Nashville home, wearing a floaty floral dress bought at a flea market, and talked via Zoom about why she decided it was time to open up. The conversation has been edited for clarity. Why did you want to write a book? Because people see you in two dimensions on the page of a magazine, they assume that you're two dimensional as well and the picture is essentially who you are. I really wanted to get under that and show my perspective. It's been a couple of years in the making, from having the first conversation to scouring my archives and figuring out what images to use. And then writing it and really trying to dig deep and be honest. In social media culture, everything is squished to a 15 second sound bite, and if I'm doing something for a brand, I have to speak about how great the product is. No one is ever asking about my insights and my career and job as a model. So I figured I'd take the opportunity to unearth these things and talk about the stuff that's pretty hard. Has your attitude toward your job changed? Now, if anyone asks me to do a nude, there has to be a conversation before I get on set so I have the ability to say, "No, I'm not comfortable doing that." I've got to have a say in these things, but in the past I didn't. I just took it as "this is what is expected of me." It wasn't until I got older, maybe even when I had kids and moved to Nashville and got a bit of distance from the fashion world, that I started doing some digging inside myself about what feels comfortable. I started to realize that a lot of the times I've done nudes I have felt uncomfortable, but there's this sort of subtle conditioning that happens to a model, or did back in the day. The last time I was offended on a shoot or show was a couple of years ago. The photographer was being really offensive to everybody. He would say things to be controversial and made comments about how people used to call me "fat." It crossed a line, so I called my agents, and we had a conversation with the magazine and with the photographer's people and I can't say who, what, how, why but action was taken. People used to call you fat? Yes, at 130 pounds I could be deemed heavy. In the real world that is just insane, and a really dangerous narrative, but fashion is so insular that it has enabled very toxic mind sets to thrive because nobody's ever really questioned it. Are there any photographers you avoid working with? There are a number of people I avoid working with absolutely because I didn't enjoy the experience. I was maybe made to feel less than, so why bother walking into that arena again? But I believe in redemption. I will draw the line when there are things that are sexual in nature. But if it's toxic behavior like bullying, acting like a tyrant on set or yelling at people, fat shaming people if I can say, "You know, I want to talk about how this behavior made me feel," then maybe, just maybe, I might be able to move on from it. But I will always take the side of the victim because I myself have been in situations where I've been treated terribly, and it has scarred me. You just walked in Fendi's show. Do you still like the catwalk? There is a lot of camaraderie, especially with the models who have known each other like a decade plus. It's always a funny thing when someone is trying to tell you how to walk on a runway. We go, "It's not my first rodeo!" At one point, one of the models and it may even have been me took the microphone because this guy was explaining it to us. And then we were like, "Ladies, this is how you walk down the runway." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Nine rooms, starting at 85 with a shared bath. Beyond promoting its status as "World's First Kickstarter Funded Hotel," the Jennings is an unusual hotel. The formerly dilapidated two story brick building has a colorful history as a boardinghouse, a tattoo parlor and, if legend is to be believed, a brothel. And it is now the ambitious passion project of Greg Hennes, an artist who first came across the property in Joseph in 2010. It took "almost four years of looking, dreaming and planning before I got my life to the place where I believed I could actually pull it off," said Mr. Hennes, who had been based in Portland. Having raised 107,000 through crowdfunding, Mr. Hennes turned to his friends a stable of well known artists, architects and designers for the hotel's creative vision. The hotel's first remodeled room was ready for guests in 2015. Four additional rooms are set to roll out by Memorial Day 2018. On the main street of Joseph (population: about 1,000), six hours east of Portland, the hotel is in the heart of the "Alps of Oregon," with a view of the dramatic, pine covered Wallowa Mountains and Joseph's attractive, sculpture adorned downtown. Each room is the work of a single designer, including some big names like Brendon Farrell, who is responsible for the unique look of Portland's popular Loyly Spa and the Scandinavian inspired Room 7 at the Jennings. Spacious, light filled Room 2 was designed by the Portland architect Ashley Tackett with a mix of white walls, exposed brick and roughly finished light wood floors accented with area rugs and animal skins. It had an unconventional configuration, with both a queen sized bed and a twin in the entrance alcove. The living area had a black velour couch, a desk equipped with a sturdy, marble based lamp and a back door that opened onto the hotel's wide porch, where there was a small bistro style table. Idiosyncratic touches included a large format photograph of a cowgirl in a leopard print shirt, and a coffee table with secret hatches that opened to reveal two carefully selected books of poetry: "Mountain Echoes" by Jim Whilt and "American Primitive" by Mary Oliver. The shared bath area had three rooms: a changing room with a shelf of charcoal gray and white Turkish towels and heatproof, break proof black rubber water cups, a Scandinavian style cedar sauna with a squat wooden bucket and ladle for pouring water onto the hot stones, and a bathroom with black and white octagonal tiles and a rain shower. Sauna instructions are scrawled artfully on the bath's sliding wooden door. In keeping with its unconventional style, the Jennings has no lobby. Instead, it has an airy common room with a large wooden dining table, a well equipped communal kitchen and a library that includes Audubon guides to local foliage alongside works by Don DeLillo and Henry David Thoreau, a Ouija board and a record player. The hotel offers free Wi Fi, though it was a bit spotty during my stay. Though the Jennings doesn't offer room service, guests can prepare meals in the shared kitchen. With an in house residency for artists, a new nonprofit school for traditional crafts and cooking (called The Prairie Mountain Folk School) and renovation work underway on the remaining five rooms (even as guests occupy the existing rooms), the hotel is a work in progress the next best thing to staying in an artist's studio. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Scientists See Promise in Resurrecting These Rhinos That Are Nearly Extinct None When the last male northern white rhinoceros died in March, people mourned the beloved mammal's step toward extinction. With no members of the subspecies left in the wild and just two females remaining in captivity, it felt like the last bit of sand was draining through the rhino's hourglass. But several teams of scientists are working to flip the hourglass back over. One group, led by researchers at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, hopes to revive the northern white rhino using preserved cells. In a study published Thursday in Genome Research, the scientists sequenced the DNA of these cells and concluded that they hold a promising amount of genetic diversity for re establishing a viable population of northern whites. With the right advances in assisted reproduction or cloning, there could be a second chance for this "unique form of rhinoceros," said Oliver Ryder, director of conservation genetics at San Diego Zoo Global. Dr. Oliver Ryder, of the San Diego Zoo Global's Frozen Zoo, inspecting cell cultures from a store of tissue and genetic material. Not everyone agrees that having the capacity to bring back the northern white rhino means it should be done. Critics question whether the buzz around resurrecting a functionally extinct creature takes attention and resources away from other animals with greater chances of survival. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. They also point out that any resurrected northern white rhinos would likely remain in captivity, rather than roaming free in their former habitat in central and eastern Africa, where poaching for horns remains a serious threat. Nola, a northern white rhino at the San Diego Zoo, died in 2015. In their study, Dr. Ryder and his colleagues focused on the feasibility of recovering the northern white rhino using cells stored in the Frozen Zoo, a large collection of cryopreserved samples at the San Diego Zoo. These cell lines represent eight presumably unrelated northern whites, Dr. Ryder said. The researchers sequenced these genomes and compared them to genomes from southern white rhinos, the northern white rhino's closest kin, which underwent a spectacular recovery under protection over the last century, although it remains near threatened. They confirmed scientists' long held hypothesis that the two rhinos are subspecies, rather than distinct species. This close relationship might bode well for someday using southern white rhinos as surrogates for northern white embryos. The scientists also discovered sufficient genetic diversity in their northern white rhino samples when compared with the southern white rhinos, Dr. Ryder said. "If it came down to the materials in the Frozen Zoo, we could turn those cells into animals." A sample from the Frozen Zoo at San Diego, which holds thousands of specimens from many species. But Marty Kardos, an evolutionary biology researcher at the University of Montana, cautioned that the southern white rhino comparison is "not necessarily worth banking on." Purely by chance, harmful mutations could exist at high frequency among the northern white rhinos, and have a detrimental effect, he said. Jason Gilchrist, an ecologist at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland, questioned the point of reviving an animal that can't return to its native way of life. "As an ecologist, what I want is to see wild ecosystems functioning as close to naturally as they can," he said. Joseph Bennett, a conservation researcher at Carleton University in Ontario, feels the northern white rhino is a good candidate for resurrection because there's a relatively high chance of success compared to more ambitious projects like the de extinction of the woolly mammoth or passenger pigeon. It could be a "really nice 'good news story' for people," he said. Cathy Dean, chief executive of the charity Save the Rhino, said that efforts to revive the northern white rhino likely attract different sources of funding than conserving remaining wild rhinos. Still, she wishes other rhinos, like the critically endangered Sumatran, Javan and black rhinos, received nearly as much airtime as the northern white, she said. Dr. Ryder said his team's efforts are not in lieu of, but in addition to, efforts to conserve wild animals, adding that "we are seeing species go extinct in spite of a global commitment" to protect them. In light of that, he said, providing "more options for the existence of species into the future is an appropriate quest." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
A bite size sampling of concours, cruise nights, auctions, club races and other upwellings of car culture happening across America this weekend: Sam Pack, a Texas businessman and car collector, is attempting to downsize his fleet by selling 130 vehicles. Among the lots are a 1963 Shelby Cobra, a 2006 Ford GT, several mid '50s Chevrolet Bel Airs and a 1981 DeLorean DMC 12. The high presale estimate for the '63 Cobra is 1.1 million. More info. Mecum has 750 vehicles scheduled to be sold at its auction this weekend. The trove of classics includes many American makes, including a 1953 Willys Wagon, a 1952 Studebaker pickup, many Chevrolet Corvettes and Bel Airs and a 426 V8 powered 1970 Plymouth Hemi Cuda. More info. This Tampa area auction also includes a collector car swap meet and a car corral, and wraps up the year's Carlisle event schedule. Friday and Saturday, the show features the Josh Borne Freestyle Motorcycle Exhibition at various times throughout the day. More info. The National Hot Rod Association holds its seaon ender at the Auto Club Raceway. The contests for the Funny Car and Pro Stock car classes are close, and Tony Schumacher holds a penetrable 109 point lead in Top Fuel. Andrew Hines leads Pro Stock Motorcycle by 92 points. More info. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
It was nearly two months ago when the first white refrigerated trucks began to appear on the streets of New York City. They were meant as a temporary solution to help overwhelmed hospitals and morgues house the bodies of people who had succumbed to Covid 19. The pandemic has now left nearly 30,000 dead in New York and about 205 of the vehicles, sent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or purchased by the medical examiner's office, are stationed across the city. Normally these trucks are used to transport refrigerated groceries. But for weeks they've sat outside nearly all of the city's hospitals, in parking lots, next to parks, outside subway entrances and at four temporary morgue locations. What happens when thousands of people die in a dense city and there's not enough room to store their bodies? Their remains become your new neighbors. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
A remarkable gender gap has opened up in Americans' views of their own finances and the broader national economy. Men feel better about the economy than they have in over a decade. Women are far more skeptical. And the sharp divide has emerged since President Trump was elected two years ago. Nearly half of men 47 percent said their family's finances had improved in the past year, according to a survey conducted for The New York Times in early October by the online research platform SurveyMonkey. Just 30 percent of women said the same, despite an unemployment rate that is near a five decade low and economic growth that is on track for its best year since before the recession. Asked how they expected the American economy to fare over the next five years, nearly two thirds of men said they anticipated "continuous good times economically." Women were more likely to expect "periods of widespread unemployment or depression." The gaps remain even between men and women who are similar in age, race, education and income. It isn't clear how men's and women's diverging views of the economy will affect next month's elections. There has historically been at most a loose connection between the state of the economy and midterm election results, and Mr. Trump's signature economic policies poll poorly with swing voters. What is clear is that the gender divide transcending party lines and voting preferences is a striking departure from the past. Polls by the Pew Research Center going back to the mid 2000s showed almost no gender gap on economic questions until Mr. Trump took office; since then, men have become significantly more confident, while women's confidence has stalled. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey has long shown a small gender gap, but the divide grew after Mr. Trump's 2016 victory and in December reached its widest point on record. The gap has since narrowed slightly but remains larger than before the election. But while their circumstances are similar, their views of the economy differ sharply. Mr. Weeldreyer, a Wisconsin native who lives in Denver, said the local job market was strong. To the extent that his finances aren't where he would like them to be, he blames his own choices earlier in adulthood, not the economy more generally. He is confident in the future. "It's frustrating not being able to buy a house and stuff, but I guess I don't lose sleep over it," he said. "I guess it'll work out." Ms. Pierce sees things differently. She says there are plenty of jobs where she lives in central New York State, but pay has lagged. She dreams of the day she can pay her bills the day they arrive, rather than stalling until payday. "It's gotten a lot harder to do the things that our parents may have done, buy the house and do all the American dream stuff," she said. "Everything in my life seems to be getting more expensive, and my wages are the same." Ms. Pierce's and Mr. Weeldreyer's different perspectives may reflect at least in part different realities. Denver is in the midst of an economic boom. Rome, where Ms. Pierce lives, has seen a significant rebound in recent years but is still struggling compared with the country over all. Their political views may also play a role. A registered Republican, Mr. Weeldreyer said he voted for Mr. Trump only reluctantly in 2016 and hadn't made up his mind about how to vote in next month's midterms. But he said the economy was "probably the one area where I would say the president is doing a good job." Ms. Pierce is a member of the progressive Working Families Party and said she strongly opposed Mr. Trump's agenda. Still, partisanship isn't the whole story. Among men who said they "strongly approve" of Mr. Trump's overall performance, 76 percent said their finances were better now than a year ago, according to the SurveyMonkey survey. That sentiment was expressed by just 65 percent of women who gave Mr. Trump strong overall marks. Other economic questions reveal a similar gap. 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. "Republican men are just more confident and more optimistic than even Republican women are," said Laura Wronski, a research scientist for SurveyMonkey. Mr. Trump has repeatedly promoted his economic record, and Republican strategists are hoping the strong economy will help hold off a potential "blue wave" of Democratic victories next month. Still, the economy seems to be doing little to win over groups of women who could be crucial to Republicans' chances. Ms. Wronski noted that college educated suburban white women actually felt slightly worse about their finances than women over all and far worse than similarly situated men. Perhaps not coincidentally, they also overwhelmingly said they planned to vote for Democrats in the midterms. But Ms. Shue Willis, 49, is pessimistic about the economy. She lost her house to foreclosure during the last recession and now worries that banks are repeating the mistakes that led to the financial crisis. She worries about the cost of health insurance, and about the jobs available for her daughter, who didn't earn a high school diploma. She said that the construction industry, where she works, was slowing down, and that she didn't believe the rosy economic figures she heard on the news. "I think the unemployment rate they talk about on TV is misleading," she said. Ms. Shue Willis said she wasn't sure whom she would vote for next month. She isn't impressed by her Republican congressman, Scott Taylor or by almost anyone else in Congress, a group she called "a bunch of squabbling hypocrites." It isn't clear what, beyond partisanship, is driving the gender divide on the economy. Men have not notably outperformed women in their economic fortunes since Mr. Trump took office. Women have, if anything, received a slightly disproportionate share of jobs, and the pay gap for full time workers narrowed slightly last year. But hiring has been especially strong in male dominated sectors such as manufacturing, construction and mining, noted Jed Kolko, chief economist for the job search site Indeed. That growth, Mr. Kolko said, may be making men more optimistic particularly because those same sectors had been in a long slump. "We are in this unexpected and perhaps temporary moment where job growth is faster on average in traditionally male dominated jobs," he said. Mr. Trump's policies, Mr. Kolko said, probably have little to do with the blue collar rebound. But that may not matter. Amber Wichowsky, a political science professor at Marquette University, said that during the Obama administration, white men particularly those without a college degree reported feeling that their social status was eroding. Now that might be reversing. "Their guy's in office, the economy's doing well, it's an even bigger shot in the arm," Ms. Wichowsky said. "The psychology's really important." Even with the unemployment rate under 4 percent, however, millions of Americans are stuck in part time or low paying jobs, and many families have barely begun to recover from the Great Recession. "You have an economy that, although the stock market and unemployment rate look good, people's actual lived experience of making ends meet" is less good, said Corrine McConnaughy, a political scientist at George Washington University. Ms. McConnaughy said the uneven nature of the recovery might affect men's and women's views of the economy differently. She said research had found that men, on average, gauged the economy based on their own financial situation. Women tend to weigh more heavily the experiences of the people they see around them. For Addie Chase, the economy is working fine. The shopping center that she and her husband own in Stratford, Conn., is fully rented, and she has a strong stable of students for her business as a piano teacher. But Ms. Chase, 67, said Connecticut as a whole was struggling economically. She sees people leaving the state in search of better opportunities, and she worries about the future. And she said her frustrations with the national political environment were hard to separate from her feelings about the economy. "I just feel like I'm angry all the time, which isn't my personality," she said. "Because women are so upset about how things are going, it colors their whole outlook." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Dark clouds loomed over Downtown Brooklyn on Friday as the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, standing on the bed of a pickup truck, announced to people gathered at Betty Carter Park that they were about to witness a world premiere. "No one has heard this music before!" he told the small crowd, as if he were a carnival barker. "We are so excited to do this for you." Then he cued a trio of players from the New York Philharmonic, which had not given a public performance since the coronavirus pandemic forced it to close in March. The orchestra made its return with this pop up, pickup concert from what is being called the NY Phil Bandwagon. People in the audience were undaunted by the weather, as were the players. Once "Loop" ended, Mr. Costanzo asked if the concert should continue; an answer came from the trio as Cynthia Phelps, the orchestra's principal violist, shouted "Yes!" After the performance, while the truck was being packed up and prepared for its next surprise show, Ms. Phelps said she didn't want to stop because it felt good to be playing with her colleagues again. "It's reminiscent of what we used to do," she added. "It's a charge," Ms. Phelps replied. "This is the thing, to groove off each other. It's not the same when we're at home doing things over the internet." For months, the internet has been the Philharmonic's only venue for performances archived material streamed on Facebook, videos of pieces recorded individually and edited together in "Brady Bunch" like tiles. The orchestra's last public appearance was an open rehearsal on the morning March 12; by the afternoon, that evening's concert had been canceled, and now a return to David Geffen Hall is unlikely before a coronavirus vaccine becomes widely available. The NY Phil Bandwagon, conceived by Mr. Costanzo, is bringing the orchestra out of its dormancy. The truck a Ford F 250 decorated in Philharmonic red, white and black, with touches like a gas cap cover that says "PHIL 'ER UP" will drive to three unannounced locations each Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the next eight weeks, with small ensembles performing chamber works and recently commissioned premieres. There is little flexibility in a concert at Geffen Hall; with the program and players planned a year in advance, only encores are unexpected. The Bandwagon, however, is designed to be endlessly adaptable to weather, crowds or, in the case of Friday's debut, a demonstration that necessitated a change of venue. A performance can be cut short or extended; repertoire can change at any moment. The series came together quickly and remains a work in progress, especially as organizers work to grow a list of community partners in all five boroughs. A refrain on the first day: "We're learning as we go." The day began around 2 p.m. with a soundcheck across the street from Lincoln Center, facing the rear of the Metropolitan Opera and an entrance to the parking garage. Several crew members set up the microphones and lights, helped by Mr. Costanzo and DeAnne Eisch, the orchestra's personnel manager, who sanitized each stand and seat. Everyone's temperature was checked upon arrival, and they were tested for Covid 19 in advance. Adam Crane, the Philharmonic's vice president for external affairs, described them as being in "a test bubble"; only those in the bubble can touch the equipment, ride in the truck or take part in the performance. Once the string trio Ms. Ziskel, Ms. Phelps and the cellist Sumire Kudo arrived, they played excerpts from the program: movements of works by Beethoven and Dohnanyi, as well as the Simon premiere and, with Mr. Costanzo, vocal music by Handel, Purcell and Gershwin. This wasn't an official concert, but an audience formed nonetheless. A man making a Grubhub delivery pulled up on his bike, seeming not to notice amid the music that the bubble tea he was toting had exploded. People recorded on their phones, which continued and was even encouraged (with a hashtag, of course) all day. Gwendolyn Wilson, from Middletown, N.Y., who was in town visiting her daughter, stopped while walking a small dog named Oreo, surprised by what she had found. "I just love music," she said, smiling. As if to offer a test for unpredictability, one man walked right into the performance, between the players and the truck. He looked up at Mr. Costanzo, who calmly flashed him a peace sign; he did the same and kept walking until, hearing the sounds of Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm," he decided to stay. The Bandwagon was packed up and driven to Betty Carter Park, where its first actual concert would unfold with the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the background. Already the day had hit a snag: traffic. Mr. Crane and his group arrived first, so they kept a parking space open for the truck by standing in the street. "We wear many hats in this organization," he said. It was a loud spot for a string performance. Beethoven was accompanied by a passing cement mixer; a red light forced an orange Jeep Wrangler, Latin music blaring out of its open windows, to stop directly behind the Bandwagon. But the driver muted his stereo and began to mime playing a cello in his seat. After the first piece, Mr. Costanzo introduced the players and one of the Bandwagon's partners, Catherine Gray from the League of Women Voters, who came from Park Slope to follow the truck and register voters at each stop. One concession: The program would need to be shorter because Mr. Costanzo had promised that it would last less than 15 minutes. So the group winnowed it down to four pieces and started quickly to make up for the delay. People brought Shake Shack takeout and listened while eating on benches. The man operating a Brooklyn Ice Cream truck leaned out to watch, as did a woman from a corner apartment across the street. Mr. Costanzo found another potential partner in the teenage drummer Ezra Kessler, who got a shout out during the performance. As crew members were packing up, someone noticed that a screw had penetrated one of the rear tires. But that problem could wait until tomorrow. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
This will be the second workshop style cabaret, after an earlier performance in Boston, where Faith Soloway lives. (She splits her time between there and Los Angeles for "Transparent.") She described the audience whose feedback is welcome and whose ticket sales benefit the nonprofit Americans United as "part therapist, part people behind the desk" while she tries out new songs. Like the plot of "Transparent," which follows the Pfefferman family's ups and downs after one parent comes out as transgender, Ms. Soloway's songs are both serious and funny. "I'm kind of getting back to my roots," she said, referring to her history as the music director of Second City in Chicago and the composer of so called "schlock operas" like "Jesus Has Two Mommies." Before "Transparent" existed as fans know it today, the Soloway sisters had thought of writing it as a musical documentary a film form that may not actually exist. "We even had a documentarian following us around while we worked on it," Faith Soloway said. That didn't happen, of course. Still, music is central to many of the show's key moments whether performed in a studio, played in a nightclub or sung by Ms. Light largely because Jill Soloway is "a big music fan," her sister said. But don't expect "Transparent" to become a stage musical just yet. Faith Soloway is busy: In addition to writing for the show and other work, she is developing a new TV series, tentatively titled "Super Sensitives." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Whether Orion ought to be feet or head up in the night sky depends on the hemisphere. When Stan, a 23 year old student from South Australia, rides his bike through the Rocky Mountains, he marvels that the constellation is upside down. So does Jean, arriving in the Antipodes 16 months later from the States to cycle around Tasmania. In such celestial allusions lies the DNA of 's quirky debut, "Jean Harley Was Here," a novel about stars and oceans and destiny, but also about bicycles and point of view. This is a love story about loss, a sweet romantic comedy that is not meant to be funny but still skews to conventions about overcoming obstacles and finding true love. Jean and Stan first meet after he sideswipes a deer and falls off his bike. He's banged up, hungry and in need of a few pints, which leads him to the Corner House Grill in Telluride, where Jean works. After dinner, silhouetted against the moon, Stan wants to kiss her, but their timing isn't right. They will meet again, despite the nearly 10,000 miles between their hometowns. The union has been preordained by the universe, or at least by the omniscient voice that periodically pops up to tell us what's what: "Stan and Jean were destined to be lovers. It was painted on the walls of prehistoric mountains and sung by the fish in the southern seas; Stan and Jean were written in the stars." Fast forward 17 years. The couple are married, living in Adelaide, and "the galaxy grew larger" with the birth of their son, Orion. Unfortunately for this family, the galaxy will soon contract. It is no spoiler to say that shortly before Orion's fifth birthday, Jean is thrown from her bicycle as she rides through the city in the rain; her loss is in the title, "Jean Harley Was Here," and the story that unfolds has less to do with her life than with the impact of her death. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Last month, the historian and biographer Jon Meacham got an unusual request from Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s campaign. The campaign wanted him to speak at the Democratic National Convention not to endorse Mr. Biden, but to put the stakes of this election in historical context. "The request was, define the soul of America, and do it quick," Mr. Meacham said. Mr. Meacham is not a Democrat. He has voted for candidates of both parties, and his work has focused his attention on studying past presidents rather than endorsing modern day ones. When he gave his four minute address Thursday evening from his home in Nashville, he sat in his library with two portraits mounted behind him: one of Representative John Lewis and one of former President George Bush, painted by his son former President George W. Bush. It was a rare, high profile appearance in the political arena for a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Mr. Meacham has spent much of his career steeped in the country's past, studying the lives of presidents such as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. His speech also marked a public moment in a long running friendship with Mr. Biden, with whom he has had periodic, spirited conversations about American history and how the country's sometimes troubled past shapes the present and future. Some of the themes that emerged during their discussions particularly the notion that there is a "battle for the soul of this nation," as Mr. Biden has said, and that some of the darkest chapters of American history have been followed by social progress and a spirit of civic responsibility became central messages during this week's Democratic convention. In addition to giving his own remarks, Mr. Meacham was involved in discussions about the themes in Mr. Biden's acceptance speech. Mr. Meacham and Mr. Biden got to know each other around 15 years ago, when Mr. Biden told Mr. Meacham how much he enjoyed his book "American Gospel," about the founding fathers' views on the role of faith in politics and public life. Mr. Biden had studied it in detail, printing out passages and laminating them, so he could have them on hand when he was campaigning with Barack Obama in 2008. 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. In 2017, when Mr. Biden published "Promise Me, Dad," his book about his son Beau Biden, he asked Mr. Meacham to appear with him at an event in Nashville, where Mr. Meacham interviewed the former vice president in front of a packed audience. The following year, Mr. Meacham published "The Soul of America," about the history of racial, ideological and partisan strife in the United States, and how the nation has been united by a belief in progress even in the most turbulent and divisive eras. The book resonated with Mr. Biden, who called Mr. Meacham and read aloud passages that he was eager to discuss. "It was an author's dream," Mr. Meacham said. Mr. Biden was especially struck by an image in the book of a 1925 Ku Klux Klan march in Washington, which he connected to the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. "I remember saying to him that the moment may in fact be less about Trump himself than it is about us, because Trump is an exacerbation of all too perennial forces in our character that either ebb or flow," Mr. Meacham said. In February 2019, a few months before Mr. Biden declared his candidacy, the two of them met in Delaware, where they appeared together at the University of Delaware to discuss "The Soul of America" and to celebrate the naming of the Joseph R. Biden Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration. Over coffee before the event, they had another lengthy conversation about the themes in Mr. Meacham's book. "He's very interested in, how does the country come out of a crisis stronger and not weaker?" Mr. Meacham said. "He wants to know, what does history tell us about American renewal?" "Meacham has been on the same wavelength as him, not only about the moment in history that we're in but how we get out of it," said Bill Russo, deputy communications director for the Biden campaign. Since he declared his candidacy, Mr. Biden has repeatedly spoken about how the country's soul and character are at stake in this election. His thinking has been influenced by conversations with Mr. Meacham and others about the events in Charlottesville. "The historic seriousness of what the country is facing is a huge piece of what we have talked about in the campaign," said TJ Ducklo, the campaign's national press secretary. "We felt it was important to have a historian like Jon Meacham to put all of this perspective. This is a moment of crisis in our country's history." Born in Chattanooga, Tenn., in 1969, Mr. Meacham describes himself as a "white Southern boring Episcopalian." After studying at University of the South in Sewanee, he became an editor at Random House, where he published books by Al Gore, John Danforth, Clara Bingham and Mary Soames, and he was the editor of Newsweek from 2006 to 2010. He has published 10 books, including his forthcoming one about Mr. Lewis, "His Truth Is Marching On." Friends and colleagues say it is unlike Mr. Meacham to take such a public stance in a contentious election and to throw his weight behind a particular party and candidate. "Jon has never been a political activist," said the historian Michael Beschloss. "It has taken a lot to get him from the spectators' section onto the field." It is not unprecedented for a historian to play an advisory role on a campaign or in an administration. The 19th century historian George Bancroft, who has been called the "father of American history," was closely aligned with President James K. Polk. Another prominent historian, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., was outspokenly partisan, and even served in the Kennedy White House. Until now, Mr. Meacham has avoided any whiff of partisanship in his work. While he delivered eulogies at the funerals of George Bush and the former first lady Barbara Bush, he has never before spoken at a political rally or convention. He agreed to speak this week because he felt it was important to make an argument informed by history for why the country needs new leadership. "It's just a sign of the grim moment we're in that a basic statement about the capacity of America to reform itself can even seem partisan," he said. Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Bye bye, indeed, Miss American Pie. If General Motors has its way, you won't be driving your Chevy to the levee ever again. On Tuesday, G.M. sent a memo to Chevrolet employees at its Detroit headquarters, promoting the importance of "consistency" for the brand, which was the nation's best selling line of cars and trucks for more than half a century after World War II. And one way to present a consistent brand message, the memo suggested, is to stop saying "Chevy," though the word is one of the world's best known, longest lived product nicknames. "We'd ask that whether you're talking to a dealer, reviewing dealer advertising, or speaking with friends and family, that you communicate our brand as Chevrolet moving forward," said the memo, which was signed by Alan Batey, vice president for Chevrolet sales and service, and Jim Campbell, the G.M. division's vice president for marketing. "When you look at the most recognized brands throughout the world, such as Coke or Apple for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding," the memo said. "Why is this consistency so important? The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer." Although the memo cites Coke, it does not note that Coke is shorthand for Coca Cola or that Apple is not commonly used in reference to its products, which are known simply as iPads, iPhones and MacBooks. One expert on branding said G.M.'s effort ran counter to a trend in which corporate names had become more casual. The consultant, Paul Worthington, head of strategy for Wolff Olins, a brand consulting company, noted that FedEx had replaced Federal Express, KFC had supplanted Kentucky Fried Chicken and "even RadioShack has evolved into the Shack." Regardless, if Chevrolet plans to put the Chevy genie back in the bottle, the task could prove harder than climbing out of bankruptcy. As of Wednesday night, the word Chevy appeared dozens of times on Chevrolet's Web site, chevrolet.com, including a banner on the home page that said, "Over 1,000 people a day switch to Chevy." One of the dropdown menus was "Experience Chevy." On Facebook, brand pages include Chevy Camaro, Chevy Silverado and Team Chevy. If taken to its logical conclusion, Chevrolet would presumably need to ask Jeff Gordon, the four time Nascar Sprint Cup champion who currently races a Chevrolet Impala, to change the Web site address jeffgordonchevy.com for his dealership in Wilmington, N.C. A Chevrolet Tahoe on display at a dealership in Aurora, Colo. And what about rolling back the popular culture references to Chevy? Elton John, Bob Seger, Motley Crue and the Beastie Boys have all sung about Chevy, and hip hop artists rap about "Chevy Ridin' High" or "Ridin' in My Chevy." There are also a good many auto enthusiasts who have "Chevy" tattooed onto various body parts. Some probably have a Chevy II or two tucked in their garages. "It's a 'Vette, it's a Caddy, it's a Chevy," said Dick Guldstrand, a long time racer who has been inducted into the Corvette Hall of Fame. He noted that the brand was named for Louis Chevrolet, a race driver of the early 20th century. "Once it became an American icon, America took it away from G.M.," said Mr. Guldstrand, 83. "They made it a Chevy. You're doing a disservice to all the people by telling them not to call it a Chevy." In 2006, Chevrolet updated a series of popular commercials with the tagline "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet," which noted how the brand was woven into the fabric of American culture. A 2006 advertising campaign used both Chevy and Chevrolet. The commercial juxtaposed imagery of past baseball greats with modern ones. And at the end, the narrator says, "Apparently, baseball's changed a little over the years, but not America's love of the game or love for Chevy." So why make the change now? G.M. wasn't saying, but the memo came after several major marketing moves. The memo was provided to The Times by the disbelieving recipient of a copy. In April, Chevrolet dismissed its long time ad agency, Campbell Ewald, which over several decades had created such memorable slogans as "See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet," "Like a rock" and "The heartbeat of America." The account went to Publicis USA, but only for a month. In May, Joel Ewanick was hired from Nissan to head United States marketing for G.M. Shortly after settling into his position, Mr. Ewanick switched the Chevrolet advertising account again, this time to Goodby, Silverstein Partners. Klaus Peter Martin, a G.M. spokesman, confirmed the memo. "We're going to use Chevrolet instead of Chevy going forward in our communications," he said in a telephone interview, and linked the change to the move to Goodby. Mr. Worthington, the branding expert, said Chevrolet seemed unclear what the brand stood for. "So what it would appear they are trying to do, by centralizing to a single formal name, is to try to get some focus as to what that brand stands for, and get that out into the marketplace, which makes a lot of sense." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
A rhinoceros will soon be on view in Midtown Manhattan a life size aluminum rhinoceros, that is, from which a tire, a copier, a vacuum cleaner and other human artifacts sprout in all directions. The Gagosian Gallery will unveil the sculpture, a new piece by Urs Fischer titled "Things," on Tuesday at 511 Fifth Avenue, a disused bank building northeast of Bryant Park, where the work will stay through June 23. According to a statement, the piece "considers the ways that objects and forces from plastic bottles and Wi Fi signals to memories, history and emotion gather around and pass through our bodies as we move through the world." In an interview, Mr. Fischer described the development of the work as an "eight year process, that comes out of feeling and thoughts and then moves gradually into different objects or different forms that it can take, and then forms get changed out." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
VIENNA Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election was experienced by many right wing populists in Europe as a momentous turning point. It was their version of 1989, when the fall of the Berlin Wall made liberalism appear unstoppable and triumphant. Right wing populists from Hungary to Britain believed that if Mr. Trump could become president of the United States, the future belonged to them. President Trump's 2020 defeat may trigger the rise of a much darker vision. Fortified by the solidarity of a majority of Republicans, including, it seems, the secretary of state, Mr. Trump has wantonly rejected the outcome of the recent vote. Invoking allegations of fraud, he has made it clear that for him, conceding defeat is a non starter. This behavior might seem pathetic and it's not going to keep him in office but his decision to ignore the will of the people has ramifications for democracy well beyond the United States. While most presidents and prime ministers seem ready to congratulate President elect Joe Biden, a handful of political leaders Mr. Trump's allies are endorsing his defiant gambit. When the media announced Mr. Biden's triumph last Saturday, right wing broadcasters across Europe insisted that the elections were not over. While President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany seemed more than pleased to usher in a new administration, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and President Andrzej Duda of Poland were in no rush to congratulate the president elect. In fact, at the same time Mr. Trump was calling foul, Mr. Orban was proposing changes to the Hungarian electoral system that should help him to stay in power beyond 2022 and threatened to veto the European Union budget if Berlin and Brussels demanded that rule of law violations lead to the suspension of European funds. By doing it he had made it clear that the outcome of the American elections will not change his policies and that, like Mr. Trump, his choice is defiance. He is ready to block the much needed European Recovery Fund in order to demonstrate that he will not compromise with Brussels. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
POTOMAC, Md. When they were building a gallery here at Glenstone for Robert Gober's 1992 "Untitled" immersive installation featuring spouting sinks, stacked newspapers and woodland scenery Mitchell P. Rales and Emily Wei Rales worked with the artist to design the room to his specifications. That meant lowered ceilings, special plumbing, placement of the exit signs, consultation with a theatrical lighting specialist and about 70 meetings with the architects. Similarly, Charles Ray spent hours arranging the four sculptures in his gallery down to the inch. And On Kawara before he died in 2014 was explicit about how he wanted his triptych of Date Paintings, "Moon Landing," to be exhibited. As a result, it's the only gallery with a wooden floor. These are the lengths to which the Raleses went in shaping Glenstone as a bespoke temple for artists they have collected in depth over the last 12 years in this affluent exurb of Washington. Works by the likes of Brice Marden, Pipilotti Rist and Roni Horn will now be displayed in a new 204,000 square foot museum building called the Pavilions, designed by Thomas Phifer. It opens Oct. 4, but the first block of reservations have already been snapped up. The next block becomes available Oct. 1. Private museums have been criticized as vanity projects where wealthy people take great art out of circulation and avoid taxes by keeping their collections in outbuildings and only occasionally making the art accessible to visitors. Collectors can deduct the market value of any art, cash and stocks they donate to their museums or foundations, even when those are only a stone's throw from their living rooms. Glenstone is among 11 private museums whose tax exempt status was investigated by the Senate Finance Committee in 2015 regarding their degree of public accessibility and lending policies. "Tax exempt museums should focus on providing a public good and not the art of skirting around the tax code," Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the committee's Republican chairman, told The Times at the time. "Under the law, these organizations have a duty to promote the public interest, not those of well off benefactors, plain and simple." The I.R.S. has yet to respond. But Mr. Rales, 62, an industrialist and Ms. Wei Rales, 42, a former curator and dealer, maintain that they have always been generous lenders as well as donors to other museums of their renowned collection of modern and contemporary art. And now they are doubling down on the public aspect of their collection, having completed a five year expansion of Glenstone including two new cafes and three parking areas that will be free to the public (with scheduled visits) four days a week (and, eventually, possibly six) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. "They're giving birth to a whole new institution," said the dealer Matthew Marks, who has artists in Glenstone's collection. In 2006, the Raleses opened a 30,000 square foot limestone exhibition space on 100 acres, designed by Charles Gwathmey. For years, it was a hidden gem on the grounds of a former hunt club; in its first seven years of operation, only 10,000 people visited. The 200 million expansion adds 11 rooms constructed of stacked concrete blocks that are connected by a glass walled passage and surround an 18,000 square foot water court. You can see the family's home in the distance. In a lengthy recent interview at the new museum, the couple said they had decided to expand so that they could share more of their collection with more people and to entice groups from neighboring schools, where arts education is at risk. At a time when many collectors are buying art as an asset class, the pair fall into the category of those intense indeed obsessive owners who deliberate over every purchase. They only collect artists with a 15 year track record and rarely sell, except to buy something better, often with the artist's approval. In 2013, they sold one of Jackson Pollock's classic drip paintings "No. 19, 1948" at Christie's for 58.3 million to help fund their acquisition of 144 works from the Toronto collector and curator Ydessa Hendeles. The dealer David Zwirner said the Raleses "really want to contextualize what they buy where does the work of art fit into the production of an artist?" "What this museum means to the United States is more akin to what Getty did, what Hirshhorn did it's at that level," he continued, referring to J. Paul Getty and Joseph H. Hirshhorn. In an increasingly market driven art world, artists say they appreciate the Raleses approach. "These people sought my work out, and they kept coming back," said Ms. Horn, whose two large solid cast glass cylinders are on view in the passage along the water court. She added, "I don't care if they are getting a tax break." The Glenstone addition also has a strong outdoor component, with 130 acres of meadows, woodlands and streams, designed by Adam Greenspan and Peter Walker of PWP Landscape Architecture. Among the sculptures integrated into the landscape are those by Felix Gonzalez Torres, Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Serra. The couple employ a full time horticulturist to tend to the 24,000 flowers in Jeff Koons's monumental "Split Rocker." The expansion includes an environmental center, offering educational programs, that will open in the spring. "We're tree huggers," Mr. Rales said. In addition to those of Mr. Gober, Mr. Ray and On Kawara, the museum's nine single artist installations belong to Martin Puryear, Michael Heizer, Ms. Rist, Lygia Pape, Mr. Marden and Cy Twombly. There are household names like Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Agnes Martin and Mark Rothko. But there is also work by Akira Kanayama (Japan), Sergio Camargo (Brazilian) and Alighiero e Boetti (Italy). And there is an abundance of work by women. (The story of Minimalism is told through artists like Jo Baer, Anne Truitt and Agnes Martin, not just Carl Andre and Dan Flavin.) Similarly, the Raleses have hung a just acquired flag by the artist activist Faith Ringgold, which includes the N word, next to one by Jasper Johns. "History is always ripe for reinterpretation," Mr. Rales said. Glenstone has a staff of 130, including 24 young professionals working as guides. The Raleses said they toured about 50 other museums before expanding their own. Mr. Rales has been collecting since 1990. In 2005, he joined forces with Emily Wei, a former director at the Gladstone Gallery in Manhattan. They married in 2008 and have two children, 5 and 8. Their collection now numbers about 1,300 pieces, including sound art, film, video and works on paper. Glenstone aims to admit about 400 people a day, to ensure that visitors can have a contemplative experience. Instagram photos are discouraged indoors, where the space has a naturally lit, Zen like serenity, with benches for resting designed by Mr. Puryear and meandering paths. Indeed, the collectors said they wanted plenty of breathing room no "Mona Lisa" crowds or selfie sticks, very little wall text and no stanchions forcing people to keep their distance from the art. The message to visitors is clear. "Look really use your eyes," Ms. Rales said. "Allow that to be your primary experience." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
