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ROME Movie buffs will remember the Great Hall of the Palazzo Colonna from the final scene of "Roman Holiday," when Audrey Hepburn chose royal duty over love, leaving Gregory Peck brokenhearted. On Monday, the painting lined gallery hosted royalty of a different sort, when some of fashion's biggest names met with Vatican luminaries to preview the exhibit "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination," which will open at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 10. Donatella Versace and Pierpaolo Piccioli, of Valentino, and the designers Thom Browne and Jean Charles de Castelbajac joined Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, at the Palazzo Colonna, where journalists got an early look at five of the 40 ecclesiastical garments and accessories that the Vatican is lending to the show. Ms. Wintour wore red and black, as did Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's de facto culture minister. Rewording the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach's well known phrase, "Man is what he eats," Cardinal Ravasi said that the same was true of how man dresses. "From the first pages of the Bible, God enters the scene certainly as a creator, but also as a tailor," said the cardinal, citing a passage from Genesis where God made garments of skin for Adam and Eve and clothed them. "God himself worries about clothing his creatures, and this represents the genesis of the significance of clothing." The items lent by the Vatican feature exquisitely crafted clothing and accessories, with intricate patchworks of gold and silver thread embroidery, as well as bejeweled tiaras and miters. Cardinal Ravasi noted that the liturgical vestment "represents above all the transcendent dimension, the dimension of the religious mystery, and that's why it is ornate, because that which is divine is considered splendid, marvelous, sumptuous, grandiose." He cited, as an example, the "marvelous chasubles," or outermost vestments worn by clerics during mass, that Matisse designed for the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, on the French Riviera, and that are today housed in the Vatican Museums' collection of modern religious art. "When Picasso saw them, he said, 'These aren't sacred vestments, they are butterflies that fly in the sky of God,'" Cardinal Ravasi said. "And that is the real meaning of the sacred vestment." Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute's curator in charge, said some might consider fashion to be "an unfitting or unseemly medium by which to engage with ideas about the sacred or the divine." "But dress is central to any discussion about religion," he added, and "religious dress and fashion at least in terms of their presentation are both inherently performative." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Even in Better Times, Some Americans Seem Farther Behind. Here's Why. Americans' household earnings are finally stretching back to their pre recession heights. But feeling secure and comfortable isn't only a measure of how much money you have. It's also a measure of how much you have compared with others. For many, that is one reason that recent financial progress may seem overshadowed by the gains they've missed out on and a needling sense that they've lost ground. As new research illustrates, two groups in particular have stalled: whites without a college degree, and blacks and Hispanics with one. Both are being far outpaced by college educated whites. "America has been a story of getting ahead, of progress," said Morris P. Fiorina, a political scientist at Stanford University. "There's been no story of progress for them." The findings, part of a study on the demographics of wealth between 1989 and 2016 from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, show significant advances in education and earnings among white, black and Hispanic Americans over that period. A Census Bureau report this week also showed continued income gains last year. But the study highlights the growing importance of relative shifts in position up or down the income ladder at a time when the economy's riches are flowing increasingly to the wealthiest sliver. The economic swoops and comebacks of the last three decades have chipped away at many measures of well being. An advanced global economy has radically revalued the contributions of blue collar labor and technological skills. The lingering economic insecurity has fired resentments, sharpened identity politics and fueled populism on the right and left that is upending hierarchies in the Democratic and Republican Parties. But parallels between whites who did not finish college and blacks and Hispanics who did show that "this is not clearly a race story and not clearly an education story," said William R. Emmons, an economist at the St. Louis Fed and a co author of its report. In absolute terms, they are still doing better than their black and Hispanic counterparts, with nine times the wealth and a higher median income. But as Theodore Roosevelt observed, "Comparison is the thief of joy." The white working class, which once dominated the American work force and reaped a hefty chunk of its rewards, has seen its incomes trail far behind those of college graduates. In less than three decades, its share of total income sank to 27 percent from 45 percent. For these workers, the education gap is starker than ever. At the same time, working class blacks and Hispanics began to catch up. These groups' median incomes grew at an accelerated pace over the same period that the median income of working class whites declined. 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. "Their relative position has fallen dramatically," said Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, "at a time when the desirable standard of living has risen a lot." To Mr. Inglehart, expanding inequality is the primary culprit, decreasing satisfaction while fanning ethnic and racial tensions and anti immigrant sentiment around the world. "Rewards are being sucked up at the top to a degree that is stunning," he said. In the United States, polls have shown that a majority of whites feel whites are discriminated against. The sociologist Arlie Hochschild describes it as a powerful feeling that the government is helping others to cut ahead of them in line as they fall further back. This has helped turn them more aggressively, she argues, against affirmative action and policies that assist displaced migrants. But as the Fed data suggests, waning privilege is a more likely reason. The most plausible explanation, the report concluded, is the "diminishing set of advantages relative to nonwhite working class families in terms of high school graduation rates, access to relatively high paying jobs, and freedom from explicit workplace discrimination." What may be surprising is that the group with the most similar experience in some respects is black and Hispanic college graduates. Additional education has clearly paid off in terms of greater wealth and income. Yet they are lagging well behind their white counterparts. Among college graduates, white families, for instance, had six times the median wealth of black and Hispanic families, extending a stubborn racial gap. Without a cushion of family assets, the housing bubble and recession cut deep among minorities, gnawing away the assets even of college graduates. White households with similar education levels also lost wealth, but their relative position was enhanced. In the 1990s, their real median net worth was 256 percent of the general population's. That figure jumped to 416 percent by 2016. "Racial privilege is alive and well among college educated elites," said Joan C. Williams, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law and the author of "White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America." Black college graduates were also the only other group besides the white working class that experienced declines in all three nonfinancial measures tracked health, homeownership, and marriage or cohabitation rates. Researchers have found that socioeconomic status and health shadow each other, climbing or falling in tandem. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Cars Suck Up Data About You. Where Does It All Go? Cars have become rolling listening posts. They can track phone calls and texts, log queries to websites, record what radio stations you listen to even tell you when you are breaking the law by exceeding the speed limit. Automakers, local governments, retailers, insurers and tech companies are eager to leverage this information, especially as cars transform from computers on wheels into something more like self driving shuttles. And they want to tap into even more data, including what your car's video cameras see as you travel down a street. Who gets what information and for what purposes? Here is a primer. What Can Be Collected? Government rules limit how event data recorders the black boxes in cars that record information such as speed and seatbelt position in the seconds before, during and after a crash can be used. But no single law in the United States covers all the data captured by all the other devices in automobiles. Those devices include radar sensors, diagnostic systems, in dash navigation systems and built in cellular connections. Newer cars may record a driver's eye movements, the weight of people in the front seats and whether the driver's hands are on the wheel. Smartphones connected to the car, and those not connected to the car, can also track your activities, including any texting while driving. There are few rules or laws in the United States that govern what data can be collected and used by companies. (An exception is medical information.) The United States generally does not ensure that companies strip out names or other personal details, or stipulate how such information should be used, for example. Typically, a driver agrees to be tracked and monitored by checking off a box on one of the user agreement forms needed to register a car's in dash system or a navigation app. In most cases, the driver must agree to such terms to use an app or service. While anyone from an app developer to Google or Spotify may be capturing your digital moves while you drive, in most cases the primary collector and owner of this deluge of data is the automaker. And while it presents some potentially valuable new opportunities for them, it also has raised some nettlesome customer relationship problems. General Motors learned this the hard way in 2011 when it amended the terms and conditions for its OnStar communications system. They included a change that allowed OnStar to share vehicle information with other companies and organizations without asking for additional explicit consent from customers. The change led to numerous complaints, and the incident was even cited in a 2012 Supreme Court decision about warrantless tracking as evidence that drivers expect privacy behind the wheel. Consequently, many car companies view the acknowledgment of such data collection as problematic for customer relations. While drivers may welcome use of the information to relay diagnostic and service information ("Time for an oil change!"), automakers are aware that many consumers are wary of other uses so much so that several companies declined to comment on their future plans or data collection policies. Is There an Advantage to Sharing It? There are cases in which drivers regularly choose to trade their data to get a benefit. For example, live traffic services like Inrix and Waze can save a driver hours of agony sitting in sweltering traffic in exchange for sharing location and speed information. There are also products like Autobrain, Automatic, Zubie and Verizon Hum that offer connected car services, like car diagnostics, via a dongle that plugs into a car. Even insurance companies are experimenting with apps and dongles that record braking, acceleration and speed with the lure of lower rates for well mannered drivers. In Arizona, Farmers Insurance is offering customers a 3 percent discount just for using a smartphone app that tracks driving behavior, including whether the driver is holding a phone or using a hands free Bluetooth connection. "We give value back to the customer," said Mariel Devesa, Farmers' head of product innovation, noting that drivers can save up to 13 percent on their insurance based on their habits. "And they can improve as drivers by seeing their scores." The benefits to consumers and potential threats to personal privacy and security become murkier, though, as companies trade and combine information collected from multiple sources, including cars, to reveal travel and buying patterns. Aggregated information can be purchased from navigation companies, for example, and combined with other so called anonymized information from dating apps to identify the habits of a specific demographic. "We can tell who's on the road, where they live, how frequently they make this trip, and whether or not they are on vacation," said Laura Schewel, founder of StreetLight Data, which provides such information to clients like urban planners and retailers. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
Shortly after arriving in New York last month, Novak Djokovic told me that he genuinely wanted to be here for the United States Open. He repeated it throughout his stay, which ended much earlier than expected on Sunday as the top seeded Djokovic was defaulted in the fourth round for unsportsmanlike conduct, after hitting a ball in frustration toward the back wall of the court, which struck a line judge in the throat. It was unintentional, no doubt, but it was also a rash move that a 33 year old superstar, so accustomed to living and playing under the microscope, should have learned to avoid long ago. But Djokovic, the elastic winner of 17 Grand Slam singles titles who has proved himself to be the men's game's best competitor under pressure, remains a work very much in progress: capable of charm, magnanimity and deep reflection but also capable of turning too much of what he touches into ash. Despite his earnest attempts to find peace, commune with nature and heed his inner voice, Djokovic remains too often his own worst enemy. And even if he truly does not aim to be beloved on the same scale as his career long measuring sticks Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal he insists he does not he has had a rough few months. He has been spreading himself thin: serving as president of the ATP Player Council until the Sunday before the U.S. Open, when he and Canadian player Vasek Pospisil launched a new players' association that the ATP Tour's leadership views warily and which Federer, Nadal and numerous other leading players have chosen, for now, not to back. In truth, despite Djokovic's affirmations, he seemed conflicted about this business trip to New York: He only decided to come last month after extensive negotiations with the U.S. Open organizers over everything from housing to entourage size to testing and quarantine protocols. He certainly did not make it easy, but at least he came and then in typically self defeating fashion gave officials no choice but to send him packing early. "If you let yourself be blown to and fro, you lose touch with your root," tweeted his wife Jelena Djokovic on Monday afternoon in Europe. "If you let restlessness move you, you lose touch with who you are." She was quoting "The Wisdom of Tao," and though she did not mention her husband directly, the timing was certainly interesting. It would also be useful to know whether Djokovic agrees, because he was firm last month that his outside endeavors were worth the extra effort. Sitting on a couch in the home he rented for the Western Southern Open and U.S. Open, he gestured toward his agent Edoardo Artaldi. "I know that Edoardo here wishes that maybe sometimes I don't speak about some things in public or that I don't maybe deal with tennis politics as much," Djokovic said. "But look, I know that I feel deep in my heart that this is the right thing to do because I feel also responsible. And I feel that if I have an opportunity to share something that I feel might serve somebody in a positive way, I will do that." Djokovic did the right thing on Monday night. After the line umpire he hit began receiving vicious abuse online, Djokovic posted a message on Twitter to his supporters, asking them to "please also remember the linesperson that was hit by the ball last night needs our support too" and that "she's done nothing wrong at all." Pospisil and others who have worked closely with Djokovic expressed respect for his desire to put his reputation and energy on the line for his peers. He has been involved in some major behind the scenes power struggles in the last two seasons: helping to lead the ouster of Chris Kermode, the former chairman of the ATP Tour in 2019, and supporting Justin Gimelstob, an influential board member and former American player who pleaded no contest last year to a battery charge and eventually resigned. Now comes the new player association, which Djokovic views in part as an attempt to help lower ranked players increase their earnings in a sport that has traditionally rewarded the stars handsomely and hoi polloi meagerly. His labor organizing may yet lead to trouble, just as the Adria Tour, another high minded initiative organized this year during the coronavirus pandemic, got him into trouble. During the five month hiatus, Djokovic wanted to help struggling players in the Balkan region and organized a series of charity exhibitions in Serbia and Croatia, where infection rates were low and restrictions were few. The tour raised eyebrows globally as the players hugged, danced the limbo and communed, mask free, with fans. It went truly awry when he, his wife Jelena and several other players and team members ended up contracting the virus, including Borna Coric, a Croatian who is in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open. "So many times he has the right intentions, it's just with the timing he's not getting it right, like the Adria Tour," said Daniela Hantuchova, a former top 5 player from Slovakia, who has known Djokovic since his early years on tour. "There's no problem with running an exhibition tour like that, just not when the whole world stops. Same with the ATP stuff. Sure things need to change, but not right now." Federer had anger issues when he was young, and largely conquered them, becoming close to inscrutable on court. But for Djokovic, who grew up with precious little when Serbia was viewed as a political pariah, the bubbles still rise frequently to the surface. This was not the first time he put a line umpire in danger. In 2016 at the French Open, his racket slipped backward out of his hand as he swiped it in anger during a quarterfinal match with Tomas Berdych and just missed a judge. That could have been a default in the year Djokovic went on to win his only French Open. Later that season at the ATP Finals, he angrily smacked a ball into the stands without hitting anyone and later squabbled with a reporter who suggested this might be a pattern of behavior and said it could have been dangerous if he had hit a spectator. "It could have been, yes," Djokovic said. "It could have snowed in O2 Arena, as well, but it didn't." Nearly four years later, the mood changed abruptly in Arthur Ashe Stadium as the line judge dropped to the court after being hit. "It feels like sometimes the anger comes out of control," Hantuchova said of Djokovic. "I care so much about him and respect everything he is doing for our game, but I just hope there is a lesson to be learned, even if this one came at the worst possible time, where pretty much the only thing standing between him and an 18th Grand Slam title was himself, with all my respect to the other players." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Michael Tracy at one of his residences in San Ygnacio, Tex. His signature outfit is an Indian kurta.Credit...Bryan Schutmaat for The New York Times Michael Tracy at one of his residences in San Ygnacio, Tex. His signature outfit is an Indian kurta. SAN YGNACIO, Tex. There are two ways to tell the story of how the artist Michael Tracy ended up living in the tiny Texas border town of San Ygnacio. This is the more rational one: In 1978, a friend reminisced about a United States town on the Rio Grande that felt just like Mexico with its central plaza, Roman Catholic church and old stone buildings. Mr. Tracy was intrigued. Growing restless in Galveston, he drove to the town and signed a lease for a house the next day. Today, Mr. Tracy remains a perplexing resident of sleepy San Ygnacio, which has a population of less than 700. Outside the town, Mr. Tracy is known for his paintings and sculptures that at times are homoerotic or steeped in his Catholic upbringing and sense of social justice. But his art won't be his entire legacy. That will be shared with his work restoring San Ygnacio's historic architecture. At 74, Mr. Tracy still brims with a vision to draw visitors to this town, even as he ponders who will take over his efforts to remember the Texas Mexico borderlands. It's easy to see how Mr. Tracy might stand out in San Ygnacio, where many residents are the descendants of its original settlers and a paved road didn't link the town to the outside world until the 1930s. His uniform is a knee length tunic. His head is shaved with a rat tail at the back. The early rumors that he was a Satanist who painted with human blood didn't help either. A decade after he arrived, Mr. Tracy established the River Pierce Foundation with the aim of cleaning up the Rio Grande. Those efforts didn't get very far. The foundation found a new purpose when, in 1998, an elderly resident offered to sell his half share of the Trevino Uribe Rancho, a Spanish Mexican fort on the verge of becoming a national historic landmark. It wasn't in good shape. The fort is now the centerpiece of several historic buildings in San Ygnacio owned by the River Pierce Foundation. Its oldest room was built in 1830 as a ranching outpost when families lived on the south side of the Rio Grande and farmed their cattle to the north. In the face of constant raids from Native Americans, its thick fieldstone walls became a refuge and its gunports a defense. Over 70 years, five rooms and a walled courtyard were added. Those additions reflect a changing world. It became a permanent home for ranchers when land north of the Rio Grande became part of the United States after the Mexican American War ended in 1848. "The Trevino Uribe family moved to the northern banks to secure their land," said Mario Sanchez, a former architect with the Texas Historical Commission. He called the fort "an exceptional survivor of the time." Each piece of the structure tells that grander story. The poorly constructed stone walls in the original room hint at the area's isolation and the need to use nearby materials. A sundial over the northern door installed by the fort's early inhabitants is a celebration of the return of two men who were kidnapped during a Native American raid. In one room, a prayer is inscribed on a ceiling beam. "En Paz y Libertad Obremos" is its request May we work in peace and freedom. For Mr. Tracy, the fort communicates a shared history and blurred boundaries between two countries. "The idea that we have this problem with the frontier and with immigration and illegality and illegal aliens and children being torn apart and their mothers being arrested and incarcerated in these big holding tanks and I don't know if there is any solution," Mr. Tracy said. Customs and Border Protection trucks often roam the town. Residents say they've seen people crossing the river before disappearing into waiting cars. The River Pierce Foundation acquired the other half of the fort in 2008. It took several more years and about 600,000 to restore it. Most of that money came through grants and private donations, according to Mr. Tracy. Last June, the foundation began tours on the first Sunday of the month. An abstract sound experience created by the composer Omar Zubair installed in December brings each room to life with the noise of the fort's early life. In the coming months, the foundation will ramp up efforts to draw more people interested in heritage tourism, according to Christopher Rincon, its executive director. Yet, few San Ygnacio residents have been involved in the fort's restoration. It's hard to know who is to blame: Mr. Tracy's temperament or the insular nature of small towns. On a recent Tuesday afternoon at Pepe's Grocery, one of the few stores in San Ygnacio, the consensus was that the work of the River Pierce Foundation is good for the town, but Mr. Tracy is odd. He can be warm, hospitable and funny, but also hotheaded and bossy a cyclone of a person. "I don't know anyone that loves him," said Eduardo Botello, 66, a retired school maintenance worker who had a run in with Mr. Tracy when he installed sound equipment for an event. Another man, who said he was Mr. Tracy's neighbor, recalled in hushed tones seeing nude participants at a performance art piece in 1990. The performance, which mimicked San Ygnacio's annual Good Friday procession, culminated with a burning cross floating on the Rio Grande. Titled "River Pierce: Sacrifice II, 13.4.90," it protested the toxic state of the river, and was a collaborative effort between artists from Chile, Mexico and the United States, according to Mr. Tracy, who spent eight years organizing it. "He's created a lot of enemies," said Frank Briscoe, an architectural conservator who worked on the Trevino Uribe Rancho and experienced Mr. Tracy's intense micromanaging. However, without Mr. Tracy's vision and attention to detail, he added, "I don't think that building would have had much of a future." Mr. Tracy remains a prolific creator even though his art hasn't sold well in recent years. He goes to India twice a year to make jewelry for private clients. A meditation garden is under construction at one of his four properties. He still paints. An Ohio native, Mr. Tracy created work in the '70s and '80s that often reflected turmoil and aggression from a foundation of Catholic ritual. "A canvas mounted like an altarpiece is penetrated with spikes," described Michael Brenson in a review of Mr. Tracy's first New York show in 1987. In the '90s, he created a series of sculptural wagons molded from bronze. One has a base covered by dozens of ears and topped off with a male face with a penis protruding out from it. Now, Mr. Tracy is more concerned with social justice. A recent piece, "Para Mexico," shows his anguish for the cartel violence playing out over the river in Mexico where journalists and bystanders have been brutally killed. Mr. Tracy spent four years building up mounds of acrylic paint on canvas, swishing it around with sticks and other implements. Like clouds morphing into objects, the layered paint begins to take the shape of faces screaming in anguish. "Mexico is in distress right now," Mr. Tracy said by way of explanation. His foundation is planning another building restoration for May. It will coincide with construction of a viewing platform that will look out over the Rio Grande and a bird sanctuary, which draws the rare white collared seedeater and bird watchers. Eventually, the platform will become a cafe. "It really provides the border with a new language," said Leslie Aboumrad, from Frank Architects in Laredo, about 50 miles west, which has worked pro bono for the River Pierce Foundation. "Right now it is not friendly." It's hard to picture the River Pierce Foundation without Mr. Tracy's extravagant personality and his knack for fund raising. Yet he is getting older. "I can't imagine giving any more of my life to this thing," he said. And he has other goals, perhaps another art exhibition in New York. "We need to choose an agreeable godfather, godmother for this organization who will help produce the future," he said. He will, however, be staying on in San Ygnacio. "You receive these transmissions that are happening from the stones of these buildings," he said, referring to the unseen powers that drew him to San Ygnacio. "We are much more sensitive to that than we think." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Follow the OSIRIS REX mission's attempt to collect samples from Bennu asteroid. HOUSTON The asteroid Bennu, with the shape of a spinning top, turns out to be extremely rugged. That is going to make it difficult for a NASA spacecraft, Osiris Rex, to vacuum up a sample to take back to Earth. It was designed to collect sand and gravel, not boulders. "We are seeing Bennu regularly eject material into outer space," said Dante Lauretta, Osiris Rex's principal investigator, during a telephone news conference on Tuesday. He and other mission scientists have been presenting their findings at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas. "We saw the first evidence of this in January of this year and have since observed 11 such events." The NASA spacecraft, which launched in 2016, entered orbit around Bennu on Dec. 31. It is not the only spacecraft from Earth exploring an asteroid. Hayabusa2, launched by Japan's space agency in 2014, began orbiting the asteroid Ryugu last year. Its mission is also to collect samples for return to our planet for study, and members of its team were presenting findings at the Texas conference on Tuesday as well. Both missions have found that the objects they are studying have terrain much more jagged than anticipated. But while Hayabusa2 already collected its first sample from Ryugu's surface last month, the particles erupting from Bennu posed an additional challenge for the Osiris Rex mission. Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar. Varying in size from inches to perhaps a few feet in diameter, some of the ejected debris escaped Bennu's tenuous gravity, and launched in the right direction and speed to enter orbit, becoming tiny moons for at least a short while. "We certainly did not expect to see this activity," Dr. Lauretta said. When the first burst was detected on Jan. 6, the mission planners made quick calculations to determine whether their spacecraft was in any danger. "Were we safe in orbit?" said Rich Burns, the project manager for the mission. With the same tools used to assess the danger to satellites around Earth from orbital debris and meteorites, the team concluded that the chances of Osiris Rex suffering a hit was very low. The mission of Osiris Rex the name is a shortening of Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer is to study a carbon rich asteroid in hopes of understanding bits of the early solar system and perhaps how the building blocks of life came to Earth. (Japan's Hayabusa2 team has a similar mission.) Bennu, some 1,600 feet wide, is covered, almost top to bottom, with boulders. Some are only a few feet wide. The largest, some 250 feet across, protrudes like a giant pimple. The spacecraft's primary mission is to collect samples, and it was designed to aim at a target circle 82 feet in diameter. It is to briefly place its collection apparatus, which resembles an automobile air filter, on the surface, blow a burst of nitrogen and gather material that is knocked upward. However, there is no 82 foot wide hazard free location on Bennu. Dr. Lauretta and Mr. Burns both expressed confidence that they will be able to guide the spacecraft to a smooth enough site. They have time to prepare. Osiris Rex is not to make its collection attempt until July next year. In outward appearances, Ryugu is similar to Bennu a faceted spinning top, covered with boulders. Hayabusa2 had been designed to set down on Ryugu within an accuracy of 164 feet to collect its sample, but there was no clear swath big enough on the asteroid. Refining their techniques, the Hayabusa2 navigators were able to touch down within 9 feet of their target, firing a projectile into its surface to free material for its sample collection tool. In April, Hayabusa2 is to shoot a larger bullet into Ryugu to create a crater and allow its instruments to peer at what lies below the asteroid's surface. Later, the spacecraft may collect another sample from the artificial crater. While they look similar, measurements show distinct differences between the two asteroids. Bennu contains a bounty of waterlogged minerals while Ryugu according to papers published Tuesday in the journal Science appears to hold only wisps of water, as if the material had been heated to hundreds of degrees and dried out. Ryugu's mineralogical signal could just be in the surface layer, and underneath it is more like Bennu, or the object the Japanese researchers are studying could be dry all the way through. That's one of the things excavation by the bullet might reveal. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The first moving assembly line for cars at Ford's plant in Highland Park, a suburb of Detroit. The years from the late 19th and early 20th centuries were not the most egalitarian in American history. Robber barons roamed the economy, living off lavish rents generated by powerful cartels and industrial monopolies. The richest 1 percent of Americans reaped nearly one in five dollars generated by the economy and amassed almost half its wealth; at the other end of the scale, wage earners lost ground to inflation. It was the era of the Haymarket riots and Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Workers staged 1,500 strikes in 1886 alone. Ultimately, though, the disparities in wealth and income led to an age of ferment that came to be known as the Progressive Era. Women got the right to vote. Congress passed the Sherman Act. Chicago's Beef Trust and John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil were taken down. In 1914, Henry Ford decided to raise wages to 5 a day, doubling at a stroke most of his workers' pay. And crucially, a progressive federal income tax was enacted by Constitutional amendment, overcoming the opposition of not only the steel lobby and the establishment press, but a Supreme Court that had struck down the income tax law of 1894 as unconstitutional. "The present assault on capital is but the beginning," wrote Justice Stephen J. Field in a concurring opinion against the 1894 law. "It will be but the steppingstone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich; a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness." But Edwin Seligman of Columbia University, one of the leading proponents of a progressive income tax, ultimately had the winning argument: "Amid the clashing of divergent interests and the endeavor of each social class to roll off the burden of taxation on some other class, we discern the slow and laborious growth of standards of justice in taxation and the attempt on the part of the community as a whole to realize this justice." The parallel offers valuable insight into one of the most important questions posed by the nation's lopsided development: Can democracy stop inequality from rising? Despite the gains of the Progressive Era, the answer echoing down the halls of history is not encouraging. Basic models of political economy hold that inequality self corrects. As income concentrates among a smaller group of voters, majorities will vote for more redistribution. But that isn't quite how the world works. For starters, the poor vote less than the rich. And they don't vote exclusively based on their economic self interest. Many Americans, rich or poor, mistrust government. They support free market capitalism and view the distribution of the nation's economic fruits as roughly fair. 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. The growing concentration of income can, in fact, make inequality more difficult to correct, as the wealthy bring their wealth to bear on the political process to maintain their privilege. What's more, disparities in income seem to produce political polarization and gridlock, which tend to favor those who receive a better deal from the prevailing rules, says Francesco Trebbi, an expert on political economy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. The American political system may eventually act against the interests of the fortunate few at the very top of the pyramid of success. But that may be only because many affluent, powerful people just below the top notch see themselves as losers from the nation's economic dynamics. "The really upset people are those that are well in the top of the distribution," said Nolan McCarty, a political scientist at Princeton. "There could be a populist uprising, but that is less likely than a battle within the top 1 percent." This is, indeed, reminiscent of the Progressive movement, which was led not by pitchfork wielding populists, but by lawyers, college professors and others in the upper middle class who saw their future prosperity and social standing at risk. "There hasn't been the immiseration you would associate with a revolution," Professor McCarty said. "But people are concerned about fairness and the way the game has been rigged." Is this alignment of forces enough to stop America's income chasm from growing? Some scholars draw hope from the nation's history. In his best selling "Capital in the Twenty First Century," the French economist Thomas Piketty proposes that inequality could be tempered by returning to the tax rates of the past. Confiscatory taxes of excess incomes are, he says, "an American invention." If we could raise top tax rates to nearly 80 percent once, why couldn't we do it again? Historical precedent, however, doesn't justify unbridled optimism. For all the egalitarian initiatives of the Progressive Era, it did little to curb the concentration of income at the top. "The Progressive era established the basic grammar and vocabulary and syntax of the American policy discussion for a century," said David Kennedy, the prominent Stanford historian. "All the main themes of equity and access to democratic institutions and workplace regulations came up then." But in terms of real redistribution, Professor Kennedy added, "relatively little was accomplished." The bold new income tax affected only a tiny share of Americans. And while the top rate for a married couple was 7 percent, to reach it they had to make more than 500,000, nearly 12 million in 2014 dollars. In 1913, it raised a grand total of 28 million, a mere 668 million in today's dollars. Justifying hefty taxation of the wealthy required a more compelling argument than inequality. The immiseration caused by the Great Depression helped. But winning the argument required war. Only the prospect of many thousands of poor young men contributing their lives to the national project could justify taking more of the elite's money in the service of the national good. "The idea was conscription of wealth and income," said Kenneth Scheve, a political scientist at Stanford. "The term was used in party manifestos, in speeches to Congress. It came up everywhere." By 1917, the top federal income tax rate had been raised to 67 percent. Though it fell in the 1920s, it would rise again during the Great Depression and, especially, World War II. In 1940, before the United States entered the conflagration, the federal income tax raised 1.5 billion ( 25 billion in today's money). By 1945, it collected 17 billion ( 223 billion). The top income tax rate would not fall below 70 percent again until 1980. But what does this historical precedent say about our ability to deal with inequality today? The Great Recession helped make a case for redistribution. Jason Furman, President Obama's chief economic adviser, says that the administration's initiatives like higher income tax rates, subsidies to buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and expanded tax breaks for poor families with children have produced "the most significant policy induced reduction in inequality in at least 40 years." Just the tax measures, Mr. Furman estimated, take off about half a decade's worth of increasing inequality, as measured by the so called Gini coefficient. Is this as good as it gets? For all the struggle on the part of the White House, the income gap keeps growing. Maybe this means that, in the absence of war, democracy can't do much more. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
ON Sunday, a rare Ferrari will take its place among a special group of cars at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, there to be admired by the world's most discerning car collectors. Unlike the majority of the restored classics on display at the Pebble Beach Golf Links in California, however, this 400 Superamerica Coupe remains largely untouched from the day it left an Italian dealership some five decades ago. The Ferrari is a dazzling example of an emerging kind of vintage car, where original condition, even with flaws in paint and upholstery, is valued over pristine restoration. And the market is following. For the first time, the Pebble Beach show, among the world's most prestigious, will feature a separate preservation class for vintage Ferraris. "Because this preservation class is happening at Pebble and because these are Ferraris the significance is huge," said David Gooding, president of the Santa Monica, Calif. based auction company that bears his name. "It shows how much our ideas are changing about what a classic car should look like, how it should be maintained and repaired, and what it is worth." At stake are auction prices in the millions. Last year, sales during the eight day gathering of vintage cars in and around the Monterey Peninsula hit a record 399 million. They included a world record single car price of 38.1 million, for a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. Mr. Gooding says he believes the tipping point may have come at his company's January 2014 auctions in Scottsdale, Ariz. Two virtually identical 1956 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing coupes, both painted black with red leather interiors, were on offer. But any similarity ended there. The ugly duckling sold for just under 1.9 million, nearly 500,000 more than its twin. A month later, an unrestored 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, owned by the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum in Philadelphia, became the first automobile to be included in a new federal registry of historic vehicles, similar to the National Registry of Historic Places. "Restoring cars is not an evil thing when they need it," Sandra Button, head of the Pebble Beach concourse, said in a recent interview. But, she added, "I hear from collectors all the time who say, 'I restored my car 15 years ago, and I wouldn't do it now.'" Ed Gilbertson, former chief judge at Pebble Beach and a current member of the show's selection committee, compares the trend toward preservation in classic automobiles with antique furniture, where excessive refinishing has long been regarded as an enemy of value. "Collectors got too much in the habit of doing ground up restorations," Mr. Gilbertson said. "It almost makes me cry to think of the number of cars ruined by restorations they didn't need. We're finally learning that things are original only once." John Mozart of Los Altos Hills, Calif., a longtime collector whose competition scarred 1966 Ferrari racing coupe was also chosen for the preservation class, said that enthusiasts became too caught up in vehicular cosmetics. "When I started, the only reason people bought old cars was to restore them." Indeed, that was the intended fate for the Superamerica Coupe, acquired in the spring by Dr. Rick Workman, a dentist from Windermere, Fla., for "slightly above" its 4 million market price. The men soon realized that the glistening black Ferrari was completely original the same, inside and out, as when it left the showroom. Rather than planning its restoration, they decided to use a special dry ice cleaning process that removes oil, dust and dirt without disturbing original surfaces. Afterward, they made another discovery, one Dr. Workman called "a Eureka moment." On the underside of the left front fender, Mr. Hill spotted something they had never expected to see on what was assumed to be a steel body car: a patch of bare aluminum. Further tests with magnets and a review of factory archives confirmed the Ferrari was even rarer and more valuable than they'd thought. Indeed, Dr. Workman says he believes it is the only Superamerica built with an alloy body. "We're learning," Dr. Workman said, "that it can be equally pleasing to see a car that has been loved and nurtured for 50 years as one that has had a nut and bolt restoration." Many enthusiasts treasure historically significant automobiles for their artistry, innovation and craftsmanship, to be cherished much like fine paintings or sculpture. "What we've been doing to these vehicles would be an abomination in those fields," Scott Grundfor, a restorer, says. "Restoration came to mean the complete destruction of all original surfaces." A frequent Pebble Beach judge, Mr. Grundfor, of Arroyo Grande, Calif., is preparing a 1967 Ferrari for the preservation class. "I want it to be a demonstration project that encourages people to stop restoring cars unnecessarily," he said. Restored vehicles will continue to reign at shows like Pebble, if only because, for better or worse, so many historically significant cars already are restored. That leaves preservationists scrambling for a shrinking pool of original cars. Of course, the ultimate evidence of preservation's rise will be when an unrestored classic takes the Best of Show award. On a lawn of shining, spotless dream cars, could such an automotive Cinderella really stand a chance? "Absolutely," Ms. Button of the Pebble Beach concours said. "By offering owners a place to participate and compete, we want to encourage them not to restore vintage cars needlessly. And if they're unsure, to let them be." Update: The Ferrari Superamerica owned by Dr. Rick Workman came in second place in the Ferrari Preservation class at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. A 1964 Ferrari 250 GTL Scaglietti Berlinetta Lusso placed first. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
LOS ANGELES Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia, stars of the NBC drama "This Is Us," were on the set one day last month, sitting in their fictional family's living room, as they discussed a fairly remarkable feat: how network TV can still create hits. Ms. Moore said she realized "This Is Us" was gaining real steam after a couple of unusual things happened: There were raves from people who usually watch "the cool show on Amazon," not over the air TV; then there was praise from, of all people, Sarah Silverman, the caustic comedian, who has taken to Twitter armed with adoration. ("I'm a puddle of tears," she tweeted recently, among some profanities.) "I'm like 'Whaaat?' I would never have thought she would have been watching," Ms. Moore said. Mr. Ventimiglia jumped in to add: "You're, like, HBO. What are you doing on NBC?" "This Is Us," which airs on Tuesday nights, is the biggest hit for the broadcast networks since "Empire" sent shock waves through the industry two years ago. NBC has taken the bold step of already renewing the show for a second and third season, even though just 13 episodes have aired. And as with the meteoric rise of "Empire," "This Is Us" has seen its audience growing week to week; the most recent episode drew 14.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen data covering three days of delayed viewing. But can this show keep it up? Indeed, can any new show keep it up these days? A big hearted and occasionally quite funny drama, "This Is Us'' centers on the Pearson family as it navigates any number of challenges, like death, dieting and sibling rivalries. The show jumps from decade to decade stretching from the early 1980s when Jack (Mr. Ventimiglia) and Rebecca Pearson (Ms. Moore) are raising three babies to a present that features three still figuring it all out 36 year olds. There are challenges ahead. American audiences have radically changed the way they watch TV, and laws that used to govern the industry have been rewritten. There is one recent phenomenon that "This Is Us'' hopes to avoid: Shows that start hot have fizzled after a break between seasons. The 2015 finale of AMC's "Fear the Walking Dead" had 10 million viewers, yet its second season finale barely registered half that, according to Nielsen. Likewise, USA's "Mr. Robot" shed nearly half its audience between its first and second seasons. Broadcast network shows like ABC's "How to Get Away With Murder" and "Quantico," Fox's "Last Man on Earth" and NBC's "Blindspot" similarly saw big drops after fine rookie seasons. Even "Empire," which still has strong ratings, has lost a quarter of its viewership this season. Television executives offer a few theories: Several of those shows suffered creatively after strong starts; some shows deployed one twist too many, potentially exhausting viewers. And at a moment when there is more TV than ever, it's harder to get an audience to return to a show it has already sampled. This is one reason many networks are beginning to turn to limited and anthology series. This is a trend that is not lost on the people behind "This Is Us.'' "I'm aware of it because it happens to me," said Dan Fogelman, the show's creator. "There's a point in a TV show where I check out a little bit despite my best efforts. You know that feeling: You've got that big DVR list at home, and you're suddenly not going back to a program that used to be first up." But Mr. Fogelman and executives behind his show are convinced that "This Is Us" has passed a series of stress tests that indicate it can avoid a serious drop off. "It's already bucking the trend," said Dana Walden, co chief executive of the Fox Television Group, which controls the studio that produced the show. "It has weathered an incredibly difficult fall in the TV business with the election, presidential debates, a wildly entertaining World Series and a holiday break." NBC executives even argue that the holiday breaks have benefited the show as word of mouth spread and new viewers began jumping on board by binge viewing. Within NBC's offices in Universal City, Calif., they have been referring to its performance in early December as the "Thanksgiving bump": The two episodes that were broadcast after the holiday had a jump of more than a million viewers, according to Nielsen. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. NBC's decision last month to give "This Is Us" a two season renewal was not just bravado. It was also a strategic decision meant to entice would be viewers and assure them that the show is not going anywhere. Jennifer Salke, NBC Entertainment's president, said that as TV ratings had eroded, networks had been too trigger happy in recent years, canceling shows that failed to hit traditional ratings benchmarks even if the show had a loyal fan base. "We're all over social media to figure out who's watching, and there's a lot of negative sentiment that I heard that goes, 'I really want to watch it, but they'll just cancel it and burn us like they always do,'" she said. The long term investment for "This Is Us,'' she said, was intended as an "insurance policy" for viewers who were reluctant to jump aboard. NBC had its earliest indications that the series would be a hit last May when, out of nowhere, its trailer became a viral sensation months before the premiere. (Mr. Ventimiglia's prominently featured bare butt may have had something to do with it.) It was that same month, Ms. Salke said, that she thought it might be a hit for another reason: When she looked at lineups at the annual upfront presentations, she noticed programming slates overflowing with procedurals and crime shows. As Mr. Fogelman put it: "Not everybody is a cop or a lawyer or a schoolteacher turned drug dealer. It's just a story about people and more specifically this family, and I think people are seeing themselves a little bit in it." Mr. Fogelman said he had the 1983 dramedy and tear jerker "Terms of Endearment" in mind when he was conceiving "This Is Us." And the show is certainly emotional. (Critics have taken to calling it manipulative.) "This Is Us" has been especially popular among women, ranking as the third highest rated show for female viewers ages 18 to 34, behind only "Empire" and "Grey's Anatomy." When asked why the show is popular right now, executives offered two explanations. One was tonal: At a time when TV has gone gritty, sophisticated and dark, audiences may have room for something else. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Is the war on drugs crippling the war on AIDS? And might the AIDS epidemic make governments more willing to treat drug abusers as suffering patients rather than as hardened criminals? Those questions came to the fore last week because of a fumbled news story. It was announced incorrectly, it turned out that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which oversees the fight against cross border drug trafficking, was about to do a startling about face and advocate ending penalties for personal use of all drugs. The schisms revealed by the news U.N. agencies, not to mention nations and political parties, are sharply divided over the issue showed how the debate is shifting, in part because of H.I.V. The spread of the virus through needles may be the least talked about but most intractable aspect of the AIDS epidemic. In North America and Western Europe, H.I.V. is mostly transmitted through gay sex. In Africa, the focus of most Western aid, it is spread through heterosexual sex. But in many countries notably Russia and Eastern Europe, and across swaths of Asia where the opium poppy flourishes, the greatest H.I.V. risk is injected heroin. "Our position is very clear," said Michel Sidibe, the executive director of Unaids, the U.N. agency fighting AIDS. "Of the 12 million people who inject drugs, 1.7 million are infected. We need to take these people out of the shadows and into services, or we will never control the epidemic." Studies done decades ago on groups with different H.I.V. risk factors prostitutes in Nairobi, gay men in San Francisco and addicts in Bangkok, for example showed that needle sharing was the fastest way the virus spread when it entered a new population. Around the world, users who inject drugs are 28 times more likely to be infected than people who do not. Taking away the fear of arrest after being caught with a syringe or a gram of heroin makes it possible for addicts to sign up for risk lowering interventions: clean syringes, condoms for those who sell sex for drugs, antibiotic treatment for venereal diseases, methadone to help addicts lead less chaotic lives, antiretroviral treatment and pre exposure prophylaxis. Jailing users, by contrast, increases risk. Many prisons are H.I.V. hotbeds because of drug needles, tattoo needles, unprotected male male sex and rape. No two countries have matching policies on the nonmedicinal use of drugs. In the United States, marijuana is legal in four states while heroin is universally outlawed; 30 states allow syringe exchanges while 20 do not. In Switzerland, by contrast, voters in 2008 effectively made heroin a medical problem, but kept marijuana illegal. Iran permits clean syringes and methadone, even to prisoners. Heroin addicts, who once faced the death penalty, are immune from arrest while in treatment. Study after study has shown that countries that reduce penalties and offer treatment have reduced H.I.V. infections. China, for example, dropped a zero tolerance policy on heroin in favor of clean syringes and methadone. It now has 700 clinics treating 200,000 patients, and new H.I.V. cases among those patients have dropped by 90 percent, Mr. Sidibe said. In 2001, Portugal made the possession of up to 10 days' worth of any drug legal. Only 78 H.I.V. cases there were attributed to drug use in 2013. (Also, overdose deaths are now among the lowest in Europe 3 per million Portuguese versus 45 per million among residents of Britain, for example.) In Germany, arrests on charges of possession of small amounts may be dismissed. Most addicts are in treatment, and pharmacies sell syringes cheaply. Germany has about 3,300 new H.I.V. infections a year with only about 100 of them from drug use down from 1,200 in 1986. Many are in recent emigres from former Soviet countries, according to a 2012 Unaids report. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
At moments, these four, distinctly individual young men seem truly to become a single organism an eight armed, eight legged industrial animal, coaxing what they call "the magic" from molten steel. Watching the quartet of actors performing their characters' cadenced daily labors in Kieran Knowles's gripping "Operation Crucible," at 59E59 Theaters, it's impossible not to feel the warming reassurance of reliable interdependence. That, and the comforts of repetition, of workers knowing that they're "all in rhythm," as these lads say to one another, "all in time." Until, one day, a hole is blown in their routine and in their lives, their town, in time itself. And the trust in that blessed familiarity, which had given their shared existence form and function, will never again be entirely there. Such are the cruel disruptions of war visited on Sheffield, England, during mid December in 1940. That was when German Lutfwaffe bombers killed more than 660 people in the Yorkshire city, which had become a center for munitions manufacturing, and left another 40,000 homeless. Those statistics are not recited in "Operation Crucible," which opened on Tuesday night as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival. This production, powerfully directed with a machine tooled precision of its own by Bryony Shanahan, limits its point of view to that of four people surprised by what would later be known as the Sheffield Blitz. ("Crucible" was the German code name for the mission.) Yet this intimate viewpoint only increases our sense of the enormity of that event. It is hard to think of another play that captures so efficiently the dividing, before and after, of war's devastation. And it is all accomplished on a single simple set, with a cast of four and 80 minutes of stage time. This achievement is the more impressive when you realize that "Operation Crucible" is the debut play of Mr. Knowles, an actor who appears as a member of the cast. A wealth of research obviously informs his script, yet it is woven with a confident seamlessness into a story of men who, for much of our time with them, can barely see what's in front of them. I mean that literally. Bob (Salvatore D'Aquila), Tommy (Mr. Knowles), Phil (Christopher McCurry) and Arthur (James Wallwork) are longtime workmates who find themselves trapped in a hotel basement, where they have sought shelter. "Operation Crucible" dares to leave us and them in the dark for stretches of time. And much of the play's tension comes from our feeling their ignorance of what exactly is happening to their city and what awaits them. Mr. Knowles also uses theatrical license to enter the heads of all of his characters and let us see what they're thinking about in their captivity. That includes choicely detailed scenes from childhood, from local soccer games and, above all, their shared workplace, which has become as much of a home to them as the houses they share with their families. The balancing of visions of then and now and briefly, at the end, of the future is artfully managed throughout. The play begins with a description of Sheffield on fire, immediately after the bombing, as seen by a numbed, disoriented Arthur. This suddenly unhinged universe is described with exact, simple and resounding eloquence. "The light's blinding, but it's not bright, just gray," he says. And: "The weather isn't. It isn't this. It isn't that. It just isn't." And then we are in the steelworks, before the carnage, in a kind of indefinite present. Here the men not only describe what they do at the steel plant creating detail work for war planes they also embody it, in a ballet of interlinked limbs and bending bodies, their sweat towels draped about their necks. "Turn, turn," they say together. "Brush, brush." By degrees, we learn the history of each man. They are not, mercifully, of the classic spectrum of types so frequently found in war movies. Instead, they are testaments to how any group of people, so superficially similar, emerges as disparate individuals when observed in steady close up. They tease and haze one another, recall their initiations into the factory and describe their wartime lives with their families as non soldiers, including their respective, provisional bomb shelters. Glimmers of personal guilt and fear surface now and then, feelings that later become intense and divisive when they're waiting for deliverance from the bombed hotel. But for the moment, what we're most aware of is the pride and sense of safety these men take from working as a team in a job that is not without its dangers. This makes the utter helplessness that later enfolds them all the sadder, as each actor subtly conveys a sudden awareness of brutal aloneness. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Montgomery, Ala., is home to the newly opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the latest in a wealth of civil rights museums and monuments worth your time and patronage. While you're there, explore the city's art houses, bars and restaurants all of which we walk you through in our local guide. Now, what to pack? We've shared packing essentials for any 36 hour trip in previous lists. So we asked Elaine Glusac, who wrote our guide to Montgomery, to name a few items she was glad to have on her last visit or wished she had brought with her. Then we turned to Ria Misra, an editor at Wirecutter, for the best products to fill those needs and her expert suggestions for other things to pack to make the most of your trip. Here are their picks. None Comfortable running shoes. "I was glad to have packed my running shoes to get in some exercise each morning before sightseeing in hopes of working off the previous night's bacon or deep fried dish two ubiquitous menu staples," Ms. Glusac said. Both the Mizuno Wave Rider 21 (for men) and Brooks Ghost 10 (for women) offer a great fit and comfort, according to Ms. Misra, and both are Wirecutter favorites. And you'll be glad for the shoes' cushiony treads as you make the rounds of museums, monuments and restaurants. None Mobile friendly wireless earbuds. Jabra's Elite 65t is the first pair of "truly" wireless (as in, there isn't even a wire between the left and the right) earbuds that Wirecutter wholeheartedly recommends, Ms. Misra explained. That's thanks to their comfortable fit and high sound quality for both music and phone calls. If you're going for a run or walk around the city like Ms. Glusac suggested, or just want to stroll along Montgomery's riverfront, you'll be glad you brought them. Also, visit Storybooth, a podcast studio fashioned like an old telephone booth, where stories from the city's history are being collected and shared. You won't need the earbuds while there, but those story archives are also available online, so you can keep listening after you leave. None A lightweight outer layer. Typical for most cities where the weather can vary, a light, packable outer layer is definitely essential. "I really enjoyed walking around Montgomery and spent a lot of time outdoors between the EJI monument, the capitol building, the Civil Rights Memorial and even a beer garden," Ms. Glusac said. "While it's important to dress light there, it's also critical to take a layer for time spent in air conditioned museums, of which there are plenty." Outdoor Research's Tantrum Hooded Jacket is a great option for changeable conditions. Ms. Misra noted that it's breathable enough that you don't overheat in milder temperatures, but it still offers a layer of protection from overzealous air conditioning or on a breezy evening walk. Best of all, it's feather light and packs down small, so you can stow it and forget about it when you don't need it. None Portable power for your phone. A good battery pack is a must wherever you roam, but even more so given how often you'll want to snap and share photos from Montgomery's waterfront and museums or access notes, maps or directions you may have stored in your phone. For something you can slide into your pocket, Ms. Misra suggests the TravelCard charger. If you have a little more space, like in a daypack or a purse, grab the Jackery Bolt for even more juice. None Sun protection. "It's very sunny in Alabama and I definitely needed sunscreen for my face, which I always forget and have to run out and buy," Ms. Glusac said. You can, of course, use the same sunscreen on your face that you use on the rest of your body. But if you want something that can take the place of your regular moisturizer, Ms. Misra suggests CeraVe AM Facial Moisturizing Lotion with Sunscreen, which blends in easily and thoroughly. Whatever you get, make sure it's in a travel friendly container currently 3.4 ounces or smaller, according to the Transportation Security Administration. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Mr. Sialelli's "singular and very personal vision, his audacity, his culture, his energy and ability to build a strong creative team definitely convinced us," Mr. Hecquet said in the announcement. He was in China and not available for further comment. There is a lot riding on the choice, not just for Mr. Sialelli but also for Fosun, a relative newcomer to the luxury industry. Lanvin was once the darling of the fashion set thanks to the designer Alber Elbaz, who along with the former owner Shaw Lan Wang revived the house he called a "sleeping beauty" and made it beloved of stars like Meryl Streep and Natalie Portman. But it has recently suffered from poor management, designer churn, plunging revenues and internal strife. After a disagreement with Mrs. Wang, Mr. Elbaz was fired in 2015; he was replaced the next year by Bouchra Jarrar, who lasted only 16 months before also coming into conflict with management. Her successor, Olivier Lapidus, made it half as long. Though Lanvin men's wear was overseen for 14 years by Lucas Ossendrijver (who left last November), the house had been largely defined by Mr. Elbaz's women's wear, and the result of the chaos after his dismissal was an almost total loss of identity. By the time Fosun bought the company early last year, it was seen as an example of how quickly brand equity and reputation could be destroyed, rather than as a heritage jewel. (The label was founded by Jeanne Lanvin in 1899.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
ALONG THE MASSACHUSETTS TURNPIKE It's high season for the people with some of the toughest jobs in higher education. No, not the admissions officers and their piles of applications. I'm talking about the people who run what's come to be known as enrollment management. When they're not talking to the families writing the tuition checks, they speak in business terms of overall discount rates and net tuition revenue. Make no mistake, their field is competitive. "It's a zero sum game," said John Dolan, who works in this area at Simmons College in Boston. "Every student I gain I took from some other institution." Most parents planning for college in the first 16 or so years of a child's life have no idea that this two track system exists, since it mostly did not when they attended college. And there isn't much data on how to qualify for these discounts. The schools may not explain the qualifications, or they'll hide the formula inside complex calculators. Moreover, the raw numbers of students who do get discounts are often listed in reports that are hard to find. It's frustrating bordering on maddening. Shouldn't we have as much data about merit aid and discounts as we do when buying a home or a car? To try to decode some of this, I paid a visit to enrollment practitioners from Mount Holyoke, Simmons, Smith and Wellesley Colleges. The schools have a few important things in common besides Bay State geography: They're relatively small, and their undergraduate divisions are women's colleges. When it comes to how they give away and talk about merit aid, however, they are very different. But first, a bit of history. For years, most financial aid was based on need. You disclosed your income and assets, and colleges would make their best offer with a package consisting of grants, loans and perhaps a campus job. Once a few private colleges started doing it, however, most of the rest fell in line (including an increasing number of public schools) in order to remain competitive. And by the 2016 17 school year, the 411 private nonprofit schools that the National Association of College and University Business Officers surveyed were reporting an average discount rate of 49 percent for first time, full time students. So almost half of every dollar in gross tuition revenue from first year students was used for grants to reduce the cost. Stephen Burd's 2013 mini history of merit aid in The Washington Monthly is essential reading for any family trying to understand the system, and it highlights one fundamental problem with merit aid: By giving discounts to families that might otherwise pay more, there may be less money for lower income students who truly cannot afford the school. Colleges and universities give away merit aid because they believe they must. But there are holdouts; they mostly include schools like Wellesley, which is prestigious enough that a large minority 42 percent of families are willing to pay full price. Its big endowment also helps, since it can be especially generous with financial aid that is based solely on its definition of need. "If we found ourselves having difficulty finding the best academic students, we would reassess," said Joy St. John, dean of admission and financial aid, who admitted 22 percent of the applicants for the class of 2021. "But once you start offering it at a place that is so selective, then everyone begins to expect it." A few years ago, Smith College started offering more merit aid in the form of 10,000 per year Presidential Scholarships. To the vice president for enrollment, Audrey Smith, this was a way of acknowledging what untold numbers of upper middle class families confront each year: While a financial need formula may say that you can afford to pay 70,000 per year with your 225,000 annual income, that may not be your reality. "I think there are people who don't quite demonstrate financial need that truly need the help," she said. Smith does not, however, provide much explanation about who may qualify for these discounts or how. I pressed the college for some average SAT scores or grade point averages, but it would not hand any over. "We don't admit statistics, we admit individuals, and individuals are infinitely more complex than the sum of their numerical parts," said Stacey Schmeidel, a college spokeswoman. Just across the Pioneer Valley, Mount Holyoke does indeed provide overall merit aid qualification data for named merit scholarships on its website. After I visited, however, I asked for a breakdown by merit scholarship type and did not receive one. In an interview there, Gail Berson, the vice president for enrollment and dean of admission, described her growing comfort with merit aid. "We're trying to discount not just for need but for others who are most deserving in other ways," she said. She also acknowledged the realities of the marketplace, noting the need to "fend off" competition like the selective honors college with the lower sticker price at the flagship state university just up the road, the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Which brings us back to Dr. Dolan at Simmons, he of the zero sum game. He told me that his staff uses matrices created by outside consultants at the Human Capital Research Corporation to try to make the right merit aid offer to the right student at the right time. He doesn't mince words in describing how he changed his approach to financial aid, once it became clear that Simmons, a small liberal arts school in Boston, was going to need to offer a discount to everyone to attract the right number and type of students. "Do we leverage this and say, 'This is who we are, and everyone is going to get something based on academic performance'?" he said. "At some point, it's just kind of icky not to admit it." Simmons does not disclose the average credentials for merit aid recipients on its merit aid website page in the same way that Mount Holyoke does, but Dr. Dolan said he was considering adding them. I believe I speak for most families and applicants when I say this: It should not be this hard to get basic information about what kind of discounts you might get from a school. They release some data on the percentage of people who get merit discounts, if you do a careful read of federal data from a website called Ipeds or in another collection of numbers that many schools release called the Common Data Set. Every school also has a net price calculator that spits out estimates of what you might pay there. Some of the calculators (though not the ones at Smith and Mount Holyoke) may ask for academic data and try to predict merit aid eligibility. Debbie Schwartz, who runs the Paying for College 101 Facebook group, has a suggestion for how the schools could make merit aid forecasting much simpler: Release a graphic that explains how much merit aid students might get, on average, if they are in particular bands of SAT scores or grade point averages. It would not be perfectly predictive, but it would offer a lot more information than many schools currently release. And given how far into the six figures many families will go to pay for college, it doesn't seem like too much to ask. "It's a sad statement that this is like it is," she said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Democrats in the House this week began a series of investigations into President Trump's past conduct and finances, even as Trump urged them in his State of the Union address to stop investigating him. On Thursday, the president said on Twitter that the investigations planned by various House committees constituted "Unlimited Presidential Harassment." Stephen Colbert ridiculed the term, which the president has also used in speeches. "Yes, presidential harassment it's like sexual harassment, only Republicans take it seriously." STEPHEN COLBERT Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi have already developed an acrimonious working relationship, just one month into her term. Both attended the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, and Jimmy Fallon figured it probably got awkward. "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was also at the prayer breakfast. Both Trump and Pelosi walked in the room and prayed they wouldn't be seated next to each other." JIMMY FALLON With the political scandal in Virginia worsening and various Democratic presidential hopefuls apologizing for past mistakes, Conan O'Brien decided to get in on the confessional action. "Did you notice that everyone right now in public life is apologizing? Pretty much 24/7, right? The governor of Virginia apologizing, the attorney general of Virginia apologizing, actors apologizing. Everyone's coming out and apologizing, and I thought I should start tonight's show by just coming clean. They've dug up some embarrassing footage of me. It's every episode of my show over the last 25 years. I just want to say, I'm sorry." CONAN O'BRIEN Trevor Noah talked about Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's push for a sweeping tax increase on the wealthiest Americans. Opponents are calling her ideas extreme, but Ocasio Cortez's proposal has broad public support, according to some polls. "The truth is, 76 percent of Americans supporting the raising of taxes means it's not that fringe. That's a really impressive number, because usually the only thing 76 percent of Americans agree on is that extra guac should be free. And it should be guacamole is a human right!" TREVOR NOAH, citing a Morning Consult/Politico poll "A motorist in the U.K. was arrested yesterday after he crashed his car while swerving to avoid hitting an octopus he claimed to have seen in the road. Officials became suspicious when they couldn't find any squid marks." SETH MEYERS "Taco Bell just announced that delivery is now available nationwide. Taco Bell made the decision after stoners kept getting lost at the drive through." JIMMY FALLON "It's February, which, as anyone in Virginia can tell you, is Blackface History Month." TREVOR NOAH Nick Kroll has an animated Netflix series, "Big Mouth," about going through puberty, but he probably shouldn't actually teach sex education to high schoolers. Here was his advice on contraception: "What you want to do when you have a condom is get two men comedians to help you put it on." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Sometimes a frame gets more attention than the picture that's in it, which is the case with Omer Fast's current solo exhibition at James Cohan's Chinatown space. The show is titled "August" after its centerpiece, a fine 3D video from 2016 that was inspired by the life of the German photographer August Sander. But that video, along with an earlier one, has been upstaged by a bizarre surrounding installation that transforms Cohan's white box space into a funky Chinatown shop or bus company waiting room with metal chairs, broken A.T.M.s and a shabby facade. In his past films, Mr. Fast has often played with elements of fake authenticity for the disturbance and distancing the disjunction can produce. Sections of his quasi documentary film "Spielberg's List" (2003) were set within a reconstructed Nazi concentration camp originally created for "Schindler's List" and built directly beside the ruins of a real concentration camp. Mr. Fast, an Israeli immigrant to the United States now living in Berlin, seems to have intended the Cohan gallery "waiting room" not as a replication of any real Chinatown but as the kind of fantasy version of immigrant neighborhoods evoked to justify "slum clearance." He pretty clearly meant to provoke strong reactions and he has. A group of Chinatown based activists have called out the piece as racist "poverty porn," pure and simple, and demanded its removal. At best, the installation is a serious misfire, as some preliminary canvassing on the artist's part might have revealed. The ethical indeterminacy that has worked in other contexts for him backfires here. It reads as nasty condescension. And, really, can a portrait of a "lost" ethnic neighborhood as a study in tawdry dysfunction read any other way? Not in the class and wealth co opted New York City of today. As a consequence of the miscalculation, the video that gives the show its name, and has a pertinent political content of its own, is in danger of being overlooked. Sander (1876 1964) is revered for his series of portrait photographs called "People of the 20th Century," conceived as an encyclopedic survey of Weimar Republic society. According to some historians (though not all), he regarded his epic project as politically neutral, even after the rise of Nazism. And, the thinking is, he sustained that position despite the fact that his son Erich was arrested as a radical socialist and died in jail after being denied treatment for appendicitis. Mr. Fast's video, moving back and forth in time, departs from this account of Sander's life by suggesting he eventually had a political awakening, though it came too late. We see him as a young photographer viewing the world through the camera's lens and from under a black camera cloth. Simultaneously, we meet him old, blind, and haunted by the past, specifically by the apparitional figure of a Nazi officer whom Sander photographs even as he learns that this was the man who had let his son die. The question hangs in the air: Can art ever be morally neutral? The film becomes a meditation on the responsibility of the artist to engage in politics, whatever the risks, or die of regret. The second video, "Looking Pretty for God (After G.W.)," from 2008, has a lighter mood, and a different message. Set in funeral parlors, it's an unnervingly upbeat look at the work of professional funeral directors, the artists who give an appearance of life to the dead. We're never quite sure, from one scene to the next, whether we're at an embalming session or a fashion shoot, and the placement of video adds to the slipperiness. Whereas "August" is projected in a standard black box space apart from the fake waiting room installation, "Looking Pretty for God" is inside it and even has Chinese language subtitles. In ways successful and not, this show is about trying to make things threatened with extinction look alive: a neighborhood under attack; the mid tier gallery as an engaged and viable enterprise: and the market squashed ideal of art as a moral force. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
Brush up on fashion history at the new Westfield World Trade Center mall this week. On Thursday, Lacoste will open "L Comme Legende, L Comme Lacoste," an exhibition celebrating the heritage of the French brand. It will include a wooden racket that once belonged to the founder and tennis legend Rene Lacoste, who won 10 grand slams from 1925 to 1929. For more things French, stop by Caudalie from 5 to 8 p.m. where the vinotherapy skin care company will celebrate the opening of its boutique spa with free mini facials with its crushed cabernet scrub at the Beauty Barrel Bar. On Friday, the Madrid jewelry company UNOde50 will open a store where you'll find a 20th anniversary collection with 20 pieces from the last two decades, including a silver plated peseta necklace ( 145) and key shaped ring ( 109). At 185 Greenwich Street. Mitchell Ness, Asics and Packer Shoes are joining forces on a limited edition collection of tennis inspired sneakers, apparel and accessories in celebration of the 2016 U.S. Open. It includes court ready Gel Lyte tennis shoes with a debossed tennis racquet logo on the heel ( 160), available at a pop up shop opening Monday. At Vanderbilt Hall, Grand Central Station. COVET by Stella Dot, a new line of jewelry and accessories from the San Francisco based social selling company, which includes sweet diamond pave necklaces ( 248) and embossed leather wallets ( 128), is now available to order. Opening Ceremony will have its biannual sample sale from Friday to Sunday, with discounts up to 90 percent on covetable bits like an Alexander Wang cross body envelope bag ( 125, originally 550) and Common Projects three strap Velcro sneakers ( 100, originally 450). At Villain, 50 North Third Street, Brooklyn. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
It's not surprising that the 19th century transcendentalists were attracted to Emerson Hill on Staten Island: The neighborhood still has a measure of the natural beauty of the wilderness that first attracted those poets and philosophers. Abounding in beeches and oaks of great height and age, the area is named for William Emerson, a former resident and a brother of the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a frequent visitor along with the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. Up a hill that has only two unassuming entrances, this neighborhood of just over 100 houses hidden in thickets has retained anonymity even by the standards of an island borough a kind of side benefit of its geography. "I lived on Staten Island for 10 years, 12 years, and I didn't know it existed," Mr. Marchese said. "I used to drive by it all the time, and one day there were balloons out there at the bottom of the hill, where it says 'No Through Traffic,' and it looks like a giant driveway. A sign said 'Open House,' and I said: 'What the heck is this? You can go up this hill?' " Mr. Marchese did, and made an offer on the house as soon as he saw its tree trimmed property and the sprawling views from its back deck. "To the left was the city, to the right was New Jersey, and right in dead center was the Verrazano Narrows Bridge," he said, "and it was so beautiful. The agent came out and said, 'You want to see the rest of the house?' And I said, 'No, I just want to make an offer.' " The current estimate for that house, for which Mr. Marchese paid about 900,000 a decade ago, may be almost 1.2 million, he said; it has appreciated far less than he had originally hoped. But the value has been in enjoying the property, where sightings of deer, raccoons, opossums and birds are frequent, he said. "We've loved every minute of being here," said Mr. Marchese, a tree consultant by trade, adding that the house, just minutes from the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, gives him easy access to all the boroughs for his work. "We have all the holidays here, and the kids love it. The grandchildren come and run around this house in the trees it's like a castle for them." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