LOS ANGELES Executives at Walt Disney Studios were celebrating. "Mulan," a 200 million live action spectacle five years in the making, had arrived on Disney's streaming service to strong reviews, with critics lauding its ravishing scenery and thrilling battle sequences. The abundant controversies that had dogged "Mulan" over its gestation false rumors that Disney was casting a white lead actress, calls for a boycott after its star expressed support for the Hong Kong police had largely dissipated by Sept. 4, when the film arrived online. Success looked likely around the world, including the crucial market of China, where "Mulan" is set and where Disney hoped its release in theaters on Friday would advance the company's hold on Chinese imaginations and wallets. "In many ways, the movie is a love letter to China," Niki Caro, the film's director, had told the state run Xinhua News Agency. Almost as soon as the film arrived on Disney , social media users noticed that, nine minutes into the film's 10 minute end credits, the "Mulan" filmmakers had thanked eight government entities in Xinjiang, the region in China where Uighur Muslims have been detained in mass internment camps. Activists rushed out a new BoycottMulan campaign, and Disney found itself the latest example of a global company stumbling as the United States and China increasingly clash over human rights, trade and security, even as their economies remain entwined. Disney is one of the world's savviest operators when it comes to China, having seamlessly opened Shanghai Disneyland in 2016, but it was caught flat footed with "Mulan." Top studio executives had not seen the Xinjiang credits, according to three people briefed on the matter, and no one involved with the production had warned that footage from the area was perhaps not a good idea. The filmmakers may not have known what was happening there when they chose it as one of 20 locations in China to shoot scenery, but by the time a camera crew arrived in August 2018 the detention camps were all over the news. And all of this for what ended up being roughly a minute of background footage in a 1 hour 55 minute film. "I would just leave it at that," she said, before allowing that the credits had "generated a lot of issues for us." No overseas market is more important to Hollywood than China, which is poised to overtake the United States and Canada as the world's No. 1 box office engine. Disney has even more at stake. The Chinese government co owns the 5.5 billion Shanghai Disney Resort, which Disney executives have said is the company's greatest opportunity since Walt Disney himself bought land in central Florida in the 1960s. Disney is also pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into upgrades at its money losing Hong Kong Disneyland in hopes of creating a must visit attraction for families. Disney worked overtime to ensure that "Mulan" would appeal to Chinese audiences. It cast household names, including Liu Yifei in the title role and Donnie Yen as Mulan's regiment leader. The filmmakers cut a kiss between Mulan and her love interest on the advice of a Chinese test audience. Disney also shared the script with Chinese officials (a not uncommon practice in Hollywood) and heeded the advice of Chinese consultants, who told Disney not to focus on a specific Chinese dynasty. "If 'Mulan' doesn't work in China, we have a problem," Alan F. Horn, co chairman of Walt Disney Studios, told The Hollywood Reporter last year. The "Mulan" controversy underscores the dilemma companies face when trying to balance their core principles with access to the Chinese market. The Chinese government shut out the National Basketball Association last year after the general manager of the Houston Rockets shared an image on Twitter that was supportive of pro democracy protesters in Hong Kong. The backlash cost the league hundreds of millions of dollars. (After mounting pressure from American politicians to sever ties with a basketball academy in Xinjiang, the N.B.A. disclosed in July that it had already done so.) Disney has long argued that its infractions are unfairly magnified because its brand provides a convenient punching bag. A lot of American companies had operations in Xinjiang in 2018, and some still source goods there. Apologizing for the Xinjiang credits could anger China and threaten the release of future movies. China blocked the release of Disney's animated "Mulan" for eight months in the late 1990s after the company backed Martin Scorsese's "Kundun," a film seen as sympathetic to the Dalai Lama. The animated "Mulan" bombed in China as a result. "On one hand, Disney supports Black Lives Matter and the MeToo movement and has been responsive to calls for inclusion by making a movie like 'Mulan' with an all Asian cast and a female director," said Michael Berry, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. "On the other, it has to be very careful on the topic of human rights in China. That's business, of course, but it's also hypocritical, and it makes some people angry." It remains to be seen how "Mulan" will fare in China. The country's 70,000 theaters have reopened, but most are still limiting capacity to 50 percent as a coronavirus precaution. Rampant piracy and chilly reviews could also cut into ticket sales. On Friday, theaters in China were decked out with large posters of a fierce looking Ms. Liu as Mulan, clad in a red robe and wielding a sword as her long black tresses billowed behind her. At one Beijing cinema, moviegoers were invited to test their archery skills. By the end of the day, "Mulan" had taken in a humdrum 8 million. "The Lion King," released last year, collected 13 million on its first day in China. Detail oriented Disney set out to make a movie that rang true to Chinese audiences in aspects big and small much as the company approached Shanghai Disneyland. It infused the park with myriad Chinese elements and avoided classic Disney rides to circumvent cries of cultural imperialism. "I had an army of Chinese advisers," Ms. Caro, the film's director, told the Xinhua News Agency. Many Chinese feel an intense ownership of the character of Mulan, having grown up learning about the 1,500 year old "Ballad of Mulan" in school. The poem has been the source of inspiration for countless plays, poems and novels over the centuries. In the quest to make a culturally authentic film and to give "Mulan" sweep and scale Disney sought to showcase the diverse scenery of China. In keeping with China's rules on filming in the country, Disney teamed with a Chinese production company, which secured the necessary government permits. A crew filmed in the Xinjiang area for several days, including in the red sandstone Flaming Mountains near Turpan, said Sun Yu, a translator on the film. "Usually when a lot of foreigners go to Xinjiang, officials there are pretty sensitive," Ms. Sun said in an interview. "But actually our filming process went very smoothly because the local government was very supportive and understanding at the time." To find the perfect Mulan, Disney casting directors scoured the globe before choosing the Chinese born Liu Yifei. To Disney, Ms. Liu was ideal: physically fit, a household name in China (for playing elegant maidens in martial arts dramas) and fluent in English, having spent part of her childhood in Queens. Then, last summer, as tensions boiled in Hong Kong over the antigovernment protests, Ms. Liu reposted an image on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, expressing support for the police there. The backlash was swift. Prominent Hong Kong pro democracy activists quickly called for a boycott of the movie. Mr. Horn told The Hollywood Reporter that her post had caught Disney by surprise. "We don't wish to be political," he said. "And to get dragged into a political discussion, I would argue, is sort of inherently unfair. We are not politicians." As Disney's marketing campaign for "Mulan" ramped up this year, other contretemps surfaced. There were complaints about a lack of Asians among the core creative team; cries of sacrilege that Mushu, a wisecracking dragon in Disney's animated version, had been jettisoned; and grumbles that this telling of the Mulan tale seemed to pander to Chinese nationalism. The internet storms had mostly died down by the time "Mulan" arrived on Disney on Sept. 4. The credits changed that. As many as one million Uighurs a predominantly Muslim, Turkic speaking ethnic minority have been rounded up into mass detention centers in Xinjiang in what advocates of human rights have called the worst abuse in China in decades. The entities mentioned in the movie's credits included a local police bureau that the Trump administration blacklisted last year from doing business with U.S. companies. As the backlash over Xinjiang mounted, China ordered major media outlets to limit their coverage of "Mulan," according to three people familiar with the matter. Still, on Friday night, the Emperor Cinema in Beijing was set for a "Mulan" party. Some moviegoers wore red, in homage to the title character, while others opted for a more traditional Chinese look: flowing robes and bejeweled hair accessories. After the screening, two traditional Chinese opera singers dressed in elaborate red and yellow costumes took the stage to perform an excerpt from a well known Henan Opera rendition of "Mulan" called "Who Says Women Are Inferior to Men?" The movie had already been playing in China, thanks to pirated versions on the internet. By Friday's opening, there were more than 76,000 reviews on Douban, a popular Chinese review website. Most were tepid, averaging 4.7 out of 10 stars. (The 1998 animated version had 7.8 stars.) In a review posted on Weibo, Luo Jin, a Chinese film critic who goes by the nom de plume Magasa, called the film "General Tso's Chicken" an Americanized take on Chinese culture. "Some people are just going to be against these Hollywood takes on Chinese movies no matter how well made the movie might be," Mr. Luo said in a phone interview. "For them, the thinking is like, 'Who are you to appropriate our culture for your own benefit?'" Brooks Barnes reported from Los Angeles, and Amy Qin from Taipei, Taiwan. Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing, and Amy Chang Chien from Taipei. Claire Fu contributed research from Beijing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
First, it seems only fair to mention that those looking for a book about the enduring legacy of James Boswell's great subject should look elsewhere. A mention of that Samuel Johnson does appear toward the end of "Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return," 's darkly inventive debut novel, as though to reassure the reader that she isn't insane to wonder if the titular character would turn out to have some connection to the 18th century lexicographer. He doesn't, but, given the novel's precipitous swerves, it would not have been shocking if he had. Riker is already revered among partisans of the bolder corners of the literary landscape for founding, with his wife, Danielle Dutton, the sublime feminist press Dorothy, a Publishing Project. His novel, like the work they have championed, rejects many of the prevailing conventions of contemporary fiction, most significantly in this case that of having a narrator who is, to put it baldly, confined to one body for the length of the narrative. This Samuel Johnson, we soon come to understand, is dead, and his particular brand of purgatory is to have his consciousness shuttled helplessly into the body of the nearest living being at hand whenever the one he is inhabiting expires. The conceit isn't without precedent: In interviews, Riker has cited Robert Montgomery Bird's "Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself," a novel published in 1836 in which the main character migrates between bodies, learning lessons about pre Civil War America. (A less highbrow recent example is the 2012 young adult novel "Every Day," by David Levithan.) But Riker brings a unique, cheerfully grotesque sensibility to his crack at this hallucinatory mini genre, emphasizing the bleakest aspects of his premise as he roves through a swath of the past half century of American life. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
America Has Two Feet. It's About to Lose One of Them. How big is a foot? In the United States, that depends on which of the two official foot measurements you are talking about. If it comes as a surprise that there are two feet, how about this: One of those feet is about to go away. The first foot is the old U.S. survey foot from 1893. The second is the newer, shorter and slightly more exact international foot from 1959, used by nearly everybody except surveyors in some states. The two feet differ by about one hundredth of a foot (0.12672 inches) per mile that's two feet for every million feet an amount so small that it only adds up for people who measure over long distances. Surveyors are such people. For more than six decades, they have been toggling between the two units, depending on what they are measuring and where. The toggling does not always work. Michael L. Dennis, an Arizona based surveyor and geodesist with the National Geodetic Survey, has been cataloging mix ups with the two feet for years and repairing errors. Last year, he had enough. "I kept running into these problems with different versions of the foot, and I thought it was ridiculous that this thing had gone on this long," he said. "So I had this secret desire to kill off the U.S. survey foot, and I'd been harboring that for years." Most states mandate the use of the old U.S. survey foot for their state coordinate systems, which allow surveyors to take into account Earth's curvature in their measurements. A few states mandate the use of the new, international foot. A handful do not specify which of the two feet should be used. Arizona, for example, is an international foot state, but when employees with the Federal Aviation Administration or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the Park Service measure there, they use the U.S. survey foot. "There's a recipe for disaster right there, and I'm getting this all the time," Dr. Dennis said. While such differences might seem merely philosophical, they can have vital and costly consequences in the real world. In one case, in a certain city that Dr. Dennis declined to name, the construction of a downtown high rise that sat in the approach path to an international airport was delayed while the building was redesigned to be one floor shorter. Occasionally, surveyors must use one foot for horizontal measurements and the other for elevations. That happened to Dr. Dennis on an engineering project in Arizona. But while the geospatial software was capable of acknowledging both feet, it would not allow for different feet in different directions. He resolved the problem by converting everything to international feet and massaging the vertical measurements, which ought to have been in U.S. survey feet. "It's bad enough that people are worried about getting sued over it or losing clients," Dr. Dennis said. And then there's the problem of knowing which foot is which. Even the National Geodetic Survey gets muddled. In a video about how not to mix up the two feet, it mixed them up. It wrongly said that 2,000 meters was 6,561.67 international feet and 6,561.68 U.S. survey feet, reversing the correct conversions. The error went unnoticed for years until Dr. Dennis watched the video recently as he plotted to kill the old foot. He was mortified. "This provides yet more evidence of the folly of maintaining two nearly identical versions of the same foot," he wrote in an email. Fed up, Dr. Dennis broached the subject of retiring, or deprecating, the old U.S. survey foot with his boss, Juliana P. Blackwell, the director of the National Geodetic Survey. The nation's geodesists are already in the throes of recalibrating the coordinates of the National Spatial Reference System, which is needed to measure where the U.S. exists geographically. It seemed like a golden opportunity to ask those who measure the nation to shift to one foot instead of two, Ms. Blackwell said. "It's one of those things that's been with you for so long you forget that there's an opportunity here to make things more accurate," she said. "The joke was, the people who knew I was doing this said I need to wear a bulletproof vest," he said. To his surprise, the directors of the National Society of Professional Surveyors were in favor of the shift to a single foot. Although the directors don't have a role in the decision, they wanted to know how their members would react. A poll told them that most support the move. But others consider it akin to blasphemy. "One thing is, let's be honest, the actual name, the U.S. survey foot," said Timothy W. Burch, the society's president elect, who is in favor of retiring the old foot. "For unfortunately a lot of Americans, especially in this day and age, anything that has to do with the U.S. and that naming quality being taken away, it's like we're under attack. So there is a portion of the country that's like, No, this is ours, this is what we're going to keep." It's no surprise that some Americans are reluctant to do away with the old foot, said Robert P. Crease, a philosopher and historian of science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the author of "World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement." "The way we measure shapes our imagination," he said. "Changing the way that you measure requires changing the imagination, and that's really difficult. It sounds like a neutral activity but it's anything but." The choice of units of measurement is also laden with history. As settlers began to colonize America, they brought with them measurements from their former countries. These included the English ell for cloth but also the far shorter Dutch ell, the Rhineland rod and the British chain and the Spanish vara for measuring land, the English flitch of bacon and hattock of grain, plus the German quentchen for gold. By the time of Independence, 100,000 units of measurement were in use, Andro Linklater, a British historian, recounted in "Measuring America: How the United States Was Shaped By the Greatest Land Sale in History." Opportunities for cheating were rife. Establishing common measurements, and therefore fair trade, became a political imperative. The first message to Congress by President George Washington, in January 1790, contained a call to lawmakers about the importance of establishing a standard system of weights and measurements. Their solution was to adopt parts of the British imperial system, including the yard. In 1815, a brass yard bar made by the Edward Troughton, a London instrument maker, arrived in the U.S. to become the American standard yard. By 1850, most states then in the union had received official copies of that yard and the other standards, a bid to make sure that every citizen and enterprise in the nation had equal access to the same units of measurement. But imperial measurements, while standard, were also arbitrarily derived. The yard, for instance, evolved from the idea that "foure graines of barley make a finger, foure fingers a hande, foure handes a foote," Mr. Linklater noted. During the reign of Elizabeth I, those 16 fingers per foot became 12 inches and were tripled to make the yard that Mr. Troughton fashioned into a bar for America. Even as the U.S. government shipped imperial standards across the country, the move to metric was gaining appeal in America and elsewhere, driven by a hunger for ever greater precision and easier replicability. Decimalized metric standards, which were being developed by French scientists at the urging of its National Assembly during the French Revolution, are based on scientific findings rather than folksy norms, and these days units increasingly relate to each other. The meter was originally based on one ten millionth the distance from the geographic North Pole to the Equator; it is now derived from the speed of light. Volume and mass, in turn, are based on the meter. By 1866, Congress legalized the use of metric units across the U.S., setting the meter 39.37 inches long, and in 1875, America was among the original 17 signatories of the Treaty of the Metre, which aimed to establish metric standards across the world. America broke with the imperial system of measurement in 1893 and officially adopted metric standards under the order of Thomas Mendenhall, then the superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, the forerunner of the National Geodetic Survey. That means imperial sounding measurements are actually derived from metric units. So at that point, the foot became a fraction of a meter. The math works like this: 36 inches divided by 3 feet is a foot, or 12 inches. Divide that by the number of inches in a meter: 39.37. Move the decimal places for ease of calculation and you get one foot is 1200/3937 of a meter, a ratio whose run on decimal places (0.3048006096....) make it slightly imprecise because the measurement will always need to be rounded. But the 20th century demanded greater exactitude, for the sake of accuracy as well as for international trade in machine tooled industrial components. "We believe that there is romance in precision measurement, and that ability to extend the absolute accuracy of measurement by one decimal place frequently demands as much in ingenuity, perseverance and analytical competence as does the discovery of a new principle or effect in science," Allen V. Astin, then the director of the National Bureau of Standards, said in a speech to the American Physical Society in 1953. In 1959, the U.S. redefined the foot to align with international standards, making it exactly 0.3048 of a meter, a difference of two parts per million from the old foot. The new foot became known as the international foot. The government allowed geodesists and surveyors to keep using the foot of 1893, which became known as the U.S. survey foot, in deference to the historical measurements they relied on, with the understanding that they would eventually embrace the new foot. Whether they embrace the new one or not, the old foot will be obsolete as of Jan. 1, 2023, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the agency within the Department of Commerce with the authority to fix weights and measures for the U.S. "At that point, we will discourage everyone from using the U.S. survey foot," said Elizabeth Benham, the institute's metric program coordinator. The switch to a single foot, which will be known as either the international foot or simply the foot, is too subtle to require surveyors to purchase new yardsticks or measuring tapes, but it is part of an intellectual retooling among those who, as Mr. Linklater wrote, practice the "masochistic science" of land measurement. Once, surveyors depended on handwritten deeds or plaques with century old notes to describe plots of land, said Mr. Burch of the National Society of Professional Surveyors. Later, when Mr. Burch learned the profession from his father in the 1980s, each job felt like its own world, he said. Today, thanks to global navigational satellite systems such as GPS, every measurement is part of a master global coordinate system. The way Mr. Burch sees it, moving to a single American foot is a small step in the long march toward standardization and precision. "It's funny how protective people have gotten over this change," Mr. Burch said. "It's just not taking into account that science and technology has allowed us to get that much smarter about this big blue marble we live on." As for Dr. Dennis, his successful campaign to get rid of the old foot leaves him feeling that he has made an important contribution to America's future. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
When the idea to create the Black Girl Hockey Club hit Renee Hess almost two years ago, she couldn't have foreseen the degree to which it has insinuated itself into hockey culture in the United States and Canada. From the first handful of respondents to her social media query in October 2018 asking if other women of color loved hockey but felt uncomfortable attending N.H.L. games because of gender and race based comments directed at them, the Black Girl Hockey Club now has more than 16,000 Twitter followers. And perhaps more significantly, it has the ear of the N.H.L. executive suites and its member clubs. Hess, an associate director of community engagement and an adjunct professor at La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif., last year participated in a call with league executives on how the N.H.L. can improve its diversity efforts and engage more fans of color. Kim Davis, an N.H.L. executive vice president who works on social impact and growth, and is Black, credited Hess, 40, with "bringing a new perspective to all dimensions of our inclusion efforts." "I can't say I saw our community growing to this magnitude, but our country is in crisis and Black women have historically led the way toward social change," Hess said. "I believe we can lead the way in hockey, too." The N.H.L. announced earlier this month a wide ranging set of initiatives to combat racism and promote diversity in hockey, many in conjunction with the players' union. Players will attend mandatory inclusion and diversity training during training camp and into the beginning of next season, and all league executives will receive similar training. Additionally, an Executive Inclusion Committee will identify opportunities for change throughout hockey, and three committees will address issues specific to players, fans and youth programs. Hess applauded the league, but said there needs to be additional representation from people of color on the new committees "so that true change can happen." Hess added that she also wants the N.H.L. to take a "clear stance" and a leading position in their teams' communities on the many social, economic and cultural issues raised this summer, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. Racist acts have plagued hockey and have prompted new outrage since last November, when Canadian broadcaster Sportsnet dismissed the longtime commentator Don Cherry for making derogatory comments about immigrants on "Hockey Night in Canada" and Calgary Flames Coach Bill Peters resigned after a former minor league player accused him of directing racial slurs at him. In January, the American Hockey League suspended Bakersfield's Brandon Manning for five games for directing a racial slur at Ontario's Bokondji Imama, and in April someone hacked into a New York Rangers sponsored video chat and posted slurs against prospect K'Andre Miller, who is Black. Saroya Tinker of Canada played four years of hockey at Yale and in April was drafted fourth over all by the National Women's Hockey League's Metropolitan Riveters. She remembers being called the n word on the ice growing up in Ontario, and during her college years hearing racist comments from players, coaches and even teammates as the first Black skater at Yale. All these events, including when N.H.L. and other pro sports teams boycotted games last month after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin, highlighted what Hess considers a crucial hurdle to effecting social change in hockey: addressing hiring disparities throughout hockey organizations, particularly where they can have the most impact. "As a fan maybe I'm unique, but I have more expectations of executives and the people in power," she said. "One thing we're preaching to front offices is to hire more Black women, people of color, and L.G.B.T. people. If you want to get into the Black community, hire Black people. Nothing works better than having someone from the community doing that work." Participating with Hess and Davis in a panel discussion last month on diversity in sports hosted by She's4Sports, a network of women pushing for a larger voice, the Canadian activist and writer Shireen Ahmed challenged the N.H.L. and its teams to hire those most invested in effecting change. "At the end of the day, power and privilege rises to the top," Ahmed said. "I've always found that people who are decision makers, unless they are impacted personally by anti Blackness or oppression won't change, because why should they have to?" "How many season ticket holders are we willing to lose because we stand for something different than what we've articulated in the past? This is the training we're having with our clubs," she said. In addition to the league's diversity initiatives announced last week, individual clubs have also made headway. Most visibly, the expansion Seattle Kraken, who start play in the 2021 22 season, hired two people of color among their 11 vice presidents. Six of those executives are women. The team also hired Everett Fitzhugh, 31, as the first Black team play by play broadcaster in the N.H.L., and siblings Kyle Boyd and Kendall Boyd Tyson were hired as the director of youth and community development and vice president for strategy and analytics. Their father, Dr. Joel Boyd, is the team physician for the Minnesota Wild and was the N.H.L.'s first Black team doctor. "That is an important step toward a culture shift in that specific club," Hess said, adding that she's looking for continued progress from the league. "If hockey truly is for everyone," she said, referring to a league diversity and inclusion initiative, "then the N.H.L. needs to stop telling us and start showing us." Hess said her initial idea for the B.G.H.C was merely to create a support network for women of color who are hockey fans. "Now," she said, "it's more than just a fan club. We've been able to have an impact on the hockey community because we've learned we're stronger together. We're trying to gather enough voices so we can be loud enough to be heard, and focus on initiatives to advance social change." Floyd's death and the police shooting of Blake have intensified B.G.H.C.'s activism. Hess said the B.G.H.C. will announce specific initiatives in the coming weeks to address hiring disparities and financial barriers that inhibit diversity in hockey. "More important" she said, "we want to make sure that those who are feeling marginalized know that at least there's this space for us." As interest in B.G.H.C. grew during the 2018 19 season, Hess began convening meet ups at N.H.L. arenas so Black women could attend games comfortably as a group. Their first was a Washington Capitals game on Dec. 15, 2018, attended by Hess and about 40 others, many with hockey playing daughters in tow. The Caps, chosen because the team had two Black players at the time and two African Americans are part of the franchise's ownership group, arranged for a special tour of the National Capitol and the National Museum of African History and Culture, as well as a visit with four players after the game. "You don't have to be a Black woman to be a part of our space," Hess said. "If you're here, you're an ally. We can't do it on our own." Inclusiveness was evident at that February gathering in Raleigh, N.C. Among those attending were Melissa Royal Martinez, her husband and their three children. Her 9 year old daughter, Ripley, who is white and Hispanic, learned to skate a year ago through Carolina's First Goal program, which introduces boys and girls ages 5 to 9 to hockey and provides them with hockey equipment. "She's at an age where she already notices inequalities, so it's important for her to see Black women out there advocating, to see those role models in person," Royal Martinez said. Because the pandemic has, for now, forced games to continue without fans, meet ups like the one in Carolina are on hold. But the club is still active. Now a certified nonprofit organization, B.G.H.C. is raising money for diversity education, hockey skills training and virtual events. Earlier this year it awarded its first scholarship to 11 year old Talia Rose of Ontario, Canada, to pay for goalie equipment. Since her idea for the club took hold, Hess recognizes progress, but also realizes how embedded racism remains in hockey. "Of course, I vacillate between hopefulness and hopelessness when I continue to see the blind spots," she said. "It's frustrating and it's tiresome, but that's why we keep pushing, to make sure those who are feeling marginalized know at least there's this space for us. We should definitely criticize and make better something we love, whether it's the sport or our country." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
You could watch the final play of the Tampa Bay Rays' 8 7 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 4 of the World Series dozens of times and probably still struggle to comprehend exactly what occurred. You wouldn't be alone. "I don't know if anything like that has ever happened," Rays' center fielder Kevin Kiermaier said after scoring the game tying run on Brett Phillips's ninth inning single. Added second baseman Brandon Lowe: "I'm about to live 15 years shorter. My God, I think I lost 10 years on that last play." Saturday's game gave this World Series its first white knuckled, seesawing contest, and that was true even before it ended with the most improbable of comebacks in the most chaotic of fashions. With Tampa Bay trailing by 7 6 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, Phillips came to bat against Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen. Phillips is a light hitting outfielder, used mainly as a pinch runner or defensive replacement. His last hit and run batted in came during the regular season on Sept. 25. He is a career .202 hitter. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. But Phillips laced Jansen's 1 2 cutter into center field for a single that was probably enough on its own to score Kiermaier, who had gotten on base with a single and moved to second when Randy Arozarena drew a hard fought walk. But as he charged Phillips's hit, Dodgers center fielder Chris Taylor misplayed the ground ball. Arozarena followed Kiermaier, tearing around the bases. "From the moment of the hit, I needed to score," Arozarena said. And the speedy Arozarena might have been able to with ease had he not slipped and fallen after rounding third base. But then the Rays caught another stroke of luck: Dodgers catcher Will Smith whiffed at catching the relay throw from Max Muncy, allowing Arozarena to hop up, dash home and give the Rays an improbable come from behind victory. "When he stumbled, he got up really quick," Rays third base coach Rodney Linares said. "A lot of credit to him, because he kept his eye on the ball. It was probably a magical moment because he ended up crawling to the plate and stomping on the plate. I kind of blacked out for a minute." Added Kiermaier: "The baseball gods were on our side. I was the happiest man on the planet to see Randy score just so the game could be over with. I couldn't have took anymore from that point on." Watching from the dugout, Los Angeles Manager Dave Roberts yanked off his hat in disgust as the Rays celebrated a victory that the Dodgers had seemed poised to claim after multiple comebacks of their own. Phillips, on the other hand, used all of his energy to race around with his arms out like an airplane. "I kind of had to get out of the doggy pile because I was literally this close to passing out," he said. "It was just through pure excitement and pure joy." That capped a wild night of alternating punches between the teams. There were four lead changes in all, starting with Lowe's three run blast in the sixth inning that gave the Rays a 5 4 margin. It was, in fact, the first lead change of this World Series. Then came three more heart stopping moments. A half inning after Lowe's home run, pinch hitter Joc Pederson lined a two run single which clipped off the top of the glove of a diving Lowe that pushed the Dodgers ahead, 6 5. Another half inning later, Kiermaier erased Pederson's work with a game tying solo blast. In the top of the eighth, Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager drove a single into shallow left field off Rays reliever Nick Anderson that scored Taylor and put the Dodgers ahead again. All seven of the Dodgers' runs in Game 4 came with two outs in the inning. No other team since 1994, when M.L.B. first expanded the playoffs to include a wild card team from each league, has scored as many two out runs (57) in a single postseason. But the Rays had a two out rally of their own still to come, one that turned the game into a wondrous classic and knotted up the World Series. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
So, with both main mayoral candidates opposed to allowing horse drawn carriages in the streets, a major chapter in the history of New York may be about to close. The first horses served man here no later than the 1620s, and since then they have pulled, plodded, trotted and galloped in our service. True, they have endured many horrors under the human hand, but we have not been entirely ungrateful, and John Hooper's monumental 1894 fountain at West 155th Street and St. Nicholas Place is a moving tribute, even if it has no customers. New York in the 19th century was an astonishingly cruel place for children, for the poor, for the sick. So it was not hard to turn a blind eye to even the most ghastly kinds of animal cruelty, even after Henry Bergh founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866. Horses were routinely turned out into the street to collapse and die, days later. Drivers mercilessly beat their animals, or ran them lame, with open sores, in all weather. Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr's 2007 book, "The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the 19th Century" (Johns Hopkins University Press), suggests that the larger companies relying on horses had great incentive to treat them well. For instance, in 1874 the horsecar lines began stopping only at corners, rather than wherever they were hailed, because it was easier on the horses. There were then about 40,000 horses in New York City. The industry calculated that 2.5 miles per hour was the optimum speed for horses, because they could pull a heavy load much farther at that rate than at 10 miles per hour. Many street railway companies restricted a horse's time on the street to five hours a day. There was a parallel horse community in New York: the animals of the rich, which were brushed and washed and bedded down on thick straw in sumptuous private stables, including the block on 73rd from Lexington to Third Avenue in Manhattan; and, in Brooklyn, Vanderbilt and Waverly Avenues, which are the flanking service streets to the mansions of Clinton Avenue. Few of those horses felt the lash, or suffered bleeding wounds, or endured thirst on hot days. For the others, public fountains were erected at least as early as the 1860s, often in conjunction with those for dogs and humans. The businessman John Hooper left 5,000 in his will for what one of the most elaborate troughs in the city, at West 155th Street, designed by George Martin Huss and completed in 1894. Centered on a stone shaft, it has a wide circular basin on one side for horses, small ground level bowls for dogs and, on the other side, a drinking tap for humans. Atop the stone shaft is a pierced metal globe, illuminated from within. Few city fountains had the architectural ambition of Hooper's, but there are still about a dozen similar to the simple troughs on Central Park South at Fifth and the Avenue of the Americas now used by the carriage horses. According to research conducted by Michele Bogart, a professor at Stony Brook University who has written widely on civic art, the A.S.P.C.A. alone had put up more than 100 such fountains by the early 1900s. This burst of civic empathy took place just as the horse's place in the economy of the city was waning. According to "The Horse in the City," streetcar interests calculated in 1890 that electric streetcars cost 2 cents a mile, whereas horsepower cost 4 cents a mile. After 1900 the advent of steam and gasoline vehicles forecast the end of the horse's utility. In 1931 The New York Times reported that 8,000 horses were resident in Manhattan, served by 44 fountains and watering troughs. Horse drawn vehicles still delivered milk, ice and other items, since the horse could proceed on its own to the next delivery point, while the driver made the drop. In August of 1946 The Times profiled John Gauci, who served as the A.S.P.C.A's inspector of watering troughs, fending off people who used them as ashtrays, oceans for toy boats or basins for washing laundry. Mr. Gauci, the newspaper reported, "frequently finds dead fish in the troughs," which "horses don't like any better than you do." That summer the A.S.P.C.A. operated a horse watering truck, but it and Mr. Gauci's position were on their way out. The present controversy turns not just on the driving of carriages in Central Park, but also on the distance that the approximately 200 carriage horses must travel through heavy traffic from their stables on the Far West Side. Nineteenth century New Yorkers would be astounded at the idea that such a modest trip constitutes a hardship, but over the years, the concept that carriage operations amount to cruelty has gained ground, and the mayoral candidates, Joseph J. Lhota and Bill de Blasio, have both called for the end of the practice. It appears that the sound of clip clopping hooves, except for those of police horses, may soon vanish from the streets of New York, just as the private stables were long ago converted to studios and garages. The drinking troughs on Central Park South may go dry; you can't lead a horse to water if there's no horse. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Jessika D. Williams, outdoors at the American Shakespeare Center in Virginia, where she is playing the title role in "Othello."Credit...Melanie Metz for The New York Times Jessika D. Williams, outdoors at the American Shakespeare Center in Virginia, where she is playing the title role in "Othello." Jessika D. Williams has wanted to play the title role in "Othello" since she was a teenager. Now she's 35, with quotes from Shakespeare tattooed down both arms, and after years studying in Scotland, working in Britain and traveling the United States by van to perform in regional theaters, she finally got the part this summer, at the American Shakespeare Center, a destination theater in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. There was only one hitch, but it was a big one: the coronavirus pandemic. Actors' Equity, the labor union representing performers and stage managers, barred its members from in person performances around the country, citing safety concerns. The union then made a handful of exceptions, mostly in New England, where infection rates are low; the Virginia theater was among scores denied a waiver. The American Shakespeare Center, located in a rural community with few cases and with a company of actors who signed an "isolation covenant" and live together, decided to proceed anyway, using nonunion actors and elaborate safety protocols. Actors' Equity has been critical. The union accused the nonprofit theater of abandoning its commitment to safety and listed it as among a handful that are "no longer Equity producers." But the American Shakespeare Center sees the situation differently, noting that in normal years, it employs not only Equity and non Equity actors at its home in Staunton, Va., but also a non Equity touring ensemble that performs in Staunton as well as on the road. When the pandemic prompted the theater to cancel its main season, it decided to come up with a safety plan and stage the two plays now running with the nonunion company. In a phone interview from Virginia, Williams talked calmly and confidently about her decision, the "Othello" production and the pandemic. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation. You've been thinking about playing Othello since you were a kid. Why? I was like, "Oh, there's a Black character in Shakespeare? I've got to play it!" What do you think the significance is of playing the role as a Black woman? I was doing a lot of research into the men who have played this before me, and something that came up a lot was, how do you play this beautiful person and not fall into the trap of perpetuating the idea that Black people are overemotional, monstrous, barbarous creatures? As a woman, I feel like I was able to get around the fear of that, because it didn't have to do with being a man, it just had to do with being a human being. Also, it's just really great to hand a female a role of this size we've seen female Hamlets, female Richard IIs, we just recently saw a female Lear and I think that's important that women can tackle these epic roles. You opted to resign as a member of your union to take the role. Can you explain what happened? It was really sad, actually. To me it felt like Equity was assuming that I was being thrust into an unsafe situation, and that's not how I felt at all. But at the end of the day, I wasn't receiving any unemployment, and I needed a paycheck. I live in a van and travel from job to job, and that had just broken down. And I have a lot of love for this place and a lot of love for the people in the community. It's a small town, and the theater drives the restaurants and the small businesses. And I chose to stay. It was a really, really tough decision for me. I really hoped that Equity would understand, and I hope that they will understand in the future. But ultimately I needed a job, and there weren't a lot of other opportunities, and I felt a lot safer at the A.S.C. than if I had to pick up a job at a grocery store or go work a service industry job and find my all the way across the country during the pandemic and move in with my mother, who is elderly and at risk. It felt like the right thing to do, and I don't regret it. I do, actually. I really do. Staunton has been pretty low as far as Covid cases are concerned. We all live in one building. The theater is a two minute walk from where we all stay. No one is traveling. No one is taking public transportation. It's scary at times, but that's the nature of the world we're living in. What would you want the union to hear from you? I wish that they had considered it more thoroughly. I completely understand from their standpoint from a very New York centric and Broadway centric perspective that it just doesn't seem doable. They couldn't come down here because of the travel restrictions, but they don't really know what our theater is like or what this community is like. I wish they had considered our SafeStart protocols a little more thoroughly. I just hope that Equity understands my position in choosing to jump into survival mode and take care of myself, my immediate community, and the theater. In this production, Othello is not the only character played by an actor of color. How do you think having a diverse cast affects the way we see the play? I feel like it eliminates a lot of preconceived notions of exactly what the play is about. It's not that the play isn't racist, but the play isn't actually about racism it's about a lot. And I think that having other members of the cast of color helps to pull out and highlight other aspects of the human condition that Shakespeare is touching on in this play. Your audience is masked. How does that affect your ability to relate to them? We don't get that collective reaction. It makes you have to work harder. If I'm going to take something to the audience, or ask them a question, I really have to look into their eyes, and I might not know what I'm getting back. But if someone is leaning forward, or leaning back, we can still gather information. What are your expectations for next summer? I do hope that the American theater gets up and running. I do hope that Equity continues to work with these smaller regional theaters, because I don't think that there is a "one size fits all" here. I hope that we can get people to gather again. We've got to find a way to continue to educate and enlighten and entertain. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
6 Photographers to Look Out For at the Arles Festival ARLES, France It is a daunting task to pick through the huge choice of photography exhibited this summer at the Rencontres d'Arles all the more so in this season's baking heat. In addition to more than 50 shows listed in the program of the prestigious international photography festival, dozens of additional venues in the city and around it in the South of France have joined in celebrating the medium. This year is the 50th edition of the festival, and while much of the Rencontres d'Arles program is dedicated to 20th century photography, space has also been made for contemporary artists. Six rising photographers with work at Arles explained their approaches to the art form. Here are edited extracts from their explanations. I went to Ukraine in 2015. The country has a history of famine, wars, revolutions, annexations. Ukrainians of all generations are deeply connected by these memories. I wanted to explore how they experience life today and their hopes for the future. I spent 50 days walking the streets of Kiev with an interpreter, talking with people and shooting pictures that combined their story with my views. As a Belgian and outsider, I question who I am to tell these other people's stories, so I prefer to build a narrative with them. It was an exchange, and I actually question the authorship of these photographs a lot. I didn't want my name on the cover of the resulting book, which I called "Let Us Not Fall Asleep While Walking," but the publisher overruled me . While working on a project about Monet's paintings of cathedrals, I opened a 1950s book on French architectural heritage to a page showing the cathedral of Bourges. I became transfixed by the slow progression across the image of shadows cast by my studio's window frames. It was deeply moving to watch and wait, anticipating the inevitable outcome when the shadow would completely darken the photograph. I shot the sequence in 126 photographs. It is a contemplative, multilayered body of work timeless shadows recording the passage of time photographed over images of a cathedral 10 centuries old. As darkness engulfs the cathedral, it feels like a last breath. I also printed other images from the book in heat reactive ink: The cathedral naves slowly emerge when warm sun rays pass over the print, and disappear afterward. I was born in Shanghai, and "Experimental Relationship" was shot with my Japanese boyfriend, Moro, whom I met 14 years ago at Memphis University. I started shooting playful portraits of him, but then I included myself. The scenes reflect our roles in our relationship, the fact that I am in charge of a lot of things for both of us, which can feel heavy, but also that he takes care of me in many ways. He is often the one triggering the shutter release, when he feels it's the right moment. My vision of a man's body is not the mainstream masculine type. I look for what is closest to me and doesn't feel threatening. I think men and women are not that different. "In Jesus' Name" is part of a trilogy on economic, political and religious power. I worked within a evangelical church in my native Switzerland, the International Christian Fellowship, for over a year. When the resulting book was published, the I.C.F. leaders filed a complaint and had the courts prohibit its sales. The book reflects my personal view of what I had been given permission to photograph, whereas they were expecting something more promotional. I now show the images with banners covering the faces; on them is the exact wording of what the I.C.F. said about each photo. I long viewed Turkey as a model of democracy for the Middle East, and as a Frenchman I hoped it would join the European Union. But after the huge crackdown on opposition and journalists and the brutal resumption of the war on the Kurds, reality kicked in. I looked back over a century and realized that ever since the Armenian genocide, Turkey had methodically erased people, places and memories that came in the way of the rulers' view of the nation. What ceased to be seen or mentioned simply disappeared. In this work, I focus on the continuing conflict with the Kurds, which it is forbidden to mention in Turkey. I printed satellite images of Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey, then literally cut out the historic district of Sur, which is listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site, and which I'd seen reduced to rubble in 2015. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Like many organizations in the wake of George Floyd's killing, the board of the American Institute of Architects issued a statement the other day expressing solidarity with protesters and offering a mea culpa. "We were wrong not to address and work to correct the built world's role in perpetuating systemic racial injustice," the statement said. But "we support and are committed to efforts to ensure that our profession is part of the solution." To that end, the statement added, "we will review our own programs" and "ask our community to join us and hold us accountable." That's good to hear. So, for starters, how about stop repeating that it's OK by you for architects to design death chambers and solitary confinement cells in racially biased prisons that incarcerate and execute an overwhelmingly disproportionate percentage of African Americans? Several years ago, I wrote about a petition filed with the A.I.A. by an organization called Architects/Planners/Designers for Social Responsibility. A Bay Area architect, Raphael Sperry, leads the group. The petition asked the A.I.A. to censure architects who designed death chambers and solitary confinement facilities, which, as constituted and employed in countless American prisons, often function as instruments of psychological and physical torture. As Mr. Sperry pointed out, while the death penalty is legal in the United States, the United Nations and other human rights organizations have determined that it violates human rights. The A.I.A.'s code of ethics instructs its members to "uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors." Last year, Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, became the latest among dozens of drug companies to ban the use of its products in executions; and the American Medical Association instructs doctors not to participate in execution and torture. So why not architects, too? Its former president, Helene Combs Dreiling, explained to me at the time that "the code has to do with the way architects practice, treat each other, perform in the eyes of our clients." She said, "It isn't about what architects build." Mr. Sperry and his associates didn't give up. Last October they met with the A.I.A. National Ethics Council, which, in January, published an opinion on death chambers and solitary confinement. The opinion basically doubled down on the organization's position. A death chamber is not a problem, it reiterated, because the death penalty is legal in the United States and "the norms of our society are reflected in its laws." And if solitary confinement is a form of torture, the A.I.A. ethicists reasoned, that's the fault of those who run the prison, not an architect's problem: "Members could not be held responsible for torture policies and procedures put into place by their clients after they occupy a space, so long as the members were unaware as they were designing the space that it was intended to be used for torture." Do we need to run the numbers again? Between 1976 and the end of last year, there were 21 white defendants executed in this country for the deaths of African American victims 295 African American defendants executed for the deaths of white victims. African Americans constitute some 13 percent of the United States population but more than 40 percent of the death row population. The board members of the A.I.A. might want to watch Ava DuVernay's "13th," on Netflix, the documentary about the mass incarceration of African Americans, which, among other things, gives a vivid picture of the role that architecture plays in perpetuating a broken system. There is nothing radical about this position. That racist policing and racially biased criminal justice practices have institutionalized discrimination in the country is perhaps the single issue about which both the Koch brothers and Black Lives Matter ever agreed. Diverse architecture firms, like the New York based PAU, founded and run by Vishaan Chakrabarti, the incoming dean of the school of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, have declared as part of their mission statement a refusal to design correctional facilities. On June 4, Michael Ford, who co founded a nonprofit in the Midwest called the Urban Arts Collective and runs the Hip Hop Architecture Camp, which introduces black and brown children to architecture, made a few waves when he tweeted: "Let's list every architecture firm that has designed a jail or prison and make sure upcoming designers do not join those offices!" Fewer than 3 percent of licensed architects in the United States are African American. Last week Mr. Ford resigned from SmithGroup, one of the nation's biggest architecture firms. We spoke this week and he sent me a copy of his resignation letter, in which he explained: "Our office has recently provided master planning services for the Kenosha County Civic Campus which includes planning services for juvenile detention spaces and a jail. Recently, I learned that we also completed the City of Detroit Public Safety Headquarters. These project types are the literal structures of structural racism against black people in the United States. Wisconsin has some of the highest incarceration rates of African Americans in the United States and I will not work to further those disparities." Mr. Ford, who is African American, also added: "The death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many before them provided an opportunity for all of us to question how our morals and values are practiced in our daily lives, including our work as designers and architects." After my column ran on the A.I.A.'s rejection of Mr. Sperry's petition in 2015, an architect emailed in confidence to chastise me, saying that architects can't be held responsible for what occurs in the buildings they design, and besides, while he had never been hired to design a death chamber, he was sure the right architect could design a more humane one. This was pre Trump. I didn't think the architect's email demanded a reply. But the time has passed for moral prevarication in America. Public attitudes are swiftly shifting. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