It was an eventful week for the DeVos family of Grand Rapids, Mich. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence cast the tiebreaking vote, confirming Betsy DeVos as the Trump administration's Secretary of Education. On Friday, Pamella DeVos staged her New York Fashion Week runway show for the Fall Winter 2017 collection of her evening wear line, Pamella Roland. Pamella and Betsy are married to brothers, Dan DeVos and Dick DeVos, who are sons of Richard DeVos, a billionaire founder of Amway. More than 300 people attended the fashion show, where they ogled aubergine crepe gowns, cashmere coats with fox fur cuffs and numerous sequined numbers, as models strode down the runway to tunes such as Michelle Gurevich's "Russian Romance." The education secretary, however, was not among them. Hours earlier, she was booed and harangued by protesters outside of a school in Washington that she had come to visit. Despite her sister in law's absence, in an interview backstage, Pamella said Betsy had been an ardent supporter of the fashion line since it was introduced in 2002. "She wears it beautifully; she's tall and thin and has been one of my best customers," the designer said. Of the hoopla surrounding her sister in law's nomination and confirmation, Ms. DeVos said, "It's crazy because, I'm telling you, she's very smart and she knows what she was walking into. She can handle it. But no one would do this if she didn't have a love of education of the children." Ms. DeVos has tried to keep her public and fashion personae apolitical. Though some captions in her Instagram feed link to one of her daughter's accounts where the DeVos family's enjoyment of President Trump's inaugural festivities are on full display, Ms. DeVos avoids connecting her brand to her family, which gave financial support to Mr. Trump's presidential campaign. As to why, consider the response of some in attendance when they learned of her family connection. Just before the lights went down, Sarah Gerrish, the fashion market director at Redbook settled in at her assigned seat next to Aja Mangum, a freelancer editor covering the show for Modern Luxury publications. Both said they had second thoughts about being at the show when they learned of Pamella Roland's ties to Mr. Trump. "I questioned my attendance," Ms. Gerrish said, noting that she was speaking of her personal convictions, not for her employer. "It gave me pause," Ms. Mangum said, adding, "But we really don't know what Pamella's politics are, just because of the family she's from." For Ms. DeVos, it is not just her customers response she is worrying about. "You have to think about the people who work for you, too," Ms. DeVos said. "We don't want to bring that kind of craziness in." Nevertheless, Ms. DeVos will continue to dress her sister in law, the education secretary, as well as other visible women in the nation's capital. This is nothing new. "We've always had a presence in Washington," she said. While models were primping and Ms. DeVos was giving interviews, the designer's husband glad handed in the front of the house, greeting family friends as they joined fashion buyers and editors in the large space, darkened by the drawn floor to ceiling shades. A small hubbub surrounded the actress Vanessa Williams, dressed in a white Pamella Roland strapless jumpsuit. Ms. Williams likes Ms. DeVos's designs (she wore one to her May 2016 wedding) because Ms. DeVos is "a woman of a certain age and her pieces are mature without being old ladyish," she said, looking not the slightest bit old ladyish. She is not Ms. DeVos's only celebrity fan. Just a few days earlier, the singer and songwriter Rachel Platten appeared at the Red Dress Collection event, held in honor of the American Heart Association, wearing a red Pamella Roland gown. She also wore a Pamella Roland gown to the American Music Awards last November. Ms. Platten is best known being a writer of "Fight Song," the unofficial anthem for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. On Nov. 8, Ms. Platten posted on Instagram a photograph of a campaign button that says, "A Woman's Place is in the White House." She captioned it " ImWithHer," likely referring to Mrs. Clinton, not either of the Ms. DeVoses. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
PARIS Can you admire a stage production if its director's choices hardly register? In France, where directorial vision is generally considered the driving force in theater, it's a conundrum. By local standards, the Comedie Francaise debut of "Angels in America," Tony Kushner's epic play about the AIDS crisis in the United States, is a curious success. Onstage, a chorus of voices including both the actors' and the playwright's converge with clarity yet also seem unfiltered, as if the director had taken a back seat. Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise: The director, Arnaud Desplechin, whose background is in film, is essentially new to theater. Although he has released a dozen highly individual screen dramas since the early 1990s including "A Christmas Tale" and last year's "Oh Mercy!" "Angels in America" is only his second project for the stage after a rather staid 2015 production of August Strindberg's "Father," also for the Comedie Francaise. With its modern setting and sprawling story lines, "Angels in America" was always going to look different from "Father," which relied on period costumes and static sets. Still, Desplechin's reading of Kushner's play is similarly literal. When characters wander around New York City, the city's skyline, Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge appear in graceless video projections. As soon as the action moves inside someone's home, walls are dutifully wheeled in. Desplechin has little instinct for theater's visual shortcuts and never quite finds an overall concept to tie the production together. Even the play's fantastical apparitions don't spark his imagination. In case the audience doesn't realize there are angels in Kushner's America, Desplechin spells it out: Florence Viala is lowered from the ceiling while wearing a long white robe and unwieldy wings. Add to that an abridged text, and it feels a little like watching a CliffsNotes version. Kushner's play in two parts, "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika" typically runs to nearly eight hours. Under the Comedie Francaise's rotating repertoire system, however, productions are limited to three hours to allow for quick turnover. And instead of staging the diptych over two days, Desplechin has condensed it into one evening. From a storytelling perspective, it works. The pace precludes boredom, and the loss of Kushner's digressions about American history won't be felt too keenly by French viewers. The Comedie Francaise is also the right environment for Desplechin's self effacing approach to stage direction. For much of the company's history, directors played second fiddle to playwrights and actors. While stars of the field, including Thomas Ostermeier and Ivo van Hove, have made their house debuts in recent years, "Angels in America" harks back to a model that has its merits. For starters, it may afford the cast greater freedom: They bring a sense of individual spontaneity to the protagonists' inner lives and contradictions. As Joe, the closeted gay Mormon, Christophe Montenez is oblivious to his own pain and that of others, including his wife, Harper (Jennifer Decker, who veers between childlike torpor and lucidity). The verbal sparring between the hateful Roy Cohn (Michel Vuillermoz, on blistering form), who hides his AIDS diagnosis, and his gay nurse, Belize (Gael Kalimindi), isn't just brutal: Somehow, it carves a space for empathy. While the treatment of Kushner's "gay fantasia" remains fairly conventional, other French directors are taking more radical cues from the L.G.B.T.Q. world. Two productions currently playing in Paris Johanny Bert's "Hen" and Joel Pommerat's "Tales and Legends" ("Contes et legendes") take gender fluidity as a starting point to bring unsettling creatures to the stage: a shape shifting puppet, and humanoids that may be just a little too friendly. The acclaimed Pommerat, who returns to theater for the first time since his runaway 2015 hit, "Ca ira (1) Fin de Louis" (which translates roughly as "It Will Be Fine (1) End of Louis") can't be accused of lacking a directorial stamp. The shadowy aesthetic and self contained vignettes of "Tales and Legends," which had its premiere at the Theatre de Nanterre Amandiers, are unmistakably his, yet he also explores intriguing new ground. In the production's world, children grow up alongside robots who act as their companions and learning aids. The result is futuristic and eerily intimate. Teenagers become highly attached to these "artificial people" and can't let them go when adulthood nears. Flickers of emotion pass across the humanoids' faces. And Pommerat adds another layer of illusion to these stories through the casting, since nearly all of the roles humans and robots, adults and children are played by adult women. Their transformation into boys is especially impressive, and allows "Tales and Legends" to take on the social roots of male violence with sensitivity. Bert's "Hen" achieves the same result without a single human actor. Presented on the small stage of Le Mouffetard, a venue specializing in puppetry, it is a witty, playful one puppet cabaret performance. Its star character is named after a gender neutral Swedish pronoun, and their bald head (save for a thin ponytail) is alternately attached to a feminine or masculine body from one number to the next. The distance that puppetry creates from real bodies makes it ideal to defuse any tension around sexuality, and "Hen" is painstakingly articulated by two puppeteers (Bert is one of them) who remain hidden in black clothes. Bert also sings the musical numbers, whose lyrics, while uneven, are often amusingly, bluntly sexual. There is a "Clitoris Tango," an army of dildos of all shapes and sizes, and even a handful of introspective moments that serve to lend the character depth. Gender fluidity in "Hen" mostly means seesawing between extremes, with the puppet moving from hyper feminine to muscleman looks, and some of the political commentary feels didactic. Still, on the night I attended, the young audience included a class of high school students who guffawed in disbelief throughout, before giving the performers a standing ovation. Sex education classes are so passe: Just take teenagers to see "Hen," and throw in "Tales and Legends." Angels in America. Directed by Arnaud Desplechin. Comedie Francaise, through March 27. Contes et legendes. Directed by Joel Pommerat. Nanterre Amandiers, through Feb. 16. Hen. Directed by Johanny Bert. Le Mouffetard Theatre des arts de la marionnette, through Feb. 8. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
This cast does have special graces. Taylor Stanley, who was just promoted to principal, is especially good as Bottom, funny and touching even with his face hidden in the head of an ass. And the all dance second act, the slightly dull wedding party that happens after the story has been wrapped up, is justified and lifted to another plane by Tyler Angle and Tiler Peck's as good as it gets rendition of the pas de deux. This sublime duet, Balanchine's harmonious rebuke to the foolish entanglements of Shakespeare's lovers, is all about intimacy and trust. Mr. Angle and Ms. Peck, sturdy but never stolid, keep afloat on a singing line through balances, low lifts and quarter turns, sustaining an ideal of love into the gentle ecstasy of the final dips. Soon afterward, we return to the forest and the fairies and fireflies at dusk. The final image is supposed to be of Puck in flight, but on Tuesday, something happened with the harness and the ropes, and Antonio Carmena's Puck stayed grounded, accidentally emblematic of an evening a little short on enchantment. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
At a recent cocktail party in Manhattan, John Dean and Salman Rushdie were sitting on a zebra print bench. Wherever Mr. Dean goes, talk of Watergate is never far behind, and Mr. Rushdie mentioned that he knew Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the reporters whose investigative work at The Washington Post in the 1970s helped run President Richard M. Nixon out of office and get Mr. Dean sentenced to a jail term. "We shared the same agent, David Obst," Mr. Dean told Mr. Rushdie, recalling Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein. "We had lunch together once. We went to a Chinese restaurant. Obst speaks Chinese and he wanted to order for us in Chinese. I don't know if the waiter understood him." They laughed, and Mr. Rushdie asked Mr. Dean, a hotshot lawyer in his 30s when he worked in the Nixon White House, if he had known Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein back in those days. "No," Mr. Dean said. "I was never a source." At 78, Mr. Dean no longer wears the signature horn rims that set him apart from the crowd of nervous staff members testifying on live television before a Senate committee in 1973. Since then, he has written four books about the Nixon administration and made himself a regular on the lecture circuit. As if in expiation for his role during the Nixon years, the main theme in his books and speeches is to sound the alarm about abuses of presidential power. He was in New York at the invitation of the Ethics Center of Australia, at a cocktail party at the Library Hotel; the next morning he would give a talk on his views of President Trump, and how his actions may wind up intersecting with those of his old boss. He settled on a Cobb salad and a bottle of Coke Zero. John Wesley Dean III grew up in Ohio and attended high school at the Staunton Military Academy in Staunton, Va. There, he befriended Barry Goldwater Jr., a son of the five term Republican senator from Arizona who would suffer a landslide loss to Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1964 presidential bid. Mr. Dean and Barry Jr. would visit the senator in Washington, and Mr. Dean was captivated. "He was a very striking man," Mr. Dean said. "He would take us around to the Senate. And you'd see all the people, the guards, make a wake for these two young guys following behind him." He was also impressed by the senator's car. "He had a Thunderbird when they were first out. It was rigged like the cockpit of an airplane. He had all kinds of meters and gadgets that didn't come with the car. He had a two way radio. He had a ham radio. He could talk to airplanes." Mr. Dean attended law school at Georgetown University and in July 1970, at age 32, was recruited to become White House counsel to the president. It didn't take long for him to witness the underside of power. He told the story, after his Cobb salad arrived, of Scanlan's, an upstart magazine that printed an article linking Vice President Spiro T. Agnew to a scheme to repeal the Bill of Rights and cancel the 1972 election. Just days after Mr. Agnew had condemned the story as fraudulent, Mr. Dean received an order instructing him to have Scanlan's audited by the Internal Revenue Service. The assignment came from Mr. Nixon himself, Mr. Dean said. "I thought, O.K., I don't know much about Agnew, but I do know that this is so off the wall, and unlikely, that this is almost a joke," Mr. Dean said. "I really wasn't sure how to handle it." He sought the advice of a Nixon political adviser, Murray Chotiner. "He said, 'John, this is a place that operates on need to know, and I don't need to know this,'" Mr. Dean recalled. Mr. Chotiner made this argument, according to Mr. Dean: "Well, why can't the president, who is the head of the executive branch, start an audit of any taxpayer he decides he wants audited?" Mr. Dean was dumbfounded, believing such an audit would be illegal. Mr. Chotiner persisted, Mr. Dean said. "He said: 'I don't want to get in a debate with you, but let me just give you some advice. If you don't do it, he will find somebody who will do it.'" The president fell not as a result of such small bore abuses of power but because of the June 1972 break in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel and office complex. John D. Ehrlichman, a Nixon adviser, had approved the break in by five burglars, who were called "plumbers." When they were caught, the administration tried to cover it up by destroying records, committing perjury and paying hush money. Mr. Dean was caught up in the Watergate plot, and the White House called him the cover up's "mastermind." He maintains that his colleagues sought to make him a scapegoat. He said that he warned them: "The jig is up. It's over." In a taped conversation, he said to Mr. Nixon, "We have a cancer within, close to, the presidency, that is growing." As the investigation intensified, Mr. Dean cooperated with the Senate committee and was fired in April 1973. As part of a deal, Mr. Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and was disbarred from legal practice in Virginia and the District of Columbia. "It is not what you expect, to go from the White House to the big house, so to speak," he said. He helped prosecutors with their case and did not go to prison, serving four months at Fort Holabird, a former Army base in Baltimore. Mr. Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974; the scope of presidential authority became more limited. That changed again after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Dean said, when President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney reclaimed many of those powers in the wake of terrorist attacks. Mr. Dean, who is not registered with any political party, was not a fan of the Bush presidency, as he made clear in a 2006 book, "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush." Mr. Obama continued the strengthening of the executive branch that occurred under Mr. Bush and took the fight to government leakers more frequently than any previous president during his two terms. Do the Walls Have Ears? Mr. Dean, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Maureen, has never met Mr. Trump, nor has he watched "The Apprentice" or its spinoffs. But he had an impression of the real estate mogul turned reality TV star long before Mr. Trump ran for office. "A little showy for my style," he said. "Obviously, he was an egomaniac way back when." He noted the similarities and differences between the new president and the chief executive he knew so well, and said that Mr. Nixon, unlike Mr. Trump, "was not an extemporaneous person." "If you listen to the Nixon tapes like I have, hour after hour, over and over, you realize that Nixon is barely articulate in private," he said. "He doesn't complete sentences. He doesn't complete thoughts." "The private Nixon and public Trump are very similar," Mr. Dean added. "The difference is Nixon, who was so highly disciplined, prepared ad nauseam for press conferences. He had huge briefing books, which he used as a management tool, because he got the departments and the agencies to get answers to all the questions he would be asked." Mr. Trump seems more taken with the adulation of cheering crowds than the 37th president was. "You keep pouring stuff into him and he'll go with it, adopt it as his own, without the same sophistication," Mr. Dean said. "I mean, Trump isn't stupid. He's street smart. He's shrewd. But he's not an original thinker." A woman brushed past Mr. Dean and spoke in what sounded like a Russian accent. Mr. Dean chuckled and looked at the ceiling. "We are miked and it is going right to Oval Office," he said. Of the Trump administration's alleged ties to Russia, Mr. Dean said: "It is clear that something serious is going on. They are just throwing out every signal. If this was nothing but the witch hunt that Trump claims, you could make it go away in a week." By now, Mr. Dean had finished lunch. "It was O.K.," he said. "A Cobb salad is pretty hard to mess up, actually." He said he had never had a meal at the Watergate. "I used to go there because it had the best pool," he said, "long before I went to the White House." In 2012, The Post held a party there for the 40th anniversary of the burglary. "That was the only time I was ever in the office complex," he said. "So I actually went down to look at the floor where they did it, the stairwell." "The whole thing is just so stupid," he said. "Five guys. That is not a cat burglar. That's a small army." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
DETROIT Even during the American auto industry's collapse three years ago, the Ford Motor Company kept investing heavily in new products for the future. As American auto sales recovered, so did Ford's revenue and profit in what previously had been its most troubled market. Now Ford is gambling the same strategy will work in Europe, where economic conditions are deteriorating and car sales are at their lowest point in 15 years. The company on Thursday said it would introduce several new or refreshed models to bolster its struggling European division, including stalwarts from its American lineup like the Edge sport utility vehicle and the Mustang sports car. "Just like in the U.S., we are going to invest in the worst of times because it will allow us to grow," Ford's chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, said in an interview from Amsterdam, where Ford announced its product plans at an event attended by 2,500 of its European dealers. Raising the bet in Europe is a daring move for Ford, which expects to lose more than 1 billion in Europe this year. The European auto industry is in crisis. Saddled with high costs and too much production capacity, the region's automakers must also contend with deep recessions in prime markets like Italy and Spain, where consumers have sharply curtailed car purchases. Analysts say that many of the automakers in the region, including Ford, need to close factories and produce fewer cars. "One of the worst things in the auto industry is owning a cash burning, resource consuming business," the analyst, Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley, wrote in a lengthy research report about G.M.'s Opel unit. "One of the best things is getting rid of that business." G.M. had no immediate comment on the Morgan Stanley report. But the company has replaced top management at its Opel unit and G.M.'s chief executive, Daniel Akerson, has consistently said his goal is to fix Opel and use its product expertise on global platforms. 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. Mr. Mulally of Ford said he was confident his company can survive the crisis in Europe and emerge as a more formidable competitor when the economy revives. The company is willing to be patient for a recovery that even Mr. Mulally concedes may be years away. "We really don't know," he said. "Nobody knows." One analyst said all automakers in Europe are wrestling with investment plans in a region where sales in some countries have dropped more than 20 percent this year. "Europe might not fully recover until 2016," said Rebecca Lindland, an analyst with the research firm IHS Automotive. "Ford has to walk a fine line to keep the product fresh and hope demand returns at the same time." Like other automakers, Ford is trying to stabilize its business in Europe. The company lost 404 million in Europe in the second quarter of this year, and has said its troubles there will cause its overall 2012 operating profits to fall from last year's results. "Even with the near term business environment, Europe represents a significant opportunity for profitable growth," Mr. Mulally said. Over all, the company will have 15 of its global vehicles on sale in Europe within five years, and will also introduce its fuel efficient EcoBoost engines to the market. Ford executives, including its European chief, Stephen Odell, also showed new versions of some of its biggest sellers on the continent, including the Fiesta compact car, the Kuga sport utility, and Mondeo sedan. Ford did not put a price tag on its investment in the new models, nor did it discuss any moves to reduce its manufacturing capacity or employment levels in Europe. The company is expected to unveil a restructuring plan later this year to possibly cut employment and costs in the region. The product blitz underscores the increasingly competitive environment in the European industry. Volkswagen, which has the region's biggest market share, is also ramping up its new products to gain share from weaker rivals such as G.M. and PSA Peugeot Citroen. Mr. Jonas, the Morgan Stanley analyst, said it might be time for G.M. to simply call it quits and divest its European operations, just as the German automaker Daimler sold Chrysler in 2007. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
When I walked into Alice Birch's "Anatomy of a Suicide" at the Atlantic Theater Company, a spell of springlike weather had snapped toward freezing. When I walked out again, the temperature hadn't really budged. But the world felt even colder. Cleareyed, comfortless, often dazzling, like sun on ice, "Anatomy of a Suicide" follows three generations of women tethered to life by the thinnest possible filament. Staged simultaneously across three time periods seemingly the 1970s, the 1990s, the 2030s it explores, unflappably, the interior devastation that leads at least two of these women to take their own lives. The play, which won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2018, is also, somehow, a bleak love letter to mothers trying the best they can, even if that best is appallingly inadequate. Did I mention I saw it on Valentine's Day? It opens with Carol (Carla Gugino). Primly dressed and swathed in mystery like a pre Code film star, she has bandaged forearms, the relics of a suicide attempt she keeps insisting was an accident. Finally, her husband, John (Richard Topol in a terrible wig), explodes as much as his mild manners will allow. "You ran a bath and you drank gin and you took pills and you left food and you tried really hard to die, Carol," he says with one lonely expletive added. Later, as Carol smokes and makes a desultory attempt at cooking, Anna (Celeste Arias) appears to her left, in a separate hospital scene. Anna, we come to understand, is Carol's daughter, and we meet her in early adulthood, wearing a cast on a wrist she doesn't remember breaking. Jangled, still half high, a too free spirit, she is trying to cadge an IV from a doctor she knows. Then, to Anna's left, Bonnie (Gabby Beans), Anna's grown daughter, emerges, also in a hospital. A doctor herself, her hair tightly braided, she is stitching the hand of a flirty patient (Jo Mei, delightful). Each woman, in each time, occupies her own third of the stage. A lot of the dialogue is coincident and the speech carefully synchronized so that the women will say certain lines ("Yes," "I'm fine," "O.K.") in unison or close sequence. Words and images recur. Time and the script move both horizontally and vertically, with the past concurrent with the future it initiates. Birch, incidentally, is a mother of two, so it's as tempting as it is irrelevant to wonder whether these themes slant personal. (Most mothers I know good mothers feel they are failing their children in some way.) The director, Lileana Blain Cruz, allows female characters to exist in all their complex humanity, without sanding down or slicing off any of the unlikable or unreconcilable bits. She managed it recently, in a lush revival of Maria Irene Fornes's "Fefu and Her Friends" and in Birch's "Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.," a violent deconstruction of gender and language. Her plays often resemble a ritual or invocation. "Anatomy of a Suicide," which calls the past forward, has the feel of a summoning. The women don't see one another, though they seem at times to sense one another. Blain Cruz takes their characters' genetic bond as implicit; she hasn't pushed the actors to find similarities of tone or gesture. Gugino's Carol, scarfed in a fog of herbal cigarettes, has a dreamy presence, as if she and gravity have worked out some side deal, though the birth of her daughter binds her to life. "She's a fish hook around my middle pulling me up when I want to be under," she tells her husband. Arias, an exciting and emotionally labile actor, makes Anna a jittery creature, like a woman in the constant throes of a low grade fever. And Beans, in her doctor's coat and burgundy jumpsuit (what a relief to know that jumpsuits stay chic!), plays Bonnie like a dour closed system. If death is always trying to spirit Carol away, like a demon lover, and psychosis comes suddenly for Anna, like an unpremeditated assault, it's life that grinds Bonnie down. Beans suggests the tremendous effort she makes to move through the world with anything like sympathy or grace. The tone throughout is cool, a consequence of Birch's style, which privileges language and rhythm over emotion, a negotiation of form and content reminiscent of Caryl Churchill. This coolness also puts distance perhaps necessary between the pain of the women's inner lives and the fact of their expression. After all, a playwright can't do an hour and 45 minutes of unadulterated agony. Or, rather, a playwright absolutely can; but I rarely want to see it. Mariana Sanchez's blue green set studded with houseplants some fecund, some withering and Jiyoun Chang's lights tend cool, too. Ideally, Blain Cruz and the cast would have had a few more weeks to work through the play's complex rhythms, to make each pause seem like the response an interaction demands rather than what the script requires, to find the music grave, adagio in the not quite naturalism. The production, beautifully designed, does aestheticize women's suffering, though it rarely romanticizes it. And were you looking for catharsis? Ha! What's more fraught is Birch's declining to see mental illness as something capable of treatment or productive intervention. Carol and Anna both undergo electroconvulsive therapy, and Carol has sporadic access to talk therapy. Nothing helps. This suggests suicide as an inherited trait, as direct and inevitable in its expression as red hair or detached earlobes. But do Carol's fuguelike depression, Anna's psychosis and Bonnie's clenched anhedonia really share DNA? Still, none of the women experience suicide as a choice. Carol keeps trying to choose the life she doesn't even want, with death drive as her pre existing condition. "I have stayed," she says. "I have Stayed. For as long as I possibly can." The play's coolness means that you may not feel everything that a narrative like this might allow you to feel, at least not right away. Me? I was never even close to tears, though I heard sniffling from several sides. But "Anatomy of a Suicide" isn't the kind of show you can see then cavalierly head out for drinks, recycling your playbill along the way. It is a drama like the blue heart of a flame; it looks like winter even as it scorches you. Anatomy of a Suicide Through March 15 at the Atlantic Theater Company, Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; 866 811 4111, atlantictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
This interview includes spoilers for the first season of "Raised by Wolves." Outside of a failed pilot in 2013, it had been about 50 years since Ridley Scott sat in the director's chair for a television series. (He got his start as a director doing live TV at the BBC.) Scott has spent most of his career in film and commercials, with his TV work generally limited to executive producing series like "The Good Wife" and "The Terror," among others. But none of those shows bore his distinct visual stamp. That changed after he read the pilot script for "Raised by Wolves," which debuted in September on HBO Max. The writer Aaron Guzikowski had submitted the project for production consideration, and while the story spoke to Scott's sensibilities, he worried about repeating himself. "My tendency was to think, 'I don't want to go down that road of androids again,'" said Scott, the creator of "Blade Runner" and the "Alien" series. "I try not to play the old music." But by the time Scott finished reading the script, he had changed his mind. "It's a very rare bird, this story," he said. "I thought: 'Oh my god. I've got to do this. I've got to set the pace and direct the pilot." He immediately started storyboarding and designing costumes, spaceships and more, and he ended up directing the first two episodes. The result of those labors is a story that is set on an actual planet the barren Kepler 22b but that feels very much of the Ridleyverse. Humans face a hostile alien world; androids have emotions and dreams. Like Ash, the sinister science officer in "Alien," these robots bleed a white substance (in this case, milk). The threat of forced maternity is ever present: A killer android model is reprogrammed to protect humanity's last surviving embryos, a teenager is impregnated while in stasis, and then the android now known as Mother is herself impregnated. In Thursday's startling finale, Mother finally gives birth, through the mouth, to another of Scott's phallus shaped monsters: a serpent that grows exponentially larger, capable of flight, hungry for blood and impervious to the androids' desperate efforts to kill it. "It was meant to look like a sea eel, with a disgusting mouth and a long body," Scott said. In separate phone interviews, Scott (in Ireland, resuming production on his latest film, "The Last Duel") and Guzikowski (in California) discussed the show's finale, which debuted Thursday on HBO Max, its brand of psychosexual horror and some course corrections that will be made in Season 2. These are edited excerpts from the conversations. AARON GUZIKOWSKI I can't spell it all out now, because the show is so much about mystery, but we have a multiple season plan that will illuminate a lot of stuff. It's like a big haunted house, and it's about the people who lived there before, all the rooms you haven't seen the inside of, the backyard you haven't seen yet. SCOTT This planet had life on it prior to these people's arrival. When they arrive on the planet, the androids Mother and Father discover that there is this dinosaur sized skeleton of a serpent. Initially we assume these massive creatures were like our dinosaurs and died off. And we discover that there are other forms of life on the planet. And then Mother creates new life with one of these serpents. GUZIKOWSKI Mother and Father think the giant skull is from an extinct creature, not realizing that someday Mother would give birth to one and reintroduce it to the world and reactivate the planet. You're seeing all of these iconic elements the serpent, the garden, Adam and Eve but they're not the versions we know. We subvert expectations a little bit. Let's talk about the serpent. Its birth alone, through the mouth, is disturbing. But can you clarify how an android is able to get pregnant and give birth to a serpent in the first place? GUZIKOWSKI It's kind of a weird thing, because it's almost like she's been digitally impregnated with information, as it were. While she was communing with her creator in a virtual space, basically having sex in the simulation, something else got inside and downloaded her drive with information about how to build a new being. In essence, Mother is like a 3 D printer. Her body starts to work on that digital information and it decides that it needs more organic compounds. Because she's an android, her body could download that information and make something out of it. Her body was never designed to give birth, though, so it has to improvise a bit to get the thing out of her. The birth is pretty wild it never fails to disturb me. SCOTT On "Alien," we had a guy in a rubber suit. Today, digital effects can do anything, but it better look real, and not digital. Ridley, you vowed not to read criticism of your work after "Blade Runner." Has that changed now that you've moved back into directing television? SCOTT No. I knew I had done something special with "Blade Runner." I knew it was very challenging in terms of the world I'd done and the story we were telling, but I thought I'd nailed it. I didn't expect such vitriolic criticism. I was slaughtered by Pauline Kael. She never even met me! But what that taught me was to never read critique again, Because you have to be your own critic. Multiple reviewers have noted the drab, washed out look. Will this desaturated gray palette change in Season 2? GUZIKOWSKI Like Earth, this planet hosts a variety of different climates, flora and fauna. So we are going to a very different region for Season 2. It's like Season 1 was in Arizona, and Season 2 is in Siberia. That's just as an example we're not going to a snowy place. And there are going to be new arrivals from Earth and a change in power dynamics. The gray look extends from the landscape to the wardrobe. Ridley, did you design the skin suit to help accommodate the pregnancy? SCOTT The skin suit is a metaphor for being naked. I thought: "Can I do elastic suits? Can I give a female an androgynous look like David Bowie?" I wanted Mother to have a short haircut, red hair and an elastic suit she has this wonderful demeanor of placidity, but she could become suddenly dangerous. GUZIKOWSKI And those suits were so uncomfortable for the actors! They should be credited as stunt people for wearing those outfits every day. In real life, they're made from a latex material, and the idea is that in the future, the material never needs to be washed and won't rip unless you purposely cut it with a knife. It would last a lifetime. In the first meeting we had, I told Ridley about the plan for the season finale, so he knew that the suits would have to accommodate pregnancy. What's the deal with androids and milk? GUZIKOWSKI When I pitched this to Ridley, I told him that I had androids with black blood. He asked, "Why black blood?" I said, "Well, I didn't want to rip you off, basically." He was like, "Don't worry about that." So we have this connection to android characters that he's previously created. And there is just such a visceral reaction to the white blood, the milk all the places that it takes the brain. Ridley is a master of creating those gut reactions. SCOTT On "Alien," I was in a room with Sigourney Weaver, who was being attacked by Ian Holm as an android. His acting was just sublime, and his character was on the verge of completely losing it and getting violent. I said, "Does anybody have an eyedropper full of milk?" The makeup department brought out an eyedropper, and I got the milk, and I reached out and put a drop of milk above his eye and then started rolling. As it dropped down across his eye, it freaked everybody out! And then I thought: "Do androids all have white blood? Like milk of magnesia?" So that's why my androids are milky white inside. And for Mother, I wondered, "Should I use that again?" I think it works great it's more uncomfortable than seeing red blood. It also amps up the psychosexual body horrors. Ridley, you have these recurring nightmares throughout your work of characters impregnated against their will and then forced to give an unconventional form of "birth," whether it's a chestburster in "Alien," Shaw's procedure in "Prometheus," or Mother's serpent here. SCOTT The idea came from Oxford Scientific, where they showed some footage of grubs in tree bark. A wood boring beetle would be walking across the bark, pass a grub that was underneath, on the other side, and drill down through the bark which by comparison was like a 10 foot piece of concrete to us to impregnate the grub, to make it a host for its larvae. That blew me away. There's nothing more extraordinary than nature. Mother Nature gave us a giant slap this year, and we better start paying attention. GUZIKOWSKI It's almost like you're writing the original "Grimms' Fairy Tales," the really weird ones. It's a gut reaction, with thematic resonance. A forced pregnancy happens to Tempest, and then it happens to Mother, which changes Mother's perspective on what happened to Tempest. She keeps gaining more emotional intelligence, and she comes to understand Tempest's point of view. This show has some very female centric themes, but critics have noted the lack of female input. Are you looking to hire some female or nonbinary directors for Season 2? GUZIKOWSKI Yeah. That's absolutely our goal. We wanted to do it in Season 1. We're working on it now. We're going to do everything possible to find those people and get them in the director's chair. SCOTT That can certainly happen. It's all about who can deliver. Given that it's the future, why do people still have mullets? How did space mullets happen? GUZIKOWSKI It just happened! Everybody just had these mullets one day. I didn't know what to make of it at first, but very quickly I was like, "This feels right." We can't escape mullets. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Otis Rush, a powerful blues singer and innovative guitarist who had a profound influence not just on his fellow bluesmen but also on rock guitarists like Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, died on Saturday. He was 83. His wife, Masaki Rush, announced the death on Mr. Rush's website, saying that the cause was complications of a stroke he had in 2003. She did not say where he died. A richly emotive singer and a guitarist of great skill and imagination, Mr. Rush was in the vanguard of a small circle of late 1950s innovators, including Buddy Guy and Magic Sam, whose music, steeped in R B, heralded a new era for Chicago blues. While Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, his predecessors from the city's South Side, popularized an amplified update of the bare bones sound of the Mississippi Delta, Mr. Rush's modernized variant which came to be called the West Side sound because of its prevalence in nightclubs in that part of town was at once more lyrical and more rhythmically complex. "The sound was a radical departure from the down home records that dominated the market at the time," the producer Neil Slaven, contrasting Chicago's West Side sound with its South Side counterpart, observed in the notes to a compilation of Mr. Rush's 1950s recordings for the independent Cobra label. Mr. Rush's output for Cobra showcased his lacerating, vibrato laden electric guitar lines and his gritty, gospel inspired vocals throaty mid register groaning, thrilling leaps of falsetto. Holding sway beyond Chicago, his adopted hometown, this early body of work served as a rich repository of material for the blues rock bands of the 1960s. The British group John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, which featured Mr. Clapton on lead guitar, included a version of Mr. Rush's slow burning 1958 shuffle, "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)," on its 1966 album, "Blues Breakers." Led Zeppelin reimagined Mr. Rush's grinding 1956 hit, "I Can't Quit You, Baby," on its debut album, "Led Zeppelin"; the Rolling Stones updated the same song in 2016 on their album "Blue and Lonesome." The Texas guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan named his band after Mr. Rush's minor key tour de force "Double Trouble." Virtuoso rock guitarists including Johnny Winter and Duane Allman have also cited Mr. Rush as an influence. Mr. Rush's guitar technique owed a debt to the discursive single string voicings of jazz players like Kenny Burrell and jazz inspired bluesmen like T Bone Walker and B. B. King. But it was also attributable to the fact that Mr. Rush played his instrument left handed and upside down. Curling the little finger of his pick hand around the bottom E string of his guitar enabled him to bend and extend notes, to dazzling emotional effect. The critic Robert Palmer, in his book "Deep Blues" (1981), wrote rapturously of Mr. Rush's musicianship. "His guitar playing hit heights I didn't think any musician was capable of: notes bent and twisted so delicately and immaculately," he wrote, "they seemed to form actual words, phrases that cascaded up the neck, hung suspended over the rhythm and fell suddenly, bunching at the bottom in anguished paroxysms." In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 1968, the guitarist Michael Bloomfield said that white blues bands hoping to prove themselves in the 1960s "had to be as good as Otis Rush." In 2015 Rolling Stone ranked Mr. Rush 53rd on its list of "100 Greatest Guitarists." He was born on April 29, 1935, in Philadelphia, Miss., one of seven children of O. C. and Julia (Boyd) Rush. Reared by his sharecropping mother, Otis and his brothers and sisters were often kept out of school to work in the fields to make ends meet. Otis dabbled on the harmonica before he began teaching himself the rudiments of the guitar at age 8. Mr. Rush first appeared in public in 1953, performing unaccompanied and billed as Little Otis. Three years later he was leading a trio at Chicago's celebrated 708 Club, where he impressed the bluesman Willie Dixon, then working as a talent scout for the West Side businessman Eli Toscano. Mr. Toscano signed Mr. Rush to his newly founded Cobra label in 1956. A series of commercial and financial setbacks followed. Several record deals unraveled, including the one with Cobra, which went bankrupt in the late 1950s, a casualty of Mr. Toscano's mounting gambling debts. In what would prove to be a streak of unusually bad luck, Mr. Rush's subsequent recordings, for respected blues labels like Chess and Delmark, were often unreleased or delayed. Most notable was "Right Place, Wrong Time," an album postponed five years before its release in 1976 on the tiny Bullfrog label. Ultimately acknowledged by fans and critics as a classic, the album might have brought Mr. Rush greater acclaim had it enjoyed the promotional backing of its original, more powerful label, Capitol Records. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Only three credited actors are onstage for any given performance of "What the Constitution Means to Me," Heidi Schreck's searching oratory/memoir, now at the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway. But the space can feel crowded not only by the personal stories and civic history Ms. Schreck's play invokes, but by a gallery of faces, four rows tall and several columns across, that stare unvaryingly down at her, and us, throughout. Rachel Hauck's diorama like set, a heightened evocation of one of the American Legion halls in which a teenage Ms. Schreck once delivered prizewinning encomiums to the United States Constitution, includes many carefully selected details: a few carrot colored banquet chairs; a flag with the insignia of the Legion post in Ms. Schreck's hometown, Wenatchee, Wash.; a thin, functional carpet in a dingy shade of maroon. But it is the wraparound wall of 163 photos depicting American Legion members veterans from every United States conflict from World War I to our current war in Afghanistan that provides the image audiences are most likely to remember. "I walked in and had a visceral reaction of terror," Ms. Schreck confessed recently. "I was like, 'You have to take some of them down. It's too much. It's too many. I feel claustrophobic in here.'" In retrospect, said Ms. Hauck, "I admit I made her a pretty merciless environment. I think it's the meanest set I've ever designed." It emerged from the designer's "gut response," she said, to Ms. Schreck's play, which even in its earliest drafts set out to interweave the fraught legacy of the nation's founding document with the stories of the women in Ms. Schreck's family, including herself. The set, Ms. Hauck concluded, "is as intense as the stories she tells." The photos didn't come down in number, as Ms. Schreck first requested. Instead they multiplied, with the help of prop master Raphael Mishler, who scoured the internet and gathered hundreds of choices. Rights to use the images were secured for Broadway, though not for previous runs at Berkeley Repertory Theater and New York Theater Workshop. Ms. Hauck, working with the director Oliver Butler, also took pains to space the photos more tightly, as they found that fewer faces made each one stand out too individually. Now, as Mr. Butler put it, "it's a bit more like wallpaper it's geometric." That's not to say there aren't individual touches for attentive viewers. In fact, the 163 total is a little misleading, as there are a handful of ringers in the mix. On one wall there's a picture of TV producer Norman Lear, who served in World War II and whose daughter Kate Lear is a co producer for the show's Broadway run. Another wall features photos of Mr. Butler dressed in the signature garrison cap, as well as of the two actors who've played an onstage Legionnaire, Danny Wolohan and Mike Iveson. One theatregoer in Berkeley even excitedly recognized his own photo on the wall. Ms. Schreck has particular affection for one face up there: that of the late James Melvin "Mel" Younkin, a World War II veteran from Wenatchee who chaired the American Legion oratorical contests at which Ms. Schreck excelled, and who later traveled with young Heidi and her family to competitions at other Legion posts in the Pacific Northwest. A version of Mr. Younkin is embodied onstage by Mr. Iveson, who plays him as a stern, judgmental figure "a flesh and blood part of the set," as Mr. Iveson put it until a monologue late in the show adds nuance to both the real life veteran and the actor who plays him. There are also invisible touches typical of Ms. Hauck's architectural approach to scenic design. (She's also currently represented by "Hadestown" on Broadway, and has worked at most of New York's major theaters.) The brick walls audiences glimpse behind the ceiling less diorama of the main set, for instance, are not the interior of the Helen Hayes but approximate reconstructions of the walls of New York Theater Workshop. Another choice that may escape notice until pointed out, as Ms. Schreck does in her scripted preamble: There's no door. "I mean, it's a trap," Ms. Hauck said, with a sly smile. Mr. Butler said he thinks of the set as "a rigid box that contains and maybe oppresses Ms. Schreck , but also gives her something to push against. It's like Houdini would say, 'These are the shackles; they're real locks.' If he wasn't wearing the shackles, then what was he escaping from?" For her part, Ms. Schreck has warmed considerably to her onstage surroundings. That's partly a result of her own efforts to make herself feel at home: In the leaves of a live Cordyline plant at stage right she's placed a sachet of White Shoulders perfume, a scent her grandmother wore. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