WASHINGTON Jeffrey M. Lacker, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in Virginia, resigned abruptly on Tuesday, saying that he had broken the Fed's rules in 2012 by speaking with a financial analyst about confidential deliberations. Mr. Lacker said he also failed to disclose the details of the conversation even when he was questioned directly in an internal investigation. The confession and resignation shed light on a nearly five year old mystery. In October 2012, Medley Global Advisors, a firm that tracks policy developments for financial investors, sent a note to its clients describing previously undisclosed details of the Fed's plans for a new phase in its bond buying campaign. The information was potentially valuable to investors, who could have made money by anticipating the market's reaction when the Fed's plans were publicly disclosed. The Fed conducted an inconclusive investigation into the source of the leak. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission opened an insider trading investigation and referred the matter to the United States attorney's office in Manhattan, which then began a criminal investigation, two people briefed on the matter said. But the investigation stalled in the past couple of years, one of the people said. As the various government authorities sought to resolve the matter, negotiations heated up about six weeks ago. The statute of limitations on the case was due to expire in the fall. Mr. Lacker decided to announce his resignation after being told by the authorities that they had completed their investigation into his role, a lawyer representing him said. "Dr. Lacker has cooperated with the Department of Justice and has been informed that no charges will be brought and that the investigation as to him is complete," said the lawyer, Richard Cullen, a partner at McGuireWoods. (Mr. Lacker has a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin.) The Fed's Office of the Inspector General said Tuesday that its investigation also was now complete. It is not clear whether any other investigations are in progress. The episode occurred after the Fed said in September 2012 that it would begin to accumulate mortgage bonds until job growth improved substantially, a new chapter in its campaign to stimulate economic growth in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. On Oct. 3, a day before the Fed released an account of its deliberations, Regina Schleiger, a Medley analyst, sent a note to clients saying the Fed was likely to announce in December that it would buy Treasuries too. The note also said that Fed officials were considering a statement that the central bank would not raise interest rates before the unemployment rate fell below a threshold of 6.5 percent. The information was accurate and valuable. On the day Ms. Schleiger published her memo, the yield on the benchmark 10 year Treasury was 1.61 percent. After the Fed's official account was published the next day, the benchmark yield rose to 1.74 percent on the day. Investors who saw the memo titled "Fed: December Bound" could have profited by anticipating that movement. Mr. Lacker said Tuesday in his statement issued by McGuireWoods rather than the Richmond Fed that he had not provided any confidential information about the Fed's deliberations to Ms. Schleiger, whom he did not name. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. Instead, he said that Ms. Schleiger mentioned the information and that he had failed to make clear that he could not comment. The next day, after seeing Ms. Schleiger's memo, Mr. Lacker said, "I realized that my failure to decline comment on the information could have been taken by the analyst, in the context of the conversation, as an acknowledgment or confirmation of the information." He added, "I deeply regret the role I may have played." After the leak, the C.F.T.C. pursued an investigation under its "Eddie Murphy rule." This rule was a nod to Mr. Murphy's 1983 movie "Trading Places," which humorously exposed the legality of insider trading in commodities. In 2010, the Dodd Frank Act adopted some restrictions on federal employees intentionally providing nonpublic government information to help other people trade in certain markets. Yet the investigation stalled as the agency and Manhattan federal prosecutors were unable to serve a subpoena on Medley because it considers itself to be a news organization, the people briefed on the matter said. The Justice Department generally avoids issuing subpoenas to news organizations. Separate from the insider trading rules, the Fed had announced a new policy in 2011 restricting contact between policy makers and market intelligence firms like Medley, which traded on the perception that analysts had access to inside information. Officials were instructed to avoid conversations that might contribute to such impressions. Mr. Lacker said Tuesday that in speaking with Ms. Schleiger he may have violated this policy, too, regardless of the contents of the conversation. He acknowledged speaking with her multiple times. Mr. Lacker, 61, was the longest serving member of the Fed's policy making committee. He became president of the Richmond Fed in August 2004. He had previously announced that he planned to resign in October. The Richmond Fed said it would continue to search for a new president, and that its first vice president, Mark L. Mullinix, would lead the bank in the interim. Mr. Lacker was not a voting member of the Fed's policy committee this year. The Fed has sought to limit leaks in recent years both by sharing more information with the public and by tightening its communications policies. In a statement, the Fed said, "We appreciate the diligent efforts made to bring this matter to its conclusion." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Patricia McKissack, who with her husband transformed a career crisis into a prolific literary partnership that produced scores of children's books about black history and folklore, died on April 7 in Bridgeton, Mo. She was 72. The cause was cardiorespiratory arrest, her son Fredrick L. McKissack Jr. said. Ms. McKissack, who grew up in the segregated South and was the only black student in her sixth grade class, wove the back porch fables she remembered from childhood together with her own personal anecdotes (including a false accusation of thievery and a dinner at a whites only restaurant) in fictional narratives. She also championed black exemplars whom her husband, Fredrick, had exhaustively researched in biographies for young people of all races. "We try to enlighten, to change attitudes, to set goals to build bridges with books," she once told Prof. Jessie Carney Smith of Fisk University in "Notable Black American Women," a series of reference books she edited. Fred Jr. said his parents had shared a "missionary zeal" to write books about black personalities "where there hadn't been any before." While Ms. McKissack always said that her books were the product of a lifelong partnership with her husband, who died in 2013, most of her folkloric fiction appeared under her name alone and was written, she explained, to fill another void in the canon. "When children don't see themselves in books, they aren't motivated to read," she told Professor Smith, who has written extensively about black heroes. "If children don't read often they usually don't read well. And soon that translates into failure. I don't want that to happen, so I try to create characters children enjoy reading about." Patricia McKissack wrote folkloric fiction, like "The Dark Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural" (1992), which won a Newbery honor. Her "Mirandy and Brother Wind" (1988) won a Caldecott honor for distinguished picture book, and "The Dark Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural" (1992) won another prestigious award, a Newbery honor, for an outstanding contribution to children's literature. The couple's books won nine Coretta Scott King Author and Honor awards. The New York Times Book Review called the couple's "Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman?" (1992), about the 19th century black abolitionist and women's rights advocate, "arguably the best" biography of her for young readers. And it praised Ms. McKissack's "refreshing candor" in a 1989 biography of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson. "At first glance, it may seem the book is meant for an intelligent student in the middle grades," the reviewer, Rosemary L. Bray, wrote. "But Patricia McKissack is excellent at conveying sophisticated themes and ideas, so that 'Jesse Jackson: A Biography' can be read with pleasure by both children and young adults." Ms. McKissack and her son Fred Jr., a writer, together wrote "Best Shot in the West: The Adventures of Nat Love" (illustrated by Randy DuBurke and published in 2012), which The Times called a "gripping graphic novel." She was born Patricia L'Ann Carwell on Aug. 9, 1944, in Smyrna, Tenn. Her family moved to St. Louis when she was 3. Her father, Robert, was successively an administrator of the city jail, convention center and airport. Her mother, the former Erma Petway, was a hospital admissions aide. She was raised in St. Louis and in Kirkwood, Tenn., and moved to Nashville after her parents divorced when she was in junior high school. As a young girl, she had pen pals in three countries, wrote poetry and was a frequent visitor to her local library, which she later remembered as a lifesaver. In 1964, she earned a bachelor's degree in English from Tennessee Agricultural Industrial State University (now Tennessee State University) in Nashville, where she became reacquainted with her childhood friend Fred McKissack, who was studying civil engineering and hailed from a family of prominent architects. He proposed marriage on their second date. Ms. McKissack earned a master's degree at Webster University in Missouri while teaching English to eighth graders and writing to college students. At the same time, she wrote radio scripts and freelance magazine articles. She was children's book editor of Concordia Publishing House, an affiliate of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, from 1976 to 1981. But in the early 1980s, the couple had a transformative conversation on a park bench. She was in tears because his contracting business was failing. He asked her what she would do if she could choose anything. Write books, she said. "Let's do it," Mr. McKissack said, "and I'll help you." He closed his business temporarily, he thought and they began a three decade collaboration, working at almost identical desks in their home library. Their first book together was a biography of her mother's favorite poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, published a decade after she had been unable to find one for her students in the junior high school library. They wrote a dozen more. Her latest book, published in January, was "Let's Clap, Jump, Sing Shout; Dance, Spin Turn It Out!," a celebration of childhood stories and songs. Another, "What Is Given From the Heart, Reaches the Heart," is to be released in 2019. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Jo Galvis was 15 years old when she got a tattoo on the center of her lower back. She had been fighting with her family and living at a friend's house. What better way to infuriate her parents? Ms. Galvis, who now is 29 and lives in Queens, grew up in Colombia, where she just walked into a tattoo parlor in Bogota and glanced at a sheet of paper crammed with popular design choices that hung on the wall. She liked one design of a Japanese character (the meaning of which she did not know) and a tribal tattoo with a black curvy design (the cultural meaning of which she did not know). She chose the latter and had it placed at the center of her lower back. "I didn't think very much about what I was getting," Ms. Galvis said. She now finds herself embarrassed by the original tattoo, in part because she doesn't want to be a party to the cultural appropriation of an aborigine symbol and because lower back tattoos have come to take on a derogatory name: the tramp stamp. "In the past year, it really bothered me," Ms. Galvis said. She considered removing the tattoo, but she had heard that removal was painful and expensive. Through a friend, she met Henric Nielsen, a traveling tattoo artist currently working at Allied Tattoo in Brooklyn. Mr. Nielsen and Ms. Galvis discussed a new, larger design an oversize, intricately drawn rose that would change the entire scope of the tattoo. "I feel really happy about it," she said of her cover up tattoo, which she had done last month at a cost of 900. Some people in their 30s and 40s are having their out of favor tattoos refreshed (through a process referred to as blasting over) or reimagined altogether. The new design tends to be better thought out and researched than that which lies beneath it. Melissa Haims, 44, a sculptor who lives in Philadelphia, had not realized until she glimpsed a photograph of herself in a bikini how pregnancy had changed the shape of a star tattooed on the small of her back when she was 21. "With the expansion and contraction of my skin throughout my pregnancy and life, the tattoo really looked horrible," she said. So last year, Ms. Haims decided on a lotus to cover up the original tattoo. Her tattoo artist, Eric Eaton of the Electric Temple in Philadelphia, designed a blastover so that a purple heart covered most of the original brittle star; the lotus petals rise up from the base of the heart. Ms. Haims liked the symbolism. "A lotus grows in the mud, and so you have something beautiful that grows out of something generally ugly," she said. Clients seeking reimagined designs are giving tattoo artists new avenues for creativity. When a client came to Sarah Gaugler, the owner of Snow Tattoo in New York, seeking help with a faded tribal armband tattoo, Ms. Gaugler designed a Victorianesque woman, utilizing the old tribal design to appear as if it were a lace collar around the woman's neck. "You get something when you're younger and it means something to you then," she said. "But then you can't relate to it anymore." Ms. Gaugler's feminine tattooing style and skill at covering up was why Kate Horgan, 52, who lives in Dublin, went to her studio while on vacation in New York last month. Ms. Horgan had picked a tiny flower tattoo from a flash sheet some 30 years ago. Over the years, it became smudged and distorted. "People would ask me what it was, and it became really annoying," she said. After a lengthy conversation with Ms. Gaugler, Ms. Horgan chose a black inked sunflower cover up with three small waves trailing behind it. "The three waves represent three very personal things to me," Ms. Horgan said. Amanda Wachob, a tattoo artist in Brooklyn who has been in the business for more than a decade, attributes the rise in tattoo refreshers to a higher quality of artwork. "When tattooing evolves in the way that it has," she said, "it opens up the possibility for people to sort of get more creative than what was available in tattoo trends five or 10 years ago." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
'HUMA BHABHA: WE COME IN PEACE' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 28). This spare and unsettling sculptural installation for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden Commission includes two figures: one that is somewhat humanoid but with a ferocious mask face and that visually dwarfs the jagged Manhattan skyline behind it, and another bowing in supplication or prayer, with long cartoonish human hands and a scraggly tail emerging from its shiny, black drapery. The title is a variant on the line an alien uttered to an anxious crowd in the 1951 science fiction movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still," but it ripples with other associations: colonization, invasion, imperialism or missionaries and other foreigners whose intentions were not always innocent. The installation also feels like an extension of the complex, cross cultural conversation going on downstairs, inside a museum packed with 5,000 years of art history. (Martha Schwendener) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'CANOVA'S GEORGE WASHINGTON' at the Frick Collection (through Sept. 23). When Canova's statue arrived in Raleigh, N.C., in 1821, the American press went wild for the likeness by the Italian neoclassical sculptor of the first president, wearing Roman military dress and drafting his farewell address. Ten years later it was destroyed by fire, but the Frick has brought the full scale plaster model of the lost statue over from Italy for this smashing show that reveals how European artists were inspired by American revolutionary ideals. Canova's Washington, looming all alone over the Frick's circular gallery, wears thickly curled hair instead of the pulled back style he sports on the dollar bill, and in both his costume (leather skirt, strappy sandals) and his bearing, he embodies the ideals of the new republic, where principles come before power. Supplementary materials include a life mask of Washington and several smaller Canova models, including a nude Washington with some rather nice pecs. (Jason Farago) 212 288 0700, frick.org 'CHARTING THE DIVINE PLAN: THE ART OF ORRA WHITE HITCHCOCK' at the American Folk Art Museum (through Oct. 14). Love in the time of science that could serve as the catchphrase for this ravishing exhibition of botanical and geological illustration from the first decades of the United States. Born in progressive Amherst, Mass., a few years after the Revolution, Orra White received a first rate scientific education like few girls of her day; then, with her beloved husband, Edward Hitchcock, she painted the plants, reeds, flowers and mushrooms of New England in exquisite folios. Later, Edward became president of Amherst College, and Orra painted and drew large scale illustrations for his lessons: Paleolithic skeletons, brightly striped cross sections of volcanic earth, a massive octopus munching on a three masted schooner. While the plant and mushroom paintings are delicate and painstakingly exact, the classroom aids are boldly imaginative but both are evidence of an extraordinary life in which carnal love and religious conviction intertwined with scientific discovery. (Farago) 212 595 9533, folkartmuseum.org 'SUE COE: GRAPHIC RESISTANCE' at MoMA PS 1 (through Sept. 9). In the East Village in the early 1980s, this British American artist showed some of the strongest political art of the day, and in the most traditional of media: figurative painting, drawing and printmaking. But her kind of directness has had a hard time in a market driven world that favors the convenient slipperiness of ambiguity. As a result, Ms. Coe was left out of many of the big "political" shows of the 1980s and '90s, and has had spotty visibility since. Some the artist's great early pieces are in this long overdue survey, including the 1983 mural size collage painting titled "Woman Walks Into Bar Is Raped by Four Men on the Pool Table While 20 Watch." The show also features later pictures like "Road to White House" (1992) and selections from her recent sketchbooks. Together they indicate that her style has changed over the years, growing at once more abstract and more naturalistic, but her view of the ethical mission of art has not. (Holland Cotter) 718 784 2084, momaps1.org 'MARY CORSE' at Dia:Beacon in Beacon, N.Y., and 'MARY CORSE: A SURVEY IN LIGHT' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through Nov. 25). Light, and specifically the radiant light of Los Angeles, shaped Ms. Corse's career. She became interested not just in representing light, but also in making objects that emitted or reflected it. This duo of shows features her light boxes or "light paintings" made with argon gas and Tesla coils, as well as her paintings on canvas that include glass microspheres, like those used in the lines that divide highway lanes. Both shows are overdue representations for Ms. Corse, who was an early member of the loosely defined Light and Space movement of the 1960s and '70s in California. (Schwendener) 212 570 3600, whitney.org 'CROWNS OF THE VAJRA MASTERS: RITUAL ART OF NEPAL' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Dec. 16). Up a narrow staircase, above the Met's galleries of South and Southeast Asian art, are three small rooms of art from the Himalayas. The space, a bit like a treehouse, is a capsule of spiritual energy, which is especially potent these days thanks to this exhibition. The crowns of the title look like antique versions of astronaut headgear: gilded copper helmets, studded with gems, encrusted with repousse plaques and topped by five pronged antennas the vajra, or thunderbolt of wisdom. Such crowns were believed to turn their wearers into perfected beings who are willing and able to bestow blessings on the world. This show is the first to focus on these crowns, and it does so with a wealth of compressed historical information, as well as several resplendent related sculptures and paintings from Nepal and Tibet. But it's the crowns themselves, the real ones, the wisdom generators, set in mandala formation in the center of the gallery, that are the fascinators. (Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'GIACOMETTI' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through Sept. 12). This museum filling outing for the signal sculptor of Western modernism is rather cautious but revisionism can wait another day when the art looks as good as it does here. The Swiss artist's witty and erotic early sculpture, such as the still shocking "Disagreeable Object" (a phallic torture device with a spiked business end), enraptured the Surrealists in early 1930s Paris, but Giacometti was never content with an art of ideas, and in his filthy studio, he soon started making elongated, emaciated humanoids that have since become emblems of Europe's postwar trauma. If you know Giacometti best for the bronzes that now go for obscene sums at auction, it's a particular pleasure here to see his work in plaster, a medium he adored; the humility of the handwork testifies to his anxious mastery. (Farago) 212 423 3800, guggenheim.org 'HEAVENLY BODIES: FASHION AND THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters (through Oct. 8). Let us pray. After last year's stark exhibition of Rei Kawakubo's irregular apparel, the Met Costume Institute is back in blockbuster mode with this three part blowout on the influence of Catholicism on haute couture of the past century. The trinity of fashion begins downstairs at the Met with the exceptional loans of vestments from the Vatican; upstairs are gowns fit for angels in heaven (by Lanvin, Thierry Mugler, Rodarte) or angels fallen to earth (such as slinky Versace sheaths garlanded with crosses). The scenography at the Met is willfully operatic spotlights, choir music which militates against serious thinking about fashion and religion, but up at the Cloisters, by far the strongest third of the show, you can commune more peacefully with an immaculate Balenciaga wedding gown or a divine Valentino gown embroidered with Cranach's Adam and Eve. (Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION' at the Museum of the Moving Image. The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of America's great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program "Sam and Friends" before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft faced Kermit, was fashioned from his mother's old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show," though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace and love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and storyboards and rediscover some old friends. (Farago) 718 784 0077, movingimage.us 'HISTORY REFUSED TO DIE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE SOULS GROWN DEEP FOUNDATION GIFT' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 23). This inspired foundation is dispersing around 1,200 works by black self taught artists from the American South to museums across the country. The Met's exhibition of 29 of the 57 pieces it received proposes an exciting broadening of postwar art. It is dominated by the dialogue between the rough hewed relief paintings of Thornton Dial and the geometrically, chromatically brilliant quilts of the Gee's Bend collective. But much else chimes in, including works by Purvis Young, Joe Minter and Lonnie Holley. (Roberta Smith) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'BODYS ISEK KINGELEZ: CITY DREAMS' at the Museum of Modern Art (through Jan. 1, 2019). The first comprehensive survey of the Congolese artist is a euphoric exhibition as utopian wonderland, featuring his fantasy architectural models and cities works strong in color, eccentric in shape, loaded with enthralling details and futuristic aura. Mr. Kingelez (1948 2015) was convinced that the world had never seen a vision like his, and this beautifully designed show bears him out. (Smith) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'THE LONG RUN' at the Museum of Modern Art (through Nov. 4). The museum upends its cherished Modern narrative of ceaseless progress by mostly young (white) men. Instead we see works by artists 45 and older who have just kept on keeping on, regardless of attention or reward, sometimes saving the best for last. Art here is an older person's game, a pursuit of a deepening personal vision over innovation. Winding through 17 galleries, the installation is alternatively visually or thematically acute and altogether inspiring. (Smith) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'THE MAGIC OF HANDWRITING' at the Morgan Library Museum (through Sept. 16). With polemicists lamenting that cursive is going the way of the dodo and old school devotees of pen and paper posting their work on social media with hashtags like snailmail and penpal, this exhibition at the Morgan might seem at first glance to be part of this nostalgia. Instead, it simply luxuriates in the humble, intimate and sometimes very messy traces that some of the great figures of history have left behind. The show features some 140 items including a papal bull from Pope Anastasius IV and a photograph signed by Rasputin from the encyclopedic holdings of the Brazilian collector Pedro Correa do Lago, who owns thousands of letters, notes, receipts, manuscripts, signed photographs and other pieces documenting notable lives in the arts, politics, science and other fields. (Jennifer Schuessler) 212 685 0008, themorgan.org 'GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: VISIONS OF HAWAI'I' at the New York Botanical Garden (through Oct. 28). Finding out O'Keeffe had a Hawaiian period is kind of like finding out Brian Wilson had a desert period. But here it is: 17 eye popping paradisal paintings, produced in a nine week visit in 1939. The paintings, and their almost psychedelic palette, are as fleshlike and physical as O'Keeffe's New Mexican work is stripped and metaphysical. The other star of the show, fittingly, is Hawaii, and the garden has mounted a living display of the subjects depicted in the artwork. As much as they might look like the products of an artist's imagination, the plants and flowers in the Enid Haupt Conservatory are boastfully real. On Aloha Nights every other Saturday, the garden is staging a cultural complement of activities, including lei making, hula lessons and ukulele performances. (William L. Hamilton) 718 817 8700, nybg.org 'SCENES FROM THE COLLECTION' at the Jewish Museum. After a surgical renovation to its grand pile on Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Museum has reopened its third floor galleries with a rethought, refreshed display of its permanent collection, which intermingles 4,000 years of Judaica with modern and contemporary art by Jews and gentiles alike Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and the excellent young Nigerian draftswoman Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. The works are shown in a nimble, nonchronological suite of galleries, and some of its century spanning juxtapositions are bracing; others feel reductive, even dilettantish. But always, the Jewish Museum conceives of art and religion as interlocking elements of a story of civilization, commendably open to new influences and new interpretations. (Farago) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org 'THE SENSES: DESIGN BEYOND VISION' at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (through Oct. 28). There's a serious, timely big idea at this exhibition: As social media, smartphones and virtual reality make us ever more "ocularcentric," we have taken leave of our nonvisual senses and need to get back in touch, literally. Thus "The Senses" features multisensory adventures such as a portable speaker size contraption that emits odors, with titles like "Surfside" and "Einstein," in timed combinations; hand painted scratch and sniff wallpaper (think Warhol's patterned cows but with cherries cherry scented, naturally); and a device that projects ultrasonic waves to simulate the touch and feel of virtual objects. The show also presents commissions, videos, products and prototypes from more than 65 designers and teams, some of which address sensory disabilities like blindness and deafness, including Vibeat, which can be worn as a bracelet, brooch or necklace and translates music into vibrations. And if you bring the kids, they will likely bliss out stroking a wavy, fur lined installation that makes music as you rub it. (Michael Kimmelman) 212 849 8400, cooperhewitt.org 'CHAIM SOUTINE: FLESH' at the Jewish Museum (through Sept. 16). The Russian Jewish artist Chaim Soutine (1893 1943), who spent most of his life in Paris, is best known for bloody, ecstatic paintings of beef carcasses. But it wasn't death that interested him it was the immaterial life force of the material world. Along with an instructive lineup of naked fowl, silver herring and popeyed sardines, this indispensable tribute to the transcendent but still undervalued painter centers on a stupendous 1925 "Carcass of Beef," glistening scarlet, streaked with orange fat and straddling a starry sky. (Heinrich) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org 'WAYNE THIEBAUD: DRAFTSMAN' at the Morgan Library Museum (through Sept. 23). Mr. Thiebaud has won a place in American art history for his densely slathered paintings of cakes, pies, ice cream cones, burgers, fruits and crudites. His drawings have been less celebrated, and this sweet show at the Morgan is the first devoted to his work in pen, charcoal and pastel. Mr. Thiebaud trained in commercial art and came to New York to work as a cartoonist. You can see the influence in his still lifes from the 1960s: The watercolor "Nine Jelly Apples" (1964) depicts the candied fruits to advantage from a high angle, while the pencil drawing "Ice Cream Cone" (1964) places the titular treat front and center, its edges as carefully teased as a model's coiffure. Mr. Thiebaud is sometimes called a realist, but that's not precise; his drawings (and paintings, too) rely less on artful imitation of appearances and affects than on a translation of low advertising into high art. (Farago) 212 685 0008, themorgan.org 'THROUGH A DIFFERENT LENS: STANLEY KUBRICK PHOTOGRAPHS' at the Museum of the City of New York (through Oct. 28). This exhibition of the great director's photography is essentially Kubrick before he became Kubrick. Starting in 1945, when he was 17 and living in the Bronx, he worked as a photographer for Look magazine, and the topics he explored are chestnuts so old that they smell a little moldy: lovers embracing on a park bench as their neighbors gaze ostentatiously elsewhere, patients anxiously awaiting their doctor's appointments, boxing hopefuls in the ring, celebrities at home, pampered dogs in the city. It probably helped that Kubrick was just a kid, so instead of inducing yawns, these magazine perennials struck him as novelties, and he in turn brought something fresh to them. Photographs that emphasize the mise en scene could be movie stills: a shouting circus executive who takes up the right side of the foreground while aerialists rehearse in the middle distance, a boy climbing to a roof with the city tenements surrounding him, a subway car filled with sleeping passengers. Looking at these pictures, you want to know what comes next. (Arthur Lubow) 212 534 1672, mcny.org 'TOWARD A CONCRETE UTOPIA: ARCHITECTURE IN YUGOSLAVIA, 1948 1980' at the Museum of Modern Art (through Jan. 13, 2019). This nimble, continuously surprising show tells one of the most underappreciated stories of postwar architecture: the rise of avant garde government buildings, pie in the sky apartment blocks, mod beachfront resorts and even whole new cities in the southeast corner of Europe. Tito's Yugoslavia rejected both Stalinism and liberal democracy, and its neither nor political position was reflected in architecture of stunning individuality, even as it embodied collective ambitions that Yugoslavs called the "social standard." From Slovenia, where elegant office buildings drew on the tradition of Viennese modernism, to Kosovo, whose dome topped national library appears as a Buckminster Fuller fever dream, these impassioned buildings defy all our Cold War vintage stereotypes of Eastern Europe. Sure, in places the show dips too far into Socialist chic. But this show is exactly how MoMA should be thinking as it rethinks its old narratives for its new home next year. (Farago) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'DAVID WOJNAROWICZ: HISTORY KEEPS ME AWAKE AT NIGHT' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through Sept. 30). This artist was there when we needed him politically 30 plus years ago. Now we need him again, and he's back in this big, rich retrospective. Wojnarowicz (pronounced Voyna ROH vich), who died at 37 in 1992, was one of the most articulate art world voices raised against the corporate greed and government foot dragging that contributed to the early AIDS crisis. But he was far from a one issue artist. From the start, he took outsiderness itself, as defined by ethnicity, gender, economics and sexual preference, as his native turf. And from it he attacked all forms of exclusion through writing, performing and object making. In the show, we find him working at full force in all three disciplines, and the timing couldn't be better. Not long before his AIDS related death, during the culture wars era, he wrote, "I'm convinced I'm from another planet." In 2018 America, he would have felt more than ever like a criminal migrant, an alien combatant. (Cotter) 212 570 3600, whitney.org 'THOMAS BAYRLE: PLAYTIME' at the New Museum (through Sept. 2). In the digital fever dream of Mr. Bayrle's work, pixelated pictures twist and bend and resolve into fuzzily warped images. Abstract films and videos pulse with psychedelic patterns. But if Mr. Bayrle's art seems like the apex in early computer design, most of the 115 paintings, prints, films and sculptures in his first major New York retrospective are actually handcrafted, generally using his signature "superform" of a large image made up of hundreds or thousands of smaller ones. Ultimately, Mr. Bayrle's work instead offers a window on digital thinking or, it could be said, how we got to where we are now. (Schwendener) 212 219 1222, newmuseum.org 'THE FACE OF DYNASTY: ROYAL CRESTS FROM WESTERN CAMEROON' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 3). In the African wing, a show of just four commanding wooden crowns constitutes a blockbuster in its own right. These massive wooden crests in the form of stylized human faces with vast vertical brows served as markers of royal power among the Bamileke peoples of the Cameroonian grasslands, and the Met's recent acquisition of an 18th century specimen is joined here by three later examples, each featuring sharply protruding cheeks, broadly smiling mouths and brows incised with involute geometric patterns. Ritual objects like these were decisive for the development of Western modernist painting, and a Cameroonian crest was even shown at MoMA in the 1930s, as a "sculpture" divorced from ethnography. But these crests had legal and diplomatic significance as well as aesthetic appeal, and their anonymous African creators had a political understanding of art not so far from our own. (Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'THE INCOMPLETE ARAKI' at the Museum of Sex (through Aug. 31). It remains a bit of a tourist trap, but the for profit Museum of Sex is making its most serious bid yet for artistic credibility with a two floor exhibition of Japan's most prominent and controversial photographer. Nobuyoshi Araki has spent decades shooting Tokyo streetscapes, blossoming flowers and, notably, women trussed up in the baroque rope bondage technique known as kinbaku bi, or "the beauty of tight binding." Given the venue, it's natural that this show concentrates on the erotic side of his art, but less lustful visitors can discover an ambitious cross section of Mr. Araki's omnivorous photography, including his lastingly moving "Sentimental Journey," picturing his beloved wife, Yoko, from honeymoon to funeral. (Farago) 212 689 6337, museumofsex.com 'RAMMELLZEE: RACING FOR THUNDER' at Red Bull Arts New York (through Aug. 26). Ever since he was a teenager in Far Rockaway, Queens a precocious kid with an artistic bent and a propensity for tinkering Rammellzee wanted to make letters into weapons. This exhibition of his work includes more than 150 pieces spanning four decades, from his graffiti in late 1970s to his gallery days and concluding with his outsider art of the 1990s and beyond. Throughout his career, he battled with the limitations of form he first drew letters in elaborate, weapon shaped forms and then built them into small rolling warriors. Later in his life he died in 2010 he was pushing back against his corporeal self, building fanciful and vivid costumes that he would wear in public, transitioning from making art to becoming it. (Jon Caramanica) 212 379 9417, redbullarts.com 'RENOIR: FATHER AND SON/PAINTING AND CINEMA' at Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (through Sept. 3). Jean Renoir transformed the history of cinema with humanistic, precisely edited films like "The Grand Illusion," and especially "The Rules of the Game" considered one of the greatest films ever made, though it was a box office flop on its release in 1939. Yet the critic he strove most to please was his father, the Impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir. This terrific dad and lad exhibition, organized with Paris's Musee d'Orsay, interweaves painting and cinema into a heartfelt survey of Jean Renoir's career, and finds paternal influence in the pastoral romance of "A Day in the Country" or the bright landscapes of his 1959 color film "Picnic on the Grass." The irony? It is Jean Renoir who now seems the more inventive artist, even if he was convinced that "I have always imitated my father." (Farago) 215 278 7000, barnesfoundation.org 'WORLD ON THE HORIZON: SWAHILI ARTS ACROSS THE INDIAN OCEAN' at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington (through Sept. 3). The Swahili coast of East Africa is home to a crossroads culture. For millenniums, the port cities in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique have been centers of long distance trade and cultural exchange from multiple directions. To the west, they were anciently connected by caravan with Central Africa; to the east, by ship with India, China and Japan; to the north, with an Arab world that included Oman, Iran and Yemen; and to the south, via roundabout shipping routes with Europe and the Americas. This exhibition makes evident both the great beauty and the deep disturbance of those connections East Africa was a nodal point on the international slave trade. (Cotter) 202 633 4600, africa.si.edu | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
How do you dress to declare fake victory? How do you convey the image of coming out on top when the top itself is shrouded in clouds and fog? In the small hours of Wednesday morning, as news organizations warned that it could be days before the election results were known, President Trump walked onto a makeshift stage in the East Room of the White House for his moment in the spotlight and announced, essentially, that, as far as he was concerned, it looked like they had won, and they didn't understand why vote counting was still going on. He did so by stripping down some of his usual stagecraft, turning what might have been a coronation extravaganza into something that looked a lot more like a war room. They were preceded by the flotilla of Trump children, who took their places at the front of the audience. They almost all went dark: Ivanka wore a black double breasted pantsuit; Kimberly Guilfoyle, black capri pants and a top; Lara Trump, a navy pantsuit. Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, wore a black dress. The only punctuation marks were Tiffany, who wore a Republican red pantsuit, and Don Jr., who was in bright blue, to match the flags. The first lady, who earlier on Tuesday had gone to cast her vote in Palm Beach wearing a sleeveless Gucci chain print silk dress, had also changed into her sartorial security blanket: a black no nonsense Dolce Gabbana pantsuit, with a crisp white shirt (the same kind of look she had worn for her official portrait). Mrs. Pence also wore black. The president wore his usual dark suit. So did the vice president. Mr. Trump's tie was blue; Mr. Pence's red. Viewed as a whole, through the screen, the picture was business as usual. It was startling to remember the asymmetric white jumpsuit with ruffle Mrs. Trump had worn on the same night four years ago, and the little blue sky dresses Ivanka and Tiffany had chosen as they took their places flanking their father after his surprise victory. That had been a scene of somewhat shellshocked brightness, and not quite coordination. This was more like a gold chandeliered, stars and stripes bunker. It was accessorized with the implicit suggestion: We're not going anywhere. We're hunkering down and digging in. Take this thing to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Black is a complicated political color, with its associations of elitism and funerals, doom and threat. It tends to be avoided by family members whose role it is to show the softer, human side of a candidate or leader; to surround him (or her), literally, in a hazy glow. But the creeping darkness mirrored the mood of the country and President Trump's own dark accusations: of voter fraud and election thievery. It's a battle, no question. Neither side is denying that one. Monday night, in her final rally in Philadelphia, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden's running mate, wore a heavy steel toned military greatcoat as protection against the elements, even as she exhorted voters with a big smile. (It was from MaxMara, the brand that made Nancy Pelosi's famous burnt orange flame throwing coat, which may or may not have been a coincidence.) Yet Jill Biden, standing with her husband as he addressed his supporters just after midnight on Wednesday morning outdoors, against a mere sprinkling of flags, just a gesture to the idea of props wore a rose colored swing coat: a light spot in the darkness. That's an old presidential tradition, harking back to Eisenhower, who shed his coat at his second inauguration to stand unshielded (at least by wool) in front of the world. Kennedy did the same, as did almost every President after him, until Obama. It's a little visual sleight of hand, a nod to old traditions and stereotypes of virility and strength and a certain internal heat. That guy doesn't need a coat: He makes his own warmth. Certainly, Mr. Biden has tried. Whether it catches fire as the last votes are counted, or is doused by the cold water of this divided country, remains to be seen. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
BEIJING Even with a jump in consumer prices in February, there were no signs of a change in China's economic policy course as it continued its strong recovery, economists and government officials said Thursday. The 2.7 percent increase in prices over the same month in 2009 was attributed in part to the Lunar New Year holiday, along with rising inflationary pressures. Other data reflected China's recent resurgence. During January and February, a period that factors out distortions from the holiday, industrial output expanded 21 percent and retail sales rose 18 percent compared with the same months a year ago. On Wednesday, a report showed robust growth in Chinese exports and imports in February. Economists said this week's data suggested that no shift in policy was in store, but they predicted higher interest rates as China tried to hold down inflation. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
In an essay about attending via video the burial of her mother, Jill Bialosky, a poet and an executive editor at W.W. Norton Co., describes mourning at a time when travel isn't safe and services are limited to a few family members. We asked readers who had recently lost someone they cared about how they've managed, both physically and emotionally. For some, it has meant sitting shiva using Zoom, asking priests to livestream services or being the solo member of a funeral procession. A selection of their stories follow. They have been edited for length and clarity. Sheltering in place but grieving together On March 29, in the middle of the shutdown, I lost the woman who had been the love of my life for 44 years. She had dementia for at least a decade and was bedbound (but mostly happy) since 2017. We will hold a memorial service at a later date. I can't let myself think about how hard it is to mourn without anyone giving me a hug, without a shoulder to cry on. I've been spending time going through old pictures, and every day I post something new on Facebook. The little comments, hearts and "love" icons are very comforting; no one asks me to explain or describe anything. Being awash in all those images makes me happy. If I shut my eyes I can see her in heaven, in the jeans she used to love wearing so much. Rebecca MacLean, New York Our family's time is now marked as B.C. and A.D. B.C. is "Before Coronavirus" and A.D. is "After her Death." Not knowing when we could memorialize my mother, we chose to write a tribute, similar to what would have been delivered as her eulogy. When I finally worked up the courage to hit "Send" and email the tribute to my entire office, the wellspring of comfort that flowed my way was overwhelming. In B.C., I would have mentioned a tidbit of the service to a peer around the water cooler. In A.D., I allowed myself to be vulnerable. Susana Limon, University Park, Md. My uncle passed away on April 3 from Covid 19 and my family couldn't grieve in person. We sat shiva virtually for days. However, we didn't feel robbed of a funeral. With Zoom we could connect with family to mourn and remember. We shared stories, cried, laughed and were reminded again of how wonderful and supportive our family is. We even saw some benefits to virtual grieving: Geography wasn't a barrier to entry; old friends who live far away and may not have flown in were able to share stories many of us had never heard, leading to a deeper understanding of my uncle's life. We could easily tailor different Zoom meetings to specific groups (work colleagues, tennis friends, extended family). Eric Phillips, Brooklyn My mom was sent to the emergency room for low blood pressure and low oxygen levels in early April. She had already been on lockdown in her assisted living home for weeks prior. She asked us (over the phone), "Why am I here?" No one was permitted to be with her or visit her. We thought she would be discharged but a few days later her test came back positive for Covid 19. A nurse called us one night and held the phone to my mom's ear while my daughter and I told her how much we loved her, how everyone was thinking of her and how we were giving her kisses all over her precious face. Initially, the funeral director said they could still allow a wake for my mother with up to 25 people, per state order. The next day we were told that there could be no more than 10 people in attendance at the funeral home. We held a small service there using technology so that others could "attend." Ten of us and the priest were in the room, safely distanced from one another. My daughter read from Proverbs, my sister read a poem written by Maya Angelou. Our beautiful mother, 85, who had been unable to speak or care for herself for the previous three years, was gone and we could not be together to hug, cry, laugh, share her stories or ours. Following the graveside service, we split up the plants and sent home the flowers in glass vases. And then we all left, heading to our respective homes, as there was no place to gather. Deb Oriola, Niskayuna, N.Y. I've lost three relatives to Covid 19 and there could be no funerals or family gatherings. As a police officer for a short period, one of the first things we were taught is that when somebody has died they simply aren't there anymore. It's just a body. That concept helped me get through dealing with death sometimes grievously unfair. When my relatives died their souls were gone and what was left was irrelevant. They don't belong to anyone. Farewells are over. You are here because they were here, and for that you should always be thankful. James Perry Thurber III, Mountain View, Calif. 'The absence of this Mass leaves our souls speechless' Losing our grandmother to Covid 19 has been devastating. Far harder, however, has been the inability of our family to physically gather and to have to postpone the opportunity to celebrate her life with a funeral. Ritual is the language of our souls, and the absence of this Mass leaves our souls speechless. Aaron Alme, Whitefish, Mont. My father was in the I.C.U. the week before he died, and my sister, mother and I were asked to leave. My mother and sister were allowed in just before he died and FaceTimed me. I can still see my father he was awake, but could not breathe. Poor Dad. His eyes looked so upset. I didn't go home to mourn and watched all of it from afar, his funeral in a livestream. I stayed away from my family for safety, mine and my daughter's. It has been horrible. My family really doesn't understand why I chose to stay back. I don't know if I understand completely. Gwen McQueeney, Middletown, Md. 'Although far from anything we ever imagined, there was a beauty in its simplicity' I lost my mother, 86, on April 3 to chronic kidney disease. The mausoleum permitted only the funeral director, two priests and me. A neighbor in my mom's retirement community suggested having the hearse drive through the community on the way to the mausoleum, and the funeral home agreed to videotape the procession and the entombment. On April 6, a bright, sunny day, I walked behind the hearse wearing my kilt (we are Scottish immigrants). Many of my mom's neighbors stood outside their homes (at a safe distance) as we passed. My niece arranged to have a bagpiper play. Although far from anything we ever imagined, there was beauty in its simplicity. Sam McPherson, Jersey City My Jewish grandmother, a lifelong New Yorker, died on April 1 in Florida. Her body was hurriedly flown back to Long Island so that she could be buried next to my grandfather in the plots they picked out decades ago. None of our family was allowed to be in attendance some could not travel and some in New York had tested positive for Covid 19. The rabbi was supposed to FaceTime my uncle, who would then record the ceremony to share with the rest of us later, but nearly hurricane like winds and rain made video impossible. With no family members present, virtually or physically, my grandmother was laid to rest. We held a family call over Zoom later that day but with nothing tangible and few details to go on, we reminisced a little but also talked about the bread we were baking, the books we've been reading and the myriad other ways we've been keeping sane. My cousin's baby laughed and jabbered and distracted us. Jessica Lobl, Honolulu There were just a few of us at the cemetery me, one of my sisters and her husband, plus the shomer, who had sat with my father's body until the burial, and the funeral director all in masks and gloves. The rabbi gave a lovely service from under her white mask. We set up an iPad with Zoom so loved ones could see and participate in the service. He was laid to rest next to his wife, my stepmother. Hopefully they will find each other and share their quarantine happily. Carolyn Ruth Kaplan, M.D., Atlanta | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Class consciousness does not flow automatically out of class identity. Being a worker does not necessarily mean you will come to identify as a worker. Instead, you can think of class consciousness as a process of discovery, of insights derived from events that put the relationships of class into stark relief. Or as the political theorist Cedric J. Robinson observed about the Civil War and Emancipation, Groups moved to the logic of immediate self interest and to historical paradox. Consciousness, when it did develop, had come later in the process of the events. The revolution had caused the formation of revolutionary consciousness and had not been caused by it. The revolution was spontaneous. We aren't yet living through a revolution. But we are seeing how self interest and paradox are shaping the consciousness of an entire class of people. The coronavirus pandemic has forced all but the most "essential" workers to either leave their jobs or work from home. And who are those essential workers? They work in hospitals and grocery stores, warehouses and meatpacking plants. They tend to patients and cash out customers, clean floors and stock shelves. They drive trucks, deliver packages and help sustain this country as it tries to fight off a deadly virus. The close quarters, public facing nature of this work mean these workers are also more likely to be exposed to disease, and many of them are furious with their employers for not doing enough to protect them. To protect themselves, they've begun to speak out. Some have even decided to strike. At the start of the crisis, in mid March, bus drivers in Detroit refused to drive, citing safety concerns. "The drivers didn't feel safe going on the bus, spreading their germs and getting germs from anybody," Glenn Tolbert, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 26, said in an interview with The Detroit News. "We are on the front lines and picking up more sick people than doctors see. This was a last resort but drivers didn't feel safe." Their actions prompted officials to increase cleaning, provide masks to passengers and drivers, and eliminate fares to keep person to person interactions to a minimum. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Anyone who saw Christopher Shinn's "Dying City" at Lincoln Center 12 years ago most likely left the theater on wobbly legs. As staged by the inventive British director James Macdonald, this three character, two performer drama about an American war widow in the early 21st century slyly transformed the terra firma of a conventional, well made play into quicksand. "Now how did they do that?" I remember thinking afterward. Of course, I sort of knew, consciously, how my sympathies had been enlisted and then turned inside out. That slowly rotating stage, which literally and imperceptibly kept altering the audience's viewpoint, helped, as did the stealthy and increasingly sinister performance by Pablo Schreiber, as a pair of identical twins. But by the end, like the young woman portrayed by the newcomer Rebecca Brooksher, I felt that I'd been good and truly gas lighted, to devastating effect. No similar currents of disorientation tugged at me during the revival of "Dying City," which opened on Monday night at Second Stage Theater. Watching this dry and sturdy revival directed by Mr. Shinn and starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Colin Woodell I felt more as if I were rereading a play I admired than actually experiencing it. Mind you, this isn't one of those revivals that make you feel you must have been hoodwinked (or drunk) the first time around. It must be said that Mr. Shinn's production as is perhaps appropriate to a dramatist's staging his own work allows you to perceive with new clarity the canny structure and thematic depth of "Dying City," which was a deserving finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. This means that you may find yourself nodding your head appreciatively as certain points register, with clean clicks of revelation. You are far less likely to shiver, or gasp, or tear up. In description, the play's setup sounds hokey, like that of a black and white movie thriller with an Oscar courting star in two roles. Kelly (Ms. Winstead, in her stage debut), a Manhattan therapist, receives an unexpected visit one night from Peter (Mr. Woodell), an actor and the identical twin brother of her husband, Craig, who was killed in the Iraq war. Mr. Woodell portrays Craig, too, in flashback sequences that find the actor exchanging a drapey T shirt for plaid flannel. On occasion, he even plays both brothers in the same scene. And it is to Mr. Woodell's credit that you, like Kelly, can always tell them apart. Peter is the unstable one, an egotistical actor who cheats on his boyfriends, walks out on a performance mid play and drinks himself into a stupor. Craig, whom Kelly met at Harvard, was working on a dissertation in American literature when, as a reservist, he was recruited to fight in Iraq after 9 11. He would seem to be a man of honor and substance. But the more you learn about the brothers and particularly about their Midwestern childhood the more you sense affinities between them that wouldn't be obvious at first. It develops, by stealthy degrees (warning: spoilers ahead), that they are both cut from a similar, deceptively silky cloth of misogyny and sadism. Whether gay or straight, actor or soldier, these brothers carry a shared legacy of poisonous masculinity. Their dad was a Vietnam vet, it turns out, and prone to scary eruptions of violence, which their mom seemed to be almost proud of. Peter and Craig have learned how to torment women, in particular without raising a fist, or a rifle. The marvel of "Dying City" is how fluidly and subtly it traces the prevalence of this toxic sensibility through so many levels of culture and politics, from the backstage of a theater to the arena of war; from the marriage bed to the back seat of a car on a family drive. Mr. Shinn carefully stacks up the evidence via seemingly casual reminiscences; an explosive collection of emails Craig sent to Peter from Iraq; even the writers, all male, that Craig was exploring for his doctoral studies. What adds to the unease here is that much of what we learn comes directly from Peter, an artist of passive aggression. How much of what he says is really true, and how much has been devised purely to mess with Kelly's understandably confused mind? There was a component of melodrama in the 2007 production of "Dying City," which flirted with the archetypes of menacing (male) villain and vulnerable (female) prey. Mr. Shinn's staging tones down that dichotomy, as do the performances. Largely known for their screen work, Mr. Woodell and Ms. Winstead register as comfortable and natural on stage. Then again, this a play about discomfort and unnatural acts. As the narcissistic Peter, Mr. Woodell seems more like an annoyance than a threat. (His relatively opaque Craig is the creepier of the two.) And Ms. Winstead seems too centered, too self reliant to be unhinged by either of these brothers. You do not fear for the nightmares of her future. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