"Go Nero!" Nikola Tarandek, a truffle hunter, urged on his black Labrador, who scratched furiously at the moist soil of Motovun Forest in Croatia. We were in the hinterlands of Istria, a diamond shaped peninsula that juts into the Adriatic Sea, exploring one of the richest grounds for premium white truffles long overshadowed in fame but not quality by the truffle mecca of Alba in the Piedmont region of Italy. Nero had caught the scent at the roots of an oak, sending up clumps of dirt as Mr. Tarandek twisted a spade into the black earth. The commotion yielded only a tiny tuber that wasn't even worth taking back to town. Other truffles that Nero sniffed out turned up spoiled. But it was just the beginning of the season, and within weeks Mr. Tarandek, who runs a side business taking visitors on truffle hunting tours, would be bringing fist sized truffles home to market. Truffles are considered an expensive delicacy in some places, but that is not the case here. And while the Istrian truffle is premium grade, its culture is free of the snobbery, intrigue and astronomical prices found in Piedmont or in the Perigord region of France. It may seem surprising that a delicacy associated with Italy and France is found in Croatia's dense oak forests, but truffles have been hunted here for centuries. Istrian truffles have maintained a low profile largely because those from Alba enjoy such cachet. And there's another reason: Croatian truffles have for decades made their way to the Italian market and been sold as Alba truffles. Locals say that has translated into little incentive to make their product famous, since hunters earn so much supplying Italy in a shady trade made possible by Istria's proximity to Piedmont. That's been changing in the last decade. The night before my truffle hunt I was dining at Mondo Tavern in the village of Motovun, which commands spectacular views on a hilltop overlooking the truffle forest. The owner, Klaudio Ivasic, said locals are awakening to the benefits of keeping truffles at home. Until recent years, Motovun's tourist season ended in August. As truffle fame has grown, the season is extending through November. "People are coming for the truffles," Mr. Ivasic said proudly. For travelers, the attractions of an Istrian truffle tour are plentiful. Istria's rolling landscapes evoke Tuscany; its beaches are among the Mediterranean's most beautiful; cliffs are dotted with fairy tale villages and a truffle meal won't burn a hole through your wallet. At Mondo, a man started shaving a white truffle over my plate of Istrian "fuzi," short pasta. I expected him to stop after a couple of seconds, but he kept going. A heavenly aroma filled the room. The flakes drifted down until my pasta was buried in a white truffle mantle. This dish, which in Milan would easily cost 40 euros (and in New York or London don't even think about it), is priced here at a reasonable 155 Croatian kuna, or 20 euros ( 22). Mr. Ivasic, himself a truffle hunter, said the dry summer and rainy September had been ideal for white truffles, and that this season could be the best in a decade, although "truffles are a mystery." In the morning, Mr. Tarandek was less optimistic, and it was understandable. He had been seeking truffles for two hours, to no avail. "Too early in the season," he mumbled. Suddenly Nero started barking frantically by the roots of a poplar. His owner dropped to his knees, cutting at roots so his dog could dig deeper. "Come down close to the hole," Mr. Tarandek beckoned, "and SMELL!" I was then on hands and knees, sinking my face into a muddy crater just like a truffle hunting dog and a blast of truffle hit my nose. Is this the jackpot? Mr. Tarandek shook his head. "Oh no, it's a small truffle," he said, "but a good one." He continued cutting at roots to extract the puny but precious truffle and stopped. A stream of invective poured from his lips. The yellowish fleck he had found poking from the dirt was only the tip of a much larger prize. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Finally, the overlap in the Venn diagram of Arnold Schoenberg and bluegrass music is getting a bit larger, thanks to "(Gimme Some of That) Ol' Atonal Music," by the country prankster Merle Hazard. The whole thing made me smile, but it was his high pitched, Bob Wills ian "Aha" during the atonal banjo solo that made me crack up. MICHAEL COOPER Instead of watching the State of the Union address on Tuesday, I heard Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" in the crypt of a church. As part of the Crypt Sessions series at the Church of the Intercession in Harlem, the piece got a mystical and moving performance from a makeshift group: Yoonah Kim, clarinet; Orion Weiss, piano; Stefan Jackiw, violin; and Jay Campbell, cello. They played with the synchronicity of a seasoned ensemble, nailing exposed and dangerous passages like the octave runs in the "Interlude" and "Tangle of Rainbows." In the extreme intimacy of the crypt, you could hear the click clack of the clarinet's keys, and the airy sounds of bows on strings. Up close, the quartet seemed to deal only in disorienting extremes, like the alternating alarms and chirps, both chilling and playful, in "Abyss of the Birds," a lengthy solo played with inexhaustible virtuosity by Ms. Kim. And proximity lifted "Praise to the Eternity of Jesus," a duet for cello and piano (heard here in a luxury casting album from 2017), to the sublime. JOSHUA BARONE Yuja Wang's regular partnership with the violinist Leonidas Kavakos isn't the place to hear the sustained stretches of imaginative power that characterize her solo piano concerts. On their recording of the Brahms violin sonatas and at their gripping recital at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday it's possible to sense Ms. Wang pulling back on the throttle. Which isn't a bad thing; it can be a revelation to hear this bold pianist in a collaborative setting. That quality of reserve can also make Ms. Wang's occasional lurch into more demonstrative playing all the more shocking. On Wednesday, her florid energy found a moment for expression during Brahms's Violin Sonata No. 2. During the middle movement's "Vivace di piu" section, the rhythmic charge Ms. Wang put into select chords made it feel as though she could vault into Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" transcription at any second. She didn't, of course and Mr. Kavakos's steely sense of purpose kept the performance from losing its overall form. But it was a reminder of how thoroughly Ms. Wang can transform a familiar work. SETH COLTER WALLS Recently, over five days in New York, three pianists at very different stages of their careers gave remarkable recitals. Leon Fleisher celebrated his 90th birthday with musician friends at Zankel Hall. Jeremy Denk, 48 and in his prime, concluded a varied program (literally: he offered theme and variation pieces by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and John Adams) at Carnegie Hall with a magnificent account of Schumann's Fantasy in C. And Behzod Abduraimov, 28, appeared at the 92nd Street Y. This fast rising Uzbek pianist, who combines prodigious technique with a feeling for color and youthful temperament, gave a stunning account of Liszt's formidable Sonata in B minor. But his overeagerness came through in 10 Pieces from Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet." There were captivating moments but also passages of slam bang steeliness. Perhaps he had trouble adjusting to the Y's intimacy; he has said that he prefers big spaces. Mr. Abduraimov can certainly play with wondrous fleetness, clarity and imagination, as he did in his encore, Liszt's "La Campanella." Just listen to him in this excerpt from a 2015 performance in Munich. ANTHONY TOMMASINI | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
A relentless heat wave across much of Europe is making travel difficult and uncomfortable for hotel owners and their guests. "There's been a high pressure dome reaching from Spain throughout Eastern Europe," said Jonathan Erdman, a senior digital meteorologist for the Weather Channel. "It's been persistent with very little cloud cover and has been camped out over most of the summer in Spain, Italy, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia and Romania." The intensely hot weather, which began in Italy and the Balkans in the spring, has brought European temperatures to highs in the low 100s, dropping into the 80s only in the evening, he said. The latest "State of the Climate" global report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, published in July, said that January to June was the hottest such period on record in parts of Western Europe, including Spain, Portugal, far southern France and Sicily. "According to Spain's meteorological agency, AEMET, a record high in the country was set on July 13 47.3 degrees Celsius 117.1 Fahrenheit in Montoro," Mr. Erdman said. "The heat has gone on day after day after day in cities with lots of buildings and concrete and not many parks," said Mr. Erdman, who recently experienced it firsthand on a multicity European tour. "There's no break at night. You open a window hoping for a cool breeze, but you're standing in front of a hair dryer." Nat Hake, from Denver, was recently in Berlin "in a very nice four star hotel" but found the heat "fairly unbearable inside the rooms, which of course don't have AC." "I knew that going in," he said. "But when I called to ask for a fan, the person at the front desk said, 'Yes, I know fans are standard in American hotels, but that's just not how it works here in Europe.'" Mr. Hake did not get a fan. "I'm in my final leg of a six week backpacking trip through the Balkans and Italy, 12 cities in eight countries. The heat is brutal!" Stephanie Craig, who lives in Philadelphia, said in an email. "When I booked accommodations, I didn't consider air conditioning," she said, "but I've been pleasantly surprised. Every hotel I've stayed at has had air conditioning. Of the 12 hotels and hostels I've stayed in during the heat wave, nine had air conditioning and two had enough fans for every room. Only one place did not have either available. "The heat wave practically ruined my time in Venice, a city where it's either hard or expensive to escape the heat," she added. "I've been staying cool by doing more of my sightseeing in the early morning or evening, booking individualized walking tours where we can change plans at the last minute if we need to, and getting taxis when it's too hot to walk. Plus, tons of gelato." "American travelers are accustomed to air conditioning in the warmer months," said Chelsea Hudson, from Morristown, N.J. "I recently traveled to Athens, Greece, and I expected the weather to be warm. On our first couple of days there, the temperature reached 107 degrees. Even the Acropolis was closed due to the heat wave." Her hostel had air conditioning units in its windows, "but because it was so hot and all guests were running their units, we experienced power shortages. We got very lucky because a group of us were able to stay in the basement where it was extremely cool. With one fan, we were perfectly fine." Hotel owners say they too are coping as best they can. Jaime Armero owns a nine room hotel in Requijada, Spain, La Tejera de Fausto, built in a former tile factory that isn't air conditioned. He relies instead on the building's two foot thick stone walls to insulate rooms from grueling temperatures. "It's always hot in Spain," he said. "Our location is 3,000 feet up, so it gets really hot during the day, but the evenings are cool." At his home in Madrid, though, Mr. Armero relies on air conditioning. "In Madrid it was nearly 104 degrees. You couldn't survive it without air conditioning." Ingrid Koeck, one of three owners of Torel Palace, a 28 room hotel in Lisbon, has been cooling down guests' rooms before they arrive. "We have air conditioning in all rooms and common areas, but we have two old buildings from the turn of the 19th century, so we have to take specific precautions," she said. "We also provide extra fans, close the shutters, offer plenty of cool water and have an outdoor pool." She counsels her guests, already visiting a hilly city that requires much walking, to adjust by slowing down and touring in the cooler mornings or evenings. "It's already a challenge," she said, "and in this heat they can't manage. Take it easy! Sit down! It should be quality time. You don't want to need a holiday from your holiday." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Out of Work, Out of Benefits, and Running Out of Options BOSTON Abe Gorelick has decades of marketing experience, an extensive contact list, an Ivy League undergraduate degree, a master's in business from the University of Chicago, ideas about how to reach consumers young and old, experience working with businesses from start ups to huge financial firms and an upbeat, effervescent way about him. What he does not have and has not had for the last year is a full time job. Five years since the recession ended, it is a story still shared by millions. Mr. Gorelick, 57, lost his position at a large marketing firm last March. As he searched, taking on freelance and consulting work, his family's finances slowly frayed. He is now working three jobs, driving a cab and picking up shifts at Lord Taylor and Whole Foods. "I'm not in my basement, unshaven, unshowered, drinking a bottle of Scotch a day," Mr. Gorelick said. "I'm out there working these jobs, meeting people and trying to make something happen. But it is exhausting. It is stressful. It is difficult." For people experiencing such long spells without appropriate work, it is a crisis. Often, it is also a conundrum: What should a worker who finds himself out of a job for six months or more do? "There is this very pressing issue," said Ofer Sharone, a sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "and there is this great gap in knowledge about what to do about it, both for policy makers and these individuals." Should long term jobless workers seek out career counseling? Should they accept far lower salaries? Should politicians revamp training programs? To those questions, and to many others, there are too few answers. In Washington, the plight of the long term jobless has largely faded from the policy conversation. At the moment, the federal government offers virtually no help to the 3.8 million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months. The maximum duration of unemployment insurance payments fell from as long as 73 weeks to 26 weeks in most states in January. A jobless aid bill is expected to win final approval from the Democrat controlled Senate early next week, but it is not expected to pass the Republican controlled House as currently constructed. Yet there is increasing evidence that a stronger recovery alone might not significantly aid the country's long term jobless. Even before the latest monthly job figures are released on Friday, short term unemployment has fallen to its prerecession level, but long term unemployment remains more than twice as high as it was in 2007. New research by Alan B. Krueger, the former chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, and his co authors found that only one in 10 workers who had been unemployed over an extended period of time in a given month between 2008 and 2012 had returned to full time work a year later. Elizabeth Holmes Hones Her Defense in Day 2 of Testimony Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. In part, that might be because the long term jobless become discouraged and reduce the intensity of their job searches. But it also appears that employers discriminate against the already out of work. Rand Ghayad, a researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, performed a study showing that businesses were more likely to call back a working candidate with no relevant experience than a long term jobless candidate with relevant experience. This fall, Mr. Sharone and some colleagues founded the Institute of Career Transitions to help understand what workers and policy makers should do. In its inaugural study, the institute is using long term unemployed workers, including Mr. Gorelick, as guinea pigs, comparing the outcomes for workers assigned career coaches to the outcomes of those not offered that form of help. "The idea is that in time, we should be able to say whether that intervention is effective, and we will have a lot of qualitative data about the lives of these workers as well," Mr. Sharone said. Intensive career counseling might help the long term unemployed, Mr. Sharone and his colleagues figured. Coaches could help the long term jobless optimize their resumes, refrain from flagging in their job searches, make new connections and beat common human resources screening techniques. And if career counseling does not reduce the jobless rate, that would be valuable to know too. On a frigid winter evening, 18 of the participating career counselors all of whom are working free met in Mr. Sharone's basement to snack on cheese and crackers and share tips about how to best help the long term jobless. "He really likes the accountability of coming to me on a regular basis," Nancy Dube, a human resources consultant, said of one of her clients. "He can't wait to come back! And I think it's helped motivate him in other elements of his job search." The coaches reported that their clients generally had little luck in landing new jobs just a half dozen had managed to do so at that early point. But the coaches felt that they had helped to keep their clients' spirits up and their job searches positive, wide ranging and intense. Mr. Gorelick was paired with the career coach Edward Lawrence, whom he has met with about 10 times to talk through his resume, outlook and job search over coffee at Panera Bread or in the local library. So far, Mr. Gorelick has not landed a full time position. But he says the sessions have helped him remain an attractive candidate, with phone and in person interviews taking place. "He knew nothing about me and had no preconceived notions," Mr. Gorelick said. "He could look at my work and give me constructive comments in a very objective manner. I think that in and of itself is extremely valuable." Mr. Gorelick, who was his family's primary breadwinner, has struggled to support his wife and children and cover their mortgage. He has fallen into credit card debt, wiped out his retirement accounts and even contemplated selling his house. "I decided to set my ego aside," he said. "Since my unemployment benefits have run out, I'm just trying to make a little money with these part time jobs. But, for perspective, if I combined my income from all of them, that would still be half of what my weekly unemployment benefits were." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Nineteenth century ballet, like much of 19th century European art, loved the Orient. Ballets set in Turkish harems or Indian temples, with costumes and plots that seemed exotic, were highly popular. Yet, as the dance historian Doug Fullington pointed out in an entertaining and enlightening program at the Guggenheim Museum on Sunday, the actual dancing in these productions was almost all classical ballet. Mr. Fullington is on the staff of Pacific Northwest Ballet, and eight dancers from that company joined him to perform his research. For the program, titled "Petipa Exotique," Mr. Fullington used Russian choreographic notation of the late 19th and early 20th century to reconstruct dances from three Orientalist ballets by the great French ballet master Marius Petipa. Two of those ballets "Le Corsaire" and "La Bayadere" are still performed regularly, though much of the choreography has changed. "Le Roi Candaule" was last performed in its entirety in 1923. As is usual for the Guggenheim's Works Process series, there were no sets. The costumes were basic ballet outfits. The music was played, as it would have been in Petipa's rehearsals, by two violinists (Michael Jinsoo Lim and Brittany Boulding). The historical arrangements, known as "repetiteurs," were remarkable for how they conveyed both melody and rhythmic drive. Who needs a piano? The stripped down format emphasized the classicism. Dancing a pas de trois for harem girls from "Le Corsaire," the ladies in tutus weren't exactly scandalous. Instead of sex, they displayed Petipa's balances: the poses on point and also the symmetries of choreographic grammar. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
LOS ANGELES In Hollywood, director jobs are no longer automatically filled by white men. Television writers' rooms have made diversity and inclusion top priorities. Human resources departments at major media corporations are more responsive when complaints are filed. Intimacy coordinators, who introduce physical consent considerations into the artistic process, are now normal on productions featuring sexual content. It has been nearly two and a half years since the sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein burst into public view, and much is different in Hollywood. But the entertainment industry has been doing things a certain way for decades, and not every aspect of it has been quick to change. Even as Mr. Weinstein was found guilty on Monday of two felony sex crimes, Hollywood largely remains a man's world. Take the Oscars, moviedom's ultimate show of power and prestige. For the ninth time in 10 years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts Sciences did not nominate a woman for best director in 2020. Only one of the 20 acting nominations went to a person of color. And with the exception of "Parasite" and "Little Women," the majority of the films honored by the Academy "The Irishman," "Ford v Ferrari," "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" and "Joker" were portraits of white men directed by prominent white auteurs. "I hear people saying a lot of things they hadn't said before: that inclusion matters, that they understand the need for representation, that they believe in diverse people and perspectives being centered," the writer and director Ava DuVernay said. "But saying it and doing it aren't parallel tracks." One group of high powered women in town maintains a running list of the white men who keep rising up the executive ladder while the women stay at least one step below. Jennifer Salke, for instance, became the head of Amazon Studios in 2018 after her predecessor, Roy Price, was accused of sexual harassment. Last month, the former Sony executive Mike Hopkins was brought in to oversee Amazon's video entertainment business. Ms. Salke reports to him and he reports to Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder. It is unlikely that accused harassers like Brett Ratner, James Toback, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer will return to the public eye anytime soon. (Those men, and Mr. Weinstein, have denied any allegations of nonconsensual sex.) But many in town remain frustrated by those who were accused of improprieties or who worked closely with those who were and have been allowed to return to work. Case in point: John Lasseter, who was removed from his position as the creative chief of Pixar after acknowledging misbehavior in 2018, landed a top job at Skydance Animation last year. The former Weinstein Company partners David Glasser and Bob Weinstein, Harvey's brother, have each formed new production companies. Mr. Glasser raised some 300 million in financing from partners such as Ron Burkle, and has become a fixture on the festival circuit. "No matter how much things are shifting in the right direction, when you get to the top of these media companies, you will usually find a white dude," said Nina Jacobson, a veteran producer and the former president of Disney's Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group. "The power behind the power is still white and male, and in terms of truly passing the torch in corporate life, the torch has not yet been passed." On the whole, Hollywood has become a more inclusive place. It has been helped by the rise of streaming services, which have a seemingly insatiable need for more content that appeals to new and diverse audiences. Women and people of color have been finding their voices through organizations like Time's Up and ReFrame, which have transformed the issues of gender and racial equality from tired buzzwords into vital, concrete paths to addressing the imbalanced power structures that some blame for allowing abusers like Mr. Weinstein to flourish. "I think that the very small group of people that are waiting for things to even out and go back to the status quo need to realize that's never going to happen," said Nina Shaw, an entertainment lawyer and a co founder of Time's Up. "But we also need to figure out a way forward." Last summer, as the showrunner Melissa Rosenberg began developing a pilot for HBO Max based on the prequel to the 1998 film "Practical Magic," she noticed stark changes in corporate attitudes. "There were very specific intentions from the studio and the network to have diverse voices in the room," said Ms. Rosenberg, who created the Netflix show "Jessica Jones" and was an executive producer for "Dexter." She added that she had been told, "You will not have a room without people of color and diversity of gender and sexual orientation." 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. "That was a big change," Ms. Rosenberg said. "When I was coming up it would be sufficient to have one woman in the room to represent the female voice and she was often the lowest paid writer, too." Today's issue in television is one of supply. Rarely are episodic series staffed with an all male director slate, unless the show's creator opts to direct each episode. More frequently, women are landing directing gigs. With so many shows being produced, there aren't enough women to fill the demand. "The problem now is a pipeline problem," Ms. Shaw said. Mark Gill, who was president of Miramax Los Angeles when Harvey Weinstein ran the company, was the only man to speak out in the New York Times article in 2017 that first chronicled Mr. Weinstein's abuse. He said then that the company "was a mess" but that Mr. Weinstein's treatment of women "was the biggest mess of all," a quote that drew the ire of his male colleagues when it was published. "I got a ton of blowback," Mr. Gill said in a recent interview. "It was sort of a violation of the code. Several people actually said to me, 'You've just blown your career.'" Mr. Gill has since started a production company with 400 million in financing and a staff that is divided equally between genders. "Of course, it turned out to be the exact opposite," he said of the warnings he received. "It turned out to be a recruiting advantage." Hollywood has marked its intention to adapt with the formation of support organizations. These include Time's Up, the celebrity fueled group that in addition to condemning sexual harassment has formed a legal defense fund to help connect women of various industries to lawyers, and ReFrame, an organization run by Women in Film and the Sundance Institute with the goal of achieving gender parity in the entertainment industry. Women in Film also started an independent help line for anyone who has been harassed or abused to call to be connected with pro bono lawyers or therapists. "Women have less trepidation about helping each other, networking with each other, being vulnerable with each other," said the producer Amy Baer, the board president of Women in Film. "I think this is a direct result of MeToo and women realizing that there's strength in numbers and in having each other's backs, much the way the boys' network has worked for decades." The SAG AFTRA actors' union has turned the job of intimacy coordinator, a profession that began on theater stages, into a cottage industry inside Hollywood. And it has developed a set of guidelines and protocols for how the coordinators are integrated into sets. "It's been an interesting process," said the actress Gabrielle Carteris, who is president of the union. She worked closely with actors, directors, writers and the coordinators over the past two years to determine the protocol that was released in January. "When you think about the Harvey period from a few years ago, people felt like they had no control," Ms. Carteris said. "There was no structure. Now people are saying: 'I can do this work. This is amazing.' I think this moment is a step towards cultural change." Still, systemic transformation is slow. According to a 2019 study from the University of Southern California's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, only 17 percent of executive positions in major media companies were held by women, with only four of the women coming from underrepresented groups. Producing stats are equally dismal, with just 18 percent of producers on films between 2016 and 2018 being women. (Only 11 percent of all producers came from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.) While "Captain Marvel," "Harley Quinn," "Wonder Woman" and other female centered blockbusters have come to the screen with female directors at the helm, most theatrical blockbusters based on well worn intellectual property the bread and butter of today's movie business still belong to the men. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Ms. Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. Mr. Posner is a professor of law at the University of Chicago. This week, more than 2,000 former officials of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. called on Attorney General William Barr to resign for dropping the prosecution of Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. when he was President Trump's national security adviser. "Subsequent events strongly suggest political interference in Flynn's prosecution," the former officials said in an open letter published online. They condemned Mr. Barr for having "once again assaulted the rule of law," in light of his earlier decision to overrule career prosecutors and seek a lighter sentence than what they had recommended for another Trump associate, Roger Stone. It's easy to grow numb to the abuses of the Trump era. But Mr. Barr's intervention in the Flynn and Stone cases is a deviation even from the standards at the outset of Mr. Trump's presidency. The corrosion at the Justice Department from the beginning to the homestretch of Mr. Trump's first term illustrates a long term problem of maintaining the independence of a department with unrivaled powers of investigation and prosecution. More troubling, as recent history has shown, there are no easy ways to rein in an attorney general whose loyalty to a president stands ahead of his fidelity to the rule of law. Jeff Sessions, Mr. Trump's first attorney general, followed the advice of career professionals at the Justice Department by recusing himself from the F.B.I.'s investigation of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia in 2016. He did so because of his own meetings with Russia's ambassador while he was advising the campaign. Mr. Sessions's recusal opened the door for his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, to appoint the special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Russian campaign interference after Mr. Trump fired James Comey, the F.B.I. director. By doing so, Mr. Rosenstein allowed a federal investigation into the campaign of a sitting president to proceed. While Mr. Trump repeatedly inveighed against the Mueller investigation, its work continued, upholding a crucial norm of Justice Department independence, however uneasily. Then Mr. Barr became attorney general. Establishment figures in Washington hoped he would check Mr. Trump, given his deep experience in the Justice Department, including two years as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush. Instead, Mr. Barr muffled the impact of the special counsel's final report on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign by suggesting that it absolved Mr. Trump when it did not. A federal judge later called Mr. Barr's comments "misleading" and said "his lack of candor" about the report called into question his "credibility." Mr. Barr also opened a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, despite the conclusion of his department's inspector general that the F.B.I. had adequate reason to proceed. His department declined to investigate the whistle blower complaint about the president's phone call last July with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. That decision led dozens of government inspectors general to warn that the Justice Department "could seriously undermine the critical role whistle blowers play." Then came Mr. Barr's interference in the long running Stone and Flynn prosecutions, both times fulfilling Mr. Trump's stated desires and serving his political interests. The attorney general, whom the president hires and can fire, is supposed to advise the president and advance his or her policies. But he is also obligated to enforce the law impartially and not to use it to shield the president's allies or punish his enemies. After its inception in 1870, the Justice Department cycled between periods of cronyism and professionalism. The problem of cronyism was on full display in Watergate. President Richard Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, was jailed for his role in the scandal. Hoping to clean up the department, President Gerald Ford appointed Edward Levi, the president of the University of Chicago, who was widely regarded for his integrity. Mr. Levi boosted morale and professionalism at the Justice Department and reined in the F.B.I., whose abuses had badly tarnished the reputation of that agency. But there was no guarantee that attorneys general who followed Mr. Levi would uphold his standards. So in 1978, Congress passed a law that created an independent counsel, whom the attorney general could authorize to investigate top executive branch officials for wrongdoing. Because the counsel was chosen by a three judge panel and could be removed only for cause, the counsel operated beyond the influence of the president and the attorney general. The law addressed the competing loyalties inherent in the job of attorney general by walling him or her off from certain investigations. But Congress let the law expire in 1999 as both parties tired of independent counsels they saw as abusing their powers. Without this external watchdog, the stage was set again for conflict between politics and the rule of law. John Ashcroft, George W. Bush's first attorney general, resisted some of the Bush administration's claims to broad executive power in the wake of Sept. 11. But Mr. Ashcroft's successor, Alberto Gonzales, was a longtime Bush crony who resigned after repeated battles with Congress raised questions about whether his responsibilities to the law took a back seat to his loyalty to Mr. Bush. President Barack Obama appointed an ally with his own professional reputation, Eric Holder, as his first attorney general, and a career prosecutor, Loretta Lynch, as his second. Ms. Lynch found herself mired in controversy for talking to former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac while his wife was under investigation for mishandling classified information. Ms. Lynch's breach seems minor now but led her to defer the decision whether to prosecute Hillary Clinton to the F.B.I. and her aides. The norm of independence held. Now we have Mr. Barr. The next president could reassert that standard by appointing someone in the mold of Edward Levi. But history suggests that too often presidents prefer an attorney general whom they can control. Will Congress be able to step in? Not fully, it seems. Democrats in the House investigated Mr. Trump's dealings with Ukraine when Mr. Barr's Justice Department declined to do so, but they didn't have a clear path for compelling witnesses to testify, as a prosecutor would. And if the attorney general is willing to drop charges against an executive branch official like Mr. Flynn, who lied to the F.B.I., then what's to stop him from refusing to prosecute officials who lie to Congress? This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases about whether Congress can subpoena the president's tax returns. The back and forth hinted that the court could erect new barriers for Congress when it seeks to keep the executive in check. This suggests that Congress erred by allowing the independent counsel statute to expire. The potential that political considerations could warp decisions by the president and attorney general require this extra check on the executive branch. The best way to stop the downward spiral of the Justice Department is to protect it from its own boss. Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and a fellow for creative writing and law at Yale Law School. Eric Posner is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and the author of the forthcoming "The Demagogues' Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy From the Founders to Trump." 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 |
Jessica Heather Liebeskind and Edward Shaoul were married Aug. 18 by Rabbi Ron Li Paz at the Beverly Hills Hotel in California. Mrs. Shaoul, 42, is a makeup artist and the founder and chief executive of Vintage by Jessica Liebeskind, a cosmetics company in New York. She has also been a beauty correspondent for iMag, a Fox News online magazine. She graduated from Syracuse University. She is a daughter of Joyce Canvasser Liebeskind and Dr. Howard F. Liebeskind of Calabasas, Calif. The bride's father, a podiatrist specializing in sports medicine, has a practice in Los Angeles, which is managed by the bride's mother. He is also the team podiatrist for the United States men's and women's soccer teams, the Los Angeles Galaxy and the Los Angeles Football Club. Mr. Shaoul, 47, is an associate focusing on corporate law at Davis, Graham Stubbs, a Denver law firm. He also sits on the board of JEWISHcolorado, a charity that helps support organizations in the Jewish community. He graduated summa cum laude from Tufts and received both an M.B.A. and a law degree from the University of Denver. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
That is not to say these characters are wrong. "The World Doesn't Require You" reminds us that having to fight racism has a strange way of distorting everything one touches. Scott first explored such sentiments in his 2016 debut collection, "Insurrections," which established Cross River as a predominantly black community founded in 1807 following the only successful slave revolt in the nation's history. In the closing story, "Three Insurrections," a fatherless son keeps the rebellious fantasy of Cross River alive for a new generation. Scott has said that "in my fiction I'm attempting to write about blackness in the varied and multitudinous ways that I've experienced it." But simply sidelining white racist characters, as both of his collections do, doesn't erase the lingering effects of slavery. In the new book, two jarring stories, "The Electric Joy of Service" and "Mercury in Retrograde," feature futuristic robot slaves "designed ... to look like the grossest blackface caricature." Their very presence in this society reaffirms the failure of Cross River, a place strictly divided along class lines, to live up to its black utopian founding. The book closes with a novella, "Special Topics in Loneliness Studies," told from the point of view of Dr. Simeon Reece, a disenchanted adjunct professor who shirks his duties at two other colleges to masquerade as a member of Freedman's University's English faculty, while hiding out from campus security in the basement of the communications building. Reece targets Freedman's for its bourgeois politics, and the tenured Dr. Reginald Chambers for his internet porn habit and his uncritical teaching of a sexist poet. Scott cleverly dismantles the conventions of the novella itself by incorporating into the narrative email exchanges, syllabuses, term papers, dream sequences, manifestoes, PowerPoint presentations and eerie photographs of black male plastic dolls. It is a dizzying collage of tones and styles that Scott pulls together with mastery and confidence. Chambers's sudden resolution with his wife, following a female student's forceful repudiation of his misogyny (and that of the poet he teaches), is one of the book's few stumbles. Unlike the female protagonists in "Insurrections," the women in this book are primarily sirens, seducing the men of Cross River either to self discovery or to their drowning deaths. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
I was in Brooklyn on a Zoom meeting in mid March, when I saw my mom's name come up on my cellphone. "Your dad's not feeling well," she said. I rushed to our home in the East Village to meet my parents. For the second time in a week, my dad, Jose, was admitted to the hospital. The following day we were told that he had tested positive for Covid 19. My mother, Rosa, was worried that we'd get sick too. So she ripped sheets off his bed, and washed them along with the clothes he had worn. About two weeks after Dad was admitted, his doctor called and told us that he might not make it past the weekend. I felt the color drain from my face. My mom's knees buckled, and I held her as she sobbed inconsolably. All we could do was wait. I felt so hopeless. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
It was August, and Gina Rinehart was preparing for another school year as a special education teacher in Hemet, Calif., when she got the call: Her father, Floyd Hall, was facing surgery to remove a tumor in his lung. She flew to rural Lake Cushman, Wash., to be with her parents, expecting to spend two weeks helping her dad recover. Her father, known as Bub and an active retiree at 68, spent his days woodworking, volunteering at the local food bank and helping his own 95 year old mother. But the report from the surgical team was grim: Stage 4 lung cancer, a terminal diagnosis. "Have you ever heard news and felt like you wanted to throw up?" said Ms. Rinehart, who recalls breaking into a cold sweat. "I was seriously shocked." Her son and daughter had only recently left home for school and work. "I thought we'd have a break, my husband and me," she said. "With the kids gone and a little extra money, I thought we could go to Europe. He's never been." Instead, since that discovery in 2013, Ms. Rinehart and a younger brother, Patryk Hall, who also lives in Southern California, have been trading off monthslong stints at their parents' home. With her father declining rapidly now, Ms. Rinehart has decided to stay for the duration. Elder care was a responsibility Ms. Rinehart expected to shoulder, eventually. But she didn't foresee having to leave her home for extended periods and to give up her job when she was just 46. Researchers call this an "off time event," a normal experience that comes at a point when it's not normal. Most family members caring for elders are over 55, the National Academy of Sciences reported last year, and the older people most likely to need "intensive support" from family are in their 80s or older. Anyone can be suddenly pressed into family caregiving, of course: Ask those whose spouses have been injured in accidents or war zones, or parents of children with disabilities. But most of us don't anticipate caring for our parents, or other older relatives, in our 30s or 40s. Yet a surprising proportion of those caring for older adults are younger. The National Academy of Sciences noted that of people providing care for family members over age 65 (excluding nursing home residents), nearly 15 percent were ages 20 to 44. Almost 24 percent were 45 to 54. Beyond the challenges that caregiving brings at any age, these people face particular disruptions. Among the youngest group, "what particularly concerns them is the negative impact on their pursuit of education," said Feylyn Lewis, a doctoral candidate at the University of Birmingham in England, whose dissertation looks at 18 to 25 year old caregivers. Caregivers closer to midlife contend with pressures at work and sometimes have to reduce their hours, refuse promotions or retire early. Ms. Rinehart took a personal leave from her school, but when her absence exceeded the maximum number of months allowed, she resigned. "I loved my job," she said wistfully. "I miss the kids." In turn, job loss increases current and future financial strains. Younger caregivers may also have children at home. "They feel pulled," said Carol Whitlatch, assistant director for research and education at the Benjamin Rose Institute in Cleveland. "They need to be there for their kids who are still dependent, and they have parents who are growing more dependent." Colleen Kavanaugh calls herself "the classic stereotype" of a caregiver, "the firstborn daughter who lives nearby and puts everything on hold." In 2004, when she moved back into her parents' home in Martinsville, N.J., she was newly divorced, with a 5 year old son. Then 33, she planned to regroup, find another job and, within a few months, move out and resume her independent life. But her mother learned she had breast cancer; after multiple surgeries and increasing disability, she died in early 2009. Then Ms. Kavanaugh's father, who had been experiencing memory loss, was found to have Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. When caring for him at home became too difficult, Ms. Kavanaugh moved him into assisted living and finally to a nursing home; he died in 2013. Along the way, while helping her son navigate school, Ms. Kavanaugh had to leave her job managing a marketing and design firm. "I went seven years with no income, no 401(k), the loss of Social Security" contributions, she said. "It was a bitter pill." Perhaps the most jarring aspect of off time caregiving, though, is the sense of becoming entirely out of sync with one's peers. Friends fall away after the umpteenth time a caregiver says no to a concert or cancels a dinner because of an emergency, or because of simple exhaustion. Caregivers report biting their tongues when agemates grouse about seemingly trivial problems, from disappointing vacations to home decor dilemmas. She looked into caregiver support groups, but felt she had little in common with their much older members. "It's different when you've had your career, your chance to travel," Ms. Carthy said. "I wouldn't be so angry if I were retired and I'd already had the chance to live my life." Ms. Kavanaugh found that the people she grew close to, as her father moved into a dementia unit, were other women with parents there. "All my friends were in their 50s to 80s," she said. "You don't have contemporaries to confide in." At least she had confidantes. "One way to discharge anger and reduce stress is to be able to talk about it," Dr. Cohen said. She worries about younger caregivers' physical and mental health if they feel unsupported and too overwhelmed to take care of themselves. Supportive programs specifically for younger people providing elder care struck her as a good idea, possibly using social media. The people who most understand what Ms. Rinehart is going through aren't old friends, she said; they're participants in a weekly Twitter chat ( LCSM Chat). Not one of these caregivers regrets undertaking the role. As Joseph Gaugler, a gerontologist at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, points out, many caregivers take satisfaction in reciprocating their parents' sacrifices and pride in doing a good job. Patryk Hall, 49, may always remember the nights he and his father, both science fiction lovers prone to insomnia, sat up watching "Star Trek" and "Firefly" DVDs, fortified with blackberry cheesecake ice cream. But off time caregiving can also change your perspective for good. Though Bub Hall has long outlived his prognosis, he is faltering. Hospice care is probably not far off, his daughter said. After his death, Ms. Rinehart intends to bring her mother home to live with her and her husband in Southern California, where she'll find another teaching job. At least, "that's the plan," she said. "But I've learned that you can't expect things to go the way you think." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
"Our regular customers are in Palm Springs," he added. "Or six feet under." Mr. Galluccio did not set out to become a nightclub owner. Born and raised in Hawthorne, N.J., he dropped out of Hawthorne High School at 16 to pursue playing the clarinet, sax, flute and piano. That same year, he got sidelined into retail, and in 1960 he opened Paul Scott Ltd., a boutique in New Rochelle, N.Y., which forced him to turn down a job with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. He was married to a woman at the time, but he divorced her in 1972, after 12 years of marriage. (He considers his daughter, Pamela Galluccio Riccio, 51, a real estate agent who lives in Eastchester, N.Y., his best friend.) After the split, he went out clubbing a lot in Manhattan, at places like Adam's Apple, a disco and restaurant on East 61st Street. "Guys and girls were picking me up," he said. "Sometimes I liked the guy, sometimes the girl. But I preferred men. They don't want to own you. Women right away say, 'I want to get married.'" In 1988, while he was at a gay piano bar in the East 50s (he thinks it was called Regent East), he met and fell in love with a distinguished young man in the hotel business, with whom he had a 17 year relationship. (Mr. Galluccio would not name him, because he is not openly gay.) The two would go clubbing together. One night, Mr. Galluccio tried to go back to that bar himself and was ignored by the doorman. Infuriated, he decided to open a piano bar of his own. In 1989, he spotted an apartment building on East 58th Street that was for rent, and he and a business partner, Bob DeBenedictis, signed a lease and opened the Townhouse. "There were young guys who were attracted to older men and now knew where to find them," Mr. Galluccio said. "Some were hustlers. We'd try to curtail that. We found out what was going on and said, 'You're not welcome here.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
What is the point of nesting tables? One way to think of them is as side tables with superpowers. "They're meant to travel, expand and contract, and play at different games around the house," said the New York based interior designer Celerie Kemble. "They're a self storing little miracle of multipurpose ness." Nested inside each other beside a sofa or chair, they provide a single, unobtrusive surface. But when you need more space to hold, say, a drink, a plate and a book at the same time, "they're able to accordion out," said Ms. Kemble, who has designed nesting tables of her own for Henredon. But they really come into their own when company drops by. Then, nesting tables can be split up and moved around the room. "It's like a 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' experience," Ms. Kemble said. "Sometimes, the littlest one is just right when you pull it out next to a chair." None What is the best use for nesting tables? Since they are frequently repositioned, stick to portable items, like books or cups: "You're probably not putting picture frames or lamps on top," Ms. Kemble said. None Should they be simple or decorative? "Because of their small scale, they can often be more decorative, or a luxe material," Ms. Kemble said. None How sturdy are they? Sturdy enough, unless you have children or clumsy guests, she said, as "nesting tables can be a little more prone to tumbling" than stationary tables. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
The New York Times has made a free e book with answers your coronavirus questions. It features more than two dozen chapters on how you can reduce your risk, what you can do to protect others, what scientists have learned, what to do if you're worried about the stock market and more. You can download it on Apple Books and elsewhere. Below is an excerpt. With the spread of the coronavirus comes another ailment: anxiety about every single symptom. Is your nose feeling itchy because you're trying not to touch your face, because you picked up the flu or is it, just maybe, the coronavirus? With the start of spring, allergies may be triggering symptoms that can make it difficult to determine what your body is trying to fight off. Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, helps explain the subtle differences between signs of allergies or infection with the flu or the coronavirus. What are your symptoms? First, consider the time of year. Allergies and influenza tend to be seasonal. If you have a runny nose in the spring and this happens every year, allergies are the likeliest culprit. If it's winter and flu is raging in your community, then that's the probable explanation. The flu is far more widespread than the coronavirus. But flulike symptoms in warming weather in a place with documented coronavirus transmission? Maybe it's not the flu. Influenza dies back in the summer, but scientists have yet to see evidence that the coronavirus will go away as temperatures rise. Coronavirus infections have been spreading in equatorial climates like Singapore's and in the Southern Hemisphere, now in the middle of summer. Consider, too, where the symptoms first started appearing. "It's usually your nose and eyes where you develop symptoms of seasonal allergies," Dr. Adalja said. The seasonal flu, on the other hand, is more likely to affect your whole body, as is the case for many other respiratory viruses including the coronavirus. So if you experience fevers, headaches or muscle aches, consider flu or coronavirus. "There's a feeling of overall malaise that is associated with viral infections," Dr. Adalja said. Except for seasonality, it can be hard to tell the two apart. "Unfortunately, there's no reliable way to distinguish between early symptoms of the flu and coronavirus," Dr. Adalja said. "The only way to distinguish the two clinically is with a diagnostic test." According to reports from nearly 56,000 laboratory confirmed cases in China, people infected with the coronavirus develop symptoms like a dry cough, shortness of breath and a sore throat, in addition to fever and aches. Around 5 percent of patients may also experience nausea or vomiting, while roughly 4 percent develop diarrhea. Researchers are not sure why some people develop gastrointestinal symptoms with coronavirus infections. "But that's not something you usually see with influenza in adults," Dr. Adalja said. Severe coronavirus infections can result in lung lesions and pneumonia. But the vast majority of those infected get only mild cases that often resemble the flu. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. Your personal history can give doctors clues to what's going on. If you traveled to an area with large clusters of coronavirus cases, or were in contact with someone who later tested positive for the virus, you may have caught it, too. Doctors and health care workers have to work with these possibilities because tests are still available only in limited quantities in the United States, Dr. Adalja said. How bad is it? Pay close attention to whether your symptoms worsen over time. Discomfort due to allergy remains consistent until you treat it or the allergen goes away. Symptoms of the flu tend to resolve in about a week. The new coronavirus, on the other hand, seems to cause more severe symptoms than the average seasonal flu and seems to have a higher fatality rate, although the numbers are a bit uncertain. If you are elderly or have other health conditions, such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes or immunodeficiency, you are more vulnerable to viral infections and are more likely to develop severe disease if infected with the coronavirus. Early estimates from China show that the average death rate among coronavirus patients is around 2 percent, but that figure rises to 8 percent in people 70 years or older, and about 15 percent in people 80 years or older. But nobody is certain how many cases are very mild or asymptomatic. The general advice for people who get sick with the flu or coronavirus is very similar: Rest and drink plenty of fluids. Mild cases of the flu resolve by themselves within a few days. Although coronavirus infections tend to last a little longer, most people with mild cases get better in about two weeks, Dr. Adalja said. Severe cases may take three to six weeks to resolve. Doctors can only give supportive care, providing patients with intravenous fluids, medicines to keep the fever down or oxygen to help with breathing. There are no approved treatments for coronavirus infections, although a few clinical trials are underway that test antiviral drugs such as remdesivir. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
President Trump's speech on a smartphone at a restaurant near Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, two days after the election. Follow our live analysis of the Biden inauguration. Disinformation about election fraud is thriving on YouTube, and right wing outlets that most aggressively push false information are gaining new, conservative viewers on the video service, according to new research. YouTube, which is owned by Google, has not taken down videos challenging the outcome of the election, including content that spreads false allegations. Instead, the company has said that it is fighting disinformation by elevating authoritative news sources in search results and recommendations, while slowing the spread of so called borderline content videos that bump up against its policies but do not violate them. But data from an independent research project called Transparency Tube found that fringe, right wing news channels aggressively pushing unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud are gaining a larger share of views among conservative YouTube channels than before the election. At the same time, Fox News, which has been more reserved in promoting unsubstantiated claims of a stolen election, has seen its share among a conservative audience decline on YouTube even though it is one of YouTube's promoted, authoritative sources. "Our data indicates that YouTube's efforts have had a limited impact on slowing or stopping the spread of election misinformation," said Sam Clark, one of the researchers behind Transparency Tube. "Despite YouTube's efforts, channels posting election misinformation have seen an increase in share of traffic." In September and October, Fox News's YouTube channel had about a 17 percent share of all views on what Transparency Tube calls "Partisan Right," a grouping of more than 2,000 channels with more than 10,000 subscribers focused on politics with a highly critical view of Democrats. In the week of Nov. 5 12, that percentage fell to 13 percent. Overall, Fox News had 67 million views on YouTube that week, which was less than its average of 77 million views per week in October. A Fox News spokeswoman pointed to ratings from Nielsen indicating that its television ratings had grown by more than 60 percent in the week after the election, compared to the postelection week a year earlier. "The most popular videos about the election continue to be from authoritative news organizations," said Andrea Faville, a spokeswoman for YouTube. "A number of factors can influence viewership for channels: for example, a sudden increase in media coverage, attention from public figures or off platform social sharing." Newsmax, which has pushed a wide range of election related conspiracy theories, lifted its share of total views among conservative channels to 5 percent in the week of Nov. 5 12 from less than 1 percent for September and October. Its most viewed video during the week was a segment with Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, presenting what he claimed to be evidence of voter fraud. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
When people make risky decisions, like doubling down in blackjack or investing in volatile stocks, what happens in the brain? Scientists have long tried to understand what makes some people risk averse and others risk taking. Answers could have implications for how to treat, curb or prevent destructively risky behavior, like pathological gambling or drug addiction. Now, a study by Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a prominent Stanford neuroscientist and psychiatrist, and his colleagues gives some clues. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, reports that a specific type of neuron or nerve cell, in a certain brain region helps galvanize whether or not a risky choice is made. The study was conducted in rats, but experts said it built on research suggesting the findings could be similar in humans. If so, they said, it could inform approaches to addiction, which involves some of the same neurons and brain areas, as well as treatments for Parkinson's disease because one class of Parkinson's medications turns some patients into problem gamblers. In a series of experiments led by Kelly Zalocusky, a doctoral student, researchers found that a risk averse rat made decisions based on whether its previous choice involved a loss (in this case, of food). Rats whose previous decision netted them less food were prompted to behave conservatively next time by signals from certain receptors in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens, the scientists discovered. These receptors, which are proteins attached to neurons, are part of the dopamine system, a neurochemical important to emotion, movement and thinking. In risk taking rats, however, those receptors sent a much fainter signal, so the rats kept making high stakes choices even if they lost out. But by employing optogenetics, a technique that uses light to manipulate neurons, the scientists stimulated brain cells with those receptors, heightening the "loss" signal and turning risky rats into safer rats. "We know from other work that this is all relevant to human addiction and gambling," said Trevor Robbins, the chairman of the psychology department at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the new research. "This study has zeroed in on the area precisely where this occurs. They've tried to show that not having this signal biases you toward risky judgments in the future, and they've done a lovely job on that." Step by step, the researchers built evidence that neurons with a dopamine receptor called D2 in the nucleus accumbens, a region integral to brain reward circuitry, play a critical role in risky or not decision making. Strikingly, they found they could alter the message those neurons send. Rats were given a choice of two food levers. One released a consistent amount of sucrose each time; the other often delivered a tiny amount, but in 25 percent of presses, it unleashed a delicious sucrose flood. Over time, both levers gave the same quantity, so rats did not go hungry and their choices came down to whether or not they were gamblers. Risky rats gambled on the iffier lever more than half the time. Risk averse rats were strongly influenced by their last choice; if they picked the risky lever and received a trickle, they picked the consistent lever next time. "Some are very sensitive to losing, and if they take a risky option and lose, they're very likely to not go back to it again," said Paul Phillips, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of Washington and a co author of a commentary about the study. "That's very common in human behavior. An analogy is a slot machine in Vegas." To identify the brain location involved in these decisions, the researchers gave rats a drug used to treat Parkinson's disease, pramipexole, marketed as Mirapex, which acts on D2 receptors and seems to dampen some patients' ability to restrain risk seeking behavior. Risk averse rats receiving pramipexole turned into risk taking rats, but the drug had much greater effects when piped directly into the nucleus accumbens than when it was administered to another brain area researchers had thought might be involved. The scientists used a technique Dr. Deisseroth helped invent fiber photometry, which uses light particles to track activity of neurons tagged with certain proteins. They found that neurons in the nucleus accumbens with D2 receptors transmitted a signal when rats were making their decisions. That signal was much larger if the choice the rat had made had just had been a loser, yielding just a dribble of sucrose. The signal only spiked in non risky rats, however; it was negligible in rats that always gambled for the sucrose windfall. So, what to do with those risky rats? Using optogenetics, which Dr. Deisseroth also helped develop, the team stimulated nucleus accumbens neurons with D2 receptors at the very moment of the fateful food lever decision. That caused the receptors to send strong loss signals to the rats, apparently making them weigh recent losses more heavily, and prompting them to play it safe with their next lever choice. "It turns out you can explain a large part of whether rats were risky or not by this particular signal at this particular time," Dr. Deisseroth said. "We saw it happen, and then we were able to provide that signal, and then see that we could drive the behavior causally." Human brains are more complex, of course, and "are not only affected by immediate recent losses," Dr. Deisseroth said, but "your appetite for risk in many circumstances might be at least possibly reducible to what a particular set of cells in a particular brain area is doing." Dr. Robbins said that might yield insights for drug addiction, since it "clearly involves the dopamine system and these areas of the brain," and in addicts, as in risky rats, the same receptors produce weaker signals. For Parkinson's patients, if versions of drugs like pramipexole could be developed to skip the nucleus accumbens and focus on brain areas responsible for movement, "it would be a much more effective therapy," Dr. Phillips said. "It's because it gets to the nucleus accumbens that it has this gambling effect." He added, "Now, not only do we know the part of the brain, but we know the particular cells in the brain, and we know that if you manipulate them you can change the behavior." Dr. Deisseroth said optogenetic manipulation is too invasive to be done in humans, but findings from optogenetic studies in animals are now being used to identify brain areas to target with noninvasive brain stimulation for problems like cocaine addiction. Finding the roots of risk in the brain also "helps us understand what might be making people different in terms of their risk appetites," he said. "It may help us see them differently, maybe in a more tolerant way, to realize that there's a real biological basis for their behavior." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Mr. Birbiglia's laugh was a repetitive bray: "A heh, a heh, a heh." Mr. Key's was a louder Woody Woodpecker cackle that kept climbing in register. Their guffaws rose from the back row at the UCB Theater, an improvisational comedy showcase in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Mr. Key and Mr. Birbiglia were at a performance last Tuesday featuring three improv teams. It was their way of winding down after spending a packed several days promoting "Don't Think Twice," an indie comedy in which they star. The movie, which Mr. Birbiglia also wrote and directed, opened Friday. The two have formed a mutual admiration society since a scheduled 10 minute Skype call in 2015 went on for two hours. "My wife said: 'Who are you talking to that you're so loud and energetic?'" Mr. Birbiglia said. "'I've never in my life heard you talk to someone like that on the phone.'" The outing was thematically in keeping with the sweetly wistful movie about longtime members of an improv group in New York who face big life decisions when it appears that the group may disband. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
WASHINGTON One of my quarantine diversions was revisiting the first season of "Mad Men," where women in the workplace were sexual playthings and where a young woman's assay at writing ad copy was so unorthodox that it was, as one ad man marveled, like watching a dog play the piano. Even 20 years after that era, when I worked in Midtown Manhattan at a newsmagazine, the remnants of that sexist world existed. The idea of women writing about world events was still novel. And when I had been interviewed for that job, my future boss asked me to come up to his hotel room, spurring me to go out onto the street and scream in frustration and fear that the job was gone. So I could not have been more thrilled when MeToo ripped away the curtain on the murky transgressions and diminishments that women had endured in the droit du seigneur era. But as with any revolution, there was some overcorrection. When liberals heralded the idea that all women must be believed, it made me wince. Al Franken was pressured to pack up without a hearing, given a push by Kirsten Gillibrand, who told The New Yorker's Jane Mayer that while she had not talked to any of her colleague's accusers: "The women who came forward felt it was sexual harassment. So it was." Most Democratic women already considered Brett Kavanaugh guilty of attempted rape as a 17 year old virgin before he took the stand to defend himself. The eagerness to pin Kavanaugh produced a giddy new environment in which incredible tales, like that of Julie Swetnick, who claimed to have witnessed Kavanaugh at parties with rape lines, were treated as credible. As Joe Biden said of Christine Blasey Ford: "For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she is talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it's been made worse or better over time." To suggest that every woman who alleges a sexual assault is as credible as the next is absurd. The idea that no woman can ever be wrong just hurts women. Half the human race is female. Who has never been lied to by people of both genders? Who has never seen the mesmerizing female psychopaths of film noir? Democrats always set standards that come back and bite them. They have created a cage of their own making. In the case of Anita Hill and Blasey, these poised, professorial women were yanked into the public arena and turned into pawns; the women were making charges against conservative Supreme Court nominees whom Democrats and feminists were eager to derail. So it became a pre emptory matter of, all women must be believed when it's convenient for my side. The Clintons did great damage on this score, sliming the women who told of sexual encounters with Bill, with backup from feminists who wanted to keep Bill's progressive policies on women. Republicans always ruthlessly played to win their preordained outcome. But this belief of convenience has infected both sides of the aisle. Republicans, joined by some disaffected Bernie supporters, want to push Tara Reade's recent allegations against Joe Biden because it's convenient for them to try to make younger voters and suburban women and progressives turn on Biden. And Biden, Democrats and the liberal media have been late in addressing Reade's allegations that when she worked in Biden's Senate office in 1993, he assaulted her in a corridor, because it was inconvenient for them to do so. While Reade was being shunned by TV, Hillary Clinton, Nancy ("Joe Biden is Joe Biden") Pelosi, Gillibrand and some of the women on Biden's veep list, Stacey Abrams and Kamala Harris, were offering testimonials to his character. At the urging of women's rights advocates, Biden finally stopped ducking and talked to Mika Brzezinski on Friday from his basement bunker. He denied it "unequivocally," noting five times that this was said to have happened 27 years ago. It was a strange acid flashback, seeing Biden having to defend himself three decades after he was the one who shut down the Thomas Hill hearing without allowing the appearance of the three women waiting to come forward as corroborating witnesses for Hill. There are some unanswered questions about Reade. She said there's a complaint, so let's see it. On Friday, Biden wrote a letter to the secretary of the Senate to see if a record of it was there. But he should also agree to let someone search his papers at the University of Delaware. It's injurious to look like you're hiding something. As one Democratic strategist told me about Biden's effort to stonewall, these kind of charges are like Covid 19: You have to jump on it early and contain it, or you're left with mitigation. The 77 year old did not understand that in the age of social media, you don't assume people won't believe stuff if it's left unchallenged. I've covered Biden my entire political career, and he is known for being sometimes warmly, sometimes inappropriately, hands on with men and women. What Reade accuses him of is a crime and seems completely out of character. But that is how my brother, who coached Kavanaugh in basketball at Georgetown Prep and stayed friends with him after, felt about Blasey's allegations. In the end, these moments highlight the hypocrisy of both parties. Each case has to stand or fall on its own facts, patterns, corroborations, investigations not on viewing it only through partisan goggles. You could ask if hypocrisy in the age of Trump is antiquated. Why should the Democrats hold themselves to some higher standard of conduct when Trump, a serial assaulter of women according to his accusers and own "Access Hollywood" confession, is wallowing in amorality and refusing to release a scrap of paper about personal finances or conduct? But moral relativism is not the answer. Joe Biden is running or for the moment, sitting on compassion and decency, the antithesis of Trump. If he throws that away, he's going along with Trump's worldview: We live in a corrupt jungle. Everybody's down here in the muck. So you might as well go with me, because I'm stronger. From the day Trump was elected, it has always been a race between the damage he could do and the day his term was up. Let's hope that damage doesn't include the Democrats sinking to his cynical, miserable level. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos and anything else that strikes them as intriguing. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once a week blast of our pop music coverage. By 1963, when he recorded "Both Directions at Once," the long lost album out Friday, John Coltrane was about chant and pulse and scalding pursuit. Yet he continued to write bright, memorable themes; this is still the man who'd penned the tunes on "Blue Train." The three fresh original compositions on "Both Directions" (those not released on any other official album) charge and tumble, but they also sing. They're ear wedges. And then there's "Slow Blues" something else entirely an 11 and a half minute chance to clear out your melody packed brain and follow Coltrane's lead more freely. He speaks a thoroughgoing blues language throughout, even as he's sliding in and out of key, tearing his tones, improvising in cuts against the grain and suggesting alternatives to the harmony and the rhythm. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO This does not need Miguel! Seriously! He's here to lend some kind of gravity, to cut Meek Mill's revving engine with a jolt of cut rate solemnity. But the thing about Meek Mill is that his scream rapping often just barely conceals a sense of emotional urgency. He is a tense rapper, and this song his first since being released from prison in late April has moments that really ache (in spite of the abusive piano driven production). He's particularly gutting in the second verse, when he expresses empathy for the wild boys of the SoundCloud rap generation, spotting their mistakes and their likely consequences way before they will, or can. JON CARAMANICA The tart individuality of Chaka Khan's voice is barely recognizable in "Like Sugar" because it's multitracked in unison, canceling out quirks. But the song, produced by Switch, is a keeper that's bound to be sampled by someone. It's quantized, minimal cyber funk with a hopping bass line and one percussion sound highlighted at a time: triangle, bongos, handclaps, cowbell. Still, here's hoping Ms. Khan's voice gets more latitude on the rest of her coming album, her first since 2007. J.P. For the past few weeks, 03 Greedo has been recording at a relentless pace in preparation for a difficult road ahead: He was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison for drug and weapon charges. Part of this new haul is a new album, "God Level," that showcases the weepily melodic approach that made earlier releases like "Purple Summer" and "The Wolf of Grape Street" so enticing. "Bacc to Jail," from the new album, is a tragic plaint, delivering hard truths with quiet storm reserve: "Never left when it was ugly, that's how I know you love me." 03 Greedo's story now moves to its next chapter. J.C. Paramore, which usually plays pop punk, glances toward the Jamaican influences of No Doubt another band led by a woman grappling with power and desire with the reggae backbeat of "Caught in the Middle," a reflection on growing up, self questioning and perseverance. "I don't need no help/I can sabotage me by myself," sings Hayley Williams, 29, but she continues, "I gotta keep going or they'll call me a quitter." The song dovetails vulnerability into persistence. J.P. Everything gets chopped up and turned around in "Omygod" by Black Grapefruit, the electronic pop duo of Randa Smith and Brian Dekker; it's from an album due August 10. Vocal syllables and percussion that appears and disappears create a Caribbean tinged beat; synthesizer tones waft in and fade out; barking dogs and screams of "Omygod!" disrupt a melody that holds a fractured apology: "You told me what you held in/And I held back what you needed." After an eventful three minutes, the songs finds a surprise resolution in something like gospel. J.P. "Estamos Bien" is an ethereal take on the Bad Bunny sound. There's a natural mournfulness about his singing, but when it's stretched out taffy like, as it is here, it begins to take on a wistful quality, a good match for this song about living well. And the charming video is a soft focus pastel fantasy, a celebration of friends who let you act your goofiest and summers where you get to live free. J.C. Let's Eat Grandma the eccentric, teenage English songwriting duo of Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth test the limits of pop in "I Will Be Waiting," from its new album, "I'm All Ears," which negotiates between pop formulas and wayward impulses. The song uses Minimalistic keyboards to capture the vertigo of infatuation, until drums kick in and insist on a direction. "It's late but I will be waiting for you," the chorus proclaims, tentatively and then proudly. J.P. A trumpeter by trade, Leron Thomas has hacked his path as a lonely provocateur for more than a decade. On his solo records, he sings, produces, plays all kinds of instruments, earnestly ironizes, makes slyly brilliant videos to accompany the music. In April, under the alias Pan Amsterdam, he put out "The Pocket Watch," a short album of lazing underground hip hop (plus trumpet solos). Last week Mr. Thomas released an update to one of the record's quiet winners, "Landlord Elijah." The more drolly syncopated original version is an easy one to prefer, with an adorned Pete Rock sample that kicks, and a gleefully corny declaration over the break: "If it was already written, well then shall I not have scorn/A jazz musician died, Pan Am was born." But as he touches up the polish on "Re Do," he never loses the sense of preposterous honesty. Choose your favorite, or pick both. G.R. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Susan Medak, the managing director of the Berkeley Repertory Theater in California, said the writing was on the wall over two weeks ago: Closings were coming. "The sense of urgency around the potential for closings hit the West Coast before it hit the East Coast," she said in a phone interview. So her company, along with the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, began hatching a plan to make their most recent stage productions available to their patrons on the streaming platform BroadwayHD. Berkeley Rep will stream Jocelyn Bioh's "School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play" and the Culture Clash group's "Culture Clash (Still) in America." And Jennifer Bielstein, who runs the A.C.T., said that the theater had made recordings of Lydia Diamond's "Toni Stone" and Branden Jacobs Jenkins's "Gloria" "while they were still up and running." (All shows will be available to ticketholders for about two weeks.) "We didn't have the time or resource to invest in a five camera shoot that's directed and designed," Bielstein said. "So we recorded with one or two cameras in the house. It's more about making sure the audience gets to see the work." Experiencing theater from home is not a new phenomenon, of course. But now, in addition to the catalog long available on platforms such as BroadwayHD or more niche services like On the Boards, which specializes in experimental performance (and offers free streaming through the end of April), companies are trying to preserve the shows that were playing, or about to start, when the industry shut down. On Friday, for instance, New York Theater Workshop filmed a performance of Martyna Majok's "Sanctuary City" in front of a small audience of friends and family members. Later that day, in Princeton, N.J., the McCarter Theater Center which records all of its productions for archival purposes captured Anthony Shaffer's "Sleuth" with a three camera setup in front of a few staff members and invited guests. "It may be for archive only, but after we weather this storm, we will be discussing ways that we may be able to share this piece with those who did not get a chance to see it," Tom Miller, a spokesman for the McCarter, wrote in an email. "There are zero plans in place for this right now, mind you. For now, we are committing it to 'film' (digitally) before it is gone." Shows and special programs are announcing streaming plans daily. The Alley Theater in Houston will make its production of "1984" available, for a limited time, to ticketholders and anybody interested in purchasing a viewing. In Chicago, Theater Wit will make its production of Mike Lew's "Teenage Dick" available starting on March 20; customers will be able to buy access to a Vimeo link for the desired date and time. The Signature Theater in Arlington, Va., is looking to make its production of Dani Stoller's "Easy Women Smoking Loose Cigarettes" available online to ticketholders. In New York City, the experimental institution La MaMa live streamed several events last weekend, including a festival copresented with CultureHub and HowlRound, and it is looking to do more in the near future. Mia Yoo, La MaMa's artistic director, pointed out that the organization has been building valuable experience since 2009, "because of the work we've done with live streaming and telematic performances where we've had audiences and artists in remote locations communicating or creating art together, or long distance workshops with kids." Also in New York, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater obtained special permission from Actors' Equity to record its production of "The Siblings Play" and should be able to stream it to ticket buyers starting this week. We are also likely to see a booming number of individual initiatives like Young Jean Lee who made a "low fi" version of her show "We're Gonna Die" (closed prematurely at Second Stage Theater) available on her website, and Broadway regulars Telly Leung and Alice Ripley, who teamed up for a live concert on the Stageit platform. On Friday, ACT of Connecticut and the Ridgefield Playhouse will stream a live concert that will include the composer Stephen Schwartz performing "Beautiful City," from his musical "Godspell." But before a production can be live streamed, it has to leap several hurdles. Any group, professional or not, that wants to stream a play must get permission from its author some of whom are more forthcoming with it than others. John Patrick Shanley whose shows "Doubt" and "Welcome to the Moon" are popular licenses said that he "just gave blanket permission for any and all request to live stream my plays to be granted, as opposed to case by case." Unions and professional associations are also hastily figuring out new legal and artistic goal posts when it comes to making theater accessible. And in the time of coronavirus, there's the matter of public health. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