With transmons and entanglement, scientists strive to put sub atomic weirdness to work on the human scale. YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y. A bolt from the maybe future struck the technology community in late September. A paper by Google computer scientists appeared on a NASA website, claiming that an innovative new machine called a quantum computer had demonstrated "quantum supremacy." According to the paper, the device, in three minutes, had performed a highly technical and specialized computation that would have taken a regular computer 10,000 years to work out. The achievement, if real, could presage a revolution in how we think, compute, guard our data and interrogate the most subtle aspects of nature. In an email, John Preskill, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology who coined the term "quantum supremacy," said the Google work was potentially "a truly impressive achievement in experimental physics ." But then the paper disappeared, leaving tech enthusiasts grasping at air. At the time, Google declined to comment, but many experts suspect that an official announcement, with all the bells and whistles of publicity and proper peer review, is imminent. And so quantum computing, one of the jazziest and most mysterious concepts in modern science, struggles to come of age. It's been a century since scientists discovered that, on the most intimate scales, nature operates according to principles that boggle our poor ape brains. Randomness and uncertainty rule, causes are not guaranteed to be linked to effects, and an electron or other subatomic entity can be everywhere or nowhere, a wave or a particle, until someone measures it. Most of modern technology, from transistors and lasers to the gadgets in our pockets, runs on this quantum weirdness. Lately technophiles, politicians and journalists have been worrying out loud that China is pulling ahead in the effort to harness said weirdness for industry and power, better spying and better computing. Last year Congress passed, and President Trump signed, the National Quantum Initiative Act, a plan to spend 1.2 billion to boost research into quantum technology and especially quantum computers. Ordinary computers store data and perform computations as a series of bits that are either 1 or 0. By contrast, a quantum computer uses qubits, which can be 1 and 0 at the same time, at least until they are measured, at which point their states become defined. Eight bits make a byte; the active working memory of a typical smartphone might employ something like 2 gigabytes, or two times 8 billion bits. That's a lot of information, but it pales in comparison to the information capacity of only a few dozen qubits. Because each qubit represents two states at once, the total number of states doubles with each added qubit. One qubit is two possible numbers, two is four possible numbers, three is eight and so forth. It starts slow but gets huge fast. How this is accomplished is an engineer's dream and nightmare. On a recent rainy day, Dr. Gil offered a tour of IBM's quantum operation. The trip started with an actual quantum computer, its innards exposed, on display in the lobby of the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. It looked a bit like a small, inverted Christmas tree: 3 feet high and a foot wide, a series of gold colored platforms hanging one from another and adorned with chips, wires, mysterious capsules and gleaming, curled silver tubes. Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life None With Apple's latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here's what to know. A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties' unwanted attempts to access your data. Here's a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online. Ever considered a password manager? You should. There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet. Each quantum computation starts and ends with a string of ones and zeros classical bits at the top of this assembly. Those bits are then converted into pulses of microwaves and sent down through wires and pipes to a series of 50 small superconducting devices called "transmons" the qubits dangling at the bottom. The microwave pulses transform the qubits, putting them into a state of uncertainty between one and zero. Subsequent microwave pulses manipulate them, adding or subtracting them from one another or putting pairs of them into a spooky condition called entanglement, in which what happens to one qubit affects measurements of the other. At the end, the qubits interfere with one another, like waves on an ocean, producing an output string of ones and zeros that is the answer , Dr. Gil said . All of this happens in a fraction of a second , which is as long as you can keep nature from peeking at the qubits and spoiling things. Moreover, in practice, the qubits must be sheltered from the noisy non quantum world, so the process transpires inside a dilution refrigerator a big Thermos bottle where the temperature of the chips at the bottom is kept at just above absolute zero, colder than outer space. At the other end of a long curving corridor, sitting alone in its own room, was the real, working thing. Called IBM Q System One , it was encased in a 9 foot wide cube of black glass and accessible only through 700 pound doors a half inch thick, the better to seal in the cold and seal out the universe of noise and interference. " Q" is for quantum. Designed by an architectural firm to be as modern, intimidating and opaque as the future itself , this machine is the most beautiful computer its users will probably never see. While System One went online in January 20 19, a set of starter computers called IBM Q Experience has been available online for the last three years ; anyone can log on and write and run programs on them. To date, Dr. Gil said, some 130,000 people have used it, running 17 million experiments and publishing some 200 papers. And there were more quantum devices, behind other doors, operated by scientists trying to learn how to speak nature's exotic subatomic language. "I'm convinced there are more quantum computers working here than the rest of the world combined, in this building," Dr. Gil said. Mathematicians are still debating what might be accomplished with all this quantum power when it finally grows up. Ordinary computers are good for solving "easy" problems questions that can be answered in a reasonable amount of time, like navigating the rings of Saturn or predicting the path of a hurricane. Then there are "hard" problems, whose solutions are difficult to find but, once identified, are easy to verify. Among them is the factoring of large numbers. Many modern encryption schemes, like the widely used RSA cryptographic algorithm, rely on the inability to factor such numbers in a reasonable amount of time. In 1994 Peter Shor, then at Bell Labs and now at M.I.T., devised an algorithm that a quantum computer ( a still hypothetical device at th e time) could use to factor big numbers and thus break most cybersecurity codes now in common use . In 2012 Dr. Preskill, the Caltech physicist, invented the term "quantum supremacy" to describe the potential of quantum computers to drastically outperform classical ones. That is what a Google team has been trying to do with a quantum computer called Sycamore. The calculation they are tackling is highly specialized and technical, designed mostly to show that quantum supremacy is possible. Success would be an inflection point in the march of human knowledge, a baby step toward a radically different future, like the first Wright Brothers flight. But it's only one step on a long road. "We need to be very careful about setting expectations," said Bob Sutor, vice president of Q strategy and ecosystem at IBM, which is competing with Google for a different kind of quantum supremacy . "It's easy to overhype this stuff. " Indeed, in a demonstration of just how hazy the quantum future is, and how hotly contested is its ownership, a quartet of scientists from IBM, led by data scientist Edwin Pednault, on Monday challenged Google's claim that the calculation would take 10,000 years on a regular computer. In a paper published on the physics website arXiv, and in a blog entry posted to IBM's research website, they estimated that the task could be accomplished in just two and a half days. "Because the original meaning of the term 'quantum supremacy,' as proposed by John Preskill in 2012, was to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can't, this threshold has not been met," they wrote in the blog post. They went on to invite aspiring young scientists who wanted to do quantum computing to log on to one of IBM's machines: "Go ahead and run your first program on a real quantum computer today." Google did not respond to a request for comment. In conversation, Dr. Gil maintained that the term "quantum supremacy" was misleading and rhetorical overkill: "The reality is, the future of computing will be a hybrid between classical computer of bits, A.I. systems and quantum computing coming together." He and his colleagues would rather that we not judge quantum computers by qubits at all. They prefer a new metric, "quantum volume," which takes into account both the numbers of qubits and the amount of error correction. Quantum volume is doubling every year , according to IBM, but nobody can say how far this doubling must go before things get interesting. The ultimate goal of quantum supremacy would be to use qubits to crack encryption codes. But that will take a while . Google's Sycamore computer has all of 53 qubits to its name, as does a new IBM computer, installed online at the company's Quantum Computation Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. System One, IBM's black cube from tomorrow, only has 20 qubits. In contrast, many hundreds of qubits or more may be required to store just one of the huge numbers used in current cryptographic codes. And each of those qubits will need to be protected by many hundreds more , to protect against errors introduced by outside noise and interference. All told, it could take millions of qubits to break a code using Dr. Shor's algorithm; patience is required. In the meantime, Dr. Preskill said, "it will be fun to play with them and learn what they can do." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
WASHINGTON During a meeting with Donald Trump at Trump Tower in June of 2016, with the opera bouffe builder improbably heading toward the nomination despite a skeletal campaign crew on a floor below, I asked when he would pivot. We all assumed he would have to pivot, that he would have to stop his belittling Twitter rants, that he would have to cease attacking fellow Republicans like John McCain, that he would have to get more in line with the traditional stances of his party, that he would have to be less of a barbarian at the gates of D.C. He crossed his arms, pursed his lips and shook his head a child refusing vegetables. How naive he was, I thought to myself. But I was the naive one. Trump has forced the world to pivot to him. The state of the union is upside down and inside out and sauerkraut. Trump has changed literally everything in the last three years, transforming and coarsening the game. On Friday night, he became, arguably, the most brutishly powerful Republican of all time. Never has a leader had such a stranglehold on his party, subsuming it with one gulp. As the Senate voted 51 to 49 to smother the impeachment inquiry, guided by the dark hand of Mitch McConnell, it felt like the world's greatest deliberative body had been hollowed out, diminished. McConnell let Mitt Romney and Susan Collins vote to allow documents and witnesses such as John Bolton, knowing two could strain at the leash safely. The rest of the senators fell into line as sycophantic clones of Mike Pence. The impeachment trial amounted to one side being earnest and one pretending to be. It was exactly what Nancy Pelosi feared would happen before she was reluctantly drawn into the show trial. "Now the State of the Union is going to be the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man coming down the street and standing in the rubble of what's left of the Congress," keened one Democrat on Friday night. "The Republican Party has now lost whatever control they could exert over this president, any oversight they could have. It's gone. The state of the union is there is no union. How can there be, when one side is petrified of their Godzilla?" Senator Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat, dismissed Republicans as "a cult of personality" around Trump. "This trial in so many ways crystallized the completely diametrically opposed threats that Democrats and Republicans see to the country," Murphy told The Times's Nicholas Fandos. "We perceive Donald Trump and his corruption to be an existential threat to the country. They perceive the deep state and the liberal media to be an existential threat to the country. "That dichotomy, that contrast, has been growing over the last three years, but this trial really crystallized that difference. We were just speaking different languages, fundamentally different languages when it came to what this trial was about. They thought it was about the deep state and the media conspiracy. We thought it was about the president's crimes." I feel like I have spent my career watching the same depressing dynamic that unspooled Friday night: Democrats trying, sometimes ineptly, to play fair and Republicans ruthlessly trying to win. I watched it with the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas hearings. I watched it in the 2000 recount with Bush versus Gore. I watched it with the push by W., Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to go to war in Iraq. I watched it with the pantomime of Merrick Garland. Democrats are warning Republicans that they will be judged harshly by history. But in the meantime, the triumphant Republicans get to make history. And a lot of the history that Republicans have made is frightening: the endless, futile wars, the obliviousness to climate change, the stamp on the judiciary. As Carl Hulse writes in his book, "Confirmation Bias," about the Garland fiasco: "The success in naming judges was the signal achievement of Trump's first two years. In the coming years, those judges will be among the members of the federal bench called to rule on Trump's policies and practices in cases arising from challenges initiated by increasingly confrontational Democrats and other legal adversaries around the nation. Mitch McConnell made a snap decision one night in 2016. The consequences will reverberate for decades." For hours on Friday, the House managers made their vain final arguments. Pressing for Bolton's testimony, Val Demings implored Republican senators: Aren't you worried that, if left in office, Trump will harm America's national security, seek to corrupt the upcoming election and undermine our democracy to further his own personal gain? Don't you want to hear the witnesses and see the documents that would give the full story and make this a fair trial rather than a mock one? "This is the American way and this is the American story," Demings told the Republican senators as they looked back at her, impassive or impatient. But, of course, they didn't want that. As he voted against witnesses and documents, Lamar Alexander, McConnell's pal, said Trump did something inappropriate but they just did not accept that it was impeachable, and they did not want to tear up ballots and "pour gasoline on cultural fires that are burning out there." So why not shut it down and cover it up? The books were cooked from the start. As with so many other pivotal moments in modern history, Republicans wanted to win, not look for the truth. And history, God help us, is written by the winners. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Are technology companies running too fast into the future and creating things that could potentially wreak havoc on humankind? That question has been swirling around in my head ever since I saw the enthralling science fiction film "Ex Machina." The movie offers a clever version of the robots versus humans narrative. But what makes "Ex Machina" different from the usual special effects blockbuster is the ethical questions it poses. Foremost among them is something that most techies don't seem to want to answer: Who is making sure that all of this innovation does not go drastically wrong? In the film, advances in artificial intelligence take place in a secret laboratory beyond the reach of governments and concerned citizens. (The robot's name is Ava.) That is not unlike how most innovations occur in real life today. Alex Garland, the writer and director of "Ex Machina," said in a phone interview last week: "I have no idea if technology companies are doing anything wrong or not, but they are so powerful, and the work they are doing has such potential for seismic human change of how we live, they have to have oversight. "If you've got corporations that are investigating areas that can change fundamental things about the way we live, someone needs to be looking at them." While Mr. Garland's film is focused on A.I., his concern about unchecked innovations could apply to all kinds of disciplines, including bioengineering, smart homes, self driving cars and medical nanobots, to name a few. And while these breakthroughs are intended to help humanity, they could backfire without the proper oversight. This fear isn't just confined to science fiction filmmakers, or people who wear tinfoil hats. In recent years, experts in robotics, cosmology and artificial intelligence have set out to tackle the issue of oversight, holding symposiums and creating research organizations. Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, recently donated 10 million to the Future of Life Institute, an organization that seeks to "mitigate existential risks facing humanity" from "human level artificial intelligence." The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit that tries to help humanity combat the "existential risks" of genetic engineering, nanotechnology and the so called singularity, which refers to the hypothetical moment when artificial intelligence surpasses the human intellect. And in 2012, philosophers and scientists at Cambridge University formed the Center for Study of Existential Risk, with the goal to ensure "that our own species has a long term future." Sir Martin Rees, an emeritus professor of cosmology and astrophysics at Cambridge, who helped start the research center, said that what makes the existential risk today so much greater is the ease with which a single person or company can cause catastrophic harm. "Unlike the past, the empowerment of individuals is much greater," Mr. Rees said. "You can't make a clandestine H bomb today, but you can make a clandestine biological virus or a clandestine computer virus." Mr. Rees said that his biggest worry is not robots or A.I., but biological agents. He cited research done by scientists at the University of Wisconsin, who created a bird flu virus that can be transmitted to people through the air. (Scientists later played down the danger.) It's not hard to imagine other potential doomsday outcomes. Last month, plant geneticists at the University of Minnesota created a DNA engineered potato that doesn't accumulate sugars, so it can sit on a shelf for years without rotting. It's unclear how consuming that potato may affect the human body. Scientists are experimenting with altering the human immune system to fight certain viruses. But yet we don't know if this will create super viruses. Adding to the concern is the lack of oversight, so that private companies and researchers are basically policing themselves. For example, there is no government body that oversees the development of A.I., so Google created its own ethics committee, conveniently made up of A.I. experts. But the real world implications of technological breakthroughs are often not apparent to those entrenched in those fields, said Ronald C. Arkin, a robotics expert and professor at the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines at Georgia Tech. Mr. Arkin, who has designed software for battlefield robots under contract with the Army, said that it wasn't until he saw his robots in the field that some risks became apparent. "Seeing the robots move out of our lab and into the real world gave me some pause," he said, noting that he saw robots that were becoming "killing machines fully capable of taking human life, perhaps indiscriminately." The main characters in "Ex Machina" come to this realization as well, but do so too late. Toward the end of the film, the character Nathan Bateman, a genius programmer, realized that he may have done just what he set out to do. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Jared Evans, a member of the Indianapolis City County Council, is proud that the city is among 20 finalists for one of the most coveted prizes in the country: the planned second headquarters of Amazon. He does, however, have one small question: What financial incentives did his city dangle in front of Amazon? "What have I been told?" Mr. Evans said. "Absolutely nothing." Across the country, the search for HQ2, as the project has been nicknamed, is shrouded in secrecy. Even civic leaders can't find out what sort of tax credits and other inducements have been promised to Amazon. And there is a growing legal push to find out, because taxpayers could get saddled with a huge bill and have little chance to stop it. "The only time the public may become aware if the city has promised Amazon incentives is if we win and then we need to get those incentives passed," Mr. Evans said. But another reason is gamesmanship. Some cities say they want their Amazon proposals to remain confidential to avoid showing their hand to rivals. And Amazon required the finalists to sign nondisclosure agreements that forbid the local groups to release proprietary information about the company. The city, also a finalist, submitted a bid put together by the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, which had no consultations with the City Council. With so much secrecy and bids like Austin's that involve unelected officials making promises there is the risk that taxpayers and their civic leaders will be forced to accept the proposed terms or live with turning down an enormously lucrative opportunity. Amazon, which is expected to make 235 billion in revenue this year, promises to bring the winning location up to 50,000 high paying jobs and a 5 billion investment in construction. When the competition was announced last year, 238 places vied to be considered. In January, that list was winnowed to 20 finalists, which are now waiting to find out whether their communities will land the project. There is widespread speculation that the company could cut the field down again as soon as this month, asking for best and final offers. Amazon has not offered any updates, and a spokesman declined to answer questions about the process or the company's plans on the record. The few bids that have become public are breathtaking financial packages that indicate just how much states are willing to pony up to woo Amazon. Maryland put together an 8.5 billion tax incentive and infrastructure bid, and local and state officials in New Jersey got legislative approval to offer Amazon 7 billion in tax credits and incentives to pick Newark. But that kind of transparency is the exception. "We are not releasing documents related to Amazon HQ2. We are not subject to F.O.I.A.," Michael Finney, the president and chief executive of the Miami Dade Beacon Council, a public private partnership that handled the Amazon bid, said in an email. Similar requests to Austin, Atlanta and Indianapolis met with similar responses. And when officials in Montgomery County, Md., did respond to a request for information on their bid, they delivered, among other items, a 10 page document of incentives with every single line of text redacted. Newark released its proposal only after a citizen filed a lawsuit, and officials in other places are fighting legal challenges. The mayor's office of Chicago is pushing back against a transparency seeking public advocacy group; Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are challenging rulings by the state Office of Open Records that said the cities' pitches should be made entirely public. Companies are often stealthy when searching for a location for a critical factory or relocating a headquarters, as General Electric or Bechtel have done in recent years. And it has been reported that Apple has been holding behind closed doors meetings with government leaders as it shops for a new corporate campus. It is also not unusual for states to offer up significant tax credits and incentives to attract businesses to their region. Tesla was wooed with as much as 1.3 billion in tax breaks and incentives to build its 5 billion lithium ion battery cell factory outside of Reno, Nev., and Foxconn has received close to 4 billion in incentives to build its 10 billion megaplant in southeastern Wisconsin. In the case of Amazon, it is the size and scope of its search that some officials find shocking and galling. "Typically, you see companies bid a couple of places against each other as they try to land a corporate deal," said Brad Lander, a member of the New York City Council who has not seen the city's proposal to Amazon. (New York is a finalist.) "This process is highly unusual. It creates a real race to the bottom aspect with the potential of companies bidding multiple cities against one another." It is unclear how much promised tax credits and financial incentives will weigh into Amazon's decision. Three of the first four questions Amazon asked cities to answer in their proposals were centered on incentives. But the e commerce giant also sought information on possible building sites, the local labor force, transit options, computer science programs in local schools and cost of living data. In what it did made public, Washington, D.C., pitched the idea of Amazon University, with a customized curriculum developed in partnership with Amazon and local universities. Boston, in its 218 page proposal, provided a sleek rendering of how Amazon's second headquarters would look at Suffolk Downs, a former horse track in East Boston. And Toronto's pitch highlighted its high quality of life, including low crime rates and universal health care, and Canada's progressive policies, including embracing same sex marriage and remaining a signatory of the Paris Climate Accord. "We build doors, not walls," the proposal said. The cities see more at stake than just the jobs and investment that Amazon's second headquarters would bring. Amazon says its presence and investment in Seattle have created an additional 53,000 jobs beyond its own direct hires and added 38 billion to Seattle's economy from 2010 to 2016. But there have also been serious downsides for the city. In a be careful of what you ask for address to the U.S. Conference of Mayors this summer, Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle said that housing prices in her city average 824,000, that rents have soared 57 percent in the last five years and that there are 4,000 homeless people on the streets every night. Those are the types of concerns raised by Ms. Pool, the Austin councilwoman. Ms. Pool said she thought her city lacked the infrastructure and housing to accommodate 50,000 high paying jobs and that such fast growth would alter the city's socioeconomic makeup and quality of life. Mr. Florida was on the board of directors for Toronto Global, whose bid is one of the 20 finalists, but he said he resigned this year so that he could raise concerns about the general lack of transparency in the bidding. "I think the lack of transparency of this whole process is galling," he said. "This has to be all out in the public. This is taxpayer money." Eventually, the taxpayers whose area wins will have to be told how much money Amazon was promised. And when they discover how much they will have to hand over, Mr. Florida said, "there is going to be hell to pay." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
If you have ever seen a peregrine falcon slice cleanly through the pale dawn to capture and dismember a starling midair, you have a rough idea of what will happen this weekend, when the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony is hosted to within an inch of its life by Keke Palmer. The assignment is both a perfect application and shameful waste of Ms. Palmer's talent for showmanship. Every year for the past three, the V.M.A.s have plunged deeper into record setting ratings lows, excavating previously undiscovered levels of audience indifference. If this year's broadcast follows the same pattern, the fault will lie with MTV's rigid adherence to custom and the fragmentation of cultural consumption, rather than with Ms. Palmer, 27, who is all but certain to execute her task with brazen aplomb. Ms. Palmer will present the V.M.A.s on Sunday because MTV has wisely asked her to, but she could just as comfortably be hosting the Oscars, a Zoom funeral, a vice presidential debate or "The Ellen DeGeneres Show Starring Keke Palmer." Keke Palmer holds the eye. "I'm trying to stop you from having to see that," she said, extending her arm to hold the phone as far as possible from herself. Things about Ms. Palmer that set her apart from the rest of humanity and make her particularly suited to guiding the masses through the tribulations of live television: She is energetic, charismatic and imbued with a superabundance of screen presence (for evidence, see her starring role as an inspirational 11 year old spelling champ in "Akeelah and the Bee" from 2006, or her scene stealing turn as a convivial stripper who drugs and robs men in last year's "Hustlers"); she can manifest natural gravity to an effect either comedic (see: the "sorry to this man" meme) or profound (see: footage of her pleading with armed National Guardsmen in Los Angeles to join protesters in the wake of George Floyd's death); she can control the flow of conversations by approaching sentences at a running start (see: National Guard footage); she is indefatigable (see: previous film work, TV work, musical work and also a new Facebook TV show featuring a family of five characters she created on social media, all of whom she portrays). She is possessed of remarkably bright, gaze holding eyes, enunciates like a tongue twister and speaks from her diaphragm. Perhaps most important, she is as quick on her feet as wing sandaled Hermes, the sociable messenger god who escorts the souls of the dead to the underworld much as Ms. Palmer will guide MTV viewers to the depressing Best Music Video From Home category on Sunday night. Forged in the Fires of Child Stardom In her 2017 book, "I Don't Belong to You: Quiet the Noise and Find Your Voice," Ms. Palmer who grew up in Section 8 housing outside Chicago and was starring in (and performing the theme song for) her own Nickelodeon show by age 15 writes movingly, and with lots of emoji, about her adolescence spent managing anxiety as the primary breadwinner for her family of six. Over time, the young Ms. Palmer's aversion to disappointing strangers shrank her world a world that, though it included life lessons from Laurence Fishburne, was more insular, in many ways, than the lives of children who, say, went to school. Because she was reluctant to decline photo requests from fans under any circumstances, "it got to the point where I stopped going places," Ms. Palmer said. "That's how I would deal with it. I would just not really go places where people could ask me." In promotional videos from the early aughts for the Nickelodeon themed cruise trips Ms. Palmer took as part of her duty as network talent (she starred for three seasons as a kid fashion executive on the Nickelodeon sitcom "True Jackson, VP," a job that found her on set for 10 hours a day, five days a week, for periods of six months), a teenage Keke beams at the camera while articulating her excitement about various excursions and planned onboard activities. "I didn't like them," she recalled, sheepishly, of the cruises. "I felt like SpongeBob, but I couldn't take the suit off." (This observation is not entirely abstract; Ms. Palmer's cartoon colleague SpongeBob SquarePants manifested at sea as an individual in a removable costume.) "I did the second one because I wanted my little brother and sister to be able to go, but I just stayed in my room the whole time," she said. Later, with a note of longing while describing carefree cruise scenes from her own imagination bumping into one's new cruise friends at the buffet, for instance Ms. Palmer declared: "My personality is made for a cruise!" (Ms. Palmer has never taken a non Nickelodeon themed cruise.) "My family loved them," she said with wry affection. "My brother and sister, they talk about them like they were the best time of their lives." 'Fame Is Nothing to Fool With' Ms. Palmer is the kind of go with the flow guest who makes the late night talk show exercise seem more like a spirited game than a possible violation of the Geneva Convention's interrogation rules. In video from a June Q. and A. she hosted with Joe Biden, Ms. Palmer is clearly the more at ease participant, enveloping Mr. Biden in an almost grandmotherly warmth as he frets about whether their chat function is working. ("Yep, I see you good and everything," she assures her 77 year old grandbaby.) These days, she exudes such preternatural poise, it is difficult to imagine she might ever have been otherwise. Yet when Ms. Palmer experienced her early career success, she and her family struggled to fit comfortably into a dynamic in which she, a minor and a middle child, was the chief conduit for financial stability. "I just got 'True Jackson, VP' and we move into a big house," she said, "then people come into your home and they're like, 'Oh, y'all moved here now? Wow.' You know what that's about. It's like, 'So and so's dad is going to work but mine ain't.' But mine isn't because who else is going to help keep the family up when my mom is traveling around town with me?" (Ms. Palmer used a somewhat fresher word than "me.") Her mother, a special education teacher when the family lived in Illinois, was usually the parent who accompanied Ms. Palmer on set. Ms. Palmer's father, who had had a job in polyurethane manufacturing in Illinois, and initially continued working after the move, eventually transitioned into being a stay at home parent. Ms. Palmer's older sister was a high school freshman when the Palmers moved to Los Angeles; her younger siblings were not yet in school. In her book, Ms. Palmer writes that it "became easy for them to feel like a family without me. I was like the father who always worked." "I'm a kid," she said, remembering the time, "so I'm not realizing our life is different because my family is trying to help me maintain my dream. They're all pitching in to help me keep my dream alive. Everybody's being quite selfless. But as a kid, you can't really understand or fathom all of these things." "All you can take in are other people's judgments," she said. But "those people also can't fathom or understand what's really going on either." Ms. Palmer recalled that tensions crested when she was in her late teens. It was then that, on the advice of her lawyer, she sought therapy. "At the time, at 17, my real thoughts were: 'I want to get emancipated,'" she said. "And his words to me were, 'Talk to your parents. Tell them you want to go to therapy. Because you don't have to get emancipated from them and reject them and it needs to be this thing, because you guys can't communicate what you're both experiencing. They don't know how to be the parents to a child as a child star, and you don't know how to be the child star. You guys can work through that.'" "It's kind of a traumatic thing to have a child star in the household or as a brother or a sibling," Ms. Palmer said. "Our life became revolved around Keke." Ms. Palmer's lawyer, who had worked with her since she was 11, and who had other child entertainers as clients, counseled her not to "feel weird or ashamed about" wanting to talk to someone outside her family about her unusual situation, Ms. Palmer recalled. The lawyer arranged to have Will Smith, whose first rap single became a radio hit while he was a high school senior, reach out to her. In the end, she did not pursue emancipation from her parents; today, the family is close. "Fame is nothing to fool with. It's not a game. It's not fun. Yes, it has a perk to it at times, but it's nothing that you should ever be in pursuit of. Now, you want to be in pursuit of being the fastest runner in the world and you become Usain Bolt and that brings popularity?" Ms. Palmer said. "You want to be the best person in science because you love science so much and you become whoever the ladies that Taraji played and they played in the movie?" Ms. Palmer laughed. She was trying to summon the names of the NASA mathematicians depicted in the film "Hidden Figures." "And that brings fame? That's one thing. But fame in itself, it's going to bring so much trauma to your life. Just as much as any extreme thing would, because it's an extremity," she said. "It's not easy to find somebody that can relate to the experience." Given the opportunity to tweak her childhood experience with the benefit of hindsight, Ms. Palmer insisted she would "keep everything the same because everything made me who I am." On social media, MTV's announcement of Ms. Palmer's V.M.A. hosting gig released the same day as Disney's announcement that Ms. Palmer would voice a new character in a reboot of its cartoon "The Proud Family" was greeted with delight and an affectionate ribbing. She was heralded as "Keke 'Keep a Job' Palmer," "KeKe 'I Keep A Check' Palmer," a woman who "stays BOOKED," and the "daughter of 'I have MULTIPLE jobs.'" Undisclosed at the time was another gig already in the bank for Ms. Palmer: voicing a character in a workplace comedy called "Human Resources," the coming spinoff of Netflix's adult animated series "Big Mouth." And so, one must ask: Hasn't Ms. Palmer earned a rest? (Her next album, "Virgo Tendencies Part I" also comes out on Aug. 28.) Is she a working jack of all trades entertainer by necessity? "No," she said. "I could relax. But I don't want to relax." "I'm really, really that drama nerd person. I'm really nerdy about" she silently searched for a less embarrassing phrase, couldn't find one, and so said in a strangled voice "'creating content.' I really get off on that." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Hal and Marie are young, gorgeous, vital. They're also inopportune outsiders, wreaking havoc on seemingly tranquil communities. As the catalysts in two William Inge plays of the 1950s, Hal (in "Picnic") and Marie (in "Come Back, Little Sheba") are inadvertent agents of change. But don't expect melodramatic fireworks: The shows depict lives in turmoil with deceptive simplicity an elusive quality that the Transport Group captures in the graceful revivals now in repertory at the Gym at Judson. Inge doesn't have the reputation of his contemporary Tennessee Williams, perhaps because he lacked Williams's incantatory flamboyance, which encouraged myriad staging possibilities, audience devotion and a thousand campy spoofs. But his work burst with generous humanity and possessed a sure grasp on the power of intimacy something these productions skillfully bring to the fore. The director Jack Cummings III has staged both shows in close quarters for about 85 people at a time. The Kansas porches where the "Picnic" action takes place are gone, and Dane Laffrey's scenic design consists of a few rusting deck chairs in front of a plywood back wall. There is period furniture in "Sheba," which only reinforces the play's take on claustrophobic middle class despair. In each case, theatergoers are never more than a few feet from the actors in some scenes, a few unsettling inches turning from passive viewers to emotionally invested neighbors. In "Picnic," Hal (the likable but distractingly gym buffed David T. Patterson) is an ebullient drifter who lands in a small Kansas town and starts doing odd jobs for Mrs. Potts (Heather MacRae). The mere presence of this pulchritudinous life force sends the local women into a spin, from a suddenly giddy Mrs. Potts to the young beauty Madge (Ginna Le Vine) to the single schoolteacher Rosemary (Emily Skinner). Even Madge's boyfriend, Alan (Rowan Vickers), gets a touch of Hal fever. The contaminant in "Sheba" is Marie (Hannah Elless), a pretty coed who rents a room from Doc (Joseph Kolinski) and his wife, Lola (Ms. MacRae). The older couple appear happy enough, but their obsession with Marie suggests fault lines. Doc is in Alcoholics Anonymous and sticks to meticulous routines as a way to cope; he also sneaks looks at Marie, his fixed expression imbued with guilt and creepy desire. As for Lola, she engages in conversation with deliverymen (all portrayed by John Cariani); the connection is played as a result of unbearable loneliness rather than misguided flirtation. She treats Marie like a surrogate daughter (her actual child died soon after birth), pouring onto her the affection she probably unleashed on her now missing dog, Little Sheba. The story is fairly predictable, especially with a bottle of whiskey sitting on top of the fridge like a malevolent lighthouse luring Doc to the shoals. But the play proves spoiler proof, the payoff simply devastating. "Sheba" and "Picnic" have a lot in common, most notably their juxtaposition of disappointed older characters with younger ones who still have the luxury of options. Some of these options may not be healthy or enduring, but at least the young'uns can try again. They don't realize what their older counterparts know: Nothing lasts, least of all joy and looks. Not that physical beauty is automatically helpful, either. Hal's happy go lucky exuberance covers up his failures; Madge is in the throes of existential angst, telling her mother, Flo (a poignant Michele Pawk), "When I'm looking in the mirror that's the only way I can prove to myself I'm alive." Madge's kid sister, Millie (Ms. Elless), does have a clear idea of what she wants to be (a writer) and where (New York). She's also the only one who might actually live her dream. But then, she's a tomboy, defying the expectations placed on her gender. Beyond the obvious similarities in themes and creative elements (kudos to Michael John LaChiusa's evocative music), the productions work well together because Mr. Cummings and his cast are in sync with Inge's sensibility, aware as he was that understatement is powerful. For instance, Rosemary is often played as a caricature of the archetypal sad, lascivious spinster, but Ms. Skinner finds her desperate pathos. And while Ms. MacRae ("I Remember Mama") does not reach the heartbreaking heights of S. Epatha Merkerson in the 2008 "Sheba" revival, her wide eyed innocence and soft spoken delivery are very effective. Lola's call to her mother consists of just a few lines, but its impact is devastating, and Ms. MacRae makes the most of it. It's the little things, Inge knew, and they are so big. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
They are instructions to commit to memory, essential tools in a young man's defense system: Keep your head up. Keep your eyes forward. Keep your ego down. The audience for "The Bitter Game" Keith A. Wallace's high impact performance piece at the Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival is asked to repeat these directions again and again. They are, after all, words that might make the difference between living and dying. Mr. Wallace, at this point, has assumed the tough loving persona of Pam, an African American mother in North Philadelphia, who is laying down for her son the rules for surviving an encounter with the police. His name is Jamel, and Mr. Wallace portrays him, too. Jamel is a lively, smart mouthed boy, who has been caught by mom playing with a gun. It's only a toy gun, but his mother doesn't want anything like it in her house. That's when she decides it's the moment to deliver an essential life lesson, which she couches in the terms of basketball, Jamel's sport of choice. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
No matter how much free time you have this weekend, we have TV recommendations for you. Come back every week for new suggestions on what to watch. This Weekend I Have ... an Hour, and My Favorite Color Is Gray 'Rubicon' When to watch: Now, on AMC Premiere. If you love cryptography, icy stares, complicated back stories and sumptuous sweaters, try this conspiracy drama from 2010. James Badge Dale stars as Will Travers, an intelligence analyst who is maybe getting a little too close to the truth. There are only 13 episodes, and the show ends on a cliffhanger; don't go in expecting satisfaction. But do go in expecting moody office spaces and codes in crossword puzzles. This is for you, "Mr. Robot" people. AMC canceled "Rubicon" after one season, and it has been mostly absent from streaming ever since. Its re emergence here on AMC's subscription platform is a sign of hope for those of us obsessed with other short lived, under loved niche shows: May they, too, make their way to a streamer some day soon. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
TORONTO Long before Google started working on cars that drive themselves and Amazon was creating home appliances that talk, a handful of researchers in Canada backed by the Canadian government and universities were laying the groundwork for today's boom in artificial intelligence. But the center of the commercial gold rush has been a long way away, in Silicon Valley. In recent years, many of Canada's young A.I. scientists, lured by lucrative paydays from Google, Facebook, Apple and other companies, have departed. Canada is producing a growing number of A.I start ups, but they often head to California, where venture capital, business skills and optimism are abundant. "Canada is not really reaping the benefits from this A.I. technical leadership and decades of investment by the Canadian government," said Tiff Macklem, former senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, who is dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Now bringing A.I. home is a priority for the Canadian government, companies, universities and technologists. The goal, they say, is to build a business environment around the country's expertise and to keep the experts its universities create in the country. There are encouraging signs, including new government funding, big company investments, programs to nurture start ups, and the changing habits of homegrown entrepreneurs and American venture capitalists. In its new budget, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged 93 million ( 125 million Canadian) to support A.I. research centers in Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton, which will be public private collaborations. The Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Toronto, announced two weeks ago, will be one of them. The institute begins with commitments of 130 million, about half the money coming from the national and provincial governments and the other half from corporate sponsors like Google, Accenture and Nvidia, as well as big Canadian companies like the Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and Air Canada. Mr. Hinton, who was hired by Google in 2013 but remains a professor at the University of Toronto, will serve as its chief scientific adviser. The new institute will be in the Mars Discovery District, a cluster of buildings in downtown Toronto, run by a public private partnership, that is home to many tech start ups including A.I. companies.. Major technology companies, like Google, Microsoft and IBM, are adding to their A.I. research teams in Canada. So are companies in other industries. Last year, General Motors said it was going to locate one of its research and engineering hubs for self driving cars in the Toronto suburb of Markham. And Thomson Reuters announced it would open a center for "cognitive computing" in Toronto for research into new ways professionals will use information and technologies to assist decision making. Building businesses that use A.I. is an economic imperative for Canada. The Canadian tech industry has stalled in recent years. Nortel, Canada's big telecommunications equipment maker, declared bankruptcy in 2009, and was wound down over the next several years. And BlackBerry, once a leader, has faded in the smartphone market. The experience of two start ups applying A.I. technology to drug discovery illustrate the challenges and the opportunities facing Canadian start ups. Atomwise, a company that uses A.I. technology to predict what new molecules might combat specific diseases like multiple sclerosis, was founded in 2012. Its chief executive, Abraham Heifets, earned his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Toronto. Later, Mr. Heifets went to the Bay Area and met with Timothy Draper, founder of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Mr. Draper observed that he had invested in a couple of companies trying a similar approach 20 years ago. That didn't deter him from trying again. "That's a cultural issue, a different appetite for risk and willingness to accept failure," Mr. Heifets said. Atomwise moved to San Francisco to be close to its investors and the region's enormous talent pool. By contrast, Deep Genomics, founded in 2014, has stayed in Canada, and its American based venture backers encouraged it to remain in Toronto. Brendan Frey, the chief executive, studied under Mr. Hinton at the University of Toronto, and he has spent years on research that combines deep learning A.I. and cell biology. When he hires software engineers, he asks them to make multiyear commitments. Both Atomwise and Deep Genomics were participants in different years in a program called the Creative Destruction Lab. Founded in 2012 by Ajay Agrawal, a professor at the Rotman School, the lab was set up to help technology intensive start ups. They are typically founded by a Ph.D. scientist who has worked on an idea for five years, but has little or no business experience. In 2015, the program tilted toward A.I. start ups, with 25 companies admitted. Last year, 50 A.I. start ups were admitted, and this year will likely have 75, Mr. Agrawal said. The program lasts nine months, with fall and spring terms, much like a school year. The participants gather every eight weeks in Toronto for two days to make presentations, listen to advice and set goals for the next eight weeks. At every gathering, at least one and sometimes several companies are voted out. The voters are a growing group of tech entrepreneurs and investors whom Mr. Agrawal has recruited. One of the X factors in Canada's drive to develop an A.I. industry is the Trump administration. Canadian A.I. scientists say they have received a stream of inquiries from researchers in the United States, concerned about the new administration's stance on immigration and other policies. Should there be a northward migration it wouldn't the first time. Mr. Hinton settled in Canada in 1987 in part because of America's clandestine support for the Contra guerrillas who sought to overthrow the left wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Mr. Hinton, who is from Britain, was at Carnegie Mellon University at the time, and he realized that continuing his research in America would have meant accepting funding from the Reagan administration. "I preferred Canada," Mr. Hinton recalled. Mr. Sutton left the United States to become a professor at the University of Alberta in 2003, after American troops landed in Baghdad. "George Bush was invading Iraq," he said. "It was a good time to leave." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Rather than roast in the sun, and in all likelihood bring on sun damage, sun spots and other hot weather woes, self tanner has become a reliable solution for faking a bronzed glow. The formulas have been improved so much less streaky! less orange! that, with some practice, you can use them to contour. The makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury has plenty of personal experience with the product. "Being one of the whitest girls in the world, and with my red hair, I was obsessed with how to get the best self tan," she said. Sometimes she starts with a self tan base and then enhances her color during the day with a light dusting of bronzer or layers on a sheer tint to add depth. All in all, the goal is to "cheat," she said, adding, "It's to look leaner and longer and also more youthful and glowing." Here, Ms. Tilbury walks us through the self tanner application process, adding a few tips and tricks for carving out cheekbones and elongating limbs. STEP 1 To ensure an even application, you should prep the skin with a body exfoliator to remove dead skin. This way, the self tan won't grab onto any dead skin cells, said Ms. Tilbury, who prefers Tatcha Indigo Smoothing Black Sugar Body Gommage ( 74). She rubs the scrub up and down and then in circular motions for a thorough finish. STEP 3 Add self tanner to an applicator mitt. Ms. Tilbury likes Loving Tan bronzing mousse ( 34.95), which she discovered from the beauty bloggers Desi Perkins and Katy DeGroot, a.k.a. Lustrelux, for its believable color. Then apply in circular motions on arms, legs and other desired areas before pulling the product upward. "You do the circular motions so you won't be left with any marks, and the upward motion helps elongate," Ms. Tilbury said. For tricky areas like the elbows and ankles, where self tanner may be prone to stick, she adds some of her Magic Cream moisturizer ( 100) after the self tanner to help the product spread more easily. STEP 4 Use the self tanner base about two or three days in a row. "Once you have a base, you can start contouring your body and cheating to make yourself look longer and leaner," Ms. Tilbury said. With the mitt or a big round brush, apply self tanner down only the sides of the legs, while using small circular motions so you won't be left with an obvious streak. Repeat these steps on the outer sides of the arms. STEP 1 Exfoliate the day of the application, or even a day before. Ms. Tilbury likes the Enzyme Peeling Mask by Georgia Louise ( 120). STEP 2 Overnight self tanners have come into vogue in recent years. Ms. Tilbury created her own, the Overnight Bronze and Glow Mask ( 55), to moisturize and calm the skin as well as deliver a wash of color. Whatever product you choose, she said, it is important that it has "moisturizing agents, so it doesn't attach to freckles, and that the color is very, very subtle." Apply all over, as you would a moisturizer, she said, and then "make sure you go up into the hairline, under and down the neck, and into the decolletage." "And when you're doing your cheeks," she continued, "don't forget to drag up to your ears." STEP 4 Once you're familiar with your self tanning product, you can try creating definition. After using the self tanner over your entire face for two or three days in a row, use a large brush to apply self tanner to just your cheekbones and jawline. Suck in your cheeks and follow the hollows with circular motions up to the temple. Then, using the same brush, sweep self tanner along the jawline. Be sure to blend, using the same concise circular motions. STEP 5 But leave the more complicated contouring to makeup, Ms. Tilbury advised. "It's tough to shape your chin or nose with self tanner," she said. "It can easily get dodgy." Using her Filmstar Bronze and Glow duo ( 68), she applies the contour color to further deepen the cheek hollows and jawline. Then she dusts the highlighter color on top of the cheekbones, down the nose and on the bow of the mouth. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
How to Have a High End Ski Vacation Without All the High Prices None | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Credit...Heather Sten for The New York Times Four years ago, Chanel Miller, still known as "Emily Doe" in the sexual assault case against Brock Turner, wrote a 12 page victim impact statement so powerful that it went viral on BuzzFeed and landed her a major book deal. It also helped inspire Hillary Clinton's concession speech the part where she urged young girls never to doubt their own value. Ms. Miller wrote the first draft of her statement through tears and anger in one sleepless night in May 2016. But few of her supporters knew that the previous day she had had another kind of creative outpouring. She spent hours with a black marker in hand, standing in front of three white poster boards taped to a closet door, drawing assorted bushy tailed, beaked and humanoid creatures riding scooters, bikes and vehicles of her own invention along a circular road. She created this whimsical scene before starting the excruciating process of writing the victim impact statement as a way of clearing her head and also reconnecting to a talent that has been a source of strength since childhood. "Drawing was a way for me to see that I was still there, before I went to a darker place again," Ms. Miller said slowly and thoughtfully by Zoom. "It's like the rope to lower myself is longer because I can draw." She was speaking from her apartment in New York, where she moved with her longtime boyfriend the week before the city issued a stay at home pandemic order, giving her more time for art making. Ms. Miller returned to drawing regularly after the trial, while writing her award winning 2019 memoir, "Know My Name." This year, she published pandemic themed cartoons in Time and The New Yorker, exploring the surge of racism against Asian Americans and the emotional roller coaster of facing a suddenly empty schedule during lockdown. Now, she is making her museum debut with her biggest work yet, a 75 foot long mural marking themes of personal trauma and healing, on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. While still closed because of Covid 19, the museum has installed Ms. Miller's work in its new, glass walled contemporary art galleries, visible to pedestrians from Hyde Street. "I spent the first two decades of my life shying away from my Chinese heritage, trying to be normal, bland and mainstream, like so many kids do," she said. "But this is a chance to embrace that aspect of myself publicly. I also love that they are adding this contemporary wing to address the here and now." The vinyl mural, "I was, I am, I will be," printed from her drawing, consists of three panels showing a simply rendered character she says the perfectly circular nostrils reflect her Asian heritage on a journey through physical and emotional states. In the first panel, the somewhat lumpy figure is on the ground in a fetal position, tears pooling. In the center it is in a lotus position and the tears have been transformed into an energy field. Finally, the figure is standing and advancing. The first image could easily be read as a reference to how Ms. Miller was found on the ground in 2015 outside a Stanford fraternity by two graduate students on bicycles who witnessed Mr. Turner's assault. But she says it's not quite that direct, representing "any state of being resigned," she said. "My drawings are never about the assault but how to live with it." "Sometimes people put me on a pedestal for the final level of evolution for a survivor: You've achieved what you needed to achieve, you've healed," Ms. Miller explained. "But I want to promote this idea of perpetual healing. You start curled up and might curl up again and again, but you have the tools needed to wobble your way back up." Visitors walking outside the building or circling the open ended gallery when the museum reopens can read the panels in any order. "So yes, this character is on a journey, but I like that you can loop it," she said. The curator overseeing her project, Abby Chen, said the museum neighborhood is "very diverse and economically polarized, with Thai American, Vietnamese American and tech communities all nearby," making the mural's themes of trauma and healing vital. "The idea was to make the artwork visible from the street as a source of warmth or this beacon in the dark," she said, "but now with Covid, I think the city really needs it I need it." Preparatory drawings from 2019 reveal many more creatures oppressive characters surrounding a tiny protagonist. The San Francisco Public Library's main branch is hoping to show them in 2021, when it promotes Ms. Miller's memoir in its "One City One Book" program. If this is her first official art exhibition, she has been showing her work unofficially for years: Her mother, May May Miller, a writer who grew up during the Cultural Revolution and publishes fiction and essays as Ci Zhang, used to install her daughter's work at home, at one point bringing thick gold frames from her job at the Palo Alto shop Frame O Rama. She also encouraged her children to draw on walls of their house, and Ms. Miller laughs about "her first commission" being a peace sign globe, nodding to John Lennon, that she painted in her younger sister's bedroom. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, she got a job doing illustrations for the school newspaper. But the trauma of the assault the year after graduating, and of being cast in the stereotypical victim role by the media, made drawing feel more urgent. "The scariest part of what happened after the assault is that this identity was placed on me," she said. "And that fueled me and propelled me, so creating was no longer my little hobby I felt I had to do this." In the summer following the assault, she left for Providence to take a printmaking course at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she created oddball animals like a two headed rooster inspired in part, she says, by the fantastical menageries of the Canadian artist Marcel Dzama. "I think of these little creatures as independent of me," she said of her own drawings. "If I'm not taking care of myself and giving them the time and space to emerge, then they have to sit with their arms crossed inside me where it's murky and human." That summer, struggling to function and sleep, she drew a picture of two bicycles and taped it over her bed "to remind myself that there was a point in time when two people knew for a fact that I deserved to be protected, even if I didn't understand how to help myself." Later, she drew the faces of the jurors who found Mr. Turner guilty as a "way to document these people who saw me and bore witness to my story and spit me out in a place where I knew I would be able to recover." When writing her memoirs the following years in the Bay Area, she took an illustration class at community college at night, following her therapist's suggestion to allow herself more pleasure. She made lighthearted comic diaries about such things as fostering rescue dogs, as a respite from the book. Eventually, her visual narratives would tackle tougher subjects, too, such as the history of racism toward Asian Americans. Nor does Ms. Miller seem to be chasing the standard sales driven successes of the art world. She has no gallery representation and mentions instead her desire to write a graphic novel or children's book one day, and to make artworks for bleak courtroom settings, like the one she faced, to offer victims "nourishment or companionship." She said her New Year's resolution for 2020 was to fail as much as possible, "making things that are really crappy and undeveloped until maybe they can be good. I'm way too young to confine myself to one lane and lose the ability to openly experiment." Then, after a long pause, she found another way to describe this sense of natural but at the same time hard earned freedom as an artist, more in keeping with the wild and freewheeling creatures that she likes to draw. "I hope I can be very fluid," she said. "If I were trapped like a little bug, I would try to slip out. I hope that's what I spend the rest of my life doing: just wriggling around." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Craig Moon, a former president and publisher of USA Today, has been named as the new publisher of The Las Vegas Review Journal, the newspaper announced on Thursday. Mr. Moon served for a time as the executive vice president of Gannett Newspapers, and led its flagship newspaper, USA Today, from 2003 to 2009. Since then, he has worked as an industry consultant, The Review Journal said. Michael Temchine for The New York Times He described his new role at the biggest newspaper in Nevada in a statement on Thursday as an "an exciting opportunity." He continued, "I look forward to working with everyone at The R J to deliver first class news and information that matches the interests, needs and values of our readership." Mr. Moon replaces Jason Taylor, who has served as the publisher since July. It wasn't immediately clear what prompted the change in leadership. In the statement, Mr. Moon touched on the recent turmoil at the newspaper related to its sale to the family of Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul and Republican Party benefactor, for about 140 million. "I understand that ownership transitions can create questions among staff and readers alike," Mr. Moon said. "I intend to answer these questions with my actions actions that will demonstrate my commitment to The R J, to the people who work here, and to the community we all serve." Since the transition of ownership in December, which was initially cloaked in mystery, reporters and editors at the newspaper have been grappling with heightened worries over the potential for editorial meddling by Mr. Adelson. The anxieties only deepened when less than two weeks after the sale, Michael Hengel, the newspaper's top editor, accepted what was described as a voluntary buyout. At the time, Mr. Hengel told The Times that concerns about the new owners played a role in his decision. Glenn Cook, an editorial writer at the newspaper, has served as interim editor while management seeks a replacement for Mr. Hengel. Mr. Moon's deep background in the news business he has also served stints as publisher at The Tennessean, The Arkansas Gazette and The News Press in Fort Myers, Fla. could help mollify concerns over the leadership of the newsroom. He enjoys a solid reputation in the industry, said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute. "Reading between the lines, which I guess is about all we can do at this stage, I'd say he was chosen as someone who is very seasoned and respected, sort of a steady hand at the wheel," Mr. Edmonds said. Mr. Moon spoke briefly to the newsroom staff on Thursday, The Review Journal reported. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
MELBOURNE, Australia The reigning United States Open champion, Naomi Osaka, was serving to extend her third round match against Hsieh Su Wei when she rolled her right foot while running for a ball and tumbled to the ground, prompting the chair umpire to ask if she was O.K. "No," Osaka replied, but she was laughing. Osaka, 21, who was born in Japan and is based in Florida, had already squared herself once, picking her game up after dropping the first set and falling behind 2 4, 0 40 in the second against Taiwan's Hsieh, a big seed slayer with a bedeviling slice. By rising to hold off Hsieh 5 7, 6 4, 6 1, Osaka showed that she is more than O.K. She proved that she is maturing in front of everybody's eyes like a Polaroid picture. Osaka's round of 16 opponent is Anastasija Sevastova, whom she defeated in three sets after dropping the first in the quarterfinals of a tuneup event in Brisbane two weeks ago. Osaka struggled with her composure early on against Sevastova in what turned out to be a prelude to a hissy fit. In a straight sets semifinal loss to Lesia Tsurenko, Osaka came unstrung. She committed 26 unforced errors, was broken three times and sulked between shots in a display that she apologized for later on her Twitter account. "Had the worst attitude on the court today," Osaka wrote. "Sorry to everyone that watched. I keep telling myself to be more mature but seems it'll take a while." Fast forward to Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne two weeks later. In the first set against Hsieh, Osaka produced 20 unforced errors and was broken three times. So upset was Osaka by her start that she kicked her racket on the changeover before the second set, an act of petulance that resulted in her receiving a code violation. "Of course I would have preferred not to do that, and I'm really sorry that I did," Osaka said. "But hopefully I'll learn from that moment." It seemed that Osaka had learned nothing from Brisbane when she stood five points from defeat. But a funny thing happened on her way to another dispiriting result. Osaka laughed at her plight, and that moment of mirth acted like a release valve, letting out all the pressure that had been building since she dispatched Serena Williams in straight sets in New York to win her first major title. Instead of feeling, as she put it, "that either I win the match or I die," Osaka relaxed and started playing calmer, smarter points, blasting her way into the tournament's second week. "She was just playing so well," Osaka said, referring to Hsieh, "and I think I got overwhelmed. And then early in the second set I tried doing things that I know isn't necessarily my game, like I was trying to hit higher balls and I don't even practice doing that." She added, "Then after a while, I just started thinking that I'm in a Grand Slam. I shouldn't be sad; I'm playing against a really great player so I should just enjoy my time and try and put all my energy into doing the best that I can on every point." In both her title runs in 2018, at Indian Wells and Flushing Meadows, Osaka won every first set. Her overall record last year when she lost the first set was 2 19. So she is pleased to have already posted two victories, against Sevastova and Hsieh, this month after slow starts. "I think the more matches that I play like this, the tougher ones, then maybe as I go on it won't seem as hard," Osaka said, adding: "I'm happy with how I fought. For me, that's one of the biggest things I always thought I could improve, because it sort of seems like before I would accept defeat in a way." But as Osaka showed against Serena Williams in their U.S. Open final, she too embraces the big stage. "There is the most attention during Grand Slams, and more people come out than anywhere else," Osaka said. "So definitely it makes me really happy, and I try to sort of channel that in my tennis." When Osaka is home, she trains at the academy in Boca Raton, Fla., run by the 18 time Grand Slam singles champion Chris Evert and her brother, John. "She's very nice," Osaka said, referring to Evert. "Whenever I do see her, she always comes up and says a lot of encouraging words, so I'm really grateful for her." Osaka's eyebrows danced as she divulged a secret. Whatever advice Evert offers, Osaka absorbs it without question. For some reason, she added slyly, her coach, Sascha Bajin, and Evert can say the exact same thing, but it really resonates when Evert says it. "Not that I'm, like, ragging on Sascha," Osaka said, grinning, "but it feels like I should listen to her more in a way because oh, I'm going to get so much hate I have seen what she did and she's also played. So it's a little bit more believable." Before the tournament began, Evert described Osaka as "reliable." And here Osaka is, right on schedule, two victories from a potential rematch with Williams in the semifinals. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
When a video goes viral showing violence against a black person, the shock waves are felt throughout our community. Our social feeds show a mixture of outrage, despair and an overall sense of fatigue. When another breaking news story inevitably takes center stage and pushes the violence into the background, we still feel that pain. Black people don't have the luxury of moving on when the media does. This deep seated pain, stemming from inherited racial trauma and modern examples of injustice, informs our health, both mentally and physically. Allostatic load is the measure of wear and tear on the body caused by chronic stress, and some studies suggest that "weathering" the effects of racism may shorten average life spans for black people, over time. "Anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal issues and elevated blood pressure" are just some of the medical issues that could "point to poor stress management," said Olivia Affuso, an associate professor in the department of epidemiology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. This is why, as cities erupt in protests over police brutality, black people are in desperate need of support especially from their employers. Between a pandemic endangering black lives at disproportionately high rates and the recent killings of black people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, "every black person I've spoken to is numb," Jameta N. Barlow, a community health psychologist, told me recently. "Yet, they're expected to show up to work, if they are still employed, and perform the job optimally. This is the true definition of insane expectations." There are steps black people can take to maintain their well being during these times exercise, therapy and turning off social media have shown to be beneficial in alleviating stress. But they may have a harder time extending such acts of self care to their professional lives out of fear of retaliation, particularly during a period when unemployment rates are at record highs. That's where managers come in. It is crucial for employers to check in with their employees and acknowledge the news events of the past few weeks. They should encourage self care, whatever that may mean to the individuals, and make clear there will be no penalties for those who may need to take a mental health day or temporarily take on a lighter workload. This is especially important in environments where black employees exist in predominantly white spaces and daily instances of microaggressions and tokenism abound. It is highly possible the work space is already a source of their stress, and they don't feel comfortable speaking up about what they are going through. It's up to managers to open up the lines of communication and actively listen to black workers' concerns. Actively investing in the health of employees will also go a long way toward fostering good will and a safe work environment. For the past 10 years, Dr. Barlow has acted as a trained facilitator for Emotional Emancipation Circles, or E.E.C.s, which sprang from a partnership between the Association of Black Psychologists and the Community Healing Network. These support groups, which deal head on with racial trauma, are hosted in close to 50 cities across the United States, and an employer can facilitate an in house group or encourage workers to join one. Many companies already have some version of employee resource groups in place; for those networks dedicated to addressing black workers' needs, it's imperative that they feel as though they have enough support from management during this time. Since Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012, the deaths of black people at the hands of law enforcement or white vigilantism (and the drawn out cases that result from them) have consistently dominated news cycles, often graphically so. Cellphones, Facebook Live and even Snapchat have been crucial in uncovering how these events occurred. These photos and videos jolt America awake, and they start a necessary dialogue about police brutality and race relations. It took more than two months for the men involved in Ahmaud Arbery's death while jogging in a Georgia neighborhood to be arrested and charged the online leak of a video showing Mr. Arbery's final moments was the likely catalyst for the arrests. The death of George Floyd has been shown on every news station and can easily be found with a quick Twitter or Google search. However, these images are also costly. In a study published in 2018, after participants had been exposed to police killings of black Americans including through word of mouth and media stories they were asked how many days out of the previous 30 days was their mental health "not good." The average response was 14 days. The study also found that police killings of black Americans account for an estimated 55 million additional days of poor mental health for black Americans per year, almost matching the number of poor mental health days brought on by diabetes. We are halfway through the year, and black people, as always, are braced for more footage showing our men, women and children being harmed or threatened, often by those with the job of protecting us. Yet we continue to show up to perform our jobs, many of us working on the front lines and putting our physical health at risk in the midst of a pandemic. An empathetic work environment can make a lasting impact and ease an unnecessary source of stress. We must remain vigilant in our pursuit of a more just society. But until justice swings in our direction, we have to protect our mental and physical health against the effects of racism. Our survival depends on it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
John Leguizamo is returning to Broadway once again. His critically acclaimed one man show "Latin History for Morons," which opened Off Broadway in March at the Public Theater, will move to Studio 54 starting in October, its producers announced Wednesday. In the play, Mr. Leguizamo delivers a satirical history lesson about Latino contributions to society over the years. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote in his review that it is "harshly funny" and "surprisingly poignant." In a phone interview, Mr. Leguizamo said that the show resulted from what he perceived to be "aggression" toward Latinos. "People feel like they can disrespect us," Mr. Leguizamo said. "Mostly because our contributions aren't in history books and they aren't being taught, and that's why I started wanting to do a lot of research. I started finding out about all the amazing things that we did to build America. And I'm like: 'Wait a minute. There's a real aggressive effort to erase our contributions and to keep us out of history textbooks because we have been the contributor to the making of America since the beginning of time.'" Mr. Leguizamo has a long and storied history in theater. He played seven characters in his Off Broadway debut in 1991, "Mambo Mouth," which received an Obie Award. He was nominated for multiple Tony Awards for another one man show, 1998's "Freak," which Mr. Brantley said was "more crowded with characters than any other production on Broadway, including 'Ragtime,'" and was "scathingly funny." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
"First Match," a Netflix Original movie that made its debut on March 30, begins with near surreal imagery: a shot of a blue sky with a fluffy cloud suspended therein, into which a swatch of green flies in slow motion. Other patches of color come into the frame, items of casual clothing a tank top, sweatpants and so on. The movie quickly gets down to earth once the viewer has figured out what the objects are. On the sidewalk, a teenage girl yells up to a window at the woman throwing the clothes from a high floor of an urban housing project. The exchange is too profane to be quoted here, but the combatants are a woman and her foster daughter, and their fight is about a man. The girl, indignant, gathers up the clothes and stalks away; there's a genuine truculence in her step. In the next scene the viewer learns that the accusations are true. The girl, Monique, is romantically involved with her foster mother's partner. Boyfriends are not all she steals. We also see Monique filching jewelry. "First Match" is the first feature film from the writer director Olivia Newman, and it's noteworthy in several respects the first being that it does not do much from the outset to make its central character, played with vivid ferocity by Elvire Emanuelle, conventionally likable. The viewer grows to understand and root for her, but it takes some time. Monique, or "Mo," has an absent father whom she idolizes. Back in the day he was a school wrestling star, and a composition book containing his clippings and journal entries seems to be the only thing in the world that Monique cherishes. The wrestling coach at her high school suggests the sport as an outlet for her anger, and the team members, all boys, offer few objections. But Mo only begins to take the notion seriously when she encounters her father on a street in her Brooklyn neighborhood (the movie is set in and was shot in Brownsville). She doesn't dwell much on the fact that he hadn't even let her know he was out of prison; instead she starts inviting him to wrestling matches. They renew their bond, and Mo begins to excel. Her dad, Darrel, at first relating to his daughter from a befuddled remove, begins to show interest and helps her with training. But his intentions take an ugly turn. Ms. Emanuelle's performance as Mo is certainly spectacular, but I don't think I've seen better screen acting in 2018 than Yahya Abdul Mateen II's work as Darrel. When he first encounters Mo he's in a woozy daze, carrying out the trash from a takeout place where he's minimally employed, a near hopeless figure, eyes darting this way and that. As the character begins to pull himself together, he faces forward and displays charisma and strength. It's heartbreaking and infuriating when Darrel takes his new confidence and uses it in the service of selfish, seductive deceit. You can't stop watching Mr. Abdul Mateen, even when his character is at its most repellent. "Layla M.," a 2016 Dutch picture that had its premiere as a Netflix Original on March 23, begins with a sporting event: a soccer match at which the title character, a spirited teen played by Nora El Koussour, gets into a heated disagreement with some of the male players. The first impression the character gives is one of healthy feistiness, but Layla is, as it happens, profoundly alienated. That alienation leads her into a more serious immersion in Islam, and some political awareness. Chastised by her father, who brought the family from Morocco to the Netherlands, for participating in an online protest, Layla shoots back with a reference to Geert Wilders, the right wing, anti Islam politician. "It starts with a burqa ban, it ends with Wilders as prime minister," she says. Adopting a strict mode of dress in her home, she's mocked ("Take off that potato sack"). She joins a new group of friends she considers activists for freedom of religion, calling them "the brothers and sisters I feel safe and happy with." She takes up romantically with Abdel, a soft spoken scholarly type who marries her and whisks her off to Amman, Jordan, where she finds herself unwittingly oppressed by the patriarchy she had hoped she was escaping. Co written and directed by Mijke de Jong, who has explored the worlds of disaffected young women in works such as "Katia's Sister" (2008), "Layla M." is a brisk, involving film that depicts "radicalization" from a humanist angle while applying proper consideration to the political and cultural currents from which such transformations stem. The viewer understands the ways in which Layla is playing with fire, and the writer uses her story as a vehicle to argue in favor of compassionate repatriation for young individuals who made life choices that they came to regret. "Ladies First" is a Netflix Original documentary, brief in duration (it runs less than an hour), that had its premiere on March 8. It opens in Rio in 2016, at the Summer Olympics there. Unless we are extremely well versed in the statistics of that event to begin with, we will assume that the story it is about to tell, about India's archery prodigy, Deepika Kumari, will culminate in gold medal triumph. Not exactly. Directed by Uraaz Bahl and produced by his wife, Shaana Levy Bahl, "Ladies First" tells a tale that is indeed incredible and inspiring. Ms. Kumari, as it happens, is living a dream that she did not even know she had. Born in one of the poorest provinces of her country, she had an early enthusiasm for hitting targets, often with handmade equipment, but was more concerned with trying to help her family eat than pursuing a sports career. Once she realized she could help her family by chasing this ambition, she soared from student to champion with dazzling speed. But "Ladies First" becomes a chronicle of how Ms. Kumari suffered because of a lack of institutional support for her talents. The movie notes that across a range of developing countries (including India) with a total population of 3.1 billion, none has produced a female Olympic gold medalist. Ms. Kumari is a terrifically appealing heroine for this story, and "Ladies First" ends on a hopeful note, with this athlete training for the 2020 Olympics with the help of a help of a newly formed institute that will give her more structured training and coaching. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
NEW DELHI India's central government, convulsed by a series of corruption scandals, is under increasing pressure to deal with the potentially conflicting challenges of rising inflation and slowing growth. But any effort to deal with the underlying problems that plague the Indian economy runs directly into powerful political interests. On Tuesday, India's government said inflation increased 9.1 percent in May, compared with a year earlier, a higher rate than expected. That came atop troubling economic data indicating India's gross domestic product growth had slowed, as companies spent less, foreign investment dropped and bad loans piled up at some banks. While India's long term prospects remain strong, many economists and analysts say the country's central government needs to act quickly to ensure the short term problems do not intensify. While slower growth could help curb inflation, critics are not confident the government has the policy finesse to address either problem adequately. India faces "an unpleasant trinity of moderating growth, high inflation and monetary tightening," said Rajeev Malik, senior economist for the investment bank CLSA in Singapore. "It is very important that the government get its act together and begin to do something." In the first three months of this year, India's annual growth rate of gross domestic product slipped to 7.8 percent down from an 8.3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of last year, and short of analysts' predictions. The central government, led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has been rocked by allegations of corruption and investigations into sweetheart deals worth billions of dollars between government ministers and businesses of various types most notably one involving the award of wireless communications licenses. The scandals have paralyzed decision making and stalled development projects. India, the second fastest growing major economy after China, continues to have long term forces that should be in its favor. The country's youthful population, growing middle class and increased demand whether for refrigerators and cars, or housing and highways mean it could become the world's third largest economy after China and the United States by 2030, Standard Chartered predicted this month. India's economy currently is currently ranked 10th, according to the International Monetary Fund. Still, a recent flurry of negative economic indicators has set the stage for a rocky year. Inflation is a worry in most emerging markets, but critics say lapses and policy missteps by the central government have made the problem especially bad in India. On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of leading free market democracies, released a generally upbeat report on India's economic prospects. But it warned that without deeper policy overhauls the country would struggle to sustain its growth targets. "Moving to a new level of growth will require renewing the momentum of reforms," said Angel Gurria, secretary general of the O.E.C.D. He called for lower barriers to international trade and investment, as well as revamping of the financial sector and the labor market. Each of those issues is enveloped in a political thicket, though. And the current government has shown little willingness to even try changes. The O.E.C.D. report highlighted India's low spending on health just 1 percent of the country's G.D.P. and the contrast to the country's high spending on subsidies for food, fuel, fertilizer and electricity, at 9 percent of G.D.P. Local investment growth slowed in the second half of the fiscal year that ended March 31 to 4.1 percent, down from a 14.7 percent rate at the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, bad loans are creeping up at some of India's government run banks, particularly at the largest, State Bank of India. In the quarter that ended March 31, the bank doubled the amount of provisions for nonperforming assets from the previous quarter, according to Enam Securities in Mumbai. Car sales, one of India's fastest growing economic indicators, slowed in May to their slowest rate in two years, according to the Society of Automobile Manufacturers. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of India's Planning Commission, acknowledged that the economy was growing slower than the target annual rate of 9 to 9.5 percent set by officials. He said that getting policy reforms on the agenda had been difficult. Reaching growth targets, he said, "is not going to happen automatically there are things that need to be done." Inflation, meanwhile, threatens to become a bigger problem if agricultural productivity does not improve, said C. Rangarajan, head of the prime minister's Economic Advisory Council. On Thursday, the Reserve Bank of India is expected to raise its key borrowing rate for the 10th time since March 2010 to 7.5 percent, from the current 7.25 percent. The move may further curb growth but have little effect on inflation, analysts said, because a big inflationary force involves structural problems in India's food distribution, subsidies and infrastructure. Revising interest rates is generally considered a blunt instrument even in organized economies. In India, where the economy is complicated by factors as diverse as fuel subsidies and infrastructure bottlenecks, the central bank's capacity for precision is even more limited. Even as food prices skyrocket, the government has failed to fix an agricultural distribution system that means about 40 percent of India's farm output rots before it is eaten, analysts note. "You still need to develop your farm to fork model," said Rohini Malkani, an economist with Citigroup in Mumbai, citing need for improvements in warehousing and transportation. Although the government has noted and discussed these problems, progress has been very limited, she said. The central government's inaction on infrastructure and food distribution is helping drive up inflation even as the government is making the problem worse through farmer friendly policies like raising minimum prices for food and grains. "Part of the inflation problem is the government's doing," said Mr. Malik of CLSA. "They've chosen to improve the terms of trade for the rural economy," he said, "and it is coming at the cost of the urban economy." But Kaushik Basu, the government's chief economic adviser, said in an interview Monday that inflation was a problem all developing countries were facing. "If you look at emerging economies around the world," Mr. Basu said, "India's performance looks pretty run of the mill." He said recent skepticism about India's growth prospects was overblown. "Just like you have irrational exuberance, occasionally you have irrational pessimism as well," he said. "My own view is that for the full year, growth will be a little less than what we were forecasting. But all the long run indicators like investment and savings are going in the right direction." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Detail of Ja'Tovia Gary's 2019 "The Giverny Suite," a three screen film installation that is the centerpiece of her show "flesh that needs to be loved," at Paula Cooper. Rhythm is central to Ja'Tovia Gary's "The Giverny Suite" (2019), a nearly 40 minute, three screen film installation that is the centerpiece of "flesh that needs to be loved," Ms. Gary's first show at Paula Cooper. There is the tempo of the music accompanying the moving images, but just as crucial are the pacing and arrangement of Ms. Gary's material. There is borrowed footage of Josephine Baker in the movie "ZouZou" (1934) and shots of Ms. Gary walking in Monet's lush gardens in Giverny, France; there are close ups of leaves reminiscent of Stan Brakhage's experimental films like "Mothlight" (1963). There is the terrifying video of Diamond Reynolds's 911 call after her boyfriend, Philando Castile, was shot by a police officer and right after that, the singer Nina Simone performing at the Montreux Festival in 1976 and commenting to the audience on how the lyrics of the seemingly saccharine song "Feelings" are actually depressing. Ms. Gary's installation could be compared to moving image works by Arthur Jafa and John Akomfrah, which similarly examine the representation of black bodies and histories of violence. The difference is that Ms. Gary focuses on women. "Do you feel safe?" she asks women in Harlem, holding a microphone toward them. Most answer yes. "I don't walk alone; I walk with God," an older woman says. "We're not the weaker sex," another asserts. The rhythm of "The Giverny Suite" feels solid and confident, but the tone less consistently affirmative. MARTHA SCHWENDENER The painter Trevor Shimizu has tended to approach his medium with charming, fast moving irreverence. A few rakish lines of black on a bare canvas would suffice for a figure, a head or a stuffed animal. To cite a recent buzzword, his efforts often seemed to epitomize "deskilled." But over the past two years or so, Mr. Shimizu has turned to making landscapes that, relatively speaking, convey a passion for both his medium and nature. He might almost be freshly returned from a residency at Monet's Giverny, where the great Impressionist built and painted his famous water garden. Except not quite: Mr. Shimizu's speedy offhand technique continues, as does his love of white canvas, either bare or shining through his often dry brushed flora. Different parts of the new canvases all from 2019 evoke weeping willows, watery expanses (as in the murky "Tide Pool") and even lily pads, although similar schmears also imply bushes, distant woods or undergrowth in paintings like "Hills (2)" "Trees Around Stream (2)" or "Moss Garden (4)." Spiky lines function as tree trunks, reeds or tufts of grass. Most compositions are suspended before us, hanging in the air, their legibility intermittent at best. But this instability is a great part of their verve and attraction. Their imminent disintegration can be weirdly gripping, inviting us to examine them brush stroke by brush stroke. The most finished painting here is "Fog (2)," and, while quite beautiful, almost seems out of place. ROBERTA SMITH Experiments created at the Bauhaus, the influential art school eventually shut down by the Nazis in 1933, still have the power to instruct, enchant and inspire, as you can see in this exhibition devoted to a single work by the German artist Kurt Schwerdtfeger (1897 1966) at Microscope. Titled "Reflektorische Farblichtspiele (Reflecting Color Light Play), it was created in the 1920s and first presented at Wassily Kandinsky's home as part of the Lantern Festival in 1922, when Mr. Schwerdtfeger was a 25 year old student at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. It consists of an apparatus made of wood, electric lights, colored gels and wooden stencils with cutout shapes that performers manipulate by moving sliding panels to create a scintillating light play. (The work was also accompanied by music composed by Wolfgang Roscher.) Films of earlier performances are on view in the current exhibition and these look like abstract animations or the "expanded cinema" of the 1960s. (Mr. Schwerdtfeger's light and color system also indirectly influenced through the filmmaker Jonas Mekas Andy Warhol's "Exploding Plastic Inevitable" multimedia events.) The South African painter Cinga Samson's first U.S. solo show, "Amadoda Akafani, Afana Ngeentshebe Zodwa (men are different, though they look alike)" at Perrotin, is triumphantly single minded. His portraits are made in oil the slow, painstaking way, with a dark, compressed palette and close attention to backdrop detail; his figures, alone or in groups, exude a commitment to daily joy edged with swagger. A country kid from the Eastern Cape who made his way to Cape Town and its rough, sprawling Khayelitsha township, Mr. Samson bulled his way into a local art center and rose from there, undaunted by rejections from university art programs and determined to both inhabit and extend the art history canon. His characters are black people, unperturbed and living their best lives; they mix jeans and undershirts with Xhosa robes and beads, tote shopping bags from the mall, feed each other grapes in a Dionysian scene at the Cecil Rhodes memorial, brandish a red lollipop against the green overgrowth of a lush urban pastoral. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The Swiss painter and printmaker Felix Vallotton was an intriguing, talented but slippery artist. From painting to painting in "Felix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet," a small survey of his career, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you often don't quite know what to expect next in terms of style or subject, even within the same year. They begin with the soulful "Self Portrait at the Age of 20" from 1885, just after three years of study at the Academie Julian in Paris. It shows the artist looking wise beyond his years, already adept at a suavely brushed surface redolent of Manet, Ingres and Degas. In "The Sick Girl," a sparkling interior scene of 1892, his realist style hardens to such perfection that it dazzles but also seems slightly cold. At the other extreme is "Street Scene in Paris," from 1897, which has the flattened, rough edged shapes of the small Post Impressionist cohort that called itself the Nabi. The group included the artist's good friend, Edouard Vuillard, and Vallotton himself, although he didn't share their preference for images of cozy domesticity. Also from 1897, his portrait "Thadee Natanson," in which realism takes on a stiffening naivete that evokes the self taught French artist Henri Rousseau. Vallotton, who wrote criticism for a newspaper in Lausanne, Switzerland (where he was born in 1865), gave Rousseau an early laudatory review. By this point in the show, it becomes clear why Vallotton is not considered a first rate painter. Perhaps he was excessively skilled with too many options at his fingertips. The variety here sometimes resembles a group show, or a solo of some extra early postmodern artist who simply played the field. It helps that the show begins with a tiny unforgettable gallery where Vallotton's talent stays in one place: It is devoted to his groundbreaking woodblock prints of the 1890s, which made him famous, provided entry into the Parisian avant garde and made his place in modernist art history. Their daring black and white compositions depict some of the pleasures, but more often skewer the hypocrisies and inequities of Parisian life. Vallotton did not see life as full of happy endings. He made his first woodblock prints in 1891, inspired by the innovations of Japanese artists, eliminating their rich colors while exploiting their practice of cutting with rather than against the grain. It facilitated the curving shapes and lines basic to his formal wit. Within a year Vallotton had a thriving, if not highly remunerative career. His terse exercises in dark and light appeared in periodicals, illustrated books and portfolios in Paris, then London and as far as Chicago. They were nearly instantly understood as radical, and by the mid 90s Vallotton was a regular illustrator for Le Cri de Paris, a left wing magazine and the like minded journal La Revue Blanche, which also covered culture (and was founded by Alexandre and Thadee Natanson). The woodblocks have the compression and legibility of cartoons and news photos, the formal daring of abstract art and the literary punch of modern short stories. They portray action in the streets, as in "The Charge," in which gendarmes wade, swords swinging, into a group of anarchists (with whom the artist sympathized). Bodies seem to fly overhead until the image's spatial inventiveness asserts itself: The protesters aren't airborne, they're actually lying on the street, left behind as the melee surges toward us. "The Demonstration" reverses this: The crowd dashes frantically toward the top of the image; advancing police not yet in the picture will soon fill the white, empty street lower down. Other scenes of everyday life show pedestrians opening umbrellas; an elderly woman being gingerly rescued from beneath a carriage horse; and well dressed ladies in a department store, examining linens like connoisseurs. In voyeuristic views of opulent Parisian interiors, lone musicians practice their instruments; naked women loll on patterned textiles and unhappy marriages and love affairs unfold. If the 19th century had film noir, these would be the story boards. Vallotton's people are stereotypes personalized by highly specific expression, gesture and posture rendered with utmost economy. See the different reactions rippling across the sea of upturned faces at the bottom of "The World's Fair VI: Fireworks," as strands of light descend into the night sky. Vallotton does much of his best painting in the late 1890s and early 1900s, when he added some of his own narrative tension to the textured paint handling and soft colors of the Nabis. The bereaved mood of "Woman in Purple Dress, Under the Lamp" of 1898, focuses on the blank, masklike face of the seemingly numb woman, modeled by Helene Chatenay, Vallotton's companion of a decade. She is seen in their apartment, slumped on a sofa above which hangs Vuillard's "Large Interior With Six Figures," a recent gift from that artist. Her face is dejected, a gray mask; her arm rests woodenly on the table before her, as if paralyzed or wounded. Vallotton also sought to imbue his paintings with the prints' extreme simplicity and aggressive blacks, now offset by strong bright colors, especially red. One standout is "The Visit" (1899) a velvety vignette of a man welcoming a woman into a hushed apartment at dusk. In the shadowy "The Visit by Lamplight," two women sit, shrouded in inky ominousness, rendered with paint handling so uncharacteristically brusque it recalls Walter Sickert, the British painter of disquiet. After 1900 Vallotton seems to go into a decline that steepened after 1910. It's hard to be sure because with around 40 paintings and as many prints, the show is not definitive. It doesn't help that the effort organized by Dita Amory of the Met and Ann Dumas of the Royal Academy of Arts has shed 10 paintings since it was seen in London last summer. Most were important; several were unlike anything here. The change in Vallotton's art is often attributed to his marriage, in 1899, to a wealthy woman, by which he joined the haute bourgeois he so despised. It also removed two anchors: his relationship with Helene Chatenay and his prints. He could afford to paint full time. He also became the reluctant stepfather of three children, a predicament encapsulated in "Dinner by Lamplight" (1899), a darkened scene in which the artist depicts himself as semi present a cardboard thin silhouette facing the bright curious face of a little girl across the table. A rising animus toward women reaches a zenith of sorts in "The Chaste Suzanne" of 1922, which verges on cartoon kitsch and reverses the biblical tale of Susanna and the Elders, casting the woman as a sly trickster. Nearly two decades into his marriage, Vallotton mused in his journal, "What great evil has man committed that he deserves this terrifying partner called woman?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
On the eve of her latest book release, Anne Rice did not lurk online reading early reviews. She examined a set of taxidermied kittens, posed into a Victorian wedding scene, at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. "It's like making a vampire against its will," she said with empathy. "Somebody made these little kitties into art against their will." Surrounded by the dead (sailfish, squirrels, pheasants), Ms. Rice, 75, suddenly found inspiration. "There have to be kitties on the astral plane," she said. This is what it's like to hold a conversation with Ms. Rice, a person whose work is often inspired by what could happen to us in the spaces between life and death. She is an author who delights in the intensity of her subject matter she has found art in the macabre since wandering through the cemeteries of her native New Orleans as a child. But in person she engages easily. Ms. Rice has written more than two dozen books, 12 of which comprise the series known as "The Vampire Chronicles," which began with "Interview With the Vampire" in 1976, a book that later became an A list heavy film in 1994. Her book signings have been spectacles stocked with exotic dancers and fans in costume. She has ridden in closed coffins to these signings, with ice to keep her cool. Ms. Rice's cadre of sexy vampires evolved from pop Gothic fantasy creations into figures so complicated they required their own glossaries in later novels. Perhaps it was time for a new scene. She had been working on a novel about Atlantis for years, but when it wasn't panning out, she turned back to her hero. "When I put Lestat and the vampires into the mix, it really came to life," she said. "And all of the problems were solved immediately." The result is "Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis," which was released Tuesday. Moving on from the kittens and a perturbed looking preserved monkey, Ms. Rice visited the museum's library, which contained art fashioned out of the hair of the dead and a few objects of Catholic art that caught her eye. Ms. Rice has a fraught personal history with religion. In 2010, she announced that she had quit Catholicism, saying she objected to what she called anti gay and anti feminist views. Her feelings on the faith today, she said, remain the same. "I see myself as a follower of Jesus Christ but not of his followers," Ms. Rice said. "I think many people feel that way today." Gazing at a portrait of Jesus, Ms. Rice said she was reminded of her late husband, Stan Rice, a poet who died in 2002. "My husband grew up in the protestant tradition in Texas," she said. "He was always astonished when he saw a picture like that, with Jesus's sacred heart blazing in his chest. But I grew up in New Orleans, in an intense Irish Catholic community, and that was par for the course." Aside from religion, another topic that animates Ms. Rice is anything involving her fans. She has worked to tighten her bond with readers online. Almost 1.2 million fans follow her on Facebook. She can be sensitive about how her work is perceived. In 2004, Ms. Rice posted a 1,200 word admonishment to critics on Amazon who had given her book "Blood Canticle" poor reviews, saying those people had used the site as a "public urinal." On one recent evening, Becket Ghioto, her fan turned assistant for more than a decade, traveled with her. The two met when he was studying to become a Benedictine monk. (Ms. Rice needed a harpsichord at a book signing party in New Orleans, and Mr. Ghioto was one of the monks who carted the instrument over from the local monastery.) Having left the monastic lifestyle, Mr. Ghioto now helps operate her Facebook page. These days, Ms. Rice is most interested in conspiracy theories, reading spy thrillers and watching what she calls "high quality TV" like "The Crown" on Netflix. She and her son, the novelist Christopher Rice, are exploring how to develop "The Vampire Chronicles" into a television series. "Game of Thrones" is the template they would like to follow. When she's not touring, Ms. Rice writes constantly from a 12 foot by 12 foot room in a house in La Quinta, Calif. Paradoxically, the writer whose name is synonymous with vampire fiction said she moved from New Orleans to California for the sunlight. She has also written about ghosts, witches and even her cat. But there is one territory of the undead she said she'll never visit. "I can't get with zombies," she said. "I love dealing with a hypersensitive werewolf. Zombies are at the opposite end of the spectrum." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Each Friday, Farhad Manjoo and Mike Isaac, technology reporters at The New York Times, review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. Mike is out this week so Nick Wingfield, a Times technology reporter based in Seattle, filled in. Farhad: Hello, Nick! I'm so happy you're joining me to chat about tech news in Mike's absence. He spent the weekend covering the many boardroom twists that led to Uber picking its new C.E.O. And now he's off recovering in a Twinkie addled haze, I think. So, thanks for stepping in. Nick: You're welcome. Is there a rule that there has to be at least one bald guy in each week's newsletter? Farhad: Yes. I'm glad you were up for it or I would have had to shave my head. Farhad: O.K., so this was a busy week in tech. First, there was Uber. As you know, the troubled ride hailing company has been without a C.E.O. for two months, and its board of directors which includes former C.E.O. and co founder Travis Kalanick has been consumed with tension over a new pick. As Mike explained in his in depth account of a crazy weekend showdown, the board was picking between three people: Meg Whitman, the longtime eBay C.E.O. who now runs Hewlett Packard Enterprise; Jeff Immelt, the former C.E.O. of General Electric; and a third person whose identity no one on the outside could pin down. Kalanick and his faction backed Immelt, while Benchmark, the venture capital firm warring with Kalanick, backed Whitman. By Sunday morning it looked like Whitman had the whole thing locked up. Then the worm turned. According to Mike, Whitman kept pushing board members to make changes that would curb Kalanick's power and it appears her tactics backfired. Nick: It's deja vu all over again. Whitman has a history of being in situations like this. In 2005, Walt Disney was looking for a successor for Michael Eisner, its chief executive at the time. The company seemed to be on the verge of naming Whitman to the job, but she decided to stay as the head of eBay, in part because Disney was taking too long to select a new leader, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. It wasn't entirely surprising to see the Uber gig fall through. Farhad: Now she'll have more time to take another stab at political office. Anyway, with Immelt out of the way and Whitman overplaying her hand, the mystery third person got the nod. He is Dara Khosrowshahi, who has run the online travel company Expedia since 2005. And now, out of nowhere, he's Uber's new C.E.O. and so far, he's been getting wide praise from many analysts. (Khosrowshahi is also on the board of The New York Times Company.) To me, Uber's board sounds as dysfunctional as a brunch between the Lannisters and the Starks on Game of Thrones, but isn't it kind of interesting that the process yielded a pick who seems pretty reasonable? Nick: I'm going to be a contrarian. Aside from the leaks of candidate names, which are good for us storytellers, I don't think the hunt for a new C.E.O. was all that messy. You kind of hope there is vigorous debate on the board when they're picking a new leader. Of all the dysfunctional, wacky stuff that has gone on at Uber, I wouldn't even put the C.E.O. search in the Top 5. That's grading on a curve though. Farhad: One more thing on Uber. On Wednesday, a judge ruled that the lawsuit that Benchmark had filed against Kalanick should now be moved to arbitration. This makes it easier for Kalanick to shield any unsettling facts from public view. It might also allow both sides to back down more easily and give Uber a chance to become something of a more normal, less dramatic company soon. Or not. Nick: I wonder if Uber could become militantly boring now. The crazy at that company must be exhausting for everyone board members, management, investors, employees. I listened to the leaked audio of Khosrowshahi's remarks to Uber employees this week when his appointment was official. The way he hat tipped all the warring factions around the company made me think he would make a serious effort at peace. On the other hand, recorded audio leaked of the new C.E.O.'s remarks. Maybe I won't put away the popcorn quite yet. Amazon Whole Foods is here, and it's cheap Farhad O.K., let's move to your neck of the woods: Amazon. You had an interesting story about how Jeff Bezos, Amazon's C.E.O., reached out to Satya Nadella, Microsoft's C.E.O., to push for the two companies to integrate their voice assistants, Amazon's Alexa and Microsoft's Cortana. I was surprised by the move; it's a rare moment of cooperation among tech behemoths. One thing I wondered is if it presaged some larger cooperation between the two, on matters even beyond voice assistants. What do you think? Nick: I don't see major partnerships for the two companies down the line. They're serious, respectful rivals in cloud computing. I think part of what drove this relationship is that both are facing real roadblocks to getting people using their assistants outside homes and offices. Microsoft and Amazon are both weak in mobile devices. If they can somehow persuade Apple and Google to join their party, it might be easier to get people using Alexa and Cortana through smartphones Farhad: Then we have Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, which just closed. To mark the kickoff, Amazon cut prices on a variety of Whole Foods staples. I went to my local Whole Foods around lunchtime yesterday and found it unusually packed. But have you been able to glean anything else about Amazon's long term plans for Whole Foods, beyond this marketing push? Nick: The initial price cuts were a way to get curiosity seekers in the door on day one, which seems to have worked. Amazon has already talked about various plans to integrate Amazon services with Whole Foods, like making Amazon Prime the loyalty program for the stores. Checkout lines are the single most annoying experience everyone I know has at supermarkets. Amazon has insisted they won't use the cashier free checkout technology they're testing at their Amazon Go convenience store in Seattle to put people out of work. But if they can get the system working smoothly, I could see Amazon sticking to their promise by giving cashiers new roles inside Whole Foods stores for example, spending more time answering customer questions. And if they can prove this works through Whole Foods, what's to stop Amazon from selling the entire system to other retailers, the way they do with cloud computing services? Farhad: Oh wow, I hadn't thought about that. See, that's what's great about having you here instead of Mike, Nick. You say smart stuff! Well, thanks for joining me. Talk soon! | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Mr. Heilemann and Mr. Halperin, the authors of the popular book "Game Change" about the 2008 election, joined Bloomberg in May 2014. But their hiring caused discord between Bloomberg's offices in New York and Washington, where journalists felt they were being overshadowed by the new politics team. The show initially struggled to find an audience and was criticized in some quarters for being too frivolous. With all of that in mind, the inauguration could be viewed as both a natural and convenient endpoint. The duo are in discussions about staying on as contributors and columnists for Bloomberg, according to the memo, though they will no longer have day to day roles. Bloomberg Politics will shift to a "more global outlook," and there are plans to start a new television show "focused on global politics and the impact of the new administration's policies on business and finance worldwide," according to the memo, which was reported earlier by The Huffington Post. The moves are part of a broader reshuffling at Bloomberg, which said in a separate memo on Thursday that it was revamping its magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, to focus more on business and finance. Megan Murphy, who was Bloomberg's Washington bureau chief, was named editor of the magazine, which is expected to begin publishing in its new form in the second quarter of next year. "What will emerge from this will be very different from the stand alone magazine you all write for at the moment," the memo said. The memo also said the editorial team at the magazine "may well be smaller." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