John Herbers, a distinguished reporter for The New York Times on national affairs who in covering the racial turmoil in the Deep South in the 1960s demonstrated a rare blend of the journalistic skills, ingenuity and courage often associated with front line war correspondents, died on Friday in Washington. He was 93. Mr. Herbers died at Ingleside at Rock Creek, a nursing home, said his daughter Anne Farris Rosen, said. In the political circus of Washington and in the cities and towns of a nation struggling with urban decay, the Vietnam War and racial conflicts, Mr. Herbers often reported major news: antiwar protests, civil rights marches, the 1968 presidential campaign and the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. Over four decades, including 24 years with The Times, he also covered the passage and enforcement of civil rights laws, the rising influence of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the plight of the poor and social unrest in the cities. In the 1980s, he often went on the road to detail changing demographics and trends in American life. He wrote four books on national affairs. But it was in the caldron of racial hostilities and brutality and the drive for civil rights in the segregated South that Mr. Herbers early in his career, in the 1950s and '60s made his most indelible mark. It was a dangerous time in the South. Lynchings were common. Black churches were burned. In Birmingham, Ala., four little girls in Sunday school were killed in a bombing, and two black boys were shot dead. In Philadelphia, Miss., three civil rights workers trying to register black voters were abducted and murdered. In Selma, Ala., and other towns, the police attacked protesters with gunfire and nightsticks, snarling dogs and fire hoses, producing televised images that outraged many Americans. Mr. Herbers was chased by white mobs in Florida and Alabama, accosted by Ku Klux Klansmen in Mississippi and threatened with death many times. But in vivid narrative reports day after day, he told of night riders with guns and dynamite; of black people and rights workers slain and maimed; of white police officers joining the violence; and of federal intervention to break down the barriers of segregation. To avoid being singled out by street mobs or at Klan rallies as a reporter for a Northern newspaper, Mr. Herbers thickened his soft Tennessee drawl, wore the rumpled khaki pants and short sleeve shirts favored by local white men, sometimes feigned a lack of interest in what was going on, and tried to interview witnesses discreetly and call in his stories from out of the way telephones. He occasionally avoided taking notes publicly, a seeming handicap. "In practice, however, you seldom need notes," he wrote for Times Talk, an in house publication for Times employees, after attending a rabid torchlight Klan rally in 1964. "What's going on is etched in your memory." John Norton Herbers Jr. was born on Nov. 4, 1923, in Memphis to John Norton Herbers and the former Anne Mabell Clare Foster. His father operated small country stores in Tennessee and Mississippi, and his mother was a part time music teacher. After graduating from Brownsville High School in Brownsville, Tenn., in 1941, he was a combat infantryman in the Pacific in World War II. He graduated from Emory University in 1949 with a bachelor's degree in journalism and began his career as a reporter city editor for The Morning Star of Greenwood, Miss. In 1951, he joined another Mississippi newspaper, The Jackson Daily News, as a political and state reporter, and in 1953 the United Press hired him to be the Jackson bureau chief, responsible for state coverage. His objective reporting on racial affairs, especially after the Supreme Court struck down public school segregation in 1954, brought protests from citizens' councils and even news organizations that subscribed to United Press. In 1952, Mr. Herbers married Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Wood. They had four daughters, who survive him. Besides Anne Farris Rosen, they are Claudia Slate, Mary Herbers and Jill Herbers. He is also survived by a sister, Mary Herbers, six grandchildren and eight great grandchildren. Mr. Herbers's wife died on Feb. 5. In 1955, he covered the murder of 14 year old Emmett Till, a black visitor from Chicago who had allegedly whistled at a white woman in Money, Miss. The boy was abducted and beaten by white men, who gouged out an eye, shot him in the head, mutilated his corpse and dumped the body in a river. Mr. Herbers also covered the trial of two suspects whose swift acquittal by an all white jury shocked much of the nation. In an as yet untitled memoir scheduled for publication next year, he recalled his reaction to the verdict. "With emotions pent up no longer, I felt a horrible lump in the pit of my stomach," he wrote. "How would I explain to my daughters that something like this happened in America, much less in a region of the country we called home? I hunched over the steering wheel and cried. I wanted to cry Mississippi out of my very core." Mr. Herbers studied American history at Harvard on a Nieman fellowship in 1960 61. In 1962, he went to Washington for what had become, after a merger, United Press International to cover the Labor and Justice Departments. He was hired by The Times in 1963, assigned to be an Atlanta based correspondent, the third Southerner to cover the South for the paper in the modern era, after John N. Popham III, a Virginian who served from 1933 to 1958, and Claude Sitton, a Georgia born, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist whose reporting from 1958 to 1964 overlapped with that of Mr. Herbers. All three have been credited by historians with major roles in reporting the civil rights struggle. Mr. Herbers returned to Washington in 1965, and over the next decade covered Congress and the White House, as well as the Kennedy presidential race and assassination in Los Angeles in 1968, Watergate and Mr. Nixon's resignation in 1974. Mr. Herbers also covered national urban affairs. He became an assistant national editor in New York in 1975 but returned to Washington in 1976 as the deputy bureau chief. Two years later, he became a Washington based national correspondent and was soon roaming the country to report on trends in American life. After retiring from The Times in 1987, he taught seminars on politics and the press at Princeton and the University of Maryland, was a columnist for Governing magazine for three years and wrote occasionally for The Times. He was the author of "The Lost Priority," (1970), on the decline of the civil rights movement; "The Black Dilemma," (1973), a study of the quest for black equality; "No Thank You, Mr. President," (1976) on White House journalism; and "The New Heartland," (1986), on demographic changes in America. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
FOR nearly a decade, makers of luxury cars have insisted that their buyers would become conspicuous consumers of hybrid models not merely for a mileage boost, but for the social boost of adopting green technology. That has not happened. In fact, the most expensive, deluxe hybrids have been among the biggest sales duds, including the Lexus LS 600h L and BMW's 7 Series ActiveHybrid. Even as the all electric Tesla Model S has become a Silicon Valley status symbol, luxury hybrids have mostly failed to dent the public consciousness. Now, as regulations require even prestige brands to increase mileage and trim emissions, automakers are trying again, rolling out the next wave of luxury hybrids, including some of the world's fastest and most impressive cars. Promising better mileage than their forebears and in many cases, the ability to recharge from the grid to deliver miles of pure electric motoring these hybrids will look to meet the more stringent regulations and attract more customers to low fossil driving. But it's not an easy sell when the top of the market hybrids cost thousands more than their nonelectrified siblings. Green halo or not, the yearslong payback for those models can be a damper on sales unless benefits like H.O.V. lane access comes with the deal. BMW already offers a selection of hybridized models, but its approach to breaking open the niche comes in the form of the new "i" model range: the i3, a 42,275 city car made with lightweight carbon fiber materials, goes on sale in the United States in the spring in all electric form or, for an extra 3,850, as a plug in hybrid. Around the same time, the i8 sports car will arrive in showrooms at 136,625. This radically styled plug in goes from 0 to 60 miles an hour in 4.4 seconds and sips fuel at the equivalent of 94 miles per gallon, BMW says. Mercedes Benz made a splash at the Frankfurt auto show in September with the S500. The plug in version of the flagship S Class sedan exceeds 75 m.p.g. in Europe's fuel mileage tests. It goes on sale in the United States next year, joining a conventional, no plug hybrid version, the S400. The new Infiniti Q50 Hybrid sedan, which starts at 45,205, combines 360 horsepower with a 29/36 m.p.g. Environmental Protection Agency rating in city and highway driving. The Acura RLX Sport Hybrid sedan has slightly more power, but slightly lower mileage, at 30/30 m.p.g. The Cadillac ELR, an eye catching luxury coupe that shares its plug in powertrain with the Chevrolet Volt, goes on sale in 2014. Porsche is breaking ground with three hybrids, the Panamera S E Hybrid sedan; Cayenne Hybrid sport utility vehicle and the 918 Spyder Hybrid, an 845,000, 887 horsepower plug in supercar. Ferrari's LaFerrari hybrid has even more power and is even more expensive, combining 950 horsepower with a roughly 217 m.p.h. top speed and an estimated 1.35 million price. Back in the real world, Toyota's Lexus division has been the brand with the most success in luxury hybrids. Lexus sold more than 38,000 hybrids in 2012, or 16 percent of the brand's total. The division's hits and misses suggest some realities of the luxury hybrid market. First, a majority of sales have been concentrated in the luxury segment's entry level range of roughly 30,000 to 50,000. The strikingly styled CT 200h hatchback and RX 450h crossover deliver significant mileage gains for semireasonable prices. Those two models alone delivered nearly 80 percent of the Lexus hybrid sales. Those hits were offset somewhat by notable misses. Lexus discontinued the HS 250h in 2012 after three years of poor sales, even though it cost 35,000. Consumers and reviewers found this dowdy offshoot of the Prius to be neither luxurious nor especially frugal. Most notoriously perhaps, the 121,000 Lexus LS 600h L hybrid costs about 30,000 more than the flagship LS sedan on which it is based. Yet its fuel economy is negligibly better than the gasoline version's. BMW found only 657 buyers for its 100,000 ActiveHybrid 7 sedan over three model years. Getting the message, BMW dumped the thirsty V8 version for the 2013 6 cylinder ActiveHybrid 7, which gets 30 highway m.p.g. yet starts around 85,000. The only issue? A nonhybrid 6 cylinder 7 Series gets 28 m.p.g. and costs 6,000 less than the latest hybrid. Mark Takahashi, automotive editor at Edmunds.com, said that models like the LS 600h L and the BMW ActiveHybrid were not well thought out. "It was almost as though they were just slapping a hybrid badge on a car for people who really want one," he said. Consumers have grown wary of hybrids that demand major price premiums but do not deliver on mileage or performance, he said. For that reason, Edmunds.com, the car information resource, has been more likely to recommend luxury cars with diesel engines that deliver big mileage gains with fun to drive attributes. For some new models, the arithmetic still appears suspect. Cadillac raised eyebrows in October by announcing the ELR's 75,995 base price: The plug in Cadillac may look great, but that is still nearly double the price of the Chevrolet Volt, its technological cousin, which has struggled to find buyers. Europe's carbon dioxide regulations and America's fuel economy rules, the latter mandating that new cars average 54.5 m.p.g. by 2025, are driving the rollout of electrified cars, said Jim Hall, managing director of 2953 Analytics. Mr. Hall said the heat was on for stand alone luxury brands like Jaguar Land Rover, which cannot rely on volume sales of economy cars to raise their average fleet mileage. Some are seeking technology partners for hybrid development. Land Rover will sell its first hybrid, the Range Rover Sport Hybrid, beginning in Europe next year. "Everyone knows you're going to have more electrification in cars," Mr. Hall said. "The question is how you're going to use it." Porsche's forward looking answer includes the 99,975 Panamera S E Hybrid. The company estimates the Panamera will drive 22 miles on battery power before its gasoline V6 takes over. But Porsche adds a twist: Push a button, and the Panamera fully recharges its depleted battery in less than an hour of driving. For urban areas like London which charges hefty fees in congestion pricing zones for internal combustion cars, and may ban them altogether one day the Porsche driver could top off the battery before the city gates, then cruise city streets without ever starting the gasoline engine. The Panamera combines deluxe seating for four with 416 horsepower and a 167 m.p.h. top speed. If that seems slow, Porsche also boasts the ultimate among not just hybrids, but perhaps all automobiles. The 918 Spyder hybrid sports car surges to 60 m.p.h. in 2.6 seconds, peaks at 214 m.p.h. and delivers a claimed fuel economy equivalent of more than 75 m.p.g. With a total of 887 horsepower, including a major assist from its electric motor, it circled Germany's fabled Nurburgring course in September in six minutes and 57 seconds. That is faster than any production car in history gas, electric or otherwise. For this hybrid, despite a price approaching 1 million with options, Porsche may not worry about sales: Only 918 collectible copies will be produced. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
David Axelrod was having a candid conversation with an old colleague when, almost accidentally, the two made some news. Mr. Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama, was talking to Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general, on his podcast, "The Axe Files." He had asked Mr. Holder for his thoughts on Edward J. Snowden, the intelligence contractor who leaked classified documents about the National Security Agency in 2013. "We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in," Mr. Holder said. It was the first such public admission from the man who was the top law enforcement official in the United States when Mr. Snowden fled the country. The podcast comment was covered widely in the news media. Mr. Holder's appearance on "The Axe Files" made him another member of a group that might informally be called the Obama casters. Since the president made a much noted appearance on the popular podcast "WTF With Marc Maron" in June 2015, three prominent former staffers have started their own shows, sometimes securing lengthy and occasionally newsworthy interviews with their administration peers. Mr. Axelrod's podcast, produced by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN, started in September. In May, Mr. Obama's former speechwriter Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior White House adviser, started the weekly "Keepin' It 1600." Together, the two shows have hosted close to a dozen former and current members of Mr. Obama's administration, eliciting in depth conversations with major figures including Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations; David Plouffe, who managed Mr. Obama's 2008 presidential campaign; and Ben Rhodes, a national security adviser. While administration officials often embrace media roles after leaving the White House, podcast experts say there is something about the medium that makes particular sense for this administration. "To a certain extent, they're doing what all White Houses do. They find out what the hot medium of the time is and they exploit it," said Andy Bowers, the co founder of Panoply, Slate's podcast network. "But I feel like podcasting is a medium that is perfectly in sync with the Obama White House and Obama himself." Mr. Axelrod, who had not been much of a podcast listener, was taken with the format after hearing Mr. Obama on Mr. Maron's show. "I thought it was one of the best conversations that I'd heard him have," Mr. Axelrod said. "It was revealing and interesting, and I thought 'Boy, this would be fun.' " Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Mr. Axelrod's podcast typically consists of a single in depth interview. He has welcomed reporters and several guests from across the aisle, including Mitt Romney, whom he helped to defeat in the 2012 presidential election. (The two joked about Donald J. Trump.) Mr. Favreau and Mr. Pfeiffer's podcast is produced by The Ringer, the new website from the sports pundit Bill Simmons. It is faster paced and usually begins with the two hosts bantering about the week in politics and these days, disparaging Mr. Trump's presidential campaign before speaking with a guest. (Mr. Simmons hosted President Obama on his own show in 2012, the first time any sitting president had appeared on a podcast.) Neither Mr. Axelrod nor Mr. Favreau sees it as part of their shows' mission to scoop their more traditional media competitors, but in separate interviews, both men acknowledged that breaking news was desirable because it helped promote their podcasts. And each said that guests would be more likely to speak genuinely without resorting to talking points if they were not expecting an inquisition. "A lot of the folks who are on with me, certainly the more prominent public officials, if you start asking the usual questions that they're likely to get on TV, they start giving you the likely answers," Mr. Axelrod said. "And all of a sudden, it's not really a conversation anymore; it's more of a Kabuki dance." "People are more likely to break news because you sit, and you're comfortable and you're having a conversation and you let your guard down a little bit more" on podcasts, Mr. Favreau said. The Obama administration has been experimental in its communications strategy, often resorting to newer media outlets to spread the president's message. Mr. Obama seems to have taken a liking to comedians: A frequent guest on the late night circuit during campaigns, he has also appeared on "Between Two Ferns," a satirical show hosted by the comedian Zach Galifianakis, and Jerry Seinfeld's web series "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee." "The nature of communications in the modern era is that there is no bully pulpit anymore," Mr. Axelrod said of such appearances. "You have to reassemble it all the time from different pieces, and you have to be aware of new ways of communicating in order to keep ahead of the curve." Administration officials have also been known to express irritation with more traditional media outlets, and Mr. Favreau said that the podcasts provide an antidote to the rushed discussion that is typical of cable news. "Those of us who were in the Obama White House, that was always sort of our critique of the Washington political conversation: That it was surface level, and it was a way of relaying talking points and repeating conventional wisdom," he said. Asked to elaborate on similarities between the character of the Obama administration and the podcasting world, Mr. Favreau emphasized that it was important in both to have "the time and space to have a more nuanced, subtle conversation." "Everybody would say that's very Obama like," Mr. Favreau said. "Because he can be professorial." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Dr. Endre A. Balazs, who transformed a syrupy natural lubricant derived from rooster combs into a palliative for arthritic knees and a skin protectant that made eye surgery routine, died on Aug. 29 at a hospital near his summer home in St. Tropez, France. He was 95. The cause was complications of a severe stroke, his wife, Janet L. Denlinger, said. The Hungarian born Dr. Balazs (pronounced ba LAHJ) lived in New Jersey and conducted much of his research there and in New York. He devoted seven decades to exploring the therapeutic potential of hyaluronic acid, a viscoelastic substance, which was discovered in 1934 by Karl Meyer in an ophthalmology laboratory at Columbia University. Dr. Meyer had derived the acid from cows' eyes, a means that was not considered commercially feasible. Instead, in the 1940s, Dr. Balazs extracted the substance from rooster combs, which were typically discarded by slaughterhouses, and purified it. By the 1960s, he had discovered that it diminished pain caused by arthritis. Previously, hyaluronic acid, or hyaluronan, had been injected as a serum into the arthritic knees of racehorses to reduce swelling and used in veterinary eye surgery. In the early 1970s, Dr. Balazs and his company, Biotrics, applied for a patent for a hyaluronan derivative called Healon. They later licensed it to Pharmacia, a Swedish drug company, for use in human patients. According to his associates, products Dr. Balazs helped develop facilitated eye surgery for hundreds of millions of patients and helped improve mobility for tens of millions more crippled by osteoarthritis of the knee. Hyaluronan is a complex sugar molecule that Dr. Balazs described as "the most viscoelastic substance known to mankind." As a lubricant, it flows, though even more slowly than molasses. It is also elastic, absorbing energy and bouncing back to its original shape, which means it can reduce the effect that jumping has on the knees. Its chief medical application was initially to help the eye retain its shape and protect it from damage during lens transplants for cataract patients and other eye surgery. It was also found to prevent postoperative scar tissue, and because it can retain almost a hundred times its weight in water, it has also been used in cosmetics, including skin moisturizers, sunscreens and wrinkle creams. In 1981, Dr. Balazs, his wife and his son, Andre, founded Biomatrix, a biotechnology company that developed six hyaluronan products. It was sold in 2000 to Genzyme for an estimated 738 million. Endre Alexander Balazs was born in Budapest on Jan. 10, 1920. His father, also named Endre, was an engineer who managed the Budapest Waterworks until the Communist takeover. His mother was the former Vilma Bonta. After graduating in 1942 from the University of Budapest Medical School, he continued his research there and at the Karolinska Institute until 1951, when he was invited by Harvard Medical School to establish the Retina Foundation. He served as its president and was a founder of the Boston Biomedical Research Institute, where he worked from 1968 to 1975. He was the director of ophthalmic research at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center from 1975 to 1982. After he retired from teaching full time in 1987, he became the Malcolm P. Aldrich research professor emeritus at Columbia. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
A painter once pointed out to me that my iPhone doesn't really show millions of colors. Its minuscule pixels produce exactly three red, green and blue. Anything else is an illusion. I decided to switch off my color display for a while, and when I turned it back on, I was astonished at how tacky and monotone the images looked. Since then I've gone back and forth, but the experiment left me especially interested in artists who find ways to make the best of those discreetly repetitive pixels. Recently, I went looking for examples on Instagram, and I found four photographers and a sculptor who manage to slip work that feels organic and real through the flickering noise of a digital screen. Some do it with palettes that remain recognizable as overall patterns even when the colors themselves are off, others simply by means of that infinitely variable old standby, black and white. These are my current favorites; other New York Times critics will be posting their own every week. "Almost every photograph I take in the studio or the world," Rachel Stern, a native New Englander, says, "I also shoot on my phone, both to make a note and to check the composition. It's almost never a perfect match to the film image, and I take my phone seriously as a camera, so they're also their own things." Scrolling down her extensive feed, you'll encounter Instagram versions of several discrete analog projects, as well as such entertaining one offs as a portrait of her sister with baby carrots in her nose. But lately Ms. Stern has taken to shooting gable roofs, gravestones, treetops, and fish clutching birds of prey in a washed out and gentle black and white that makes me think of charcoal rubbings. Quiet and loosely spiritual, the images are a welcome balm for the time of the pandemic. Micaiah Carter makes everything curvy. An up and coming photographer from Southern California now living in Brooklyn, and contributing to The New York Times, Mr. Carter posts a mix of commercial, editorial and gallery work, but you see the same vibrant curve in all of it. A portrait of the rapper Megan Thee Stallion in a futuristic pale blue background with one knee lifted, about to climb right through your screen, is the most obvious example. But there is also the little boy in the denim matching set, holding aside his blue Power Rangers helmet to gaze past the camera with an expression of sage concern. Something about the way he's seated emphasizes the billow of his oversize clothing around his little body, so that it's not their cut you notice so much as the way they move. Even the concrete steps behind him sag a little, like bowstrings, as if to suggest that the precarious energy of human life enlivens the very ground we stand on. Like most photographers of her generation, the 35 year old Canadian Sara Cwynar is fluent in digital imagery. Her faux "behind the scenes" shots of portrait subjects on set, or elaborate collages of consumer products mixed with art historical references, glitter with a seductive alternation of insight and self consciousness. More to the point for Instagram, though, her feed which includes a careful sprinkling of candids, selfies, and art works by other people as well as plenty of in situ shots of her own print work largely sticks to the distinctive, otherworldly palette she's developed. It's an unforgettable mix of rose, red, gold and electric green. If I were a visual artist, I'd model my social media feed on 's. She provides steady glimpses of the African diaspora cultures that inform her monumental installations and ceramics, along with images of the work itself, both in progress and in the gallery. There are also art works that inspire her, including a lithe D'mba headdress at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Atsuko Tanaka's glorious "Electric Dress" (1956); moments of political outrage and advocacy; and the occasional family photo. Recently those influences have included powerful video clips of the poets Victoria Santa Cruz and Sonia Sanchez, or a photo of a 1927 meeting of African American women in Chicago. It's as if she's found a way to make visible the aura of memories, allusions, and impressions that hang around her sculpture or, to put it another way, she's giving an open ended artist's talk you can drop into whenever you want. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The choreographer Stephen Petronio hasn't forgotten an image he first saw more than 40 years ago: a photograph of a man in a chair, smoking. "There was a tear coming down his face, and he had a cigarette," Mr. Petronio said recently at his apartment in Harlem, describing the photo, which he had seen in Don McDonagh's book "The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Dance." The man was the choreographer Rudy Perez, pictured in one of his career defining solos, "Countdown," from 1966. A participant in Judson Dance Theater, the early 1960s collective that pioneered postmodern dance, Mr. Perez exuded, in Mr. Petronio's eyes, a potent sense of drama. From that image alone, he wanted to know more. "There was something emotive about it, and I was very confused about that," Mr. Petronio said. "Because when I came up into the postmodern dance world, meeting Steve and Trisha and all those people" the Judson founders Steve Paxton and Trisha Brown "it was not about emotion. It was about motion and the rules of motion. So that separated him in a certain way, and I was very curious." Mr. Petronio, now 63 and the artistic director of the Stephen Petronio Company, is finally satisfying that curiosity. For the fifth edition of "Bloodlines," his initiative to preserve essential works of postmodern dance, he is reviving Mr. Perez's stirring 1970 solo "Coverage." Beginning April 11 at N.Y.U. Skirball, the roughly 20 minute "Coverage Revisited," performed by Ernesto Breton, appears on a program with Merce Cunningham's 1970 "Tread" and Mr. Petronio's new "American Landscapes." Last performed in 1991 and not seen in New York since 1977, when a version was presented by the Alvin Ailey company "Coverage" embodies some of Mr. Perez's choreographic hallmarks: his astute use of stillness and slowness, his gift for assembling just right juxtapositions. The work opens with its male soloist dressed as a construction worker, in a blue hard hat and white jumpsuit, carefully laying down a perimeter of tape. Inside of that self imposed frame, he takes on a series of movement tasks, resembling a basketball player one moment, a Fosse dancer the next. Silence is one element in a sonic collage, arranged by Mr. Perez, that also includes bagpipe music, Stevie Wonder and, finally, "God Bless America." For New York audiences, the revival of "Coverage" affords a rare opportunity to see a Rudy Perez work performed live. At 89, Mr. Perez has spent most of his life in Los Angeles, where he landed in 1978 and never turned back. (Despite being partially blind, he still teaches a weekly class at the Westside Academy of Dance in Santa Monica.) Though he had built a dedicated following in New York he was a regular at avant garde havens like Judson Memorial Church and Dance Theater Workshop he found greater support for his work, financially, on the West Coast. As he said by phone from Los Angeles, "All the doors opened up for me out here." Mr. Perez, who grew up in Spanish Harlem and the Bronx, was among the few artists of color to be actively involved in Judson Dance Theater, a group known for embracing everyday movement and rejecting the status quo of modern dance. His mother, who died when he was 7, was Puerto Rican; his biological father, he learned only recently, was Italian or Spanish. He came to Judson after training in the 1950s with the modern dance matriarch Martha Graham, whose theatrics were not in vogue downtown. "I went from one extreme to the other," he said, laughing. It was in a class with Merce Cunningham that he met the multimedia artist and Judsonite Elaine Summers, who invited him to perform with her. "That's how some people got into Judson," he said. "They just needed bodies to do pieces not dance pieces, just pieces with a lot of people." Mr. Perez said he gave little thought to being Latino in a mostly white collective. "It didn't interfere at all," he said, though he wondered aloud if his fair complexion helped him to fit in. "It was kind of an elitist environment, to tell you the truth." While developing his own minimalist style at Judson and beyond, Mr. Perez didn't fully part with his Graham roots, he said. He agreed with Mr. Petronio's description of his work as more emotional and theatrical than that of his Judson peers. He clarified: Emotional, yes, "but not all over the place very restrained." For the writer Wendy Perron, who danced with Mr. Perez from 1969 70, his early work stood out for its textural contrasts. "He had this instinct for what would work next to each other," she said. "We'd be doing something rigid and stiff, then suddenly we'd be bending down and picking flowers in a dreamlike slow motion." "There was something very sure and magical about what he did onstage," she added. Mr. Petronio began "Bloodlines" with the idea of honoring his closest influences, like Cunningham and Brown, with whom he danced from 1979 to 1986. (As part of the project, he has also restaged works by Mr. Paxton, Yvonne Rainer and Anna Halprin.) Mr. Perez, he recognizes, resides on a more distant branch of his artistic family tree. "Although I didn't know Rudy's work very well," he said, "I felt there was an opportunity to explore the fantasy of what I thought his work was." Because of budgetary constraints, Mr. Petronio and Mr. Breton, who will perform "Coverage Revisited," had only a day to rehearse directly with Mr. Perez, in October in Los Angeles. They all acknowledged that the situation was not ideal. (Mr. Breton had some additional rehearsals with Sarah Swenson, Mr. Perez's assistant.) For Mr. Perez, it's crucial that the soloist shed any dancerly affectation, so that he reads as "just a guy, a man, an everyman not a dancer," he said. For a Juilliard graduate like Mr. Breton, that can take some coaching. At a recent rehearsal, Mr. Breton, 28, appeared to be settling into the complex role of a regular person. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
"Framing John DeLorean," a smart, hook filled blend of documentary and fictionalized re enactments, opens with a question: Why haven't more movies been made about John DeLorean? Because the story of the maverick, egocentric automaker, whose name is practically synonymous with the excesses of the midcentury American car industry, is ready made for the silver screen. DeLorean, who died in 2005, was an executive at G.M. before breaking with the company in the 1970s to start his own, which created the stainless steel gull wing sports car for which he is best known. DeLorean's maneuvering to open a manufacturing plant in Northern Ireland at the height of sectarian violence there could sustain a whole feature as could his spectacular fall, spurred by a drug trafficking sting operation that yielded video of him holding a bag of cocaine and proclaiming it "better than gold." A short film about him was indeed released in 1981. This movie makes a running joke out of the subsequent drought, with titles introducing film industry talking heads as, say, "Producer, Yet Another Unmade DeLorean Film." One interview subject, the actor Alec Baldwin, recalls how he was once contacted by DeLorean himself to discuss a potential biopic. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