A drug that protects children in wealthy countries against painful and sometimes lethal bouts of sickle cell disease has been proven safe for use in Africa, where the condition is far more common, scientists reported on Saturday. More research remains to be done, experts said, but knowing that hydroxyurea a cheap, effective and easy to take pill can safely be given to African children may save millions of youngsters from agonizing pain and early deaths. "I think this is going to be amazing," said Dr. Ifeyinwa Osunkwo, who directs a sickle cell disease program in Charlotte, N.C., but was not involved in the new study. "There is currently no treatment in Africa, and a lot of children die before age 5," said Dr. Osunkwo, who has treated children in the United States and Nigeria. "We're going from nothing to gangbusters." The disease, in which blood cells twist themselves into stiff semicircular shapes, is caused by a genetic mutation thought to have arisen in Africa about 7,000 years ago. About 300,000 babies are born with the disease each year; about 75 percent of them are in Africa, and about 1 percent in the United States. The condition is found throughout the Americas and the Caribbean among descendants of Africans brought to this hemisphere by the slave trade. Sickle cell disease also is found less frequently in southern Europe, the Middle East and India. These are also places where malaria is still endemic or was until a few decades ago. People who inherit one copy of the sickle cell gene are partially protected against malaria, which is presumably why the mutation has persisted in Africa. But children who inherit the gene from both parents are often left breathlessly weak from anemia, prone to infections and liable to have crises in which their blood cells clump and jam capillaries in the brain, lungs and other organs. The pain is often so excruciating that only opioids can help. Treatment may require blood transfusions or, in wealthy countries, bone marrow transplants, which themselves carry a risk of death. Without treatment, many children die from strokes or organ damage. Hydroxyurea has been used for decades in the United States and Europe. But some early animal studies made researchers fear it would make African children more susceptible to local infections, particularly malaria. The new study followed 600 children in Angola, Uganda, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo who were given the drug for more than two years. As with children in wealthy countries, taking the drug daily also made it far less likely they would die or need a blood transfusion because of their sickle cell disease. They were about half as likely to suffer bouts of severe pain, and somewhat less likely to get other infections. In an unexpected twist, investigators discovered that the children were about half as likely to get malaria while using hydroxyurea as they had been before the trial started . The reasons are not known. "With all the malaria, malnourishment and vitamin deficiency in Africa, we couldn't assume it would work as well as it did," said Dr. Russell E. Ware, director of hematology at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital and a co author of the study, which was presented at a meeting of the American Society for Hematology and simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Hydroxyurea is already on the World Health Organization's essential medicines list, is available in generic form for about 50 cents a pill and can be stored at room temperature, Dr. Ware said. If this study raises interest in buying millions of additional doses for use in Africa, the drug could presumably be made far more cheaply, he added. Even though the study was fairly large, it had some limitations. It was intended to prove only that the drug was safe for children aged 1 to 10. It was not designed to test various dosages to find the ideal one, nor to determine how many lab tests are needed to monitor children taking the drug, nor to determine the long term effects. So further work will be needed, researchers said. Also, the research was done without a placebo control a group of similar children not getting the drug. Oversight boards in the four test countries felt it would be unethical to deny the drug to any child, since it was known to work elsewhere, said Dr. Leon Tshilolo, a pediatric hematologist at the Monkole Hospital Center in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the study's lead author. To compensate for the lack of a placebo group, the researchers watched children for two months before starting them on hydroxyurea. That established the baseline rates at which the children normally suffered pain crises, needed blood transfusions and got malaria or other infections. The results "mean survival will be better even in very low resource settings," Dr. Tshilolo said. Dr. Leon Tshilolo, a pediatric hematologist at the Monkole Hospital Center in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo with a patient. Hydroxyurea was originally developed to fight blood cancers like leukemia, and people taking it must be monitored to make sure that it does not dangerously lower their white blood cell and platelet counts. The study, however, used moderate daily doses, and only about 5 percent of the children enrolled needed to have their dosages lowered because their blood cell counts dropped. In 1998, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug for American adults with sickle cell disease; pediatricians soon began giving it off label to children, Dr. Ware said. Trials proving it was safe in American children were not finished until 2016, and the F.D.A. approved pediatric use last year, opening the way for a trial in children in Africa. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. For years, many black Americans with sickle cell disease were reluctant to enroll themselves or their children in drug trials, Dr. Osunkwo said, because of America's sordid history of medical experimentation on black patients including the infamous Tuskegee Study, in which black men with syphilis were left untreated even after the invention of penicillin. Also, she said, the drug is known to lower men's sperm counts, break off women's hair and turn fingernails dark gray. For safety reasons, it is not normally given to pregnant women even though they may suffer severe sickle cell crises. Dr. Osunkwo said she slowly overcame patients' reluctance by letting them help design the trials. "And," she added, "I would say, 'Being dead is worse than having dark nails.'" In Africa, enrolling 600 children was relatively easy, Dr. Tshilolo said, because Africans with sickle cell disease who had visited Europe had heard of hydroxyurea and knew it worked. Sperm counts were obviously not an issue in a children's trial, he added. But African men were usually willing to use the drug once it was explained that the drops in sperm count were relatively small and rebounded when the drug was stopped. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
News coverage of President Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate began last week with a Republican senator calling a CNN reporter "a liberal hack" in the halls of Congress and laughing about it later that night during a Fox News interview. Journalists are up in arms about new restrictions on their movement inside the Capitol, which they say will prevent them from easily interviewing lawmakers about the proceedings. The rules, negotiated by Republican Senate leadership, have yet to be written down, causing confusion among reporters and the Capitol Police expected to enforce them. Even sedate C SPAN is aggrieved, calling on the Senate to allow its television crews to document the trial, instead of the government controlled cameras that as was the case during Bill Clinton's trial 21 years ago will limit what viewers see and hear inside the Senate chamber. The pretrial tensions suggest that the bash the press mentality that led the White House to kill off the daily briefing and strip reporters of their credentials has now crept into what senators like to call "the world's greatest deliberative body." "There's long been this understanding that we both serve the same people at the end of the day, and that it's a mutually beneficial relationship," said Sarah Wire, a Los Angeles Times reporter who leads a committee of congressional correspondents. "Senators want to talk to us because they know we're communicating their message to their voters back home." "All this," she added in an interview, "was kind of a shock." "This" is a series of restrictions abruptly imposed on reporters shortly before the start of the trial, where opening arguments are set to begin Tuesday. Instead of unfettered access to the hallways and corridors surrounding the Senate chamber a tradition for decades journalists will be confined to roped off pens as senators come and go from the trial. Walk and talk interviews with senators, a staple of congressional reporting made famous by TV shows like "The West Wing," will be curtailed. Journalists have long been barred from entering the Senate chamber, relegated to an overhead view from the press gallery above. Now, to enter the upstairs gallery, they will need to queue up for a magnetometer meant to sniff out illicit electronics, raising concerns about their ability to quickly relay to the public what is happening inside. The effect, reporters say, is to make it harder to chronicle the you are there details expected of a historic political moment including which senators are doodling or snoozing during testimony. In stark contrast with the coverage of State of the Union addresses, a few stationary cameras controlled by a Senate office, rather than an independent news organization, will provide the only viewpoint of the trial floor. 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. "Those cameras operate under very strict guidelines: They show the person who is speaking, and maybe some wide shots," Terry Murphy, vice president for programming at C SPAN, said in an interview. "They can't show others reacting or listening. Having our own cameras in there would allow us to cover the trial with a much more full picture of what's going on." C SPAN wrote to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, in December, formally requesting access. As of Saturday, the network had heard nothing back. The American news media has come a long way since the country's first impeachment trial, of President Andrew Johnson, in 1868, when House impeachment managers sat for a still portrait by the famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady. The Clinton impeachment trial was the first to take place in the age of 24 hour cable news. But journalists in 1999 did not have to contend with the minute by minute demands of digital media. Mr. Trump's impeachment trial will be the first to be dissected in real time and possibly by the Twitter happy president himself. On Capitol Hill, parties on both sides of the lawmaker journalist divide say discussions about access are active. First Amendment groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have weighed in to decry the new limits. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press gathered signatures from 57 news organizations objecting to the rules. Elisabeth Bumiller, an assistant managing editor and the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, said in a statement that the restrictions "will severely limit the ability of reporters to gather news during one of the most historic events in the nation's history." "These limits are far more burdensome than the rules that govern press access in the Capitol, even those in effect during the last impeachment trial, and will prevent journalists from freely documenting a public debate in Congress," Ms. Bumiller said. Mr. McConnell's office, which controls the business of the Senate, declined to comment. On Capitol Hill, there is speculation that the restrictions were put in place because Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is presiding over the trial, will be present in the chamber each day. Typically, reporters' movements in the Capitol are limited when high profile people visit, like Vice President Mike Pence. But congressional correspondents said that, even after several meetings with Senate officials, they did not know why the restrictions had been put in place. Some suspected that Senate leaders believe the less the public knows about the trial, the better. "Journalists are the public's eyes and ears in the Capitol," said Leo Shane III, a correspondent for Military Times. "We're asking lawmakers to make sure they're not using the excuse of security concerns as a reason to exclude the public from this trial." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Consider the odyssey of a bird known as the red knot. Each spring, flocks of the intrepid shorebirds fly up to 9,300 miles from the tropics to the Arctic. As the snow melts, they mate and produce a new generation of chicks. The chicks gorge themselves on insects, and then all the red knots head back south. "They are there less than two months," said Jan A. van Gils, an ecologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. "It's a very tight schedule." It is also a vulnerable one. The precipitous decline of the red knots that winter in West Africa may provide a small but telling parable of the perils of climate change. The new study shows how climate change can create ecological ripples that can threaten a species in unexpected ways. "I think it's a fascinating study," said David S. Wilcove, an expert on animal migrations at Princeton University. "It illustrates the odd and almost unpredictable ways in which climate change is affecting biodiversity." And if Dr. van Gils and his colleagues are right, further warming will make the plight of the red knot even more dire. "I foresee some sort of crash," Dr. van Gils said. The researchers got their first clue that something was amiss when they studied a subspecies of red knots that winters on the coast of Mauritania in West Africa. Typically, red knots dig into the sand to harvest clams with their long bills. The scientists were intrigued to discover that some of the birds were digging up sea grass roots and eating them instead. It turns out that the clams are buried deeper in the sand than the sea grass roots are. Small red knots with short bills could not reach the clams, so they had to make do with the less nutritious sea grass roots. "These smaller birds go for something they don't like so much," Dr. van Gils said. To understand why the birds grew to different sizes, the team began a study of the red knots' full migratory path. In June, the birds leave Mauritania and fly to the Arctic coast of Russia. At the end of July, they make a return trip. The adults stop off to refuel in the Netherlands, while the juvenile red knots travel through Poland. The scientists found a disturbing trend: Over the past 30 years, the juveniles arriving in Poland have been shrinking in size. On average, they are about 15 percent smaller today than in 1985. Looking at satellite images of their Arctic summer habitat, the scientists found a clue to this trend. The Arctic has been warming up earlier because of climate change. Today, the snow is melting two weeks earlier than in 1985. The insects in the Arctic are responding to the shift by hatching earlier. But the red knots are not adjusting their schedule. By the time their chicks hatch, the insects are far past their peak, and the birds can't find as much food as they could 30 years ago. When the birds arrive in Mauritania in July, the smaller juveniles with shorter beaks cannot dig deep enough to eat their regular diet of clams. Instead, they are eating more sea grass. This new diet appears to be taking a toll: Dr. van Gils and his colleagues have found that juvenile red knots with short bills are more likely to die than birds with long bills. Martin Wikelski, a zoologist at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology who was not involved in the research, cautioned that some questions about the birds were still unanswered. For example, the team kept track of the birds in Mauritania by banding them with colored rings. When the birds disappeared, the scientists couldn't know for sure if they were dead or had just gone elsewhere. "It's the first of its kind," Dr. Wikelski said of the new study, "but it might not be true." Scientists will be able to get better data about migratory birds, Dr. Wikelski said, as miniature tracking devices become more powerful and affordable. Experiments will also allow scientists to test hypotheses about the animals. This summer, for example, Dr. van Gils is going to study a population of red knots that summer in Alaska. He will move eggs to places where insects emerge at different times in the summer. He predicts the timing will affect the chicks' growth. Dr. van Gils said that climate change might be a factor behind the decline of the red knots that winter in Mauritania. They have decreased from about half a million birds to a quarter of a million. "If that continues, they're going to go extinct," he said. Dr. Wikelski still wants to see more evidence to judge the future of migratory birds in a warmer world. But he has seen enough to be worried. "Maybe they're sentinels," he said about the red knots. "We should take these early warning signs seriously." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The choreographer Yasuko Yokoshi was working on a project with high school students in Fukushima, Japan, the site of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011, when an idea for a dance was born. Manami Fukuoka, a dancer and former student who was assisting her, said casually over dinner one night, "I have a twin sister." "That's weird, right?" Ms. Yokoshi said, who had known Ms. Fukuoka a long time. "I said: 'What? There's someone like you in the world?' " That wasn't all. Manami said that her sister, Sawami, was also dancer who worked at the time with the choreographer Emio Greco in Amsterdam. "She showed me a YouTube clip of his work and, there was Sawami dancing on the computer," Ms. Yokoshi recalled in a recent interview. "I'm like, 'Oh my God, it's you!' " Sawami is now a contemporary dancer in Berlin; Manami lives in Osaka, Japan, and is trained in Butoh. The twins, 38, didn't start studying dance until they were in their early 20s and began independently; what's more, they had never performed together until Ms. Yokoshi created "Zero One," which opens at Danspace Project on Thursday, Sept. 24. "It's so weird to see: a very different training and approach to performance, but the same body," Ms. Yokoshi said. "Manami told me that Sawami was going to leave Emio's company and come back to Japan. At the time, I said, 'If she ever comes back, I want to make a piece on you guys.' It was a joke." But good jokes usually contain a whiff of truth, and when Ms. Yokoshi's mother became ill, they all found themselves living in Kyoto. The choreographer, who splits her time between Japan and New York, got to work. Ms. Yokoshi, 53, whose pieces juxtapose traditional Japanese styles with contemporary Western dance, thrives on a challenge. Her last series of works spanned 10 years during which she studied the traditional Japanese dance form of Kabuki Su odori under the master teacher Masumi Seyama. With the sisters, Ms. Yokoshi had stumbled on a new way of exploring traditional and contemporary dance: Suddenly, she had two disparate ways of moving in bodies that looked identical. "I have had the privilege to see the dance grow through the same body and the same choreography in a very bizarre context," she said. "Zero One," which was made two years ago and has toured Japan, was also Ms. Yokoshi's first work created and presented in that country. Usually, she said, she thinks of her dances as a way to translate Japanese culture for American audiences. The duet for the twins is abstract: Ms. Yokoshi incorporates gestural movement and plays with speed and slowness in unison sequences in which the dancers perform a version of an American jazz dance and a traditional Japanese dance. She quickly decided, though, that presenting just the dancers wouldn't be enough to sustain the piece. "To make a dance about twin sisters so what?" she said. "I thought: I have this film. Wouldn't it be amazing to put the two together? " Ms. Yokoshi added another element, "Hangman Takuzo," a film she shot in 2010 that documents three artists inhabiting her grandmother's house in Hiroshima, including Hangman Takuzo, a performance artist who delicately straddles life and death by hanging himself by a noose from a tree in his garden. Through muscular control, he doesn't hurt himself: As he says in the film, "If I could hang like a raindrop, then all is fine." He is joined by Mika Kurosawa, his girlfriend and an important figure in the Japanese contemporary dance scene, and Namiko Kawamura, who practices slow walking, while naked, in nature. That film, which she said "has a kind of fake documentary, fake performance feel," is projected as the backdrop in "Zero One." Originally, Ms. Yokoshi aimed to introduce these Japanese artists to American and European audiences with "Hangman Takuzo," but presenters, anxious about the idea of hanging, weren't willing to show it. (It will be screened soon it its entirety as part of Cathy Weis's insightful series, Sundays on Broadway.) As she merges these performance cultures, Ms. Yokoshi can be somewhat contrarian. "Zero One," a work featuring identical twins, has less to do with togetherness than the isolation and dislocation of its performers. "It's about the fate of being born as a twin and dealing with this individualism their whole life of trying to locate themselves," she said. But when they are together, they are close. "They always sleep in the same bed. They take baths together. They are inseparable." Sawami, in a Skype interview, said that from an early age she felt a strong urge to separate from her sister. "I needed to do something on my own and not be associated with her at all," she said. "We ended up doing the same thing, but in the beginning I, at least, didn't like that. I wanted to have different experiences, a different world." But within the similarities are profound differences. Manami, with her Butoh training, works from a place of physical sensation in which the body must first make sense of the choreography to execute it; Sawami, European trained, can process choreography instantly. "When I started the project, I'd say, 'Make a phrase of movement and memorize it in five minutes,' " Ms. Yokoshi said. "Sawami can do it, and Manami would not do it, and they would fight about who was right in the approach to choreography. But because they are twins, they're equal, so no one wins. So when they fight, it's like forever." At its core, "Zero One" is a study of performers' lives. The title, for Ms. Yokoshi, sums up the reality of a dance, which becomes zero when it ends. (The one stands for "something," Ms. Yokoshi said. "The world is made of this dual relationship between nothing and something.") For Mr. Takuzo and his hanging, "it's a theatrical event and because of what he does he hangs in his own garden in Tokyo he had no audience for a long, long time," she said. "For him, it was how to perform in front of nobody every day. For years. You think about, what is really performing or a performance? I am so fascinated by these artists who have devoted their lives to dancing and performing." And placing the twins in the context of the film seems crucial. "It presents such a sensation," she continued. "If you put them together the dance and the film it bears a scrutiny of repeated watching. This combo surprises me. I've seen the film a billion times. And if it's only the film, I wouldn't be able to watch it over and over, but if it's with the dance, for some reason, it lives through the live performance. That's all I can say: It gives it a life." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
TIGHT ON OBAMA FOR: My top science advisor John Holdman, periodically will issue some chart or report or graph ah, in the morning meetings, and they're terrifying. B ROLL SOUND UP WAVE CRASH AS PUNCTUATION OVER SCENIC B ROLL OF INTERVIEW LOCATION AND MOODY WEATHER SHOTS: Obama: And everybody starts off the day thinking about, okay ah, we we've really gotta get on this, we've gotta pay attention to this. TITLE CARD OVER THE ABOVE SCENIC/MOODY SHOTS WIDE OF PATTER TIGHT ON INTERVIEWER: Q: First of all Mr. President, thank you very much for talking to us and doing such a lovely spot. Ah, we're told you've thought a lot about how and why civilizations collapse. And we wanted to ask you, do you believe the threat from climate change is dire enough that it could precipitate the collapse of our civilization? A: Well, I don't know 00:02:00 That I can you know, look into a crystal ball and know exactly how this plays out. ... what we do know is that historically, when you see severe environmental strains of one sort or another on cultures, on civilizations, on nations, that the by products of that are unpredictable and can be very dangerous. 00:02:30 What we know is that if the current projections, the current trend lines on a warming planet continue, it is certainly going to be enormously disruptive worldwide. And just imagine for example, monsoon patterns shifting in south Asian, where you've got over a billion people. 00:03:00 If you have even a portion of those billion people displaced, ah, you now have the sorts of refugee crises and potential conflicts that we haven't seen in our lifetimes. ... Then you're looking at a much more dangerous world and severe strains on nation states, on communities, on economies ... . Q: I mean given the magnitude of that threat, why do you think it's been so difficult for you to mobilize 00:04:02 Public opinion at home about the necessity of confronting this issue? A: Well the good news is, during the course of my presidency, I think we've solidified, ah, in popular opinion the fact that climate change is real, that it's important, and we should do something about it. Ah, so the problem is not that people don't believe in climate change, you know, there's there are pockets of resistance, ah, particularly in 00:04:30 Certain congressional caucuses. UP SOUND: someon e in Congress poo pooing Obama's climate policies specifically. But you talk to the average person, I think they understand at this point ... that this is something serious and we gotta do something about it. Translating concern into action is the challenge. And part of what makes climate change difficult is that it ah, is not an instantaneous catastrophic event. It's a slow moving 00:05:00 Ah, issue that on a day to day basis people don't experience and don't see. ... And so part of our goal throughout my presidency has been to raise awareness, but also then to 00:06:00 Create frameworks, structures, rules that allow us to take specific action in ways that create economic opportunity and improve people's wellbeing as opposed to people feeling as if there are these enormous trade offs that ah, necessarily make life a lot harder for them. So that we can say, at long last, that this was the moment that we decided to confront America's energy challange and reclaim America's future. IN 2009, PRESIDENT OBAMA INTRODUCED the American Clean Energy and Security Act, PROPOSING A "CAP AND TRADE" PLAN WHERE THE GOVERNMENT SETS AN ANNUAL CAP ON GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS, AND ALLOWS BUSINESSES TO TRADE PERMITS ALLOWING THEM TO EXCEED THE LIMITS. THE BILL NEVER PASSED. LATER THAT YEAR, PRESIDENT OBAMA ATTENDED A SUMMIT OF WORLD LEADERS IN COPENHAGEN TO DISCUSS CLIMATE SCIENCE. HIS SPEECH WAS WIDELY CRITICIZED AS A FAILURE TO EMBRACE BOLD MEASURES TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE I believe that we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of this common threat. And that is why I have come here today. TALKS ENDED WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT CHANGES. Q3: Mr. President you tried but failed to take action in your first term. Ah, the cap and trade bill failed in the senate. Ah, the Copenhagen climate change talks ended in collapse. What lessons did you learn, ah, from those episodes? 00:07:30 ... When cap and trade came up, I was certainly disappointed that ah, many Republicans who previously had said that they were concerned about this suddenly went the other way, as the politics of it shifted. ... people felt if, you know, we're hemorrhaging jobs, and the economy is contracting, is this the time for us to be able to move this issue forward aggressively. Ah, but what we did do is to use the model we had created with the auto industry to start thinking how do we engage industry and how do we engage states on a whole set of rules, ah, and steps that even though short of big 00:08:30 Comprehensive legislation can still get the job done. And I think one of the most important things that people should know is that here, in 2016, ah, we've actually achieved more carbon emissions than we would have, under the ah, under the cap and trade bill that was presented and went down in the house. So ah, it taught us that there's just more than one way to skin a cat. 00:10:30 ... And what I was able to get done in Copenhagen was to at least extract the basic principle that if we're gonna solve this problem every country has to be involved, not just the wealthy countries, ... 00:11:00 ... That seems like a small thing but that was the mechanism whereby we were able in subsequent meetings to begin negotiations with China, ultimately leading to our joint announcement where China said it would set targets and restrain itself. THE NOVEMBER 2014, ANNOUNCEMENT THE PRESIDENT REFERS TO IS A SIGNIFICANT ONE, THE US STATED IT WOULD DOUBLE THE PACE OF YEARLY EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS. AND CHINA, FOR THE FIRST TIME, ANNOUNCED IT WOULD PEAK ITS OWN EMISSIONS. I commend President Xi, his team and the Chinese government for the commitment they are making to slow, peak and then reverse the course of China's carbon emissions. Q: I've been told that in the the night before actually, the 2014 US China climate deal was announced that there were a couple of outstanding issues and that some of these were actually worked out between you and President Xi one on one. ... I was wondering whether there's anything you can share with us about what your insight was about why ah, the you know, ah, party leadership in China would be willing to take such painful steps. 00:33:30 ... Ah, I had been in contact with President Xi prior 00:34:00 To my arrival. Ah and given him a sense of, if you are prepared to do this, here is what we're gonna be doing, and for us to be able to make a joint announcement, I think would signal the capacity of ah, the US and China to lead the world on an issue of critical importance to everybody. Ah, one of the reasons I think that China was prepared to go further than it 00:34:30 Had been prepared to go previously, is that their overriding concern tends to be political stability. Interestingly, one of their greatest political vulnerabilities is the environment. People who go to Beijing, ah, know that ah, it can be hard to breathe. ... And so they the Chinese party leadership recognized that they had to rethink how they approach ah, environmental issues. Ah, and find ways to make that compatible with the growth rates that they need to keep up with their population. And I think we saw that as an opener ah, for us to be able to say 00:35:30 Ah, not only can you address what is increasingly important ah, domestic issue, and that's air quality. You can also work with us to create a multi lateral framework you know, that shows China's emerging leadership on a world stage. // UNABLE TO FIND COMMON GROUND WITH REPUBLICANS, PRESIDENT OBAMA ELECTED TO TAKE UNCONVENTIONAL SOME REPUBLICANS WOULD SAY UNCONSTITUTIONAL STEPS. HIS CLEAN POWER PLAN IS AN EXPANSION OF THE REGULATORY OVERSIGHT OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY. OBAMA: I am convinced that no challenge poses a greater threat to our future and future generations than a changing climate. And that's what brings us here today. Q3: 00:22:33 ... You've gotten a lot of blow back for this. What are your misgivings about it, and how much do you worry that these will be these creative interpretation of the law will be legally durable? 00:23:30 ... Well, // if Donald Trump is elected for example, you have a pretty big shift now with the EPA operates and that's true generally. //There is no doubt that ah, when you have a legislative ratification of a policy, that it is permanent, ah, it is less subject to ah, reversal. But keep in mind that what happens, when we come up with smart policies and regulations that prove to work, 00:24:00 Ah, you start getting buy in from utilities, and you start getting buy in from states, and you start getting buy in from those who've invested, ah, private capital in this existing system. It becomes stickier. It's harder then to reverse because you know, the country's gone down a different path. 00:24:32 ... So all these ah, individual ah, and collective steps that have been taken, they lock in, they embed us moving ah, in a certain direction. And for somebody then to come in and say well we're gonna tear this out 00:26:00 Root and branch, ah, it's not just a matter now of reversing what I've done, it's a matter of reversing what a whole lot of people are are seeing works. Q3: Well you talked about all this buy in from utilities, states, industry. But one of the things that is necessary for the clean power plan to be implemented is for it to stand up to 00:27:03 Legal challenge. Ah, the supreme court has put a halt on implementing it right now. And one of the most prominent critics of the legal structure of the clean power plan is your own mentor at Harvard Law School, Larry Tribe. He has said that your use of the clean air act to put forth the clean power plan is a vast legal overreach, he has compared it direct quote to burning the constitution. What is your 00:27:30 Reaction to Professor Tribe's legal criticism of of your plan? 00:28:00 I can say that legally, he's wrong. And ah, I think most legal commentators also think he's wrong. I think he's in the minority in the view that he's taken. But ultimately what really counts is what the DC circuit ah, and ah, if it gets there, the supreme court thinks about it. And I'm very confident that the clean power plan will be upheld. Q3: If it is upheld, there will be some stark economic tradeoffs if it's implemented. If it stands up to legal challenges, essentially the clean power plan will eventually end demand for coal power. What do you owe the workers and the people in coal communities who will be hurt, who will lose their jobs, who will lose their livelihoods as a result of this? A: Well I think we as a country owe everybody opportunity. And if they're in a sector that because of the necessities of doing something about climate change are gonna be adversely impacted, then we need to be there for them. // So what we owe ah, the remaining people who are making a living ah, mining coal, is to be honest with them, and to say that, look, the economy is shifting, how we use energy is shifting, that's gonna be true here but it's also gonna be true internationally. And how can we take your ah, skills and talents and work ethic that you've shown in this coal mine and use it to build some wind turbines, or use it to install ah, solar panels, or help us to rebuild a smart grid that would make our power distribution a lot more efficient. // I think there are a lot of folks in West Virginia and Kentucky, probably southern Illinois who do think that the reason they're having a tough time is because ah, Obama and the EPA. And now of course Hillary Clinton, ah, you know, we're all trying to destroy them. Ah, but what I want to do, and I think we should all want to do, is to have an honest conversation about how do we make sure that ah, these communities thrive with the energies ah industries of the 21st century, not of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Ann Liv Young, with her daughters, Akiko, left, and Lovey. Ms. Young's Bushwick apartment will be the site of her new version of "Antigone."Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times The choreographer and performance artist Ann Liv Young is using her Bushwick apartment and her daughters and animals in her version of "Antigone." Ann Liv Young, with her daughters, Akiko, left, and Lovey. Ms. Young's Bushwick apartment will be the site of her new version of "Antigone." Depending on how comfortable you are with confrontation, the performance artist and choreographer Ann Liv Young can be a menace or a breath of fresh air. Since arriving on the scene in the early 2000s, she has undergone many physical transformations onstage, yet throughout she has stuck firmly to a belief: Art happens in the moment with an audience. She has taken bites of raw fish and spit them out at the crowd as a deranged mermaid, incorporated a dildo into her version of Snow White and initiated brutally personal and public therapy sessions as her alter ego Sherry. Yes, Ms. Young presides over a particularly raw, tough kind of art. It can get ugly, and that's O.K. Art, after all, is about revealing truths. For her latest work, "Antigone," Ms. Young, 38, is inviting viewers into her private, domestic space, where she is surrounded by children (her two daughters, Lovey, 11, and Akiko, 6) and animals (a kitten, a cat and a dog). Her Bushwick apartment and basement and overgrown backyard is the backdrop for "Antigone," which runs May 23 to May 31. On a recent afternoon visit, Ms. Young deemed the place not quite performance ready. Yet just by virtue of her design eye and thrift shopping prowess, it could easily have been mistaken for a movie set. For this intimate rendition of "Antigone" a larger version has already toured Switzerland and Norway Ms. Young, who plays the title role, was inspired by Bertolt Brecht's 1948 version, with its exploration of social resistance, and Sophocles' original. In the play, Antigone buries her brother against the wishes of Creon, the King of Thebes, who rules that she must die; her fiance, Haemon, fights for her, but it ends in both of their suicides. But Ms. Young's "Antigone," like much of her work, also refers to events of her life. Over the past year, things have been rocky: She parted ways with her partner of 14 years, Michael A. Guerrero, who is the father of her children. Her home "Antigone" braids together her imaginative rendering of the characters with her own struggles with a broken relationship. "I do think it's important to know that it's so hard," she said. "How do you deal with this? How do you break up with someone? It's all depressing, isn't it? It is. That's why I have to have kittens around." Ms. Young has long included Lovey in her work. She was originally meant to play Antigone, but after her parents separated it was decided that she should concentrate on school. In Bushwick, she will play the chorus on select nights. (Look for her sister, Akiko, as the shadow of the chorus.) The specifics of Lovey's role are up for discussion. "I think it's going to change on different nights," she said one morning before school. One idea she had was to watch "Harry Potter" movies in bed in character. "I was just kind of joking around, but my mom was like, 'Oh, that is actually a good idea,'" Lovey said. "And then she decided on doing it." Ms. Young said she was also going to try a night of live directing Lovey as Antigone. "Just to have her try on the role," she said. "We had so much fun getting ready for this. I spent six months working with her. I think it's fascinating to have someone so young in a role so intense." She's already thinking about her next choreographic move and it's one that would involve more young people: a version of Anne Frank featuring only children. "Maybe it's because I have kids, and I see the stuff that people propose to them," she said. "I'm like, what is wrong with you? They're not stupid. They can deal with heavy material. I just think, Gosh, maybe if we had them working on really intense layered things they wouldn't be so glued to the iPad." Art is life, and life is art. Ms. Young spoke about both recently at her Bushwick home. What follows are edited excerpts from our conversation. You said that this show is not super choreographed like your last major piece, "Elektra," was. How would you describe it? It's very hypnotic. It's very abstract. I was on my migraine med, like 75 milligrams a night, when I made this show, and I think you can a little bit feel that. Migraine meds are anti depressants. You cannot focus on many things at once. You have to zone in on one thing, and this is not good for me. I have to be able to see the whole picture and make choices, and so this show feels a bit like that: It feels a bit like zoning in on one thing and then stretching it out. Sighs Originally, I think I was like, oh, another strong female Greek blah blah blah. But then I had all these weird visions of a courtroom, and that was really weird to me. I would dream of a courtroom, and then I'm literally in court three times a month since I broke up with Michael. I think if there is any role that I feel the closest to it's probably this one. What I've ended up trying to do with this show is taking the scraps that have been left from this breakup and using those scraps to make something. It's like "Antigone" is the remnants after a war. How do you feel about performing with your kids? It feels a little weird in this space, but I think what we're doing to it is going to be super beautiful. I love performing with them. Why did you want to host this piece in your home? I've always been really into the idea of opening your home. What does it mean to be hospitable? It's nice to take something that's so expansive and needs so much room and crunch it into a tiny space. I also like the idea that this place can't fit so many people. It has to be quite intimate, and I think that's quite good for this particular show because people are held more accountable. You can hide less. And being here, it feels almost like opening a wound. It feels very vulnerable, like: here, come I'm going to open this very painful process to you. It's like letting people step on a sore. I don't know why I don't have issues with that. I think that's part of my problem. Laughs What does that give you back? I'm a firm believer in "make something with what you have." I always have been, and in some ways I wish I wasn't like that. I'm not really interested in prestige or money. I just want to make stuff that I feel like needs to be made. I want to ask difficult questions. I think art is the place to pose questions. Are we aspiring to make things that just make people feel O.K.? So people can just go in there and sit and be like, this is neither here nor there? That's what it seems people want. And it's not what you do. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Having conquered New York, the Mexican chef Enrique Olvera is returning to his native country to extend his empire. Mr. Olvera, who runs the acclaimed Mexico City restaurant Pujol, opened Cosme in the Flatiron neighborhood of New York last year. It's now one of the hottest restaurants in the city. His next project, to open on June 26, is Manta, the restaurant at the Cape, a Thompson Hotel in Los Cabos on the Baja Peninsula. Mr. Olvera, 39, is also an ambitious, food centric traveler. During a conversation at Cosme he spoke fondly of the trip he had just taken, which included the Rhine region of Germany, Tokyo and San Sebastian in Spain. "And then back to New York," he said. "It was two and a half weeks of a lot of eating." Following are edited excerpts from that conversation. Q. Why open your third restaurant in Los Cabos? What does it have to offer? A. I've been to Los Cabos many times. I love the aesthetic of the place. And there are a lot of ingredients going on. The Sea of Cortez is known as one of the best places in Mexico to get fish. Actually, most of the fish I get at Pujol, I get from the Baja Peninsula. And the resort project is amazing. We flew in and I saw the property and I just thought it was for me. What are your top recommendations in Los Cabos? It's a destination you go to to take time off, to reset yourself. There's a beautiful town that's 45 minutes away called Todos Santos, a colonial town. La Paz is also a couple of hours' drive. Food wise, one of my favorite restaurants is called Nick San. It's a very nice seafood driven place. And you can always do street food the mariscos, seafood spots. There are beautiful restaurants that do conchas. Also, Flora Farm is one of the nicest concepts I've seen in a while. It's like Disneyland for adults. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Clearly, the GPS had gone haywire. We were sitting in our rental car in Belgium, in search of Bruges. After directing me down a series of increasingly narrower country roads, it now wanted me to head into the driveway of a modest suburban house. The children in the backseat were laughing; my wife, to my right, was not. "It's getting dark. What are we going to do?" It was April 2015 it is always April when we take these trips and the sky had turned a striking orange behind the just budding branches of the trees and the occasional windmill that glided by the windows of our rental car. My wife, Helene, poked with increasing aggravation at the malfunctioning device on the dashboard. "Mommy what's going to happen? Belgian bandits?" This was my son, Dean, who sat behind me. "This is fun." We hadn't seen a soul for at least a half hour. And the engine shut off every time I stopped. So at the moment: complete Belgian silence. "Let's go into the driveway!" said my daughter, Paulina. Dead reckon I did. Bruges is near the coast, right, and the water had to be to the west, right? I backtracked to the last major road and kept the waning sun in front of us. And then 30 minutes later, emerging in the distance in jagged blue gray shapes and unmistakable were the sharp spires of the medieval city, piercing that orange and announcing that we'd arrived, modern devices be damned. The episode has become legendary in my little family, one of those moments from our travels that we all recall in short hand "The crazy Belgian GPS!" and probably always will. There are quite a few others. Like the English couple running a bed and breakfast in Normandy who kept their place shiveringly cold; did not speak French; had never been to Paris; and went on and on, unbidden, about how much they disliked the French. We could hear him laughing as we headed down the hill. For the remainder of our time in Japan, whenever we sat down to a meal, "Unscented Pork!" was a family rallying cry. I'm writing this now because that trip to Japan, in April of this year, was something of a final chapter for Helene, Dean and Paulina and myself. Dean is 17 and off to college. For seven years, we have taken an ambitious trip during spring break. Everyone has had a vote in our destination Europe four times, Hawaii, the West Coast (spiritually a different country than Brooklyn, where we live, right?) and Japan. Their public school vacations always lined up, making planning a snap. But that won't happen anymore with Dean in college. Also, we'll be broke. Helene and I went all in on these trips dipping into the home equity account some years, and letting my American Express travel account grow alarmingly because we saw a brief window when Dean and Paulina, who just turned 14, would be old enough to get a lot out of these journeys, and be fully mobile, yet young enough that they enjoyed spending time with us. These windows snap close fast. We developed a model, and certain patterns emerged. We've mixed food and history with views and long walks and mastered transit systems. We plan but not too much. We try to fly nonstop, and accept that at some point someone will get sick. We don't worry about the weather. (April is unpredictable and it's always April.) And we've accepted that togetherness is great, but so is breaking down into smaller units, even units of one. It seems a shame not to be able to put this knowledge to use; so maybe I can pass it on to other parents whose sons and daughters are nearing the late single digits, and who want to get back out there and see the world, along with the fresh eyes of children. It can be done. Debt or not these trips were worth every penny. Serendipity, individual interests and price always play roles. The first trip was to Ireland for the simple reason that we saw an ad for 400 round trip flights on Aer Lingus. Scotland came next because Helene's niece was in school in Glasgow, but also because the flight was 1,000 per person, and flights to Paris Dean's top choice were 1,400. Also, I'd learned in Ireland that I'm pretty good at driving on the wrong side of the road, and I wanted to have another go. A year later, Paris was 1,000 a person, so off we went. Paulina's dream was Hawaii, so that came next; at 750 a person on Hawaiian Airlines, it felt like a bargain. Japan is my thing, so we'd decided that it would be the grand finale. I booked the roughly 1,000 fare on Japan Airlines nine months in advance on Expedia. The basic model was to stay in one place and take trips: Paris for 10 days, with a night in Normandy; Amsterdam for five days, Bruges for two. We saw much of Ireland from our bed and breakfastbase in Oughterard. But some trips involved more running around: driving a circle route around Scotland and the nonstop, even frenzied train journey around Japan, rail passes in hand. The flights and hotels booked, the preparation phase began. The DVD player went into overdrive. Before Ireland, we watched John Ford's "The Quiet Man," with John Wayne the stone bridge glimpsed near the opening is outside Oughterard and David Lean's epic, "Ryan's Daughter," with Robert Mitchum. Paris was previewed in Truffaut's "The 400 Blows"; Hawaii with Alexander Payne's "The Descendants." In the weeks before Amsterdam and Bruges we watched "The Fault in Our Stars" and bad parenting alert! "In Bruges," Martin McDonagh's R rated, blood soaked hitman comedy. And we read. Paulina tore through "The Fault in Our Stars" before Amsterdam, and Helene read us the opening pages of Ernest Hemingway's "A Movable Feast" before Paris. Dean finished "Giving Up the Gun" a slim but fascinating volume on how the samurais reverted to the sword in the 1600s just before we took off for Japan. I'm not sure if these little culture dives enhanced Dean and Paulina's experience, but I'm pretty sure they gave some depth to the vistas they saw a three dimensional understanding that these were not just places to view and photograph, but to experience as others had before. There is no way to sugarcoat it the first flight is always a misery. Coach seats are plenty big for children, and the entertainment options keep them busy for a while, but Dean and Paulina slept fitfully if at all on our trans Atlantic flights and were weary by the time we landed. My wheels on the ground exclamations to cheer them up "We're in Amsterdam, start of our Grand Tour of the Low Countries!" drew only sleepy eye rolls. Dean was looking pretty green as we headed down the aisle to get off the double decker Air France A380 Airbus that had delivered us to Charles de Gaulle airport. It was while we passed through first class that he threw up. To this day I'm thankful for the flight attendant's nonchalant charm and grace in the face of Dean's and my mutual mortification; she was either the kindest person who'd ever lived, or an actress on par with Catherine Deneuve, to whom she bore a not slight resemblance. Now, for all parents hear what I say: if at all possible, book a hotel room for the night before you arrive so you can go right in and take a three hour nap. Otherwise, you might find yourself waiting with two exhausted children for several hours for your room to be available, as we did in Scotland. Because when that nap is over, the fun truly begins. To see Paulina's eyes widen as we stepped out of our hotel into Shinjuku, in Tokyo, with its rushing crowds, flashing neon and bird tweets emitting from the walk signs was to see a child's world expand exponentially. "Oh my god this is like another planet." Same with Dean as we first walked across the Pont des Arts over the Seine in Paris and his brown eyes took in the Pont Neuf, the Ile de la Cite, the towers of Notre Dame and all the rainy gray and muted brown stone buildings arrayed before us. The key to making plans is not making too many. Too little structure and we'd end up wandering the same neighborhoods; too much and the trip becomes a forced march. We always book a few restaurants and, in more recent years, as the crowds have increased, a museum or two. But that's all. We reserved a specific time at the Rijksmuseum our first day in Amsterdam, and it was a great morning. Enthused, we decided to try for two museums in a row but balked when we saw the long lines at the nearby Van Gogh Museum. So we had a rijsttafel lunch at an Indonesian restaurant we stumbled across. Then we spent some time in a Tesla showroom, for no particular reason. We don't have to be together, all of us, every minute. Dean started taking long walks by himself in Japan, especially along the river in the mountain city of Takayama, and Helene and I sneaked out to a jazz bar in Kyoto one evening while the two of them luxuriated in their yukata robes back at our ryokan (Japanese hotel). In Paris, after the unfortunate first class throw up episode, Dean was laid low for a day, so Paulina and I went up to Montmartre to take in the views and have lunch at a cafe on the Place des Abbesses. Two days later, Dean and Paulina went off on their own with a friend of Dean's from school. We met them for dessert at Berthillon, the famous ice cream parlor on the Ile St. Louis. The next day, our last, Helene had planned a boat trip to Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands off the coast. She had seemed really excited about it. But I'd begun to see familiar signs: the blank expression, the decreasing eye contact, the inability to engage in a coherent conversation. I suggested that we instead return to Aughnanure Castle, which was nearby and had been a hit with the kids on our first day. She agreed, and we sat beside a glass clear stream on the castle grounds as Dean and Paulina played with the resident Shorthaired Pointer. Helene fell asleep on the grass the start of an epic nap that, after a brief interruption, was continued back at our bed and breakfast. I went in to check on her several times to make sure she was alive. Then I took the kids back down to the pub. Various members of the family can also stage mini revolutions. In Kyoto, looking for a restaurant for our penultimate dinner, we walked past an Italian cafe and everyone's eyes lit up. Pizza! I objected forcefully We were in Japan! When would we all be in Japan together again? We have to have Japanese food. How about okonomiyaki? Or ramen? Or yakitori? I got three dirty looks and we were soon taking our seats, English menus in hand. Paulina said what was on everyone's mind. And so, despite all the great food, and the spectacular views, and the visits to pubs and grand cafes, and the museums, the most rewarding parts of these trips have been the explorations of my own family. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
A few years ago, two Michigan prison inmates, proclaiming themselves adherents of the "Christian Identity" religion, sought the prison's official recognition to be allowed to conduct their own worship services, apart from other inmates. The prison already recognized 20 religions, including a number of Christian denominations, but the two men said they couldn't pray with others because their religion demanded "white separatism." While they observed several Jewish holidays, including Passover and Yom Kippur, they said they couldn't join Jewish inmates in prayer because "the Jewish faith denies Jesus Christ." The official in charge of "religious programming" for inmates advised the prison administration to deny the men's request. He noted in his memo that "the Christian Identity movement is known to have extreme racist and anti Semitic views with a history of violence in the United States," along with ties to the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. Giving Christian Identity a recognized place in prison life, he warned, "would pose a threat to the custody and security of our correctional facilities." The two prisoners sued under a federal law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. They lost in Federal District Court. This month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned that ruling. The court said the district judge, Phillip Green, had misapplied the law by weighing the prison's interest in safety as part of his analysis of whether the prison was placing an improper burden on the men's exercise of their chosen religion. If you just did a double take, so did I when I came upon this opinion. If you wondered whether the members of the three judge appellate panel were recent Trump appointees who perhaps share his administration's desire to elevate religious claims above all else, so did I. They were not. And in fact, I don't really fault the judges Richard Griffin, Jane Stranch and Bernice B. Donald for a decision that strikes me as ridiculous. Christian Identity has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "a unique anti Semitic and racist theology" that has held a position of "commanding influence" on the extremist right. What sensible person, or judge, would want to allow it to flourish inside a prison? The startling fact of the matter is that Judges Griffin, Stranch and Donald were applying the law as they found it as the Supreme Court has handed it to them in a series of decisions instructing judges to accept almost any religious claim, no matter how preposterous, at face value and to put the government to an extremely tough test to justify any infringement on a "sincere" religious belief. In the Hobby Lobby case six years ago, the court gave dispositive legal weight to the claim by owners of two for profit businesses that the legal requirement to include contraception coverage in their employee health plans would make them complicit in the sin of birth control. "It is not for us to say that their religious beliefs are mistaken or insubstantial," Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. Rather than looking at the Sixth Circuit prison decision, Fox v. Washington, as an outlier, we need to see it as a harbinger, a frightening one. I don't know whether this particular case will end up at the Supreme Court. But there are plenty of cases like it, making claims that would have been dismissed out of hand not too many years ago and that now have to be taken seriously by those of us worried about the growing threat that an increasingly weaponized free exercise clause poses to civil society, along with the statutes meant to extend its reach. On April 29, the last scheduled argument day of its current term, the court will hear two cases that are follow ons to the Hobby Lobby decision. The cases challenge rules issued by the Trump administration to provide employers with not only an enhanced religious opt out from the Affordable Care Act's contraception requirement, but also with a generalized "moral exemption" for employers who object to covering birth control but who can't claim a basis in religious doctrine for not following the law. On Monday, the justices accepted a closely watched case that has been at the top of religious conservatives' Supreme Court wish list. It challenges the City of Philadelphia's termination of a contract with Catholic Social Services, one of the private agencies certified to find families to take in foster children. Objecting to same sex marriage, the agency, which is affiliated with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, won't place children with same sex married couples. It thus refuses to abide by the city's Fair Practices Ordinance, which bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, among other characteristics. When, for that reason, the city's Department of Human Services stopped referring children to Catholic Social Services for placement, the agency, known as C.S.S., sued, claiming a violation of its religious liberty. It lost in both Federal District Court and in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which held in a ruling last April that "the city's nondiscrimination policy is a neutral, generally applicable law, and the religious views of CSS do not entitle it to an exception from that policy." In one major respect, the claim in this case, Fulton v. Philadelphia, resembles the claim in a case from Montana that the court heard last month. In that case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, parents who want to use state scholarship vouchers to send their children to religious schools are claiming a violation of their religious rights because the voucher program was terminated by the Montana Supreme Court. Montana's Constitution prohibits spending public money for religious education, and rather than vet the nature of each school at which a voucher might be used, the state court shut the program down for religious and nonreligious schools alike. So, on the one hand, the parents want religious schools to be treated like any other schools. On the other hand, they seek special treatment in the face of the voucher program's across the board termination. In similar fashion, Catholic Social Services on the one hand seeks treatment as an equal among the several dozen agencies the city contracts with for foster placements. On the other hand, it claims the right to not follow a law that applies to everyone. In two other respects, however, this new case is even more portentous or promising, depending on one's view than the others. Five years after it ruled in favor of same sex marriage, the Supreme Court has yet to fully address the objections of those who claim religious reasons for refusing to treat same sex couples as equals. (The court failed to say anything meaningful two years ago in the case of the baker who wouldn't bake a cake to celebrate a same sex marriage.) Other such cases are pending, including one from a florist who doesn't want to arrange flowers for a same sex wedding. The court has not yet acted on that appeal, Arlene's Flowers v. Washington, which was filed in September. Although the Catholic Church is not a direct party in the Philadelphia case, it is clearly the central actor in its agency's dispute with the city, leaving no ambiguity about the doctrinal basis for the claimed right to an exemption. Whether a baker is a "cake artist" entitled to deploy his creative gifts as he chooses is not the kind of distraction that will emerge when the case is argued next fall. Finally, the new case is especially important in offering the court a chance to do formally and in one sweep what the conservative justices have been trying to do more quietly case by case. Catholic Social Services is asking the court to overturn a 30 year old decision, Employment Division v. Smith, which held that as a general matter, the Constitution's free exercise clause provides no exemption from a generally applicable law, so long as the law wasn't enacted to target religion. (The Third Circuit's decision invokes the precise language from Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in the Employment Division case.) Congress's response to that decision was swift. It passed both the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person's Act with the goal of blunting the force of the 1990 decision by forbidding government from interfering with religious practices unless it could show a compelling need to do so. (The court later ruled that Congress lacked the power to impose the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on the states, many of which have now passed their own versions.) As religious conservatives have come to dominate the court in the intervening decades, the court itself has made the most of statutes that were actually intended as a rebuke to its authority. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act in particular, initially seen by a broad liberal coalition that supported it as protection for minority religious practices, has become a powerful tool in the hands of a politically energized Christian majority. Justice Scalia's explanation for why the free exercise clause can't be read as a license to opt out from the general obligations of civic life now feels as if it comes to us from another era as indeed it does. "It may fairly be said," Justice Scalia wrote, "that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in; but that unavoidable consequence of democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself or in which judges weigh the social importance of all laws against the centrality of all religious beliefs." Now that the country's justices and its religious politics are aligned, the question is how far the court will go, and with what consequences. A moment of truth is approaching. If we don't want hate groups to have a seat in the prison chapel, the time to start drawing lines is now. 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 |
It was always high praise when Judith Jamison, the artistic director emerita of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, summed up one of her dancers in a word: creature. These creatures were beyond human, not just by way of virtuosic feats, of which Tuesday's program at City Center displayed many, but distinctly sensitive and not of this earth. Leading the performance, largely a celebration of Mr. Ailey's dances set to music by Duke Ellington, was "Night Creature" from 1974. Linda Celeste Sims, Antonio Douthit Boyd, Glenn Allen Sims all dancers from Ms. Jamison's tenure were resplendent, lending indelible phrasing to Mr. Ailey's braiding of ballet, modern dance and Horton technique. They don't dance for mere pleasure; it's more that they're compelled to, like Wilis and swans, those ballet creatures who come out only at night. Under Chenault Spence's starry lighting, dancers prowl the stage with hands bent like paws and contrast crisp petit allegro steps with swaying hips to create a magnetic groove. It helps that the queen of these night owls is Ms. Sims, whose pelvis drives her legs across the floor with brazen knowingness. She's a tiny thing, yet so voluptuous. "Pas de Duke," created in 1976 as a gala vehicle for Ms. Jamison and Mikhail Baryshnikov, shifts between modern dance and bravura ballet. On Tuesday, Jacqueline Green, though silky in her stage gulping adagio solo of balances and reaching arms, never hit the right note with Kirven Douthit Boyd (Antonio Douthit Boyd's husband), whose own performance was marred by tentativeness. His turns wobbled; so much seemed forced in a duet that needs more teasing, more interplay. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Credit...Kim Klement/USA Today Sports, via Reuters The referee Zach Zarba had spent, by his count, roughly 23 nights a month away from home during the N.B.A.'s regular season for the past 17 years. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and the league suspended its season in March. It was, in a way, a welcome shock to the system for Zarba, 45, who quarantined in Brooklyn with his wife, Christiane, and their two children, Jackson, 8, and Jordan, 6. But Zarba couldn't simply sit around with his newfound free time waiting for games to resume. Just like the players he whistles on the court, he had to stay in shape for all the running he has to do during games much more than officials in most other sports. He exercised at home and ran the 3.35 mile loop in Prospect Park. Zarba said N.B.A. officials are weighed three times a year. He and the other referees also watched N.B.A. game video often to try to keep their eyes sharp. Players and coaches are sometimes given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to rust after inactivity. Not so much referees. Zarba has officiated more than 1,000 regular season games after joining the profession in part because of his father, who was a baseball umpire in Brooklyn. "It's a great job," Zarba said. "You have the best seat in the house. Every night, your job is never the same." The games inside the N.B.A.'s bubble at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., have provided a new set of challenges for officials, who are calling games in mostly empty arenas, meaning they hear every bit of chirping from benches that would normally be drowned out by crowd noise. "It's like a rec league game, but you've got the best players in the world here," Zarba said. He is one of the 18 referees still in Florida for the N.B.A.'s conference finals, and he spoke by Zoom about his career, life in the bubble and reading social media to stay on top of player drama. This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. So in your job, on your best day, you get yelled at by your colleagues, thousands of fans, not including the people sitting at home on their couches. You could do your job 99 percent well, but the 1 percent will spawn articles criticizing you, written by jerks like me. Help me understand why being a professional referee is appealing. I think first you have to have the love of the game. You have to be a hoops junkie. You have to discover the profession first, which can be kind of hard because nobody thinks about officiating. Everyone wants to play or coach. For me, it was discovering the craft and the profession, and then when you try, it's something that you either love or you hate it. Was there rust when the season resumed? Yeah, I think that would be expected. And there was, I think. The N.B.A. ramp up was probably about three weeks or so. We had a week of training camp and then two weeks of scrimmages. I think that's where the rust showed for us. Do you think you officiate differently when there are fans? I'm not sure. I've gotten questions about, "Well, you can hear more so you can call more fouls." We're not trained that way. We're trained to get the open angle and when you don't have an open angle, somebody else does. Trust your partner. The person who can see it should call it. Do you read social media? Do other refs? If so, I apologize. I didn't mean it. I do read social media. In terms of just knowing our league, I think it's important. I don't read social media about myself. We pay attention to social media just so you can know what's going on in your league. You need to know if a certain player has a problem with somebody else. I just want to clarify: You keep track of player beefs entering a game? Oh, we also have a security meeting 60 minutes before the game where you meet with the head of security for each team and we talk about any problems between the teams. You want to have all the relevant information so that you can make accurate decisions. You don't want to anticipate the decision, but you want to have all the relevant information before you make a decision. How has replay changed your job? We look at it as, if 20,000 screaming fans can know, in two seconds, if the ball was released in time on a last second shot attempt, then the three people charged with doling out the rules of the game, we should have access to that technology. When refs blow calls, what are some of the most common reasons? Probably positioning. There's usually something in your positioning when you don't get the angle. How does it feel when your call is overturned? When you are clearly wrong, and now that has been overturned, you feel a sense of relief. We try to take the ego out of it. Your job is to be a steward of the game. Do superstars get more leeway? I would disagree and go the other way and I would say that the majority of superstar players in our league don't get all the calls and don't get as many whistles as they deserve. They would agree with you. They would agree, correct. They actually finish a lot of plays at the rim and are so strong and so fast and the hand is quicker than the eye that there are things you go back and later on, you go: "Wow, you know what? He did get fouled." Is there a good story you have from your time as a referee? It must have been my first year in the league. My "welcome to the N.B.A." moment. I'm reffing a Lakers game and it's Kobe Bryant. Kobe in 2003, 2004, was younger and brash. He was chasing a legacy. He was a great player and intense. I remember there was one game and Kobe asked about a play. He thought he got fouled on the elbow shooting a jumper. He barked about it. The culture of the N.B.A. is that, for us, if a play in question happens in the first half, you can kind of go in at halftime, look at the play, you can come back and either tell them, "Yeah, you were right," or "No, you were wrong." Sure enough, Kobe got fouled and I missed the play, and it should've been a foul. When you tell a player and you drop your guard and say, "Hey, I missed that play," 90 percent of the time the player is going to say: "Hey, don't worry about it. You'll get the next one." That's the kind of working environment. I come back out and walk up to Kobe and say: "Kobe, you were right. You did get hit on the elbow." He looked dead at me and I'm expecting a pat on the butt or whatever. He looked at me stone faced and said, "Get it together." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Apple showed off a slate of new computers with better screens, faster processors and higher price tags on Tuesday, including an iPad Pro that the company is trying to position as a primary work computer. The announcements included a new MacBook Air, the first major update since 2011 of Apple's slimmest laptop, and a new Mac mini, Apple's entry level home computer. Apple tried to make its new iPad Pro the star of the show one of its slick product release events, this time at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Like Apple's iPhone released last year, the new iPad has much smaller borders around its screen, eliminating space for a home button. Instead, owners will unlock the device just by looking at it, and control it with a series of swipes on the screen. The change allowed Apple to make its larger iPad Pro about the size of a standard piece of paper, with 25 percent less volume than the last model, while retaining its 12.9 inch screen and increasing its speed and storage capacity. Apple also introduced a new iPad keyboard, a new stylus that charges wirelessly and connects magnetically to the iPad, and new iPad apps like Adobe Photoshop. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. They call it the "Church Lane Hug." That is how educators at Church Lane Elementary Technology, a public school here, describe the protective two armed way they teach students to carry their school issued laptops. Administrators at Baltimore County Public Schools, the 25th largest public school system in the United States, have embraced the laptops as well, as part of one of the nation's most ambitious classroom technology makeovers. In 2014, the district committed more than 200 million for HP laptops, and it is spending millions of dollars on math, science and language software. Its vendors visit classrooms. Some schoolchildren have been featured in tech company promotional videos. In some significant ways, the industry's efforts to push laptops and apps in schools resemble influence techniques pioneered by drug makers. The pharmaceutical industry has long cultivated physicians as experts and financed organizations, like patient advocacy groups, to promote its products. Studies have found that strategies like these work, and even a free 20 meal from a drug maker can influence a doctor's prescribing practices. That is one reason the government today maintains a database of drug maker payments, including meals, to many physicians. Tech companies have not gone as far as drug companies, which have regularly paid doctors to give speeches. But industry practices, like flying school officials to speak at events and taking school leaders to steak and sushi restaurants, merit examination, some experts say. "If benefits are flowing in both directions, with payments from schools to vendors," said Rob Reich, a political science professor at Stanford University, "and dinner and travel going to the school leaders, it's a pay for play arrangement." Karen Cator, the chief executive of Digital Promise, said it was important for schools and industry to work together. "We want a healthy, void of conflict of interest relationship between people who create products for education and their customers," she said. "The reason is so that companies can create the best possible products to meet the needs of schools." Several parents said they were troubled by school officials' getting close to the companies seeking their business. Dr. Cynthia M. Boyd, a practicing geriatrician and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with children in district schools, said it reminded her of drug makers' promoting their medicines in hospitals. "You don't have to be paid by Big Pharma, or Big Ed Tech, to be influenced," Dr. Boyd said. She has raised concerns about the tech initiative at school board meetings. Baltimore County's 173 schools span a 600 square mile horseshoe around the city of Baltimore, which has a separate school system. Like many districts, the school system struggles to keep facilities up to date. Some of its 113,000 students attend spacious new schools. Some older schools, though, are overcrowded, requiring trailers as overflow classrooms. In some, tap water runs brown. And, in budget documents, the district said it lacked the "dedicated resources" for students with disabilities. The superintendent later appeared in an HP video. "We are going to continue needing a thought partner like HP to say what's working and what's not working," he said. Microsoft, whose Windows software runs the laptops, named the district a Microsoft Showcase school system. Intel, whose chips power the laptops, gave Ryan Imbriale, the executive director of the district's department of innovative learning, an Intel Education Visionary award. Recently, parents and teachers have reported problems with the HP devices, including batteries falling out and keyboard tiles becoming detached. HP has discontinued the Elitebook Revolve. Mr. Dickerson, the district spokesman, said there was not "a widespread issue with damaged devices." An HP spokesman said: "While the Revolve is no longer on the market, it would be factually inaccurate to suggest that's related to product quality." Asked what device would eventually replace the Revolve in the schools, the district said it was asking vendors for proposals. A Baltimore County school board member, David Uhlfelder, said a representative from the Office of the Maryland State Prosecutor had interviewed him in September about Mr. Dance's relationship with a former school vendor (a company not in the tech industry). The prosecutor's office declined to confirm or deny its interest in Mr. Dance. Mr. Dance, who discussed the district's tech initiatives with a Times reporter last year, did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls this week seeking comment. In Baltimore County and beyond, the digital makeover of America's schools has spawned a circuit of conferences, funded by Microsoft, Google, Dell and other tech vendors, that lavish attention on tech friendly educators. Between March 2014, when the laptop contract was announced, and April 2017, when he announced his resignation, Mr. Dance took at least 65 out of state trips related to the district's tech initiatives or involving industry funded groups, according to a Times analysis of travel documents obtained under public records laws nearly two trips per month on average. Those trips cost more than 33,000. The Times counted only trips with local receipts, indicating Mr. Dance set foot in the cities. At least 13,000 of Mr. Dance's airline tickets, hotel bills, meals and other fees were paid for by organizations sponsored by tech companies, some of which were school vendors, The Times found. The 13,000 is an incomplete number, because some groups cover superintendents' costs directly, which means school records may not include them. "You have these huge contracts, and then you donate all this money, and the foundation puts up a banner advertising your company's name," said Michael J. Collins, a former Maryland state senator and former school board member. "I just didn't think that passed the smell test." Discovery Education said it trained employees to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Microsoft said its policies followed government gift and ethics rules. Pearson said its donation had been nominal and vetted to prevent conflict of interest. McGraw Hill said it was committed to integrity and transparency. Deborah S. Phelps, the foundation's executive director, said it awarded scholarships and gave schools grants for projects in culture, science, technology and other subjects. When asked if the foundation had policies governing donations from vendors or potential vendors, Ms. Phelps said no. "'There's not necessarily a policy," she said. There is also no policy prohibiting foundation board members who are vendors from reviewing grants involving their or competitors' products, she said. Mr. Dickerson said the focus of Baltimore County Public Schools was on "supporting students, teachers and their learning environments." He added: "We are unapologetic for engaging with our Education Foundation, business partners and community stakeholders in an effort to close known achievement gaps." Mr. Reich of Stanford suggested school districts establish clearer rules governing their relationships with vendors, particularly with tech companies racing to win over the gatekeepers to America's classrooms. Otherwise, parents could lose trust in the system. "School leaders should be just as concerned about the perception of corruption as actual corruption," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
The production of "Hagoromo" opening Tuesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music brings together forces from different genres. It's a Japanese Noh classic reimagined and directed by David Michalek with music by Nathan Davis to a libretto by Brendan Pelsue; there's choreography by David Neumann, puppetry by Chris M. Green, costumes by Dries Van Noten, a set by Sara Brown, dancing by the former ballerina Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto and singing by the contralto Katalin Karolyi and the tenor Peter Tantsits. For many, the biggest draw will be Ms. Whelan, who retired from ballet last year, although she had already turned to modern dance. So far, however, she has not been lucky in her post ballet vehicles. "Hagoromo" has sold out; I find myself chiefly curious to see its nondance aspects. Onstage at New York City Ballet, where he is a senior member of the corps de ballet, Troy Schumacher customarily looks puckish: Puck, in the Balanchine version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," is one of the solo roles he has made his own, as is the Jester in Peter Martins's "Swan Lake." It's been a surprise to learn in recent years that this twinkling, funny performer is also a serious creator: In 2010, when he was still in his early 20s, he formed a group of artists composers, artists, dancers, poets called BalletCollective. It was one of the hits of the Joyce Theater's 2013 season of six small ballet companies, and in 2014 the company danced a short season at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. On Oct. 19, as part of the Works Process series at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the composers Ellis Ludwig Leone and Mark Dancigers and the photographic artist Paul Maffi joined him in an event that showed how they work together. Hearing about, and witnessing, this compositional process was entertaining, though probably immaterial to the final theatrical experience. What matters is that Mr. Schumacher's composers are good and that his response to their music is multifaceted. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
For over a decade, Ellen Fishman has been waiting for business to improve at Amorina Cucina Rustica, the restaurant she owns with her husband on Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn. Her pizzeria sits in the shadow of the 4.9 billion megadevelopment once known as Atlantic Yards, which has promised to deliver thousands of new residents and visitors to the area since it was proposed in 2003. But so far, the biggest change Ms. Fishman and other Vanderbilt Avenue merchants have seen is rising rent. The project has been troubled by delays, financial setbacks, lawsuits and political wrangling. And the opening of the Barclays Center, the centerpiece of the development, in 2012, did not deliver substantial new business to Vanderbilt, despite expectations that it would. All the while, Prospect Heights merchants on Vanderbilt, on the southeastern edge of the development, have been waiting for thousands of new residents to settle at the 22 acre development, now called Pacific Park Brooklyn, and stream into their shops. This fall, the first residential tower will open, and others will soon follow. Ms. Fishman hopes that a payoff might finally come. "Everybody is really having their fingers crossed," she said. "I'm sure there are a few businesses that are really hanging on by a thread, waiting for this bump up." Retail rents have been rising in anticipation that the project will change the character of the stretch of Vanderbilt that runs from Atlantic Avenue to Grand Army Plaza. Hair salons and hardware stores have been replaced with artisanal bakeries and farm to table restaurants. Some storefronts have remained vacant as landlords wait for higher paying tenants. Even some newer stores have struggled to survive, according to the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council and Ms. Fishman, president of the Vanderbilt Avenue Merchants District. But shopkeepers found that after the Barclays Center home to the Islanders and the Nets, at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues opened, sports fans and concertgoers simply did not walk the 15 minutes to Vanderbilt Avenue to eat. Also, construction of the 14 residential buildings, originally scheduled to finish by this year, stalled. But the retailers' rents rose anyway. "Nobody projected it was going to take 12 years," said Gib Veconi, the chairman of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council. "A lot of those neighborhood entrepreneurs who were here in the early part of the last decade haven't been able to hold on." Ms. Fishman and her husband, Albano Ballerini, own a separate building on Vanderbilt with a storefront. Retail brokers told her to ask 10,000 a month for the small, 750 square foot space. "It was absurd. Who could possibly do that?" she said. Instead, the couple rented it at a fraction of what the brokers suggested to Daly Pie, a bakery cafe that opened in June. Since the project's developer, Greenland Forest City Partners, agreed two years ago to build the affordable apartments faster, residential buildings have been rising. In all, the project will contain 6,430 apartments, including 2,250 affordable units to be completed by 2025. The first tower, a 32 story rental at 461 Dean Street, opens this fall. A 17 story condominium, 550 Vanderbilt, with about 250 apartments will open by next year. So too will 535 Carlton, an 18 story rental with almost 300 apartments. Another tower, 38 Sixth Avenue at Dean Street, will open in 2017 with about 300 apartments. When complete, the project is expected to add more than 13,000 residents to the area. "If you're a restaurateur and you just make ends meet, suddenly you have an opportunity to make real money," said Ofer Cohen, the president of TerraCRG, a real estate brokerage based in Prospect Heights. "And I feel like it's already started to happen." Ms. Fishman and Mr. Ballerini, who opened their restaurant 11 years ago, would like to start serving lunch and hope their delivery business will spike as new tenants order pizza. The buildings will also bring new businesses to the area. The project includes 247,000 square feet of retail. A large portion of that will eventually be housed in an office tower planned for a site opposite the Barclays Center. Most of the residential buildings will include some retail space, too, adding new space for smaller shops on Vanderbilt Avenue and Dean Street. Four storefronts will open at 535 Carlton, totaling 9,000 square feet, and 550 Vanderbilt will have 7,000 square feet of retail. A 26 story tower, 615 Dean, which broke ground in December, will have space for two stores when it opens. Many of the storefronts will face Dean Street, which runs parallel to Atlantic Avenue and has minimal retail. "Dean Street will be literally forming its identity," said Peter Levitan, a principal at Lee Associates, a commercial real estate brokerage. Greenland Forest City is courting smaller, locally owned businesses. Storefronts that open onto a landscaped park space would most likely house a restaurant or cafe. Others could suit a small grocery store, a pet store or a child care center, said Susi Yu, the executive vice president of development at Forest City Ratner, which was the sole developer before it sold a 70 percent stake of the project in 2014 to Greenland USA, a subsidiary of the Chinese company Greenland Group. "The goal is not to have big box retail here," said Scott Solish, manager of development for Greenland USA. "The strategy is to complement what's here." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
A variety of worlds from a British ship of pilgrims to a maze populated with competing detectives have been unfolding inside the neo Gothic walls of a former school on the Lower East Side. Those worlds, and many others, are part of the first Rave Theater Festival, running through Aug. 25 at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center. It is the brainchild of the Tony Award winning impresario Ken Davenport, who noticed festivals disappearing as the physical space for productions in New York became more limited. Beginning in late March, he and his staff members began to develop the festival from scratch. With little advertising or a known brand, they generated over 200 submissions from theater makers all over the world. The result: 19 productions, including musicals, plays, one person shows, an immersive experience, plus three readings. Mr. Davenport won a Tony for producing the revival of "Once on This Island"; his longtime passion project, the original musical, "Gettin' the Band Back Together," closed quickly. He's well known in Broadway circles for his blog, "The Producer's Perspective," which provides readers with practical advice on how to break into the industry. He said he had just one question before granting artists a slot in the new festival: "Can you pull this together?" "I'm looking for artpreneurs," he explained by telephone, "people who have a great way of communicating their art, but who can also make that art happen logistically." (Besides the 995 fee to participate, creators would foot producing costs for their shows.) Judging from the nine shows I attended before my deadline, Mr. Davenport's mission appeared more than fulfilled, as most of the productions appeared ready for further life. Take, for instance, the confident "Oceanborn," a sweeping musical with a book by Morgan Smith and a gorgeous score by Mhairi Cameron , done justice on piano by the musical director Paolo Perez, but itching to be performed by a full orchestra . But where those animated films had to satisfy the need for a happy ending, "Oceanborn" presents us with a bittersweet conclusion, in which duty to the community overcomes youthful desires. With haunting melodies, impressive ensemble work, and a modern sensibility, my question for "Oceanborn" is, when can I have the cast recording? In promotional material for the festival, Mr. Davenport stressed the affordability of tickets, which run from 25 to 45 apiece. That top ticket could get you into the immersive "Noirtown," devised by the playwright Michael Bontatibus and the director Charlotte Murray. As you follow several story lines across various rooms on the second floor of the Clemente, you're invited to examine scattered clues, lean in to listen to private telephone conversations, and try to solve the puzzle that has driven three detectives to near insanity. If, as cinema scholars have suggested, film noir is the cinematic style that best captures the mysterious quality of dreams, "Noirtown" succeeds in making those fantasies tangible. (The splendid set design is by Lauren Barber, the costumes by Corina Chase.) During its most electrifying moments, the show feels like being inside David Lynch's neo noir "Mulholland Drive," rather than in a Veronica Lake movie. But like the martyred detectives that inhabit noir, we audience members come to recognize that the pleasure was never in solving the mystery, but in the thrill of the chase. Other festival highlights include Joshua Turchin's uplifting musical "The Perfect Fit," in which the 12 year old prodigy proves his worth as a composer, actor, and book writer, delivering a richly layered show about the lives and loves of showbiz preadolescents. "Young Pilgrims" is a historical romantic comedy by Sydney Blake, a former sitcom writer ("Major Dad," "Empty Nest") who upon learning that her husband and daughter were descendants of the Mayflower crew member John Alden, took it upon herself to tell the story of how he met his wife, Priscilla. But rather than romanticizing early American history, Ms. Blake populates her play with pilgrims who find their faith and the reality of stealing land from indigenous people at odds. The Native American actor Michael Bluejacket gave the most moving performance I saw in the festival as Squanto, who never feels the need to justify his existence through assimilation, but merely displays his humanity as an act of resistance. Brandon Lambert and Lauren Gundrum's zippy "Just Laugh," is a musical comedy that follows Timmy (Julian Diaz Granados) from birth to the turning point where he is asked to take the reins of his adult life. Casi Riegle's scene stealing performance as Timmy's love interest, Claire, reminded me of Mr. Davenport's notion that festivals don't only serve the productions, but also help performers get seen by agents and talent scouts. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
AMSTERDAM "Some people are born teachers. Some people are born footballers. I'm a born burglar." So says Octave Durham, who stole two priceless Vincent van Gogh paintings on the evening of Dec. 7, 2002. More than 14 years after he and an accomplice clambered onto the roof of the Van Gogh Museum here, broke a window with a sledgehammer and lifted the canvases off the wall, Mr. Durham has finally come clean about his involvement in one of the most infamous postwar art heists. He did so in a 45 minute documentary that will show on Dutch television on Tuesday, the same day the museum plans to return the two canvases recovered in September from the home of an Italian mobster's mother to public view. The confession has no legal impact for Mr. Durham, who was convicted in 2004 and served just over 25 months in prison, but it sheds light on the paintings' tortuous journey and ultimate rescue, and on the intersection of art theft and organized crime. "The heist took about 3 minutes and 40 seconds," Mr. Durham says in the documentary. "When I was done, the police were there, and I was passing by with my getaway car. Took my ski mask off, window down, and I was looking at them." He adds: "I could hear them on my police scanner. They didn't know it was me." Mr. Durham, in details that he shares for the first time, after years of claiming innocence, brags of doing "bank jobs, safety deposit and more spectacular jobs than this." He says he targeted the museum not because of any interest in art but simply because he could. "That's the eye of a burglar," he boasts. The works are of inestimable value because they have never been to market: "View of the Sea at Scheveningen" (1882) is one of only two seascapes van Gogh painted during his years in the Netherlands, and "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen" (1882 84), showing the church where the artist's father was a pastor, was a gift to the artist's mother. But Mr. Durham did not know the historical background of the paintings. He said the paintings were the smallest ones in the gallery he targeted, and closest to the hole through which he entered. He stuffed them into a bag, and escaped by sliding down a rope he and his accomplice had put in place. When he hit the ground, he came down so hard that he smashed the seascape, chipping the paint. He left behind a black baseball cap. A security guard called the police, but she was not permitted to use force to try to stop the burglars. Mr. Durham could not sell the canvases on the open market, but he put out the word in the underworld. At one point, he said, he met with Cor van Hout, who was convicted in the 1983 kidnapping of the beer magnate Alfred H. Heineken. Mr. van Hout agreed to buy the paintings, but was killed on the day of the planned sale. Later, Mr. Durham and his accomplice, Henk Bieslijn, contacted an Italian mobster, Raffaele Imperiale, who at the time sold marijuana out of a "coffee shop" in Amsterdam. He agreed to buy the two paintings in March 2003 for around 350,000 euros (roughly 380,000), divided equally between the thieves. Mr. Imperiale's defense lawyers, Maurizio Frizzi and Giovanni Ricci in Genoa, Italy, confirmed that Mr. Imperiale bought the paintings even though he knew they were stolen, because "he is fond of art" and they were "a good bargain." He sent them to Italy within two weeks, and never displayed them. The thieves spent the money over about six weeks "Motorcycles, a Mercedes E320, clothes, jewelry for my girlfriend, a trip to New York," Mr. Durham recalls. Those purchases helped investigators, who were already wiretapping him, catch Mr. Durham. They went to his apartment, but he escaped by climbing up the side of the building a skill that earned him the nickname "the Monkey." They searched his house, but the paintings were long gone. Mr. Durham fled to Spain, where the police arrested him in Marbella, a southern resort town, in December 2003. The next summer, Dutch forensic investigators confirmed a DNA match from the baseball cap he left behind during the museum robbery. Mr. Durham and Mr. Bieslijn were convicted that year. Mr. Durham was released from prison in 2006, but still owed 350,000 euros in fines; he has paid about 60,000 euros. He returned to prison after a failed bank robbery. In 2013, he approached the museum and, although he still insisted he was innocent, offered to help retrieve the works. The museum rejected his offer because he suggested that they buy them back. In 2015, he met the documentary filmmaker Vincent Verweij through a mutual friend. Mr. Durham told Mr. Verweij that he wanted to help find the paintings so that he could clear his debt to the museum and abandon a life of crime. But he still maintained his innocence. "I told him frankly that I didn't believe him," Mr. Verweij recalled in an interview. "One day he sent me a WhatsApp message and asked me to meet him in a cafe, and he admitted that he'd told me a lie and that he did the break in." Mr. Verweij began filming in earnest. Along the way he learned about a big break in the case: Mr. Imperiale had sent a letter on Aug. 29, 2016, to Vincenza Marra, a public prosecutor in Naples, informing them that he had the paintings. In a phone interview, Ms. Marra said the letter merely confirmed a "much whispered about" rumor that investigators had already begun looking into. "I know that if we hadn't handed the paintings over to the Dutch authorities, they never would have found them," she added dryly. Willem Nijkerk, a Dutch prosecutor, credited the Italian police with solving the case, and noted that Mr. Durham played no role in the recovery of the paintings. Ms. Bakker, the Van Gogh Museum curator, recalls receiving a call in late September asking her to travel to Naples the next day. She wasn't given details, but she had her suspicions. She grabbed her files on the paintings. "When I was on the plane, I remember thinking: I hope they've been preserved well and people haven't taken them off the stretchers," she recalls. At the Naples police station, members of the Guardia di Finanza, the Italian police agency for financial crimes, took her to a room where the paintings had been placed on blue and white cloth on a table. "I immediately thought and knew that these were the paintings from our museum," she said. "But I took another few minutes to convince myself. They were all waiting and standing for me to say the words. I did say them, and then there were cheers." Ms. Bakker was surprised that the works seemed in relatively good condition. "When I saw the damage in the lower left corner of one of the paintings, it was substantial, but I looked at the rest and realized it was the only big damage, and I was very relieved to see that," she said of the seascape. "It was really like being in some weird movie, with all these police officers around me and this strange Mafia story they were telling me." After they were recovered, with much fanfare in Italy, the works were first exhibited for three weeks in February at the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples, and will be restored to the walls of the Van Gogh Museum on Monday. Mr. Imperiale left the Netherlands for Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, in 2013 or 2014. In writing to the prosecutor, he may have hoped for leniency, but in January he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The Italian authorities are seeking his extradition. His lawyers said that he was not sure if he would return to Italy. "He is homesick for his parents, but in Dubai he's a free man," Mr. Imperiale's lawyers said through an interpreter in a telephone interview. The Van Gogh Museum remains furious at Mr. Durham and did not cooperate with the documentary, which was funded by the Dutch national broadcaster KRO NCRV. (Mr. Durham, who lives in Amsterdam and works mostly as a driver and an assistant for his daughter, a successful musician, was not paid for his participation, the filmmaker said.) "The last 14 years have been a roller coaster of hope, disappointment and agony," the museum's director, Axel Ruger, said in an interview. "All the time this man is sitting on this information. He knew exactly what he had done and he never breathed a word. To us it feels as if he is seeking the limelight." He added: "The museum is the victim in this case, and I would expect very different behavior from someone who shows remorse." Mr. Verweij acknowledged the tricky ethics of giving Mr. Durham a platform in the documentary. "The interesting thing is that you never see documentaries or articles about art theft from the perspective of the thief," Mr. Verweij said. "It's always the experts, the museum people, the prosecutors, but never the ones who actually do it, and I think that's a unique perspective. It's not meant to be a glorification of this guy." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
INSIDE a broadcast booth, at the radio station of the State University of New York Fredonia, Jud Heussler was presiding over his hourlong comedy show "The Morning Inferno." In a barreling voice, he announced that he would soon be throwing a few things up on the show's Facebook page: a photo of a drunken moose he had uncovered online; a YouTube clip used for his segment "The Yoga Minute," in which he and his co host hyperventilate giddily along to the words of an earnest yoga instructor; and a video clip of the comedian Donald Glover, who was to perform on campus that night. "Call, text, Facebook, whatever you want," Mr. Heussler shouted to his listeners as he logged onto Facebook to check out who was posting on the show's wall. Meanwhile, he sipped apple juice and fiddled with knobs on the audio board, plotting one of the day's big activities: the videotaping of a campus groundbreaking. Who would shoot it? Someone who knew how to operate the station's beloved Flip camera flipping, as it's called. If none of this sounds like classic college radio, it's not. Fredonia, a campus of 5,700 about an hour southwest of Buffalo, has two stations. And WDVL, the more popular, is so far removed from traditional radio it can't even be found on the FM dial. Instead, that station streams on the Internet, which means tousled haired disc jockeys in faded band T's are constantly encouraging listeners to check out a rolling supply of podcasts, YouTube clips, photos and campus news on the station's Web site. Mr. Heussler, a senior majoring in audio radio production, is general manager of both stations. He pointed boastfully at a printout of the station's latest stats. "You could argue that WDVL has a bigger impact beyond the campus than we do on it," he said. The station has about 350 online listeners a day; 40 percent of them live almost 300 miles away in the New York City area, while a mere 4 percent are on or near campus. Other log in clusters? Los Angeles and the Czech Republic. "People listen from everywhere," he said. Fredonia's radio station, with its tattered band posters and fading stickers, rickety desks and swivel chairs, and the occasional forlorn turntable or microphone jack, is plush by college standards. There is a mustard colored couch from the 1960s in the lounge and an oversize banner of the call letters in red and black draped over an office divide. And nostalgically, a large closet houses thousands of dusty vinyls and CDs. Most of the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System's 700 college members now stream on the Internet along with, or instead of, their broadcasting efforts. The Web's freedom from Federal Communications Commission regulations is not the point. At stations like Fredonia's, the goal is to transform themselves into the multimedia platforms they believe students with unprecedented tech appetites actually want, and it is changing the ethos, content and vibe of collegiate stations. "No one brings a radio to their dorm today," says Sean Owczarek, a recent Yale graduate who helped remake WYBCX, the university's online only station, during his time as general manager there. Instead, students arrive on campus armed with smartphones, iPods and tablets on which they can listen to music services like Pandora, an Internet station that uses an algorithm to determine what songs to play. And now that Facebook has teamed with peer to peer applications like Spotify, users can share music right there on the site. ITunes carries some 225 college stations. YESTERDAY, TODAY Servers at Fordham's WFUV, right, store the music that once was spun on vinyl. The two corners of the station make for a fitting symbol of the changes in college radio. Michael Appleton for The New York Times In this crowd, luring listeners, and keeping them entertained, is a matter of survival. A dispiriting number of college administrators, unclear on the need for radio stations at all, are selling their coveted space on the AM FM dial. In the last two years 14 stations have been sold or have pending sales, according to College Broadcasters Inc., an industry association. Despite vociferous protest, Vanderbilt University in June sold the broadcast license to its indie station WRVU, a Nashville institution that promoted its music as the kind "you can't hear anywhere else." The sale price: 3.35 million. Brown's BSR lost its FM spot this summer, too. And after multiple attempts to scuttle the deal, Rice University recently sold its license for KTRU, which played everything from Philip Glass to shoegaze, a British rock subgenre characterized by noisy guitars and motionless musicians on stage. All three stations are now streaming online. (WRVU and KTRU can also be found on HD Radio, for hybrid digital, which requires special receivers.) To improve morale, Rob Quicke, a communications professor and general manager of the station at William Paterson University, in Wayne, N.J., organized a College Radio Day on Oct. 11. It was a call to unity in which 365 stations showcased their best work and played a segment by Professor Quicke on the value of college radio. Station managers, sounding more business than boho, increasingly meet to strategize ways to stay relevant. "One of the big things we do is monthly conference calls with our board of directors where we brainstorm the future of our station," says David DyTang, a policy analysis and management major and general manager of Cornell's rock station, WVBR. "How do we reach out to students? How do we access them through modern media?" In one way, the students are creating an app to access the station's Web site from a smartphone. Three years ago, Fordham started up the Alternate Side as an edgier, visually stimulating option to its FM based station, WFUV. The Alternate Side streams 24/7 on the Internet, a few hours a day on the FM dial, and on HD Radio. Student technicians videotape and edit live jam sessions that are e mailed to listeners in a weekly newsletter and posted on the station's page. "We call ourselves a radio station," says John O. Platt,WFUV's communications director. "But we're really a multimedia content provider." Students at Yale's WYBCX refer to their station as a "global entity." In response to lost listenership in 2007, students voluntarily transformed their free format AM station into an Internet only outfit with a highbrow mix of pop electronica and contemporary classical. While WYBCX is like many stations in that it offers live college sports, its disc jockeys would never be satisfied streaming for just a dorm buddy. "All our shows are designed for audiences beyond Yale," says the general manager, Carl Chen, a junior sociology major who is as comfortable discussing an 11 member hip hop collective from Los Angeles as the "media model" the station ought to be pursuing to compete for listeners. The plan is to develop niche followings with eclectic interview shows like "The Art World Demystified," "A Glimpse of Islam" and "fsck," on the tech world. Once upon a time, it was a hyper local focus that constituted the beauty of the often unpolished, old school college radio show. Disc jockeys shouted out to roommates cramming at 3 a.m. for calculus II exams, played cranky ballads to ex boyfriends, and introduced new, underground bands. For those who recall stations as carefree places where a kid who was into music could play some tunes, even ones no one was likely to enjoy, this global minded, strategic maneuvering is unsettling. "College radio has traditionally been rooted in a community, a place and a time," says Casey Rae Hunter, deputy director of the Future of Music Coalition, a nonprofit group that has been involved in the fight to preserve college radio. "It's live and it's local. There is a tremendous romance to that. Without it, college radio stations risk losing their uniqueness." DePaul University's Internet only station garners listeners from as far away as Tokyo, and when a marketing class was asked to evaluate what the station could do to improve, there was overwhelming consensus: focus more on what's happening here, on the Chicago campus. WKDU has long positioned itself as West Philadelphia's answer to corporate music. Playing Top 40 tunes is not allowed. Jake Cooley, a junior and the station manager, chuckles when he recalls the time, a few years back, when a D.J. propped a vacuum cleaner up to his microphone and let it roar to mimic the noisy dissonance of a black metal drone band. It was part musical experience, part D.J. bravado. Would Mr. Cooley sanction such a performance today? "Probably not," he says almost apologetically. "It's a fine line." Larry L. Epstein, faculty adviser to WKDU, has watched the transition up close. "These college stations are still social environments," says Mr. Epstein, who is also an executive board member of Cornell's WVBR. But students tend to be more deliberate about their time at them and more demanding of one another. While some of this has to do with the changing work ethos on American campuses, he says, it also has to do with the pressure stations are under. "Their programming has to be relevant to their core audience," he says. "The days of college stations that only appeal to the students who work there has come to an end." Mr. Epstein is direct. "I tell them: You don't want to end up another Vanderbilt." It wasn't always like this. As mainstream radio in the 1980s and 1990s became more focused on profits, and hence more risk averse, college radio became one of the rare broadcast venues where new sounds could be introduced, according to Susan Smulyan, author of "Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting." "College radio became a hideout," she says. And it relished the role. In the 1980s college radio catapulted the post punk pop of R.E.M. into the mainstream, and is credited with discovering and promoting the 1990s grunge bands Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. In the early 2000s, it was college radio that helped ignite a garage band revival with the White Stripes. Even Coldplay was lifted up through the ranks of college radio. David Hargis, a former student disc jockey at Princeton's WPRB, says the power of these stations has been diluted because music blogs like Pitchfork and social networking sites, which he calls "word of mouth on steroids," are offering those same opportunities to discover new music. "There are too many other ways to get what college radio gives you," says Mr. Hargis, who was a paid program coordinator for KUSF, the University of San Francisco's student station, which now is found only streaming on the Internet. Mr. Vyverman, the faculty manager at Radio DePaul, says college radio can etch out a new role, but online so young listeners can do what they have grown accustomed to doing: participating. "College students don't want: You listen to what we tell you," he says. "They want two way communication. They want to feel that their voice is being heard." Mr. Heussler believes another way to foster these connections is to help listeners find information on artists they want to learn more about. To illustrate this, he told the story of how two years ago, WDVL conducted a phone interview with an indie electro pop band from Colorado called 3OH!3. The podcast included a recording of "Don't Trust Me," the band's catchy, tongue in cheek tune about the perils of hooking up. When that song shot to No. 1 on the music charts, fans from around the world, seeking news about the band, found the Fredonia site. To old radio heads, what Mr. Heussler was describing wasn't really introducing someone to something new. You find what you're looking for; you don't find what you're not looking for. But he is not the type to get bogged down in what used to be. When asked which station was WDVL's biggest competitor, Mr. Heussler, taking a rare break in the foam padded interview room, shrugged. "Who are we competing with? We're competing with past generations." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