As a celebrity studded, headline grabbing product release, Jay Z's unveiling of Tidal was about as big as could be. Standing on a Manhattan stage with Madonna, Kanye West, Jack White, Nicki Minaj and nearly a dozen other stars, Jay Z introduced Tidal on March 30 as a streaming music service to challenge Spotify, Apple and Google. In a twist to the usual ownership of music apps, the artists not Silicon Valley financiers or big entertainment studios would control a majority of the company, and they promised fair economics for all musicians. For an industry struggling with the value of music in the digital age, it was an audacious pitch. But from the very start, Tidal's debut was ridiculed as grandiose and out of touch. A teaser video had showed Tidal's stars plotting in secret and toasting with Champagne. Jay Z and Beyonce, his wife, called Tidal a "movement" that would "change the course of history," drawing complaints that they were appropriating the language of civil rights. And the news conference itself was bombastic but short on details, with Alicia Keys quoting Nietzsche and the artists signing a declaration to "reestablish the value of music." Tidal's fumbled introduction led to weeks of negative news coverage, as bloggers trumpeted its apparent plunge in Apple's app rankings and other artists accused Tidal of being primarily a vehicle to benefit music's elite. "I think it was naive of them to think they could speak for the common man," said Errol Kolosine, an assistant professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University. "Especially in today's economic climate, people aren't ready to feel anything close to sympathy for people who are much better off." This week, a humbled Tidal began to mount its response. In a Twitter spree on Sunday, Jay Z declared that "Tidal is doing just fine" with 770,000 subscribers, but he also acknowledged mistakes. "We are human," he wrote. "We aren't perfect but we are determined." In an interview, Vania Schlogel, Tidal's chief investment officer and a former executive at the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, took responsibility for Tidal's troubled introduction, and said that the story taking shape around the streaming service was inaccurate. "If I gave myself a grade, I would probably give myself a D," Ms. Schlogel said. "It was frustrating because we knew in our hearts what the intent was and that we didn't do a good enough job telling the story for ourselves. It allowed other people to jump in and tell our story for us, which wasn't helpful." For Tidal which Jay Z bought this year for 56 million as part of his acquisition of the Swedish technology firm Aspiro the strategy of using A list celebrity power was a double edged sword. While technology companies usually release new products quietly, letting them work out early kinks away from the spotlight, Tidal capitalized on its artists' fame. That led to a wave of media coverage rare for a small player, but also invited withering scrutiny. Elizabeth Holmes Hones Her Defense in Day 2 of Testimony Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Music and technology executives say that it is far too early to judge Tidal, particularly given the specter looming over all music apps this year: the expected arrival of Apple's new streaming service, perhaps as early as June. While Tidal's unveiling may have been rocky, the company has also taken steps to distinguish itself in a crowded market. It has released exclusive videos by Beyonce, Mr. White and Erykah Badu, who used the platform to present a 50 minute Western. On May 13, Jay Z will perform a "B Sides" concert in an undisclosed New York space, with tickets available to Tidal users who submit playlists. Behind Tidal's celebrity power is a broader concern common among all artists that the digital economy is spinning out of control, resulting in a world where technology interests are all powerful and content is an often cheap and ubiquitous commodity. Yet Tidal's introduction, analysts and executives say, offers lessons in some of the missteps of marketing in the digital era. One is that no matter how famous the pitchman, the product must have a clear relevance for ordinary customers. "The whole announcement seemed geared toward other artists," said Dave Goldberg, the chief executive of SurveyMonkey and former general manager of Yahoo Music. "What is the consumer value proposition? Why should I sign up for Tidal when I can sign up for Spotify?" Part of Tidal's implied answer to those questions was a promise to pay artists better than other digital services do currently a particular issue of debate in the music industry. Last year, for example, Taylor Swift withdrew her music from Spotify because the service would not restrict it to its paid tier. (Ms. Swift is not involved with Tidal.) Tidal offered few details of its economic plan. On Sunday, Jay Z posted on Twitter, "Tidal pays 75% royalty rate to ALL artists, writers and producers." In an interview, Ms. Schlogel said the company would pay 75 percent of its revenue for royalties, slightly more than the 70 percent that is standard among Spotify, iTunes and many other digital outlets. Amy Thomson, a manager of D.J. acts like the duo Axwell and Ingrosso, who this week wrote a detailed open letter to Jay Z about Tidal, said in an interview that the company had simply misjudged consumers' interest in the issue of fair royalties for artists. "It felt like a bit of a lecture," Ms. Thomson said. "If you choose to make such a big point about how artists are paid, you should make sure that the person on the other side of that debate cares." For Ms. Schlogel, the bad publicity for Tidal has been a distraction, but she said that the company would continue to push forward. "I just hope people are willing to at least open their eyes and ears and say, 'Hey, this company has been out for a month and they are already executing on all the things they said they would,' " she said. "Maybe there weren't details of royalty splits and whatnot during the press conference," she added, "but that press conference was meant to state the mission, and then very quickly after that to let our actions speak for themselves." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Employees of the Baksan Neutrino Observatory in southern Russian gather at its entrance to take an electric trolley thousands of feet underground to the facility's laboratories.Credit... Employees of the Baksan Neutrino Observatory in southern Russian gather at its entrance to take an electric trolley thousands of feet underground to the facility's laboratories. Just over the border from Georgia, in the Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia, lies a small town called Neytrino. For the last half century, its main business has been the study of the tiniest insubstantial bit of matter in the universe, an ephemeral fly by night subatomic particle called the neutrino. This is the home of the Baksan Neutrino Observatory, a warren of tunnels and laboratories burrowed two miles into a mountain, sheltered from the outside universe and cosmic rays underneath 12,000 feet of rock. There vats of liquid wait to record the flight of neutrinos from the center of the sun, from exploding stars, atomic reactors and the Big Bang itself, carrying messages through time. Neutrinos are the ghost riders of the cosmos, mostly impervious to the forces, like electromagnetism, with which other denizens of nature interact. Neutrinos cruise unmolested through rocks, the earth and even our bodies. In the words of a famous poem by John Updike, they "insult the stallion in his stall." The most delicate measurements so far indicate that an individual neutrino weighs less than a millionth what an electron weighs. Baksan is not the only place dedicated to their surreal pursuit. Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar. The men and women in these photographs, taken by Maxim Babenko last year, share an underground union with scientists scattered around the world in equally deep places: the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the former Homestake gold mine in Lead, S.D.; the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, beneath the mountain of that name in Italy; the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Ontario, Canada; the Super Kamiokande, deep within Mount Ikeno, Japan; and IceCube, an array of detectors buried in ice at the South Pole. All of them are trying to listen to quantum whispers about the nature of reality. One of Baksan's biggest claims to fame to date was to catch neutrinos emitted by thermonuclear reactions in the center of the sun in nearly 60 tons of liquid gallium. The experiment, called S.A.G.E., for Soviet American Gallium Experiment, proved that scientists actually do know what powers our favorite star, source of our life and light. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the scientists in Baksan have had to fend off both thieves and the Russian government to keep their gallium, an element that goes for some 500 a kilogram. Physicists know that neutrinos come in at least three flavors, known as electron, muon and tau neutrinos, depending on their subatomic origin. To add to the confusion, neutrinos have a kind of quantum superpower: They can molt from one type to another, sort of like a jail escapee changing clothes as he flees. An electron neutrino, say, can emerge from a nuclear reactor in one place and appear in a detector somewhere else as a muon neutrino. This complicates the cosmic accounting of these creatures. Physicists are arguing intensely these days over whether there is evidence for a fourth type, called sterile neutrinos. That is the object of a new experiment called B.E.S.T., for Baksan Experiment on Sterile Transitions, now underway in the rusty Baksan tunnels. Although neutrinos are the lightest and flimsiest and perhaps most fickle particles of the universe, they are also among the most numerous, outnumbering the protons and electrons that make up us and ordinary matter by a billion to one. And so neutrinos contribute about as much mass to the universe as the visible stars. An extra population of neutrinos discovered by scientists in a cave in the Caucasus would affect basic calculations of the expansion of the universe. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Everyone who has helped Justin Bieber's "Love Yourself" video rack up 1.5 billion views knows that Keone and Mari Madrid can dance. And charm. Unlike some performers married to each other, they have plenty of onscreen chemistry his happy go lucky manner rubbing against her more sober guardedness. They exhibit masterly ease in the style they call West Coast urban dance, with the quick precision to register a pop song's every beat. As choreographers, they are clever and inventive but also sweet and sincere in their storytelling. The question raised by "Beyond Babel," which just opened an ambitious 10 week run at the Gym at Judson Church, is whether they can sustain a 100 minute dance drama. The answer, with qualifications, is yes. The story is a "Romeo and Juliet" update. Mr. and Ms. Madrid meet at a dance club and fall in love during one of those everyone else disappears, time stands still moments. He has a cocky, loyal, hot tempered friend (the agile, rascally Mikey Ruiz). Rather than a nurse, she has a devoted sister (Selene Haro). Less easily identifiable is an initially masked character (the forceful yet decent seeming Fabian Tucker), a tortured authority figure who hands out armbands in red and blue. By the end of the first act, the stage is divided by a fence, those with red armbands on one side, those with blue on the other. This vaguely topical obstacle is what keeps these lovers apart. The story is pretty simple, and it needs to be, because it's told exclusively through a series of dance numbers set to borrowed pop songs. The show, conceived and directed by the Madrids along with Josh and Lyndsay Aviner of the production company Hideaway Circus, is a kind of jukebox musical without dialogue. Tracks by dozens of artists mostly recent stuff by the likes of Billie Eilish, Chance the Rapper and Mumford Sons, with a few throwbacks (A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes) to make Gen Xers feel at home are shoehorned into the narrative. Many of the numbers seem stuck between advancing story or character development and delivering a knockout routine that could ace a TV dance competition. The choreography is engaging and extremely detailed; it keeps showing new ways of hitting the beat, irresistibly, while tossing off astonishing moves. But part of the detail is an acting out of lyrics, and the Madrids habitually rely on the words of the songs to put across their meanings, to both cute and clunky effect. The production has the feel of a pop concert, with the ingratiating performers dancing up the aisles and exhorting the audience to respond. (The young audience surrounding me responded enthusiastically.) Yet, despite a textbook trough at the start of the second act, the show mostly flows sometimes in advanced patterns, pausing to enter a character's mind for a number, then rewinding to pick up the tale. Although the story tilts tragic (as in the Shakespeare template, people die), it's least convincing when reaching for darkness. The guns look like toys, and characters and creators alike seem not to know what to do with them. The emotions, as well as the humor and politics, are all adolescent; they would not be out of place on a Disney teen program. But unpretentious innocence is the core of the Madrids' appeal, and that kind of love triumphs here. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Arthur Jafa is back, nearly two years after his indelible New York solo debut at Gavin Brown's enterprise. That show helped introduce the artist, 57, and previously best known as a filmmaker and cinematographer, to the wider art world, and it consisted of one revelatory video made mostly of existing footage. A head spinning seven minute compilation of joy, pain and harsh fact, "Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death" encompassed the complexities of life for black Americans: the history, the horrors, the cultural achievements, the enduring sense of community. This transformative masterpiece was in many ways an uplifting slap in the face of white America. "Air Above Mountains, Unknown Pleasures," Mr. Jafa's second show at Gavin Brown, is altogether different a dense orchestration of artworks, subjects and allusions. (For starters, the show's title refers to influential musicians of different races and aesthetic genres, combining the title of an album by the free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor with one by the post punk band Joy Division.) Spread throughout the gallery's three exhibition floors, 14 works in sculpture, photography and video frequently seem to isolate, one at a time, the various subjects and emotional chords of "Love Is the Message." We also see more of the artist himself, especially in two large staged photographs that show him in imperious half drag and revive his earlier involvement with performance. The exhibition begins with one of these photographs, "La Scala," roughly the size of a full length portrait of a European monarch. We see Mr. Jafa in a long, sumptuous white skirt, a black leather corset and a flowing dark brown weave. It is inspired by the story of Mary Jones, a pickpocket and sex worker in Manhattan in the 1830s who was possibly the first known trans woman in the United States. (Born Peter Sewally, she became known as the Man Monster after being tried for robbery.) But Mr. Jafa's costume and haughty stance also present the artist as a diva unapologetically black, proud and androgynous. The show's centerpiece is a new video, "akingdoncomethas" running 100 minutes and consisting exclusively of footage of black Christian church services from the past few decades. The show's three floors function a bit like chapters. After "La Scala," the first floor concentrates on dark chapters in our history. "Unbalanced Diptych" combines an interwar shame: a wide view of three lynched black men surrounded by a crowd of unabashedly cheerful white faces, with a narrow photograph of about eight young black men, possibly gang members with guns in their hands and black censor bars across their faces, a bizarre detail in this context. On the opposite wall is "Apex," a mural size montage of 841 found images, many of them sinister if not horrifying, that appear rapid fire and accompanied by relentless techno music in an eight minute 2013 film of the same name (though it's not in the show). The final work here is "Geto," a photograph of Whitney Houston just hours before she died, seen through the rain speckled windshield of a car and looking slightly distressed. In comparison, the second floor gallery feels like a protected zone. It's the heart of the show. The only artwork here is the ardent, electrifying "akingdoncomethas," projected onto an enormous wall. The black church was glimpsed only intermittently in "Love Is the Message." Here it is excavated as a foundation of black American life, a source of solace, musical expression, emotional catharsis and moral rejuvenation. Mr. Jafa seems to want to overwhelm us all, whether we have ever been in a black church or not. Then follows a series of mostly spellbinding figures: the growling, bearlike T.D. Jakes ("the greatest amen you can give the word of God is change") and the suave Kenneth C. Ulmer, who differentiates between flesh vs. spirit and fact vs. truth, which is a little unsettling in the days of "Fake News." The singer Le'Andria Johnson appears three times, in different circumstances with a new look her voice ever astounding. One of the longer segments features the Dallas Fort Worth Mass Choir, 200 strong in yellow and blue robes, led by the explosive Kirk Franklin who can evoke both James Brown and the Joel Grey of "Cabaret." In the final gallery, which is on the double height fourth floor, the show circles back toward the sinister in a display of four immense truck tires, over seven feet tall, nearly three feet thick and tautly encased in chains. One hangs from a steel gantry as from a gallows. There are precedents for these ready mades, including in different ways, the work of Cady Noland, the young Jeff Koons and Chakaia Booker. But their scale and density has a beauty and a ferocity that is entirely their own: They are at once tribal, industrial and fetishistically decorated. And they are of a piece with the monumentality and scope of Mr. Jafa's unfolding elucidation of black American life and art. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
IT would be easy to paint the collector car events that take place on the Monterey peninsula the second week of August as the gearhead equivalent of Studio 54 during its heyday of the late 1970s. To be sure, there are plenty of fine looking people, velvet ropes, celebrity sightings and "you're not on the list" moments. And the two top auctions are likely to sell about 100 million of cars over five nights. Yet the average auto enthusiast should not assume that there is nothing for him or her in the Monterey Carmel Pebble Beach area. Most of the events are quite accessible, offering much that is of interest to the vast majority of people who are involved in or interested in the collector car hobby. All of the established events have returned, although some have undergone changes. The Mecum at Monterey auction and the Concours d'Lemons, a parody of the hoity toity events taking place nearby, seem to be on their way to becoming fixtures. Both are back for a second year. The Concours d'Lemons is billed as "the eyesore of Pebble Beach." It is in fact nowhere near Pebble Beach either geographically or in spirit, taking over a municipal park near Salinas. A showcase for cars that even the most careful scrutinizers of the automotive fossil record have assumed to be either extinct or deserving of that status, the Concours entries compete in classes like "Rust Belt American Junk" and "Soul Sucking Japanese Appliance." This year's event includes a swap meet "with all the rusty parts you can eat." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Russell Simmons was not happy with the wood furniture at Tantris, his soon to open yoga studio on Sunset Boulevard here. "This looks like paper, plywood," Mr. Simmons said last week, knocking his knuckles on a dark shelf intended for sports bras. Glen Farraye, the president of Mr. Simmons's Rush Communications, who was showing his boss around, countered: "That ain't Ikea. It's really expensive." Mr. Simmons, who had been dropping by Tantris daily in the run up to its opening on Thursday, had more complaints. The retail area lacked pizazz. The salon was hidden behind drywall, rather than visible through glass, and its ever important blow drying station was too narrow. "The girls will get claustrophobic," said Mr. Simmons, who wore a Yankees cap and prayer beads with an Om pendant. "They'll blow their brains out." If Mr. Simmons's high end standards and off color remarks seem odd for a "center for yogic science," as Tantris aims to be, they also help distinguish his studio in a city with no shortage of places to master sphinx poses and sun salutations. Tantris an 8,000 square foot studio that offers amenities like pH balanced showers, valet parking, a juice bar, a lounge with city views and a boutique that carries Mr. Simmons's new activewear collection is the culmination of the 59 year old mogul's obsession with yoga. "We want people who teach yoga, who want to realize yoga, not people who are yoga teachers like gym teachers," he said. "We want devotional teachers for our studio who are deeply studied." After one session, he was hooked. "I was high after that class," he said. "I was present for a moment, and for that moment, I didn't feel anxiety. I used to think anxiety was a driving force in my career. The idea that I would stay up all night worrying, I used to think that was part of what made me successful. And obviously, nothing is further from the truth." Since then, he said, he has practiced yoga every day, making it a part of his routine as he ran companies including his record label, the clothing company Phat Farm and the online comedy network All Def Digital. Yoga reshaped his life in other ways. He took up meditation, became a vegan and shared his love of his new lifestyle with famous friends. "Teaching Oprah to meditate was a very special experience," he said. "I sent Bob Roth to her," he said, referring to a teacher of Transcendental Meditation. "Meditation Bob, they call him. Ellen DeGeneres, I was on her show, promoting the book 'Super Rich.' I sent Bob Roth to live with her, too." He also became a celebrity among the yoga set, whose adoration was evident in September when Mr. Simmons headlined a conference at Wanderlust, a Hollywood yoga center that offers free classes but also sells 136 healing crystals. Mr. Simmons arrived in a black Range Rover, dressed in his usual uniform of checkered shirt, baseball cap and prayer beads. In fact, Mr. Simmons is a former drug addict. After his talk, over lunch at the members only Soho House West Hollywood, which is in the same building as Tantris, he kicked off his sneakers, twisted himself into a lotus position and recalled doing "every bit of drug" available in Harlem, where he briefly attended college in the 1970s. "I smoked a lot of angel dust," he said. "It's PCP and horse tranquilizer. I would get high, eat animals." After he moved to New York from Los Angeles in the late 1990s, he sought the guidance of Sharon Gannon, a founder of the Jivamukti yoga school, which was in the East Village at the time. "He had taken a class, and then someone from his office called me," Ms. Gannon said the other day. "Russell wanted to arrange for me to give him a private yoga class. I said, 'I don't have time to come to your apartment to give you a private yoga class.' And he goes: 'How much do you want? How much do I have to pay you?' "I said: 'Russell, from what I know about you, you're all about community and the people. If you really mean that, you'll come here to classes and be in the community. That's where you're going to get the most out of this.' He listened. The next day, he was there in the yoga school." Mr. Simmons refers to Ms. Gannon and Jivamukti's other founder, David Life, as his gurus. Their Scripture informed style of teaching (he calls it "devotional yoga") inspired him to open his yoga center in the Los Angeles area, where he said the centuries old practice is treated more like a workout than a way of life. While Mr. Simmons is not licensed to teach yoga himself, he spent months interviewing instructors for Tantris, quizzing them on ancient Indian texts like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali ("the Bible," Mr. Simmons said) and the Bhagavad Gita. "I interviewed 20 teachers yesterday," he said. "I liked six." Once hired, Tantris instructors undergo seminars and further training. "By the time they finish, the teacher will be vegan or not, and if they're not, they won't teach with us," he said. "Some of them won't be able to pass our teacher training." Mr. Simmons also likes his yoga hot; Tantris's hottest classes are held at 98 degrees. This can pose a problem for women concerned about their hair, so he installed a blow dry salon at Tantris, something he's been touting around town in the hopes of drawing style conscious women. (During lunch at Soho House, Mr. Simmons spotted Gary Friedman, the chief executive of Restoration Hardware, and his young companion, Bella Hunter. "Bella, does it mess your hair up if you go to hot yoga?" Mr. Simmons asked. "So much," Ms. Hunter said. "Do you know how painful it is to run to a lunch or a damn meeting after yoga?" "If I had a dry bar, you might go more often?" he asked. "Absolutely," she said.) Other luxe conveniences include pebbled brass sinks, hotel quality bathrobes and eucalyptus scented towels. For those who forget their yoga apparel, the boutique sells 108 leggings adorned with the studio's logo, which looks like an infinity symbol with a notch and an extra loop. The perks come at a price: 28 for a single class and 275 a month for a gold membership. Tantris also reveals itself to be a place of serious yoga worship. Statues of Hindu deities line the halls. A wall outside the second floor studio is covered with photos of South Indian temples and figures from yoga and Hinduism including Swami Satchidananda and Krishna, the flute playing deity. The four colors of the studio match those of the seven chakras, including light blue for vishuddhi (the throat) and yellow for manipura (the solar plexus). Modernity has wormed its way into the space as well. This month's playlist includes songs by Kanye West, who is signed to Mr. Simmons's Def Jam label, and Krishna Das, an American vocalist who performs Hindu devotional chants. The only things Mr. Simmons wanted but was unable to finagle into Tantris were cryotherapy chambers, which expose the body to temperatures at least 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit for a few minutes. Cryotherapy is his latest obsession: He often drives to Cryohealthcare in West Hollywood after yoga. Given his never ending pursuit of a pick me up, it's tempting to wonder whether his mind body fixation was influenced by his drug fueled past. "I would say that people take drugs or meditate for the same result," he said. "I make class every day no matter what. I meditate twice a day no matter what. And lately I've been freezing every day, no matter what." "I love it," he added. "It gets me high." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
NO GOOD NICK Stream on Netflix. The Nick that's up to no good in this new show is a teenage con artist (Siena Agudong) out for revenge. At the outset, she arrives at the doorstep of the Thompson family pretending to be a distant relative. They take her in, oblivious to her true motives. But the closer Nick gets to the children and their parents, Liz (Melissa Joan Hart) and Ed (Sean Astin of "Stranger Things"), the harder it is to go through with her sinister plan. It's difficult to categorize the series: Hart recently described it as a "serialized family mystery dramedy," adding that it's like "'Scandal' for kids." ENCHANTED APRIL (1992) Stream on Hulu; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. In this adaptation of the 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, two married women in 1920s London, Lottie (Josie Lawrence) and Rose (Miranda Richardson), spot a newspaper ad for a medieval Italian castle that's up for rent for a month. They jump at the offer it's the perfect getaway from their dull lives. To defray the cost, they share the sanctuary with two others: Mrs. Fisher (Joan Plowright), an older woman who can't help but name drop all her eminent literary friends, and Caroline (Polly Walker), a rich beauty who's too pretty for her own good. Personalities clash, and gradually the viewer realizes that this film is not simply about an idyllic vacation but about the troubles these women left behind. (Interestingly, the movie takes place in the same gorgeous villa where von Arnim wrote her novel.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The Babadook goes paperless in "Come Play," a thriller in which a spindly creature from another realm torments a child and his family through phone screens and tablets. The monster's name is Larry, and his deal, we learn from a nursery rhyme in a spontaneously manifesting e book, is that he wants a friend. He has selected Oliver (Azhy Robertson, from "Marriage Story"), a boy with autism who does not speak he uses a phone app to vocalize and who, like Larry, is lonely. Oliver is bullied by his peers. His father (John Gallagher Jr.) moves out at the start of the movie. His mother (Gillian Jacobs) struggles with raising a child who has special needs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Many of New York's museum leaders have taken pay cuts to offset some of the financial damage their institutions are suffering from their Covid related closures. But at a time when museums are facing their most severe financial downturn in decades, one that has led some to make painful cuts in staff, critics are questioning whether such reductions go far enough. At the Guggenheim, the director, Richard Armstrong, took a 25 percent cut in pay. But the group A Better Guggenheim made up of current and former staff members in a July 23 Instagram post called on Mr. Armstrong, who earned 1.4 million a year in compensation in 2018, to take a deeper cut "instead of continuing to target the museum's most vulnerable staff" with furloughs. In June, after the Asia Society considered furloughs that were later avoided, staff members complained in a letter to the board that the 50 percent pay cut taken by its president and chief executive, Josette Sheeran, who earned 937,000 in compensation last year, was insufficient. A union leader who represents workers at the New Museum and other institutions said in an interview that it is difficult for museum workers to stomach layoffs when executive salaries still run so high. The pay disparity issue, already simmering in the museum world last year, has bubbled up since the pandemic as critics question whether museums should further curtail executive pay and draw on their endowments to keep their staffs employed. Though museum leaders run large organizations that mirror corporations in their complexity, they are also charities, buoyed by special tax breaks that carry with them additional scrutiny, especially when it comes to compensation. The salaries of museum directors have to be listed on the institution's tax returns, which show that leaders of a half dozen major institutions in New York received annual pay packages last year of 1 million or more, even as low level employees earn as little as 35,000. "The differentials are too large," said James Abruzzo, a nonprofit compensation consultant. "Boards need to take a more valued approach to how their institutions treat their people." Of particular note in a year when the killing of George Floyd has led museums to confront accusations of institutional racism, many of the staff reductions have come from the lower paid ranks where largely white led institutions have traditionally displayed the most diversity in hiring. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, where the work force is 43 percent nonwhite, some 48 percent of the 400 staff members cut since March have been people of color. Even before the pandemic, the issue of pay disparity had been percolating at cultural institutions. Last year, arts workers across the country began to anonymously post their job titles and salaries, alongside those of museum officials, in a spreadsheet meant to call attention to the issue. "We have an inequity in our compensation schemes," said Michael M. Kaiser, chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland, who has run several major arts institutions. "Where there is a disproportionate salary for the leader of large institutions, it arises from the fact that boards are so nervous, because they don't know how to run these institutions themselves." To be sure, good arts executives are considered hard to find, so successful ones tend to be handsomely rewarded. In addition, many trustees are also highly compensated chief executives, for whom the pay level of a museum director may not register as significant compared to their own earnings. Many of the top bosses received compensation packages last year of more than 1 million, as indicated on the most recent tax filings by the museums. Many also took pay reductions this year in response to budget gaps created by the pandemic. In 2018, Lonti Ebers, a philanthropist, quit the board of the New Museum when the director, Lisa Phillips, sought to negotiate a larger compensation package, according to two people she has spoken to about it. Ms. Ebers declined to comment for this article, but the two people she spoke to said she had argued that Ms. Phillips' compensation, a total of 768,000 last year, was high in relation to the museum's operating budget 17 million last year and in relation to the earnings of other employees. But the New Museum said Ms. Phillips' contract had been reviewed in 2018 by an independent compensation consultant. James Keith Brown, the board president, said it "reflects both industry norms and the value she brings to the museum through her experience, talent, and leadership." "Many of us not were not able to survive on our full time salaries," said Dana Kopel, who helped organize the union and was laid off in June. "This is especially egregious when the director is earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year." "The ease with which we unionized," said Ms. Kopel, who had earned 60,000 a year as senior editor and publications coordinator at the museum, "speaks to the frustration." The union recently filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, charging that "layoffs have been discriminatory and retaliatory, targeting vocal union supporters and decimating our bargaining unit." Ms. Phillips, who opposed the unionization, said of the union's recently filed complaint: "We don't believe this charge has merit." Having furloughed 41 staff members, the museum recently announced that it will bring back 23 of them (the rest were laid off). The decision led more than 160 employees in May to sign a letter of complaint to Mr. Lowry, in which they expressed their concern for the terminated workers but also "for MoMA's commitment to its stated mission as an educational institution first and foremost." At the Guggenheim on Tuesday, members of the museum's union wrote on Twitter, "The Guggenheim admin consistently cries about the lack of financial resources, but never shy away from paying bloated salaries to execs and paying lawyers for work their execs should be able to do." The museum responded in a statement that said, "We are committed to building a Guggenheim that can sustainably operate for generations to come." It said that through 2021, pay reductions will range from 5 percent to 25 percent for staff making over 80,000 per year, including the director. Even in cases where further cuts in executive pay would not do much to change a museum's bottom line, the optics of lower paid workers getting cut while top salaries stay high is not helpful for institutions, said one expert. "This is a let them eat cake syndrome," said Daniel L. Kurtz, an attorney specializing in nonprofits. "Given issues of pay equity and the challenging economic times, it seems out of touch." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
The Przewalski's horse is exceptional. It is the only horse species that has never been domesticated, and it also managed to very narrowly escape a brush with extinction. By 1969, agriculture, hunting and a string of severe winters had caused the species to disappear from its last range in Mongolia. Some horses survived in captivity, but in the 1960s, they were quickly being inbred to the point of no return. The horse was saved, however, by a carefully controlled, last ditch captive breeding program in zoos and by conservationists who reintroduced it back to Mongolia in the 1990s. Today, more than 760 Przewalski's horses roam Mongolia. As the horse's story exemplifies, extinctions are not inevitable. Since 1993, conservation efforts have saved up to 48 mammal and bird species from that dark fate, according to a study published on Wednesday in Conservation Letters. Without such interventions, extinction rates for mammals and birds over the past 27 years would be three to four times higher, the authors found. "It's nice to have these positive stories to show that, actually, we can make a difference," said Rike Bolam, a postdoctoral researcher in biodiversity policy at Newcastle University in England, who led the study. "There is so much negative press about biodiversity loss, but the knowledge that we can turn things around, even if it's just for a small number of species, is quite powerful." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Ginni Rometty, the longtime face of IBM and one of the country's most prominent female business leaders, is stepping down as chief executive, the company said on Thursday. Ms. Rometty, who became chief executive in 2012, struggled to achieve growth at the technology giant as it made the transition to new fields like cloud computing and artificial intelligence. She will be replaced in April by Arvind Krishna, who now runs the company's cloud computing business. The timing of the departure of Ms. Rometty, 62, came as a surprise, made after the close of the market on Thursday in a lengthy statement filled with praise from IBM's board. She will remain as executive chairwoman of the board until the end of the year. Ms. Rometty was one of the top women executives in the corporate world, a frequent speaker at conferences, and liked and admired by her chief executive peers. Her assessments of the challenges facing IBM, an old line technology company making a difficult transition, were cleareyed and candid. In an interview in 2014, for example, she said the next couple of years would be a "rocky time" for IBM. But the failure to reach the crossover point when the new businesses like cloud computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence grew faster than older hardware, software and services business frustrated Wall Street. During her tenure, IBM's stock price slipped even as the stock market in general rose sharply. Shares in the company rose more than 4 percent in after hours trading. Yet even Wall Street analysts who were often critical of IBM's performance during her leadership acknowledged that she had inherited key challenges. IBM, they note, was slow to adapt to cloud computing computing tasks done on remote computers, owned by others. The leaders have been Amazon and Microsoft, and Google is pushing hard to capture that corporate business as well. "She came in at a particularly tough time, and that challenge was handed to her," said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research. In August 2019, IBM bought Red Hat, the largest distributor of the popular open source operating system Linux, for 34 billion. At the time, many analysts said that the deal meant that Ms. Rometty would probably stay on until the end of this year. But her two predecessors, Samuel J. Palmisano and Louis V. Gerstner Jr., both retired at 60. The acquisition of Red Hat seems to be going well, analysts said. James Whitehurst, the chief executive of Red Hat, was named the president of IBM on Thursday. Last week, IBM reported a slight increase in revenue. "This positions us for sustained revenue growth in 2020," Ms. Rometty said at the time. Other than Red Hat, IBM acquired 65 companies under Ms. Rometty, mostly small ones. And she sold off companies that accounted for 9 billion in yearly revenue, including semiconductor manufacturing and several lower profit services and software businesses. "It's been her eight year project to reposition the company," said Frank Gens, chief analyst of IDC, a technology research firm. "And after the positive report last quarter, she's declared victory and retired." At the time the announcement was made, Ms. Rometty was addressing IBM's top 300 managers at an annual company leadership conference in downtown Manhattan. She told the assembled executives about the change and shared the stage with Mr. Krishna and Mr. Whitehurst. The three received a lengthy standing ovation, said an IBM manager who attended but was not authorized to speak about the private event. IBM said the transition was the culmination of a lengthy succession process that began more than a year ago, with Ms. Rometty collaborating closely with the rest of the IBM board. Ms. Rometty was a computer science major at Northwestern University, where she was also a sorority president. But much of her nearly 40 years at IBM was spent in sales and building up IBM's big technology services business. In tapping Mr. Krishna and Mr. Whitehurst, the company decided that the time had come for a seasoned technologist and an operating expert. Mr. Krishna, 57, had been senior vice president for IBM's cloud and cognitive software, which includes its Watson artificial intelligence technology. Since he joined IBM in 1990, Mr. Krishna held a series of research and business management roles. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. "Arvind is the right C.E.O. for the next era at IBM.," Ms. Rometty said in the statement on Thursday. Mr. Whitehurst, 52, came to IBM with the acquisition of Red Hat, which he joined in 2007. Under his leadership, Red Hat's revenue increased eightfold and its stock market valuation surged tenfold. Before Red Hat, Mr. Whitehurst was chief operating officer of Delta Air Lines, leading it out of its bankruptcy restructuring. A former partner at the Boston Consulting Group, Mr. Whitehurst earned his undergraduate degree in economics and computer science from Rice University, and he holds an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School. In recent years, IBM has not had a separate president. And given their ages and backgrounds, Mr. Krishna is seen as a shorter term chief executive, with Mr. Whitehurst positioned to take over in a few years and perhaps become a longer term leader, said Mr. Gens and Mr. Sacconaghi. Only 33 women hold chief executive positions at Fortune 500 companies, according to Catalyst, a nonprofit organization that works closely with women chief executives in an effort to improve workplace conditions for women. That number is still only 7 percent of the total, but it has steadily risen over the past two decades. "We will have one less at the end of the year, but we now have a much broader pipeline, and hopefully, that number will continue to grow," said Catalyst's president and chief executive, Lorraine Hariton. Ms. Hariton said that Ms. Rometty's departure should not be viewed as anything larger than a chief executive stepping down. "We should just see it as normal to have succession. Period," she said. IBM is a company that has long provided ample opportunities for women, said Ms. Hariton, who, like Ms. Rometty, was an IBM employee as far back as the early 80s. "This is a very progressive company," she said. "Women leaders have been commonplace." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
SHANGHAI DreamWorks Animation SKG, the Hollywood studio behind hits like "Shrek," "Kung Fu Panda" and "Madagascar," said on Tuesday that it planned to develop a 3.1 billion cultural and entertainment district in Shanghai with a group of Chinese partners. The Dream Center, a riverfront complex to cover six large city blocks, has ambitions to rival the Broadway theater district in New York and the West End in London, with theaters, performance halls, restaurants, shops and an entertainment zone with a "Kung Fu Panda" theme. The Chinese government is encouraging such projects, trying to strengthen the nation's media and cultural industries while seeking to satisfy the tastes of its growing middle class, a tempting market for the American studios. Beijing also wants to rebalance growth by encouraging more consumer spending to go along with exports and investment. The project also aligns with the grand ambitions of Shanghai, the wealthiest and most modern metropolis in China, to further burnish its credentials as a business and cultural center. The entertainment district is expected to be completed in 2016, at the same time that a 4.4 billion Disneyland theme park is set to open in Shanghai. The district will also house Oriental DreamWorks, a new 350 million joint venture animation studio that DreamWorks Animation has formed with its Chinese partners. The Hollywood studio holds a 45 percent stake in the company. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former Disney studio chief who is now chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, made the announcement at a news conference Tuesday, promising to create a "cultural landmark" along the Huangpu River. "This doesn't exist anywhere else in the world," he said. DreamWorks Animation formed Oriental DreamWorks last February with China Media Capital, the Shanghai Media Group and Shanghai Alliance, three entities backed by the city government. Li Ruigang, the former head of the Shanghai Media Group and China Media Capital, has been named chief of the new studio, which will soon co produce "Kung Fu Panda 3" in Shanghai. It will also produce animated films solely for China. The Dream Center was an outgrowth of that animation deal, Mr. Katzenberg said Tuesday, and came after discussions with the Shanghai partners and the local government in the city's Xuhui district. The entertainment zone will house three Broadway style theaters, the world's largest Imax theater and a series of office buildings and smaller performance halls. The Shanghai government is seeking to recruit some of the world's leading architects to work on the buildings. 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. At the news conference, the partners said they had not yet worked out financing. But in an interview later, Mr. Katzenberg said he had no reason for concern because the government and Chinese partners were enthusiastic and eager to build. That was clear at the reception. Shanghai's mayor, Han Zheng, attended the news conference, along with Yu Zhengsheng, the Communist Party chief for Shanghai and a member of the country's ruling Politburo. The project is in many ways another example of Shanghai's ambitions. The city attracted 80 million visitors when it was host of the World Expo in 2010, and has spent billions of dollars on infrastructure, especially transit. In an interview, Mr. Katzenberg said the DreamWorks projects would strengthen the studio's position in China, giving it better access to a market in which Hollywood has had limited success because of government limits on foreign films. China took in 2 billion in box office ticket sales last year, and recently shot past Japan to become the world's second largest market in box office receipts, behind the United States. Asked whether the joint venture in China could lead to intellectual property theft, Mr. Katzenberg said "not really." He added: "In terms of what we do, anyone and everyone can have a paintbrush. But that doesn't mean they can be a painter. That requires great storytelling." A broader strategy shift is under way at DreamWorks Animation. Mr. Katzenberg tried to sell the company in recent years but could not find a buyer willing to pay what he thought it was worth, in part because of global financial turmoil. He told analysts in a conference call on July 31 that he was now "committed to growth and diversification." In that call, Mr. Katzenberg repeated his intention to start a DreamWorks Animation television channel and highlighted a recent deal to open an indoor theme park as part of a retail mall in the New Jersey Meadowlands, near New York City. Mr. Katzenberg also spent 155 million in late July to acquire Classic Media, whose holdings include certain rights to characters like Casper the Friendly Ghost and the Lone Ranger. For the most recent quarter, DreamWorks Animation reported a slim profit of 12.8 million, a 63 percent plunge from a year earlier; revenue dropped 25 percent, to 162.8 million. Those numbers included higher than normal marketing expenses of 175 million for "Madagascar: Europe's Most Wanted" and the strong overseas performance a year ago of "Kung Fu Panda 2." It is exactly those kinds of whipsawing financial results that Mr. Katzenberg is trying to steady by diversifying in general, and in his Chinese efforts in particular. Under his studio's model, every movie release must be a huge hit, a risky proposition, especially now that the "Shrek" franchise is inactive. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