It looks as if the spring swoon is back. American employers added an estimated 88,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, compared with 268,000 in February, according to a Labor Department report released Friday. It was the slowest pace of growth since last June, and less than half of what economists had expected. It also was the start of a third consecutive spring in which employers tapered off their hiring after a healthy start to the year. Slowdowns in the previous two years could be attributed to flare ups in the European debt crisis, but this time the cause is less obvious. The recent payroll tax increase or other fiscal tightening in Washington could be partly to blame for the sudden retreat in hiring, but neither seems to be showing up much yet in other relevant economic data. "People were starting to believe the economy was really picking up steam, and desperately wanted this report to be better," said Joshua Shapiro, chief economist at MFR Inc. "But that didn't happen." Economists like Mr. Shapiro cautioned that the numbers, which are adjusted for normal seasonal variations, are volatile from month to month and are still subject to revision. The unemployment rate, which comes from a different survey, ticked down to 7.6 percent in March, from 7.7 percent, but for the wrong reason: because more people reported dropping out of the labor force (meaning they are neither working nor looking for work), not because more people were hired. The labor force participation rate has not been this low 63.3 percent since 1979, a time when women were less likely to be working. Baby boomer retirements may account for part of the slide, but pessimism about job prospects in a mediocre economy still seems to be playing a large role, economists say. "The drop in the participation rate has been centered on younger workers," said Mr. Shapiro, "many of whom have given up hope of finding a decent job and are instead continuing in school and racking up enormous amounts of student debt, which has contributed to the recent surge in consumer credit outstanding." Investors initially responded to the jobs report by sending the major stock market indexes down more than 1 percent. But as the day went on, strategists sent out reports noting that the economic slowdowns in previous years ended up being temporary. The Standard Poor's 500 stock index climbed back to end the day down only 0.4 percent. "Given the noise in the data you don't want to set your pants on fire about it," said Michael Feroli, chief United States economist at JPMorgan Chase. Job gains in March were concentrated in professional and business services and health care. The government again shed workers, as it has been doing for most of the last four years, though reductions at the Postal Service accounted for most of the latest decline. Economists expect more government layoffs in the months ahead as the effects of Washington's across the board budget cuts make their way through the system. "While the recovery was gaining traction before sequestration took effect, these arbitrary and unnecessary cuts to government services will be a headwind in the months to come, and will cut key investments in the nation's future competitiveness," Alan B. Krueger, the chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement. The latest report should quiet speculation that the Federal Reserve will take its foot off the monetary accelerator anytime soon, as some had suggested after a spike in hiring in February. Even before Friday's numbers came out, though, Fed officials had expressed concerns about not only the pace of job growth, but the quality of hiring as well. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. "It's important to look at the types of jobs that are being created because those jobs will directly affect the fortunes and challenges of households and neighborhoods as well as the course of the recovery," Sarah Bloom Raskin, a member of the Federal Reserve Board, said in a recent speech. She noted that relatively low wage sectors like food services and retail businesses had accounted for a large share of the job growth in the last few years; a report in August from the National Employment Law Project, a liberal advocacy group, found that a majority of jobs lost during the recent recession were in the middle range of wages, while a majority of those added during the recovery had been low paying. In March, in fact, jobs in food services and drinking places accounted for the largest share of total American employment on record. Today nearly one in 13 American jobs is in this industry. Ms. Raskin also expressed concern about temporary jobs, which account for a growing share of total employment. "Temporary help is rapidly approaching a new record," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, who noted that there was also a rapid increase in temp hiring during the boom years of the 1990s. "That of course means more flexibility for employers, and less job security for workers." Perhaps more distressingly, 7.6 million workers who want full time work can find only part time work, and their missing work hours do not count toward the official unemployment rate. The number of such workers fell slightly from February, but is still about where it was a year ago. A broader measure of underemployment, which includes those reluctantly working part time as well as those who want jobs but have stopped looking, stands at 13.8 percent. At the same time, long term unemployment joblessness lasting more than six months has been a persistent problem ever since the recession ended in the middle of 2009. And it may be partly driven by the fact that many of the jobs available do not pay well enough to be worth taking. "When I've had offers for positions they're part time or temporary, but the child care I'd need to pay to take the jobs is more costly than what I'd be getting paid for the job itself," said Linda Rubiano, 37, of Pennsauken, N.J., a single mother with a 3 year old boy. She was laid off from her paralegal job, which she had held for five years, in January 2012. "It's really, really frustrating." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
In an 11th hour reversal, the superstar singer Placido Domingo withdrew on Tuesday from the Metropolitan Opera's production of Verdi's "Macbeth" and indicated he would not return to the Met, amid rising tensions over the company's response to allegations that he had sexually harassed multiple women. Mr. Domingo's withdrawal on the eve of the performance opening night is Wednesday came as a growing number of people who work at the Met expressed concern about his upcoming performances. Other American cultural institutions, including the Philadelphia Orchestra and San Francisco Opera, had already canceled Mr. Domingo's upcoming appearances, citing the need to provide a safe workplace. The backstage unease at the Met boiled over in recent days, including at a heated, sometimes emotional meeting that Peter Gelb, the company's general manager, held with orchestra and chorus members after the "Macbeth" dress rehearsal on Saturday afternoon. Some of those at the meeting questioned what Mr. Domingo's return said about the Met's commitment to protecting women and rooting out sexual harassment. Three days later, Mr. Domingo said in a statement to The New York Times that he was dropping out of "Macbeth" which was to have been his first United States performance since the sexual harassment allegations were reported last month. "I made my debut at the Metropolitan Opera at the age of 27 and have sung at this magnificent theater for 51 consecutive, glorious years," Mr. Domingo said in a statement. "While I strongly dispute recent allegations made about me, and I am concerned about a climate in which people are condemned without due process, upon reflection I believe that my appearance in this production of 'Macbeth' would distract from the hard work of my colleagues both onstage and behind the scenes. As a result, I have asked to withdraw and I thank the leadership of the Met for graciously granting my request." It sounded unlikely that he would ever be back to perform with the company. "I am happy that, at the age of 78, I was able to sing the wonderful title role in the dress rehearsal of 'Macbeth,' which I consider my last performance on the Met stage," he said. "I am grateful to God and the public for what they have allowed me to accomplish here at the Metropolitan Opera." The Met issued a statement that seemed to suggest that the company had asked him to go. "The Metropolitan Opera confirms that Placido Domingo has agreed to withdraw from all future performances at the Met, effective immediately," the statement said. "The Met and Mr. Domingo are in agreement that he needed to step down." The accusations against Mr. Domingo were first reported in August by The Associated Press, which wrote that he had pressured women into sexual relationships, and sometimes professionally punished those who had rebuffed him. (In addition to being a star singer, Mr. Domingo has held leadership positions at Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera, the companies where many of the accusers met Mr. Domingo.) The news agency's initial report cited nine women, all but one of whom had been granted anonymity; a subsequent report cited 11 more women, one of whom was named. The Domingo case roiled the Met, which is still recovering from the firing of its former music director, James Levine, last year amid accusations of sexual misconduct. In the MeToo era, it also raised ongoing questions about how institutions deal with accusations of sexual harassment or abuse, even those that emerge outside their walls. And it posed a test for Mr. Gelb, who saw his initial decision to go forward with Mr. Domingo's performances as investigations into his conduct progressed elsewhere grow increasingly untenable amid a growing outcry within his company. For decades, Mr. Domingo was one of the Met's most valuable stars. It was a unique partnership between singer and company: Mr. Domingo starred in more opening night performances than anyone else 21, beating Enrico Caruso's record of 17. He sang on its stage hundreds of times in a wide variety of roles, moving to lower baritone parts when he could no longer hit a tenor's high notes, and was also a regular presence in the pit conducting its orchestra. Last year, when the Met celebrated the 50th anniversary of Mr. Domingo's debut, Mr. Gelb presented him with a piece of the Met stage. In the wake of the published reports, the Met said that it would await the results of an investigation by Los Angeles Opera "before making any final decisions about Mr. Domingo's ultimate future at the Met." And some people rallied behind Mr. Domingo, including his "Macbeth" co star, the soprano Anna Netrebko, who wrote on Instagram that she was looking forward to sharing the stage "with fantastic Placido Domingo!" Even after the accusations surfaced, he was greeted with standing ovations at appearances in Europe, including at the prestigious Salzburg Festival. But things at the Met came to a head on Saturday afternoon, after Mr. Domingo appeared at the final dress rehearsal of "Macbeth." Mr. Gelb called the meeting after NPR published an account of the concerns of some members of the company. Mr. Gelb told the gathering that no formal complaints against Mr. Domingo had been made to the Met; that he thought the multiple accusations reported so far had lacked sufficient corroboration; and that he believed the right course was to await the results of investigations underway elsewhere including at the Los Angeles Opera, where Mr. Domingo is the general director, and by the American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing many opera house employees before taking any action, according to five people who attended. At the meeting, one member of the chorus expressed support for Mr. Gelb's approach, several people who attended said. But all the other speakers were critical. Several company members told Mr. Gelb that they were being put in an uncomfortable situation by having to rehearse and perform with Mr. Domingo, and questioned whether the Met's wait and see stance was appropriate. Patricia Wulf, a mezzo soprano who described to The Associated Press repeated, unwanted propositions by Mr. Domingo when she sang with him in Washington, noted in an interview with The Times on Tuesday that her account had been corroborated by her husband, whom she told at the time, and a colleague who used to walk her to her car at work because she feared going alone. "He's an incredible artist, a great performer," she said of Mr. Domingo. "I just have absolutely no respect for him as a man." Several members of the Met's company said in interviews over the past week that while they were not making assertions about Mr. Domingo's guilt or innocence, they believed it would be prudent for him not to appear while he was being investigated the approach the Met had taken when it suspended Mr. Levine, pending an investigation into his conduct. Mr. Gelb said at the meeting that he had felt compelled to suspend Mr. Levine swiftly because there had been news reports featuring multiple named accusers, and Mr. Levine was still leading the company's young artists program at the time, according to several attendees. "The Met takes any accusations of sexual harassment extremely seriously," Mr. Gelb said in a telephone interview after the meeting. By Tuesday morning, State Senator Brad Hoylman, whose district includes Lincoln Center, was calling for Mr. Domingo to be removed from the production and for Mr. Gelb to be removed from his job if not. The Met said that Zeljko Lucic, a baritone already scheduled to appear as Macbeth later in the run, would take over for Mr. Domingo. The company said it would offer audience members the option to exchange their tickets. Mr. Domingo's departure occurred the day that news broke that a young star tenor, Vittorio Grigolo, had been suspended by the Royal Opera in London, following an incident on a tour of Japan. Mr. Gelb said he had advised Mr. Grigolo that he would not be welcome to sing in Verdi's "La Traviata" at the Met this winter unless the Royal Opera's investigation cleared him. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Lil Nas X, left, and the Weeknd responded to the music industry's day of reflection with statements imploring the business to do more. As the music world observed a voluntary "blackout" on Tuesday to reflect on issues of race and social justice, the industry also came under some criticism for making a solemn gesture without announcing more concrete plans. The initiative, called BlackoutTuesday or TheShowMustBePaused, quickly spread online, turning many people's social media feeds into grids of black squares which drew complaints that the effort was muting debate rather than contributing to it. It also raised broader questions about the value and sincerity of corporate expressions of empathy. "What if we posted donation and petitions links on instagram all at the same time instead of pitch black images," the "Old Town Road" star Lil Nas X tweeted. The Weeknd, who said this week that he would donate 500,000 to black empowerment organizations, called on music's corporate powers to "go big and public" with contributions. Echoing an initial statement from Jamila Thomas and Brianna Agyemang, the two black women who started TheShowMustBePaused, about the music industry's debt to black musicians, he wrote on Instagram: "No one profits off of black music more than the labels and streaming services," and added: "It would mean the world to me and the community if you can join us on this." Record labels and tech platforms had already made some commitments, however. This week Spotify and Sony Music said they would match employee donations. Apple said it would give unspecified sums to a number of groups, including the Equal Justice Initiative, and SiriusXM, which also owns Pandora, said it would be making undisclosed contributions. On Wednesday, the Warner Music Group home to stars like Cardi B and Ed Sheeran upped the ante by announcing a 100 million fund from the company and a foundation affiliated with its majority owner, Len Blavatnik of Access Industries, "to support charitable causes related to the music industry, social justice and campaigns against violence and racism." That statement came within minutes of another announcement from Warner about the pricing of shares in its much anticipated initial public offering. The company will sell 77 million shares seven million more than originally announced at 25 each, raising 1.9 billion for Access, which issued the stock. Those seven million extra shares will bring in 175 million. A spokesman for Access and Blavatnik said the fund "will not be directly funded from proceeds received from the I.P.O." The fund is being financed by both Warner and the Blavatnik foundation. Blavatnik, who has also invested in oil, chemicals and other industries, has been ranked by Forbes as the 51st richest person in the world, with a net worth estimated at 19.5 billion. In the days after Warner's announcement, the other two major record conglomerates made their own moves, as pressure mounted from artists and fans on social media. Universal, which had already announced a task force to examine the company's efforts in inclusion and social justice, said on Thursday that it would create a 25 million "change fund." And on Friday, Sony Music said it had created a 100 million fund "to support social justice and anti racist initiatives around the world." Still, advocates have been careful to note that their efforts would not be limited to a single day, and further donations may be coming soon. Late on Tuesday, the organizers of the Blackout campaign tweeted: "You just witnessed Act 1." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Housing activists in New York have spent much of the year preparing for the end of it. Tenant evictions have been halted or delayed by coronavirus relief measures, for the most part, until January 2021. If those measures are allowed to expire or aren't extended it could mean the displacement of thousands of families this winter. "The kind of massive evictions that we could be looking at given the number of people who have not been able to pay their rent is pretty horrifying," said Judith Goldiner, head of the Legal Aid Society's civil law reform unit, which pushes for more statewide protections for low income New Yorkers. It's a national problem: Evictions are set to shoot up around the country, according to the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey. The number of those who say they are unable to pay rent has grown exponentially, exacerbated by millions of job losses. Landlords, in turn, have said they have had trouble keeping up with mortgage payments and other expenses. In New York City, where homelessness has already reached levels not seen since the Great Depression, the fight over keeping people in their homes is set to boil over. Housing activists, many of whom participated in protests against police violence this summer, have begun working with tenant groups and nonprofits to stall evictions by showing up en masse to housing court, pressuring the state legislature and enacting eviction blockades. On Friday evening, while the temperature hovered around 19 degrees, more than 50 activists gathered outside a rowhouse in Rochester, N.Y., to protest the eviction of a tenant and her three children. (The laws passed this year in New York did not protect all tenants from eviction and court dates for evictions began again in October.) The protesters blocked the door to the police who were charged with emptying the apartment. The police arrested 15 people, including Demond Meeks, a state assemblyman and former housing activist who was observing the blockade. "I truly believe that housing is a human right," Mr. Meeks said. Despite the effort, the tenant, Clianda Florence Yarde, a sixth grade teacher, was evicted, along with her children. The family is now split up, living at different homes. In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention temporarily barred evictions for many tenants across the country a moratorium that was extended through January as part of a 900 billion stimulus package passed by Congress on Monday. But these acts did not cancel or curtail rent payments. Tenants who have not paid rent this year still owe the money. That means that, though evictions were kept at unusually low levels for the year, they are expected to surge. More than 200,000 eviction cases are pending in New York City alone in housing court. Many landlords agree that a wave of evictions is a worst case scenario. But though the state has already distributed 40 million in relief funds to them, representatives from landlord associations say more will be needed. Joseph Strasburg, the president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a landlord group that represents about 25,000 landlords in New York City, said that landlords are looking to the state to provide it. "We understand that there has to be some kind of protection for tenants because of the economy and because Covid," Mr. Strasburg said. "But you're leaving the small property owners out of this process." Activists are anxious to avert an even greater homelessness crisis. In New York at the start of the pandemic, in March, they threw their weight behind a petition to close eviction courts that was signed by 90,000 people online. Cea Weaver, the campaign coordinator at Housing Justice for All, the coalition that sponsored the petition, said that this action helped identify people across the state who were interested in housing activism. The petition also helped tenants unions and nonprofits get in touch with many more people who were not able to pay their rent. "We have this big coalition of organizations that are working to put pressure on the landlords directly to reduce the rent burden," she said. A second big burst of attention to housing activism came after the killing of George Floyd, when protests swept the country. "Cancel Rent," the housing activists' mantra, was taken up by Black Lives Matter marchers and sounded throughout the summer in cities across the U.S. Ms. Weaver said that the tragic events of the year including the coronavirus and the killing of George Floyd had revealed to a new generation of activists the connection between stable housing and the fight for racial justice. "If you want to fight for racial and economic justice in this country, the housing market is where you need to start," Ms. Weaver said. "For decades and decades, our housing policy has put the finger on the scale of white families to help them build wealth and prevented Black families from doing the same." Still, Ms. Weaver said she was surprised by the energy that she saw from housing activists in 2020. She described an eviction protest at Brooklyn's housing court in June that she had expected to be sparsely attended. Instead, hundreds of people showed up, she said. In Rochester in November, activists also formed a human chain to stop the eviction of Chris Green, a 24 year old father of two who lost both of his jobs in the pandemic. These protesters were successful; Mr. Green remains in the premises. "The community basically said you come for one of us, you come for all of us and prevented them from putting him and his family out," said Ryan Acuff, a member of the City Wide Rochester Tenant Union, which helped organize the eviction blockade. Mr. Acuff estimated that, if no legislation is passed to halt evictions, there could be up to 20,000 evictions in Rochester alone. Landlords and landlord associations have argued that any housing reform legislation that does not address the loss in funds from unpaid rent this year will lead to dire consequences. "The owners are either going to walk away or they're not going to do anything with the buildings and the quality of the housing is going to go down dramatically," said Mr. Strasburg, of the Rent Stabilization Association. Ms. Weaver and other activists say that they don't want landlords to suffer either, and that they are pushing the state government to create a hardship fund for those who would struggle in the event of an extended moratorium. But they say that small landlords those who own relatively few properties and are, on the whole, less financially stable constitute a fraction of New York City's building owners. (According to property records from December 2018, less than one third of landlords in the city own between one and five buildings.) When it comes to crafting statewide legislative action, Mr. Acuff said, there is an increasingly direct line between activists and their state representatives. He pointed to the election of Mr. Meeks, who participated in the eviction blockade for Mr. Green and has signed on to a bill proposed by Senator Zellnor Myrie. This bill calls for a full eviction moratorium until a year after the end of the state of emergency order in New York that has been in place since March. "No humane principle justifies putting someone on the street," Senator Myrie said in an interview. "An eviction moratorium is important because it can bridge us to longer term solutions," said Ms. Goldiner, of the Legal Aid Society. "But it, in itself, is just short term. It doesn't mean that the rent isn't coming due." Senator Myrie said his bill existed, in large part, because of the activists' efforts. "Any sort of any movement on the policy front never starts with the elected official," he said. "It is always of the people, always from the grass roots." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Helen Mirra's marvelous SoHo show of small, vibrant weavings, evocatively titled "Bones Are Spaces," rebalances the visual and intellectual elements of her work. For over two decades, this American artist has assiduously imbued her modest, low lying sculptures and wall pieces handmade from assorted found materials, dissected objects and, occasionally, borrowed texts with complex reverberations of literature, history and philosophy. At times, these complexities have remained obscure unless clarified by the gallery's news release, making the work feel hermetic and precious. The 24 weavings here were made on a hand loom over the last three years, using linen and wool and sometimes silk. They progress from pieces rarely more than 12 inches on a side, which are dominated by various shapes against contrasting backgrounds, to somewhat larger works in more muted yet sumptuous monochromes. In these, especially, the complexities are right on the surface: in subtle shifts in texture, tonality and the tightness of the weave; hints of shapes and grids; and other variations. All is in flux, depending on your distance from the works or where you place your attention. Everything about them conveys and invites considerable thought and concentration. The title's reference to the intricate interiors of bones which combine hollow and solid, hard and soft seems apt. Ms. Mirra has often linked her work to her devotion to walking in nature, and the connection seems especially close here. Weaving is a linear activity with a cumulative effect. Ms. Mirra's weavings can also be seen as reliefs, paintings and texts, especially those that teem with surface incident, including several from 2018 named for the months in which they were made. Perhaps most telling is the news release that has been, it says, "intentionally left blank." To Ms. Mirra's credit, we are on our own. ROBERTA SMITH Magalie Comeau works slowly. Her paintings reveal themselves slowly, too. Each canvas in "New and Recent Paintings," at Mitchell Algus Gallery, her first New York solo show and one of the few times she's shown outside her native Quebec, is a black, white or rosy beige monochrome interrupted by a complication of intersecting shadows. Inside this complication there may be a stark figment of architecture. In "De la Profondeur du Lave Temps de l'Horloge Hysteresique aux Champs de Mains," it's a tiny, uninhabited suburban interior. But this bit of bounded space serves mainly to emphasize the unbounded emptiness around it, adding a note of theatricality to the painting's spacey transcendence. (Imagine an avant garde monologue about death whose relentless focus is strangely soothing.) Even the pieces without such explicit figuration have auras of architectural allusion. Sharp edged but shadowy zones of overlapping color evoke drywall, masking tape or slightly stuffy house paint samples. More broadly, the pieces also bring to mind the installations of the Light and Space movement with the critical difference that, both because of the way they're painted and simply because they're paintings, they aren't trying to determine every aspect of a visitor's experience. Instead, they're waiting patiently to be fallen into. "Cachettes Votives aux Dimensions Insaisissables," my own favorite, is an 84 inch square black lozenge with a thick shaft of whites and grays pouring down just right of center. It's hard to focus on but impossible to look away from. WILL HEINRICH Most artists working with traditional materials use social media to plug their projects, risking promiscuous levels of self promotion. A handful transcend this tendency, however, employing the same platforms toward creative, even visionary ends. Jennifer Wynne Reeves was one such artist. Living in a small town in the Delaware River Valley, she used Facebook as her connection to the larger art world, but also as her journal, studio, classroom and utopian forum. Her Facebook presence also helped secure her first institutional exhibition, "All Right for Now," at the Drawing Center, four years after her untimely death from brain cancer. Ms. Reeves's paintings, drawings and sketchbooks, in deep matte hues, are on view here; they are quirky and occasionally brilliant. Many of the works have an illustrative quality and include text that helps situate or explain them. "Mondrian Guy and Expressionist Guy" (2005) is a small gouache with two figures a slab of straight lines and a cloud of squiggles that suggest artistic attitudes as well as worldviews. "Swallow" (2013), a larger canvas with globs of pigment perched casually on its frame, includes a trompe l'oeil sheet of paper painted with a diaristic poem that ends with a swallow dipping into the Delaware River. Some of Ms. Reeves's Facebook posts are reproduced in an accompanying catalog, giving you a sense of her voice, which was a bit like that of an Emily Dickinson for the internet age. "I believe in greatness," she wrote in February 2014. "Great buildings survive earthquakes if their foundations sit on shock absorbers." Greatness is relative, though, she argued, and we should all encourage one another toward it. Ms. Reeves's own foundations, built on art and virtual community, have proved, even posthumously, to be extraordinarily sound. MARTHA SCHWENDENER The show's title is borrowed from a 1990 essay in which Edouard Glissant argues for the right of colonized or oppressed peoples to occupy space in Western society without explaining themselves. This type of politically charged "opacity" does come up in the work, but the concept raises an equally interesting question about the relationship of artwork to viewer: What do they owe each other? Mr. Burgher's "Eden Flag With Solar Anal Emblems and Hexes," a colored pencil conglomeration of graphic devices that suggests esoteric magic and queer desire, is charming in its evasiveness. Wondering about the specific significance of the symbols doesn't prevent you from enjoying their overall effect. But several portraits of young men against backgrounds of similar symbols are more uncomfortable: The figures are so meticulously rendered that the ambiguity behind them makes you feel snubbed. Ms. Ojih Odutola's use of black ink to draw white faces in half a dozen striking small works emphasizes the political weight of color without committing to a specific position. Her large charcoal and pastel portrait, "A Guarded Intimacy," in which a watchful young man's face is framed by walls, windows and a patterned sweater, demonstrates how a distant affect can express its own kind of vulnerability. Mr. Quinn takes this paradoxical performance of truth to a brilliant height with large multimedia drawings that look like collages. In "Elephant Feet," an adult forehead, eyes and nose that look as if they were taken from torn photographs and a miniature but still oversize fur coat combine to form a defiantly heartbreaking figure whose patchwork composition is really a way of being whole. WILL HEINRICH | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
All year long as Earth revolves around the sun, it passes through streams of cosmic debris. The resulting meteor showers can light up night skies from dusk to dawn, and if you're lucky you might be able to catch a glimpse. The next shower you might be able to see is the Ursids. Active from Dec. 17 to Dec. 26, the show peaks around Sunday night into Monday morning, or Dec. 22 23. The Ursids tend to illuminate the night sky around the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. They only shoot around 10 to 20 meteors per hour. They appear to radiate from Ursa Minor, and come from Comet 8P/Tuttle. Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar. Where meteor showers come from If you spot a meteor shower, what you're usually seeing is an icy comet's leftovers that crash into Earth's atmosphere. Comets are sort of like dirty snowballs: As they travel through the solar system, they leave behind a dusty trail of rocks and ice that lingers in space long after they leave. When Earth passes through these cascades of comet waste, the bits of debris which can be as small as grains of sand pierce the sky at such speeds that they burst, creating a celestial fireworks display. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Poachers are killing 40,000 elephants a year and with a global elephant population of just 400,000, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that there is an urgent need to stop the killing. But it's hard to catch poachers in the act. They operate over a wide area, move just a few elephant tusks at a time and once their ivory contraband reaches a major port, it can be easily hidden among other goods, said Samuel Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington. In a new study published Wednesday in Science Advances, Dr. Wasser and several colleagues demonstrated an approach he hopes will help catch and convict more international ivory traffickers. Dr. Wasser had already developed a genetic map of African elephants by analyzing scat from across the continent. Now, he can link that map with genetic analysis of confiscated tusks to determine where the animal was living when it was killed. This can help law enforcement target areas most susceptible to poaching, he said in a telephone news conference on Tuesday. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
LOS ANGELES It was a big night for the 76 year old American artist Jimmie Durham. That evening, Jan. 28, was the opening of his retrospective at the Hammer Museum here, eagerly anticipated because he has not had a solo show in the United States in 22 years. Along with collectors and curators, dozens of artists came to see the works firsthand: Charles Gaines, Liz Glynn, Tacita Dean and Andrea Fraser included. Crowds surrounded a small army of gangly, totemic wood sculptures enlivened with clothing, animal skulls and paint. They lined up to see an equally unruly life size self portrait a funky assemblage that parodied a "job wanted" ad, with handwritten notes on a canvas body promoting the artist's attributes. The words "useless nipple," "12 hobbies!" and "I am basically lighthearted" ran across his chest. The work had a shell for an ear and a turquoise stone for an eye. But viewers had to make do with the self portrait, because the artist with bright blue eyes and a wry, self deprecating sense of humor was nowhere to be seen. Mr. Durham, a Cherokee Indian, has not stepped foot in the United States since 1995, the year of his last New York gallery show, at Nicole Klagsbrun. Given his history as an activist critical of the United States government, dating to his leadership in the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, published reports have said he was living in a self imposed exile in Europe. "I wish I could have come for the show," he said. "I have had many stupid problems over the last three years: strokes and broken bones and this and that. And I'm not quite over them." Still, he acknowledged that he stopped living in New York in the 1980s and gave up having a gallery there soon after, just as he was gaining a foothold in the market in large part out of frustration with the art world's increasing commercialization. "I guess you could call leaving New York a statement or position in that I didn't want to be judged by my monetary success. I didn't want to be a part of the American dream." While acknowledging such political complexities, the Hammer show, "Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World" (on view through May 7 before it travels to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Whitney Museum of American Art) does try to bring Mr. Durham's work back into a broadly American context. "I consider him to be one of the most important American sculptors today, alongside David Hammons, and yet because he moved to Europe, he's not really put into that category," said Anne Ellegood, the show's curator. Mr. Durham also has a growing fan base among artists. "Instead of overinflated, overhyped, oversized installations passing as art, Jimmie Durham's work is authentic, modest and funny," Judy Chicago noted after seeing the show. "Plus he has the most uncanny sensitivity to materials." She was particularly moved by a recent assemblage that combines found objects and Murano glass "in an amazing way to express the vulnerability of the body that comes with aging." Born to a Cherokee family in rural Arkansas, the fourth of five children, Mr. Durham was resourceful from an early age. His father was a construction worker who made his own furniture. His children followed him into the tool shed. "As a child, I didn't do art, but I made many things every kind of toy, every kind of tool," he said, mentioning wood slingshots and small animal traps. During our conversation, he retrieved some small carving knives made by his father and held them in front of the computer screen. "He was absolutely fanatic about his tools," Mr. Durham said. "He didn't approve of the way I worked. He wanted things to be nicely finished, which I don't like necessarily. And I don't mind using the tools badly or in ways you shouldn't," like hitting an ax head with a hammer to shave off a layer of wood. Wood and stone have long been the mainstays of his sculpture. Found animal skulls, painted in bright colors or encrusted with beads or stones, prove another important medium, with the skulls of an armadillo, skunk, dog and moose appearing in the Hammer show. He dates this interest to a visit to the Coushatta reservation in East Texas as a teenager. He spotted a deer skull, painted blue and mounted to a tree: "I was just astounded by it," he said. "I felt it was part of something extremely serious and special." In 1974, he became the director of the International Indian Treaty Council, an organization founded during an American Indian Movement meeting at Standing Rock, N.D., to promote the sovereignty and rights of "native nations" across the world. He resigned five years later, citing leadership problems. (As for current Standing Rock protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, he said he wished he could do something concrete to help: "I have friends there, and I think the last thing they need is my words.") As he began showing his artwork more frequently in New York, he struggled with its reception. One series from 1982, canvas paintings incorporating documentary photographs of Indian hardships, proved too popular with a mainly white audience "too easy, too entertaining," he said. "The paintings were always semiabstract, and the photos were always horrible things happening on or around Indian reservations." His lack of registration also fueled an allegation by a retired Cherokee judge, cited on Mr. Durham's Wikipedia page, that he is a "poser" and not really Cherokee. Mr. Durham pointed out that "many Cherokees are not registered. My family didn't even think about registering." He criticized tribal enrollment efforts, originally backed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as a "tool of apartheid." Mr. Durham continued to show in Europe while Ms. Ellegood pursued a new idea: an American retrospective. Three years ago, he finally agreed. "She wore me down," he said, laughing. She took the title of the current show from a long running series by Mr. Durham highlighting the absurdity of any nation's or culture's claims of superiority. For years, he has been making poles "to mark the center of the world" and placing them in odd spots in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Belgium, France, Germany, South Korea and even Siberia. As seen at the entrance of the Hammer show, the lightweight poles typically consist of a single piece of carved wood, with a hand mirror attached. One interpretation is that the mirror implicates the viewer as complicit in a classic power play of defining who is insider and who is outsider. But Mr. Durham had a more lighthearted take. It's natural to be a touch vain, he suggested: "You want to be able to look your best when you're at the center of the world." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Sandra Haggard, a 71 year old professor, has been in a committed relationship with her partner, Lynne Lamstein, for more than two decades. They never had plans to marry nor do they now even though same sex marriage has been declared a constitutional right. But ever since same sex marriage became legalized two years ago in Maine, where the couple lives part of the year, Ms. Haggard said she has had a niggling worry that her employer, the University of Maine, might eliminate domestic partner health coverage for Ms. Lamstein, 66, a freelance writer. Ms. Lamstein uses Ms. Haggard's plan because Medicare does not cover a medication that she needs. "We don't want marriage for us, though this has been a wonderful and historic day for equality," said Ms. Haggard, who teaches online from her home in Lake Worth, Fla. "I have been concerned that we and other people, heterosexual couples included, might be at risk of losing their benefits. I don't believe economic benefits should go exclusively to married people." Ms. Haggard's concern is not unfounded, as a national right to marry calls into question the fate of domestic partner benefits. Though it is unclear what most employers will decide, some companies are likely to deliver what feels like an ultimatum, at least to some: Marry within a certain time frame, or lose your partner's health care coverage. Some large employers including Verizon, Delta Air Lines, IBM and Corning already have. They rescinded domestic partner benefits to employees living in states where same sex marriage was legalized and replaced it with spousal coverage. Last July, Verizon gave its employees until the end of the year to decide whether to marry. IBM gives employees a one year grace period, though a spokeswoman said the time frame was under review; Delta said it provided a grace period as well, about two years. And some states have sought rollbacks as well. Many employers extended the benefits only to partners of gay employees because they did not have the option to legally wed. Plenty of other organizations, however, extended domestic partner coverage to opposite sex couples as well and those companies are expected to maintain the benefits more so than those that offered them only to same sex couples. "With no legal barriers to same sex marriage, it is likely some employers will eliminate their benefits for unmarried same sex partners," Todd Solomon, a partner at McDermott Will Emery who has written a book on domestic partner benefits, said. The administrative duties for domestic partners for same sex and opposite sex couples are complex, as workers may be taxed on the value of those benefits, something employers need to compute and withhold from paychecks. According to the Human Rights Campaign, two thirds of Fortune 500 companies offer domestic partner benefits to employees with same sex partners, and 62 percent of those companies also extend the benefits to workers with opposite sex partners. More broadly, about 35 percent of all private sector workers had access to domestic partner benefits for same sex partners in 2014, according to a National Compensation Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And 30 percent of workers had access to benefits for opposite sex partners. Employers have to draw a line on whom to cover, but as ideas change of what a family is, it may become more difficult to delineate exactly where those lines should be. Workplace researchers said that by taking away benefits, companies may inadvertently make statements about their values. "One thing that keeps coming up in our research is that the modern family is changing," said Kenneth Matos, senior director of employment research and practice at the Families and Work Institute. "As families continue to evolve, organizations are better served by supporting benefits options that can easily encompass any talented employee's family arrangements, rather than actively limiting support for uncommon family options." Andrew Parks and Ashlea Halpern, both 33, have been a committed but unmarried couple for more than 13 years and have no intention of walking down the aisle. Mr. Parks said his parents already refer to Ashlea as their daughter in law. "They don't need a piece of paper to prove it," Mr. Parks said in an email, "and neither do we." But some human resources departments have required it. Mr. Parks, a freelance writer, has been able to receive health coverage through some but not all of Ms. Halpern's employers, which the couple said they find discriminatory. "No American should be denied benefits by their employer or otherwise penalized for choosing to opt out of a religiously and societally mandated but historically problematic institution," said Mr. Parks, who is in Vietnam and seven months into a yearlong trip around Asia with Ms. Halpern. "Who is the I.R.S. or an I.C.U. nurse or an H.R. department to say that one couple, regardless of sexual preference, is more committed than another, simply because they are married?" Dr. Matos said there was initially a fear among employers that workers with opposite sex partners, if offered the option, would "cash in" by using the benefits, even if they were not in meaningful relationships. But the rush to sign up never materialized, he said, and the added overall costs have been insignificant. According to J.D. Piro, national practice leader in the law group at Aon Hewitt, the human resources and consulting firm, domestic partner benefits added roughly 1 percent to the total cost of an employer's health care plan. "These are not going to be snap decisions," said Mr. Piro. "Each employer will have to look at them carefully and do a thoughtful analysis, keeping in mind what the point of employee benefits is to attract and retain talent." Advocates from groups including the Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal are encouraging employers to keep domestic partner benefits for everyone. Marriage equality may now be a given, but there are still about two dozen states without antidiscrimination laws protecting individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation. So gay couples who marry to get health coverage might be at risk in other aspects of their lives, like securing housing. "If an L.G.B.T. employee is, in effect, 'outed' by being required to obtain a public marriage license in a state that doesn't provide explicit nondiscrimination protections, it could place that employee and their family at risk of being denied credit, housing and public accommodation," Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. Employers are not legally obligated to provide spousal health benefits at all, but if they do offer them, they will now be required to do so for all spouses if the plan is governed by state insurance law, according to Mr. Solomon, who wrote a book on domestic partner benefits. But, many large employers have "self insured" plans, governed by federal law, and they have more latitude to create rules on coverage. While there is no requirement to provide health coverage to same sex spouses under a self insured plan, Mr. Solomon said, plans that deny such coverage could be subject to discrimination claims and are less likely to exclude same sex spouses. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
During a support group meeting for people left behind by suicide, Hope Litoff realized she was among a group of collectors. "We all had storage spaces of our dead person," said Ms. Litoff, a New York film editor whose sister, Ruth, an artist and photographer, committed suicide in 2008 at the age of 42. "We all had the same feelings. We had saved every single thing. The items themselves were too precious to part with, but at the same time, too painful to look at." As Ms. Litoff thought about her ability to keep emotional distance in her work, it occurred to her that perhaps by making a film about her sister's life and her possessions that were packed in a storage space, she could sort through all of it. "When I'm editing a film, I'm able to feel a certain amount of distance from the footage, even if it's really sad," she said. "I'm able to stay objective and tell the story. I had this fantasy if I filmed the items, they would exist on film, they would never be gone and I would be magically protected by the process which I found out was totally not true." The result is "32 Pills: My Sister's Suicide," a documentary premiering tonight on HBO. It's a disturbing and honest portrayal of Ms. Litoff's efforts to move past her sister's suicide, but in retracing her sister's steps she derails her own recovery from addiction. At one point in the film, to the dismay of those working with her on the project, she pops a few of her sister's abandoned pills. I spoke with Ms. Litoff about her reasons for making the film, how suicide affects those left behind and what she hopes people will take away from her story. With the Netflix series "13 Reasons Why" and the Broadway hit "Dear Evan Hansen," the entertainment industry recently has seemed more willing to tackle the topic of suicide. Why do you think that is? I was at a film festival in Colorado. A young boy came up to me and said, "My girlfriend just committed suicide and also eight of my friends." The numbers are staggering. Hollywood and others being able to talk about it is a direct result of what's really happening. Many people are still uncomfortable with the topic. I know a fancy private school in New York where a student killed himself. The school's reaction was to take all mention of suicide out of the curriculum, any literature, any films, all art. It was removed from the course of study and not reintroduced until every single student who had been there at the time of the suicide had graduated. So for 10 years there was no mention of suicide. That's absolutely the wrong way to respond to something like that. There are many tragic and unexpected deaths. Why do you think suicide wreaks such havoc on the lives of those left behind? My mother did die of cancer, and it was a long, lingering bout with lung cancer. I never said to myself, "I'm going to cure cancer." That was not a fantasy that I had. With suicide there is this belief that you can make a change, and there are suicide hotlines and ways to help people. You don't need to be a surgeon or a scientist to intervene and help someone who is struggling with depression. You are left with the thought that maybe I can be the one who's going to help my sister, and I'm going to find the right words to say or the right way to make her happy. How did you find the strength to make a movie about this? The movie did wreck me. I was driven. I was obsessed and maybe in an unhealthy way I had to go through it. It's really scary how dark I went, but I feel really grateful that I'm on the other side. I'm still dealing with it. It's not like I'm all better. But now there are no more boogey monsters. I've read every journal. I've seen every date book. I've seen every pill bottle. It's not as terrifying to me. What do you hope people will get from the film? What I am really hoping is that people who see the film feel like it's for other people like me. It's for people who were left behind and who were so alone that when they walk down the street they feel like a Martian and nobody can understand what they are feeling. I hope they feel less alone by seeing someone else who has experienced the same thing. I hope that people who love people who have lost someone to suicide will understand there's no time limit to the pain. Just be patient with the person that is still in mourning. All you can really do is listen and be there. Don't try to pretend it didn't happen. Don't not talk about it. It's the not talking about it that keeps us all isolated and sad. If people go home or go out to dinner and talk about the film, that to me is an incredible success. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
LOS ANGELES In explaining the new ELR plug in hybrid, a Cadillac spokesman offered this rationale: "Mercedes Benz doesn't have anything like this." So true. As a corporate statement in the 21st century, the ELR makes a certain amount of sense. It's unique, beautiful, efficient, serenely comfortable and electronically avant garde. At 75,995 (the base price), or 82,135 as tested, it's also bracingly expensive. A 7,500 federal tax credit, state and local incentives and, for early buyers, a free 240 volt charging system installed in their garages at Cadillac's expense, will help to soothe the sticker shock, but for the average green car shopper, the price is still quite a jolt. The expense seems even higher when one realizes that beneath its lovely, high cheek boned skin, sculpted under the watchful eye of Bob Boniface, Cadillac's exterior design director, the ELR is a sister of the Chevrolet Volt. This is Apollo's own Volt, to be sure, with a thick, creamy layer of running gear refinements, noise absorbing touches, hand crafted interior and a long list of luxury, safety and technology gizmos. The ELR's recalibrated electronic control unit extracts significantly more power from its Volt spec hardware: a 16.5 kilowatt hour lithium ion battery, a primary electric drive motor and a 1.4 liter gasoline powered motor generator. In E.V. mode, the ELR sends 157 horsepower to the front wheels, compared with 133 in the Volt. In extended range mode, the gasoline motor generator adds 24 more, for a total of 181 horsepower, versus the Volt's 151. With a full battery charge, the ELR has an E.P.A. estimated driving range of 37 miles roughly the average American round trip commute in all electric mode. That charge takes from 12.5 to 18 hours with a standard 120 volt outlet, and about five hours at 240 volts. When the battery is discharged, the gasoline engine fires up to keep the car humming. Car and Driver drove the ELR from a standstill to 60 miles per hour in 9 seconds in E.V. mode, clocked 8.1 seconds in gasoline powered extended range mode and reached a top speed of 107 m.p.h. I experienced 30 to 35 miles of all electric range in real world (well, California) driving, and an average of 38 m.p.g. in gas powered extended range mode. Cadillac estimates total range on batteries and the gas range extender at 340 miles. To accomplish its 30 plus mile electric only range essentially even with the lighter, more slippery Volt the ELR software charges the battery to a higher state and allows it to discharge more deeply. On 240 volts, the Volt can be fully charged in four hours. The ELR takes five hours, which means it is extracting as much as 25 percent more charge from the same battery. Could a current Volt produce an ELR level of power, and extract more charge and thus more range from its existing battery? As far as I can tell, yes, it could. And because the Volt is more aerodynamic and 274 pounds lighter, that hacked Volt would be considerably quicker than an ELR. Hackers: to your terminals! With 295 pound feet of torque on tap, the ELR performs swimmingly in the feeding frenzy of urban commuting. The Volt's electric motor creates gratifying initial thrust, but loses steam quickly as speed increases. The ELR comes on stronger at first and keeps accelerating longer, with smoother overall power delivery. The ELR is not fast compared with its gasoline powered coupe competition. Or compared with the similarly priced all electric Tesla Model S, which can accelerate to 60 m.p.h. in less than 5 seconds. But the ELR is sufficiently lively for almost all real world driving, including an occasional uphill pass in the Santa Monica Mountains. The ELR chassis uses G.M.'s HiPer Strut front suspension to reduce the torque steer that lurks in front wheel drive cars, and to align its wider, 20 inch diameter wheels with the road. All four dampers adapt continuously to driving conditions and selectable driving modes. The ventilated front disc brakes are bigger than the Volt's, to handle the ELR's added weight and speed. The rear suspension shares the Volt's twist beam design, with a Watts link added to enhance lateral stability. This is an improvement, but even with its understeer prone front drive layout, the ELR can wag its tail in hard cornering if the front tires suddenly gain traction while turned. The window sticker for the 2014 Cadillac ELR. With the standard electronic stability control engaged, this is not a problem. With the stability control switched off, it can be disconcerting. Is a typical luxury eco coupe driver likely to throw her ELR down Latigo Canyon at the limits of adhesion? Probably not. The ELR is more capable of going quickly over a twisty road than most of its drivers ever will be, or most of its passengers will ever allow. The ZF Servoelectric power steering is programmed to raise steering effort when the driver selects Sport mode, and to increase effort and on center feel with increasing speed and cornering force. It works so well one wonders why the Volt's steering, which uses the same system, is so lifeless. Hackers, while you're at it ... My test car's interior was a rich combination of leather, olive wood, carbon fiber and Alcantara. To exploit the silence of the electric powertrain, the ELR has hydraulic suspension bushings, thick window glass and ample sound damping insulation. Bose's active noise canceling technology helps to keep the cabin calm when the gasoline engine fires up, but the increase in ambient noise is still pronounced. At freeway speeds, the generator sound is largely masked by the muted road and wind noise that slips through the ELR's soundproofing armor, but at slower speeds and at stoplights the thrum of the genset under the hood is more intrusive. Front seat room is ample, but the cramped rear seats, with their limited headroom and leg space, are best reserved for the young and the restless. The front seat shoulder belts are a significant obstacle to rear seat access. Standard safety equipment includes frontal collision and lane departure warning systems. The Safety Alert Seat vibrates through the left, right or forward seat bolsters if you drift from your lane or come up quickly behind another car. It feels vaguely as if you're running over Botts' dots or as though you've found that long lost cellphone. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
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