Xavier Perez as the xenomorph in the North Bergen High School drama club production of "Alien: The Play." There are those perennial stage works that are perfectly suited to be performed in high schools across the country every year: say, "Our Town," "The Crucible," "Annie" or "The Wizard of Oz." And now, to this canon, you might add "Alien." A New Jersey high school has found itself the unexpected recipient of online acclaim and viral attention for its recent stage production of "Alien," the 1979 science fiction thriller. "Alien: The Play," presented last weekend by the drama club of North Bergen High School, starred a cast of eight students in the film roles originally played by Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt and Ian Holm. Whereas the movie had a budget in the range of about 10 million, "Alien: The Play" had costumes, props and set designs made mostly from donated and recycled materials. "Alien: The Play" is the brainchild of Perfecto Cuervo, an English teacher at the school and the moderator of its drama club, and Steven Defendini, an art teacher there. Last year, the two teachers worked together on a student staging of "Night of the Living Dead," the George Romero zombie movie. This past summer, they started to plan a follow up. As Mr. Cuervo recalled their conversation, he said, "Do you think we can do 'Alien' as a play?" It seemed to require few sets, he said: "We have a spaceship. We have a planet. It could be handled." Mr. Defendini said he answered, "I don't know how to do that. I don't know if we can do that. But we're going to do that." The original "Alien" was directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon. Released by 20th Century Fox, it is a claustrophobic horror film about the crew of a small outer space vessel that encounters an unwelcome, nonhuman stowaway that has come to be known as the xenomorph. (Spoiler alert: The story doesn't end well for most of them.) The film was a substantial hit, critically and commercially, that burrowed itself deep in the cultural consciousness and started a decades long film franchise. Mr. Cuervo, who directed the students' version, said he spent about a month and a half adapting it from the film. Casting took place in November; the crucial role of Ripley (the Sigourney Weaver character) went to Gabriella Delacruz, a senior at the school. Ms. Delacruz, who had been in the school's "Night of the Living Dead," said that she was proud to carry on the feminist tradition that Ripley represents. "She's a female character who's really portrayed as the hero at the end," she said. "She isn't the damsel in distress. She got to be a badass, if I'm allowed to say that." Rehearsals began in December, while Mr. Defendini, the play's art director, oversaw the creation of exotic terrains and spaceship interiors, trying as best as possible to reproduce the aesthetic of the film. "Some of the walls are covered in egg crates, not because it was the cheapest solution but because it was the most authentic," Mr. Defendini said. Using a variety of materials, some of which were donated by Tom Carroll Scenery, a stage production and design shop in Jersey City, the teachers estimated the total cost of the play was under 3,500. The performances relied on an additional six student crew members, plus another five to ten who helped operate sound boards and lights and supply other special effects. "We had four kids on laptops, doing sound effects, ambient noises and alien noises," Mr. Cuervo said. "We used a lot of the band kids, because they know how to play instruments and they were really good with the cues." Though the original "Alien" movie is about to turn 40 years old, Mr. Defendini said its characters still resonated with his teenage students, who know its monsters from video games, pop cultural lore and recent sequels like "Alien: Covenant." "We had kids in the crew who knew the specific genesis and species of the xenomorph," he said. "What gender it is, what planet it's from. Everything you could know." Asked if the drama club had sought official permission to present the play, Mr. Cuervo said, "Our main goal was really just to put on a great play for the kids, just get them out, stage front." "Alien: The Play" has drawn widespread praise on social media; an official promotional Twitter account for the "Alien" franchise said, "We are impressed! 40 years and still going strong ..." and "Bravo!" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Vivienne Westwood's store in Manhattan opened in December, one month after she and her son, Joseph Corre, set fire to 5 million British pounds worth of punk memorabilia on a barge on the Thames to protest the commercialism of the movement. I was staring at the golden bovine hooves that foot the clothing racks in the new Vivienne Westwood store. "They're deadly, people are tripping," a saleswoman told me in the same helpful tone as, "I'll put that in a dressing room." Out of earshot of the warning, my partner, Carrie, walked over to me, started to flip through the rack and promptly tripped. In the 1970s, Dame Vivienne Westwood defined the aesthetic of the punk movement in London. She dressed the Sex Pistols, then supermodels, translating the rigor and shock value of punk music into reappropriated, dynastic tartan with safety pins, tulle and slogans. Ms. Westwood is now 75, a vocal environmental and political activist whose collections are always manifestoes and calls to rally. The most recent, for fall 2017 shown in London, implored her audience to convert to green energy, refocus attention on the environment and buy less by sharing clothes. Whether her clothes are eco friendly depends on your yardstick, but this was her first show in London since 1982, a small step toward localizing her production and presentation. The Manhattan store opened in December, two months after the opening of her first stand alone store in Paris and one month after she and her son, Joseph Corre, set fire to 5 million British pounds worth of punk memorabilia on a barge on the Thames to protest the commercialism of the movement. Via a megaphone, she told the crowd: "I never knew what to say before, ever since punk. We never had a strategy then, that's why we never got anywhere." Brands are not activist. A brand cannot empathize, a brand does not yearn, a brand does not hurt. Brands and people are not the same. Nothing better demonstrates this than the fact that Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, when delivering her 12 point plan for European Union separation on Jan. 17, wore a tartan Vivienne Westwood suit. Though I give credit to Ms. Westwood for making clothes with urgent messages, the various shirts, blazer and dresses with political slogans in the store "Loyalty 2 Gaia," 595; "Politicians R Criminals," 180; "We are not disposable," 80 are not necessarily bought in response to anger or oppression. She would probably agree: The most moving messages are not for sale, and the most impressing outfits are often put together when the wearer does not yet have words for what he is feeling. That doesn't mean the other clothes in the store are void of potential emotion. Hardly. At Vivienne Westwood, there were pieces cut thoughtfully enough to confirm that we have form even when we feel invisible, like a snugly tied waistcoat in woven cotton ( 860). A checkered blazer's firm shoulders were mantles, pant legs cut in a banana shape (I bought a pair of banana cropped jeans with blue embroidery for 140), and both lent the appearance of a strong stance even if you were slouching, weak kneed, underneath. Carefully chosen fabric, as in gray crepe de Chine pants that droop like a deflated lung ( 1,135), might let you relax enough to release a scream from your rib cage. Some things just made you laugh (a silver phallus keychain, 325). The view from the store's entryway was an illusion. It looked like a tiny shop, tight, with a back room of clothes peeking out from around the register. After looking at pins that said "Climate" and "Revolution" in all capital letters, I noticed the open stairs, with light bursting through that gave me Icarus level vertigo, leading to the rest of the 15,000 square foot space. The store is, for now, visited mostly by superfans. (I touched the soft sleeve of a jacket the owner of Trash and Vaudeville has on hold.) Between two chairs in the women's dressing area was a hand assembled photo book of archival dresses, set out like a family album. Ms. Westwood's fall 2017 runway show included men's wear and woman's wear, swapped and shared. In the store, the spaces for trying them on are on separate floors (and clothes meant to be shared have a unisex label, along with the name of her husband, Andreas Kronthaler, now creative director of the label). Downstairs, in men's, Carrie, my friend Durga and I took turns trying on a calf hair jacket ( 4,460). The pattern was dark clouds gathering, the cut was square and stark. I skipped around the store we were alone apart from the saleswoman and, with some forget it all glee, yipped: "This! Is! Special!" I do not know if being excited like this meant I had detached, forgotten the earth or had engaged, remembering my humanity. On the hoofed racks, matching print suit pieces (a Westwood hallmark) aren't hung as sets. There are multiple pieces that could, in theory, be worn with those hung in between. The message seems to be: Step back, more goes well together than we assumed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Last fall, not long after she was named the first editor of Vogue Arabia, a new publication from Conde Nast and the Dubai media company Nervora, Princess Deena Aljuhani Abdulaziz did not offer up the usual it's an honor just to be here quotations typical of newly hired people at glossy publications. "This Vogue is very overdue," the Saudi princess told The New York Times at Paris Fashion Week. "The Arabs deserve their Vogue, and they've deserved it for a long, long time." "The Vogue Arabia woman is one who celebrates her tradition but also considers herself a highly educated global citizen," she added. "Don't forget that we understand luxury almost better than anyone else on earth. Middle Eastern women have been serious couture clients since the late 1960s. We've been around long before the Russians and the Chinese ever came into the picture." Now, after guiding two published print issues, Ms. Aljuhani Abdulaziz is out, swiftly replaced by a Conde Nast veteran, Manuel Arnaut, who started at the company in 2004 as a writer and editor at Vogue Portugal and GQ Portugal and who is also the current editor in chief of Architectural Digest Middle East. First reported by The Business of Fashion, the end of Ms. Aljuhani Abdulaziz' tenure came on Thursday. Conde Nast and Nervora announced the appointment of Mr. Arnaut on Friday. He will begin his work at Vogue Arabia on May 7. Ms. Aljuhani Abdulaziz was appointed to lead Conde Nast's 22nd international edition of Vogue in July. A relative newcomer to media, her concrete experience in the fashion industry included the founding of D'NA, a boutique in Riyadh. With the announcement on Friday, Vogue Arabia's publishers seemed to signal a preference for a leader steeped in Conde Nast culture over one with star power and a deep knowledge of what it means to be a woman in the Middle East. "Manuel Arnaut brings over a decade of Conde Nast editorial experience combined with a strong track record of regional success," Shashi Menon, the chief executive of Nervora, said in a statement. Last fall, Ms. Aljuhani Abdulaziz made clear her mission to reframe the way the world sees women in the Middle East. "Many people don't really know exactly what Arabia is, and there are major misunderstandings around modest dressing, too," she said. "I have a responsibility to tackle those issues, through a fashion lens, of course." One of her Instagram posts earlier this week suggested she felt thwarted in her attempt to carry out those goals. It is a copy of a photograph by Irving Penn called "Veiled Mystery of Morocco" that ran in Vogue decades ago, depicting two women concealed by what appear to be burlap sacks. "There is us, then there is how we are perceived somethingsneverchange penn 1972," she wrote in her caption. Beneath the image, commenters expressed their appreciation. "You are a true style icon in the Arab world, and we have always looked up to you, as Saudis as well as the rest of the fashion world, and you made voguearabia happen! So it's definitely their loss," noorahefzi wrote in one comment. A statement given to The Business of Fashion by Ms. Aljuhani Abdulaziz reinforced the insinuations of her Instagram post. "I refused to compromise when I felt the publisher's approach conflicted with the values which underpin our readers and the role of the editor in chief in meeting those values in a truly authentic way," she said. Mr. Arnaut, based in Dubai, is from Portugal and is the third man to assume a top international role at Conde Nast this year. Emanuele Farneti was hired to replace the late Franca Sozzani at the helm of Vogue Italia in January, and Edward Enninful was appointed to lead British Vogue beginning in August, following the departure of Alexandra Shulman. For now details of the conflict between Ms. Aljuhani Abdulaziz and Vogue Arabia's publishers remain a mystery. But in an Instagram post on Wednesday, she seemed to signal her unwillingness to go quietly, adding an image of Al Pacino in the movie "Scarface." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The stars are still in reach for astronomers who want to build a 1.4 billion telescope on top of Hawaii's Mauna Kea. A year and a half after the Hawaiian Supreme Court revoked the telescope's building permit, saying that the state Board of Land and Natural Resources had cut corners in the application process, a judge recommended on Wednesday that the board issue a new permit. The telescope's opponents, a coalition of native Hawaiians and environmentalists, say that the proliferation of observatories on Mauna Kea has despoiled a sacred mountain and interfered with native Hawaiian cultural practices that are protected by state law. The judge's recommendation included the condition that the telescope's workers and astronomers undergo "mandatory cultural and natural resources training." The telescope's backers, a consortium that includes the University of California, California Institute of Technology, India, China, Japan and Canada, called the decision an important milestone, but cautioned that it was only one in a series of bureaucratic and political hurdles to overcome. The Thirty Meter Telescope, as it is known, would be the largest telescope in the Northern Hemisphere, with a primary light gathering mirror 30 meters, or some 100 feet, in diameter. Astronomers say it would be able to study planets around other stars and peer into the black hole hearts of distant galaxies with a clarity exceeding that of the Hubble Space Telescope. It is one of three such behemoth telescopes under development worldwide. But the other two, the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, are being built in Chile and thus will not be able to survey some parts of the universe only visible in the Northern sky. Mauna Kea, Hawaii's tallest mountain, has long been considered the best observatory site in the Northern Hemisphere and is already home to a passel of large telescopes. It is also a sacred place in Hawaiian culture and religion. A coalition of cultural activists and environmentalists has opposed the Thirty Meter project, citing, among other things, an environmental impact statement that concluded that 30 years of astronomy had had "an adverse effect" on nature and native culture on the mountain. At 18 stories high, the new telescope would be the biggest building on the Big Island, an industrial scale installation, opponents say, that would violate the rules for the mountain, which is a special conservation district. In 2015, a groundbreaking for the telescope project was broken up by protesters, who then blockaded the road up the mountain, preventing equipment and construction workers from passing. In December of that year, the Hawaiian Supreme Court concluded that the state board had not followed due process when it approved a building permit before holding what is known as a contested case hearing where opponents could have their say. The decision was made by retired Judge Riki May Amano, who was appointed by the land board to rehear the case. It followed 44 days of testimony by 71 witnesses over six months in a hotel room in Hilo, Hawaii. But the controversy is hardly over. Next the entire Board of Land and Natural Resources will hear arguments and decide whether to accept Judge Amano's decision. Whichever side wins, the decision will be immediately appealed to the Hawaiian Supreme Court. Even if the telescope wins in the Supreme Court, it is unclear whether the "guardians of the mountain," as they called themselves, will relent and let trucks proceed up Mauna Kea. Gov. David Ige has professed his support for the Thirty Meter Telescope, but he was criticized two years ago for allowing protesters to control the mountain. Whatever the land board's decision, Governor Ige said in a statement, "I support the coexistence of astronomy and culture on Mauna Kea along with better management of the mountain." In an interview last year, Edward Stone, a Caltech professor who is executive director of the Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory, or TIO, as it is officially known, set April 2018 as the deadline for construction to begin. If the telescope cannot be built on Mauna Kea, he said, it will be built in the Canary Islands. In a statement, Dr. Stone said, "TMT welcomes the recommendation that a state permit be issued, and we respectfully look forward to the next steps." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
During a blip in time in the late Jurassic, a dinosaur that weighed no more than a chinchilla flung itself from tree to tree, spread its wings and tried to soar. In theory, it sounds beautiful an early attempt at flight before birds figured out the blueprint. In practice, it was chaotic. The dinosaur, Yi qi, only barely managed to glide, stretching out and shimmying its skin flap, downy feathered wings in a valiant attempt at flying. "It was rocketing from tree to tree, desperately trying not to slam into something," said Alex Dececchi, a paleontologist at Mount Marty University in South Dakota. "It wouldn't be something pleasant." Unsurprisingly, Yi qi is not an ancestor of modern birds. It went extinct after just a few million years, presumably doomed by its sheer lack of competency in the air. In a study published Thursday in the journal iScience, Dr. Dececchi and other researchers analyzed how Yi qi and the dinosaur Ambopteryx could have flown. Both animals were scansoriopterygids, a little known group of small dinosaurs. The researchers did not expect the two to be great fliers, but their results painted a picture of bumbling creatures that weren't truly at home on the ground, among the trees or in the sky. Found by a farmer in northeastern China, Yi qi was first described in 2015 by paleontologists Xing Xu, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Xiaoting Zheng, of Linyi University. When Dr. Dececchi first learned about the dinosaur's bizarre anatomy, he was taken aback. "I said words that cannot be put into print," he said. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Cooke unearths old beliefs and debunks modern day myths with humor and panache. Pandas, we learn, are not bumbling fluff balls too busy being cute to breed in captivity. Elaborate matchmaking efforts at zoos say more about us and our obsessive meddling than the bears, which are known to mate more than 40 times in a single afternoon in the wild. And bats popularly believed to be blind, bloodsucking, disease bearing rats with wings are more "Buddha than Beelzebub." They see perfectly well, are very rarely rabid and share more DNA with us than they do with rodents, and only three species are vampiric. They are also among the few animals to engage in oral sex, a fact Cooke presents as one of their "porn star credentials." The book is big on bawdy humor, and while it's not that weird mating habits and giant genitalia aren't funny, Cooke describes the "ins and outs" of animal sex with a glee normally found among middle schoolers. (Gonads inspire some of the most blindingly painful puns and rhymes; a debate over beaver testicles becomes the "fluster over the beaver's cluster.") Cooke's appetite for the salacious sometimes overwhelms her sensitivity, as it does in her account of Maurice K. Temerlin, an American psychology professor who reared a chimpanzee named Lucy in his suburban home. At first Lucy is a model "daughter" who uses silverware and raises a kitten. Temerlin, disturbingly, then begins to fix her cocktails. Soon Lucy is fixing herself cocktails. When she takes to masturbating with the vacuum cleaner, Temerlin responds by buying her Playgirl and even participating in one of these sessions to "see what would happen." (Nothing, mercifully.) When Lucy eventually grows too unruly, Temerlin offloads her in Gambia, where she is flayed and butchered by poachers. A story like this is worth analyzing for what it might reveal about anthropomorphism at the edge. Cooke, however, plays it for laughs. The fraught history of humans and animals has lately been the focus of expanding scholarship, insightful meditations such as John Berger's influential essay "Why Look at Animals?" and environmentalist critiques. Cooke, however, attempts neither to probe its complexities nor to sound apocalyptic alarms (though she does, dutifully, note the impact of human carelessness and mass consumption on other species). She is not plumbing the depths; she is riding the thermals. Her pace is quick, her touch is light, and through her wealth of research we can reach new heights of wonder. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Up, up and up. That is the answer to the question I have been posing lately: Where is the luxury condominium market headed? At least, that has been the case in the last several months, where multimillion dollar apartments have been snatched up hours after they hit the market and buyers have shelled out 1 million over the asking price to secure a winning bid. At 151 East 78th Street, for example, contracts were sent out to buyers within 24 hours of the listings hitting the market in March, and a month after sales began, 11 of the 14 apartments were in contract at prices starting at 10 million. A few blocks to the north, more than half the units at 60 East 86th Street were sold in the eight weeks after sales opened, also in March, including a 20 million penthouse. "I've never seen anything like it," said John Gomes, a broker with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. He has sold 21 of the 25 units at 215 Sullivan, a new development in Greenwich Village, the majority from a desk at his office in Chelsea. "The model apartment wasn't finished, and we were able to sell more than half the units just off of floor plans and finishing boards." Mr. Gomes and his partner, Fredrik Eklund, have sold 485 million worth of real estate so far this year, as much as they sold in all of 2013, he said. Frances Katzen, a managing director at Douglas Elliman, recently sold a listing to a buyer based in Los Angeles who paid 2.5 million for a loft on East 28th Street that he never saw. The buyer's broker toured the apartment with his client on FaceTime via his iPhone. "It was crazy the other brokers were getting upset because they are trying to show their clients around while this guy was giving a tour on speakerphone," Ms. Katzen said. Michele Kleier, the president of the brokerage firm Kleier Residential, said she and others "are playing catch up," adding, "I have more buyers than exclusives." At 151 East 78th Street, for example, Ms. Kleier had a buyer who had looked at a unit when sales started but was heading to Aspen, Colo., and wanted to think it over before making a bid. "By the time we called two days later, the unit was gone," she said. "They offered us another option, but the kitchen didn't have a window, so my buyer wanted to think that over, and by the time she decided, that, too, was gone." The luxury market has been strong for some time, but it exploded in the first quarter, with prices jumping 45 percent to an average of 7.4 million from 5.1 million, according to data from the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. That is the largest year over year increase in six years. Driving the market has been a staggering lack of inventory. Just 174 new condominium units came to market in Manhattan in the first quarter, a 73 percent drop from the first quarter of 2013, when there were 640 new units, according to data from the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group. In all of 2013, there were about 2,500 new condominiums, a nearly 70 percent decrease from the roughly 8,000 new units at the height of the last real estate cycle in 2007. And what has been coming on the market has been in boutique buildings with fewer than 50 apartments. In the first quarter, the 174 new units were spread across just 11 buildings, all of them with 35 or fewer apartments. In fact, since 2007, the average size of new buildings has shrunk by more than half, with an average of 38 units per building this year, compared to 80 units in 2007, according to data from Corcoran Sunshine. While there may be fewer and smaller buildings, the average apartment size in new condo developments has grown by around 23 percent. Perhaps reflecting the rising number of families choosing to stay in New York, the average size apartment now reaches 1,560 square feet, compared with 1,265 square feet in 2007, Corcoran Sunshine data show. "The velocity of sales has been historic," said Kelly Kennedy Mack, the president of Corcoran Sunshine. "That is because so few properties were introduced to the market over the last couple of years, so there is a lot of pent up demand." There are several reasons for the flood of boutique buildings, including the fact that after the downturn, financing was tight and many developers couldn't secure large enough loans to fund a big development. "It is also very difficult to find sites large enough to build big projects they almost don't exist," said Miki Naftali, the chairman and chief executive of the Naftali Group, a development company. He added that boutique buildings are a favorite with developers because "they are less risky" it is easier and faster to sell out a 25 unit building than one with 200 units. While new condo developments often receive attention because of their high profile buyers, lofty price tags and brand name architects, the resale market for trophy mansions has also been surging. None Testing the Limits: Only three of New York's 25 tallest residential buildings have completed safety tasks required by the city. The Downside to Life in a Supertall: 432 Park faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high rises may share its fate. Luxury Developers' Loophole: Soaring towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city's labyrinthine zoning laws. An Evolving Skyline: The high rise building boom has transformed the city's skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come. Hidden Feats: Our critic looks at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks. "It is a very, very strong market," said Paula Del Nunzio, a broker at Brown Harris Stevens who specializes in ultraluxury properties. She recently had a listing for a home in the low 20 million range, and in the first two days it was listed, she had shown it to 15 potential buyers. Two offered the full asking price, and the eventual winning bidder paid 1 million over asking. "The key is to have something that is unique, and then you can put a very strong price on it," Ms. Del Nunzio said. But while sales of new developments and trophy properties are continuing apace, there is one sector that has "hit a wall," as one broker phrased it. Since April, the market for high end co ops and older condominiums priced from 8 million to 15 million has slowed, some brokers said. "The week around Passover and Easter, suddenly things went quiet," said Kirk Henckels, the director of private brokerage at Stribling Associates. "The only explanation that I can come up with was that there had been a lot of pent up energy, and it sated itself." Frederick W. Peters, the president of Warburg Realty, has seen a similar pause. "It is critically important to distinguish between the new development marketplace and every other marketplace, because they are not behaving the same way," he said. Still, so much in the market is anecdotal, with one broker reporting a far different experience from that of her colleagues. Ms. Kleier, for example, recently listed a co op on Park Avenue in the mid 9 million range. "I put it on the market for 25 percent more than what the last apartment in the building sold for," she said. "Ninety three people came to the open house and we sold it at ask the first day." But even developers who are churning out new condominium buildings don't believe prices will continue to rise at the same frenzied pace. "If you look at the escalation of sales prices in the last year to year and a half, I don't believe we will see that same escalation over the next one to two years," said Mr. Naftali, who has a new condominium project at 210 West 77th Street that is expected to come to market later this summer. "Prices won't go down, but a year from now they won't be up another 25 percent," he said. "When I underwrite a new deal these days, I don't assume a major escalation in price." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Not even a major February snowstorm kept Dragan and Dorota Dejkanovic and their three children, ages 8, 4 and 5 months, from moving into the five bedroom country Cape on just over half an acre in West Islip, a pretty hamlet on the Great South Bay in Suffolk County. Coming from a two bedroom apartment in Forest Hills, the Dejkanovics spent weekends over several months exploring Long Island's south shore for a place with a good commute to call home. "The houses were flying off the market" in West Islip, Ms. Dejkanovic said. With the birth of their third child imminent, they found what they wanted in the Willetts Point neighborhood south of Montauk Highway, where the lots are ample and the homes set back with backyards large enough for children to romp. A private sandy beach is a quick stroll away. "We fell in love with this area," said Ms. Dejkanovic, who like her husband is an interior designer. "The houses have character." The homes across the street back a canal, but should the family someday own a boat, their neighborhood association, like most in the area, provides a marina with docking rights. "When you are in Queens, you take a trip to go to the beach," Ms. Dejkanovic said. "We couldn't be happier." Value also was part of the equation. At 495,000, the eight room house was "in pretty good condition," and a suitable house for a family, with an almost open floor plan and a skylit rear extension. With prices ranging from 249,000 to 3.9 million, West Islip is a magnet for families starting out, including many who grew up locally and others seeking a better deal than in otherwise comparable south shore communities in Nassau County. "West Islip is a homegrown community; everyone knows each other," said Tammy Ramsay, a sales associate with Ramsay Realty. "People buy here because they were born here" and renovate or trade up rather than leave. "People invest in this community." Four years ago, with his four children out of the nest, David Winter, 61, split his one acre property in the Sequams Colony section, selling the half with his old home, Normandy style Tudor. On the other half, he built himself and his wife a smaller Craftsman style home with the master bedroom on the first level. "We built it to stay," Mr. Winter said. With their grown children settled nearby, he and his wife enjoy the beaches, ocean, boating, fishing, family activities and holiday parties at the private Babylon Yacht Club. They can walk to Roots Gourmand Bistro, a restaurant on Montauk Highway, and attend "big rivalry" lacrosse and football games such as West Islip High School versus East Islip. About 45 miles east of New York City, West Islip is a long and narrow 6.8 square mile community of 28,335 in the town of Islip. Deer Park and Brentwood are north; Brightwaters and Bay Shore are east. Across the Great South Bay to the south is Fire Island. West Islip is separated from its westerly neighbor, Babylon village, by Sampawams Creek, Hawley's Lake, Deer Lake and Swan Creek. Sunrise Highway, with large furniture stores, marine supply shops and a large "auto mall," cuts an east to west swath through the northern end of the community. To the south, Montauk Highway, Route 27A, is spotted with delicatessens, a florist, a bait shop, doctors' offices, a CVS and Good Samaritan Hospital. Udall Road, a north south route, has a few strip malls. Housing stock includes smaller ranches, Cape Cods, split levels and larger colonials on one acre lots in the prestigious Oak Neck Estates section. Waterfront lots range from a quarter to a half acre. Most north south streets below Montauk Highway end at the Great South Bay and are backed by canals and creeks. West Islip has "a tremendous amount of waterfront property," said Joanne Schloen, an associate broker with Coach Realtors. With 145 homes on the market, West Islip is beginning to bounce back from "a double whammy," hit first by the economic downturn, and then, just as it was starting to recover, by Hurricane Sandy, said James A. Netter, the broker owner of Netter Real Estate. The high end waterfront was slammed the hardest: Some homes were destroyed and others lost 20 percent of their value. Though few homes sold last year, this spring the market "is as good as it's been in a long time," with "multiple offers on homes from 300,000 to 2 million to 2.5 million," Mr. Netter said. Prices are "back to 2003 2004 values" but the market "has stabilized and stabilized strong right now. It's a new beginning." "The farther south you go, the closer to the water you get, the higher the price," Ms. Schloen added, with the trade up middle of the market running from 650,000 to 800,000. Based on Multiple Listing Service data, the average price from January through April of this year was similar to last year's at about 350,000, with time on the market averaging 81 days. In 2008, the average price was around 450,000. Thirty nine homes have sold since the start of the year. The volunteer 50 member West Islip Symphony Orchestra presents four concerts a year. In addition to the nearby Robert Moses State Park, West Islip Marina Park includes baseball fields and a sandy beach, and provides docking for Islip town residents. There are 4,816 students enrolled in the West Islip Public Schools. West Islip High School,for grades 9 to 12, is known for its international baccalaureate world school program, as well as its championship lacrosse team. Students in kindergarten through Grade 5 attend classes at Bayview, Manetuck, Oquenock or Paul J. Bellew elementary schools. Grades 6 to 8 are held at the Beach Street middle school. The latest SAT scores were 494 in critical reading, 511 in math and 488 in writing, compared to New York State scores of 485, 501 and 477 during the same period. St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School, a Catholic school, has 1,700 students in Grades 9 to 12. Tuition is 8,750 per year. The Bridges Academy, a secular private school that opened in September 2013, has 162 students in preschool through Grade 8. Tuition ranges from about 8,200 for the lower school to 8,990 for Grades 5 to 8. The 7:21 a.m. Long Island Rail Road train from the nearby Babylon station to Penn Station takes an hour and two minutes. A peak ticket costs 14.75 one way; monthly passes are 325. By car, the drive to Midtown takes about an hour and five minutes. Once a stagecoach stop, later a bed and breakfast, and now a shuttered restaurant and catering hall, LaGrange Inn on Montauk Highway dates to the 1750s, according to Joseph De Carlo, the president of the West Islip Association, a community group. CVS acquired the lease to the site, plans to restore the original building to what it looked like in the mid 1800s and move it across the property to face Higbie Lane. The West Islip Association will use the first floor as a museum. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Core Media Group, the company behind the television shows "American Idol" and "So You Think You Can Dance," filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday. Core, based in West Hollywood, Calif., estimated its liabilities at 512 million and assets at 73 million, according to court records. "American Idol" concluded its 14 year run last month, with its final show drawing 13.3 million viewers. At its height 10 years ago, it routinely attracted 30 million viewers per episode. However, as the show's ratings began to wane, so did its financial fortunes. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
AUDIOFEMME RELAUNCH PARTY at Rosewood Theater (Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m.). Since 2012, the Brooklyn based blog Audiofemme has been a stronghold for female and nonbinary music writers. To celebrate the website's upcoming reboot, the platform's proprietors booked a stacked musical lineup of women operating in various corners of the pop universe. Purple Pilgrims, a sister duo from New Zealand, make folksy dream pop, and Mothica, a Brooklynite, dabbles in gloomy synth pop. Topping the bill is Zola Jesus, the experimental electro pop project of the onetime opera singer Nika Roza Danilova. In performances, her haunting stage presence is as intense as her music, which, on her most recent album, grapples with topics like suicide and depression. eventbrite.com BUCK MEEK AND THE BROTHER BROTHERS at the Sultan Room (Nov. 16, 9 p.m.). In his best known work with the wildly popular indie rock outfit Big Thief, Meek yields vocal duties and, generally, the spotlight to his bandmate Adrianne Lenker. But Meek, a singer, songwriter and guitarist, is a convincing frontman in his own right, as revealed by his self titled solo debut. Released last year, the collection is ambling and good spirited, its tone set by Meek's freewheeling guitar playing and prominent Texas twang. In Bushwick, Brooklyn, he'll share a bill with the twins Adam and David Moss, who perform as the Americana duo the Brother Brothers. thesultanroom.com ANGEL OLSEN at Brooklyn Steel (Nov. 21 23, 8 p.m.). For the first few years of her career, this singer songwriter was most often described as a folk artist; with her intense, brooding songs of heartbreak shot through a sepia filter, she sounded like a student of Leonard Cohen, or a distant cousin of Bill Callahan. Olsen's 2016 album, "My Woman," marked something of a pivot, its bright, poppy single "Shut Up Kiss Me" revealing a newfound interest in lushness. "All Mirrors," released last month, takes this recalibration a step further, with decadent string arrangements making for a record that is sonically (and emotionally) vast. Olsen's performance on Nov. 22 at Brooklyn Steel is sold out, but tickets for the shows on Nov. 21 and Nov. 23 remain. 888 929 7849, bowerypresents.com KIM PETRAS at Avant Gardner (Nov. 16 17, 8 p.m.). This German singer's songs are ostensibly about heartbreak, material excess, partying and other escapades, but they're also about pop music itself. Sleek, highly produced and catchy almost to a fault, tracks like "Heart to Break" and "I Don't Want It at All" push the form to its saccharine extremes. Controversy has swirled around Petras's ongoing creative partnership with the accused abuser Dr. Luke; nonetheless, she maintains a fiercely loyal fan base, who are sure to turn out in droves for her performances at this Brooklyn event space. Saturday's show is sold out, but tickets for Sunday's performance remain. 347 987 3146, avant gardner.com SUPER M at Madison Square Garden (Nov. 19, 7 p.m.). Described as the "Avengers of K pop" in a press statement by the South Korean media mogul Lee Soo man, this newly minted seven piece supergroup comprises members of four established K pop bands. Despite having only a handful of songs to their name, released last month on a self titled EP, Super M booked a debut tour that will hit some of the country's biggest stages, including the Garden, this fall and winter. The group caters first and foremost to an American audience, representing an effort by their label bosses to capitalize on the recent crossover success of groups like BTS and Blackpink. Their EDM laced signature tune, "Jopping," sounds like something from a Marvel soundtrack in other words, like dollar signs. 212 465 6000, msg.com Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. TEI SHI at the Dance (Nov. 15, 8 p.m.). In a voice sample tucked between songs on the first album from Valerie Teicher, a Colombian Canadian who performs as Tei Shi, her younger self is heard professing her desire to be like Britney Spears. Years later, Teicher has stayed true to her childhood fascination with pop though her instincts skew more experimental than her former role model's. Tei Shi's performance at the Dance, a new bar and live music space in NoHo, coincides with the release of her sophomore album, "La Linda." The record is sweet and hooky, but dynamic enough to contain both ethereal pop in the vein of FKA twigs ("Twilight") and belted, bluesy numbers ("When He's Done"). thedance.nyc OLIVIA HORN DAYME AROCENA at Le Poisson Rouge (Nov. 16, 7:30 p.m.). On "Sonocardiogram," Arocena's newest album, the husky voiced young singer and composer yokes the folkloric melodies and rhythms of her native Cuba into a richly textured, contemporary context, adorning them with digital sounds and subtle funk grooves. Her meditative lyrics contemplate issues of family, heritage and faith; at her heavily interactive concerts, even non Spanish speakers often find themselves driven to sing along. 212 505 3474, lpr.com GEORGE CABLES TRIO at Mezzrow (Nov. 14 16, 7:30 and 9 p.m.). Cables, who just turned 75, stands as one of the last standard bearers of the classic post bop piano tradition. As sensitive as he is dynamic, he plays in a gently articulated but deeply rhythmic style, unifying the influences of his two main idols, Herbie Hancock and Thelonious Monk. At Mezzrow he will be joined on Thursday and Friday by the bassist Essiet Okon Essiet and the drummer Victor Lewis, and on Saturday by Lewis and the bassist Ed Howard. 646 476 4346, mezzrow.com DOUGLAS R. EWART/ADEGOKE STEVE COLSON DUO AND OLIVER LAKE ORGAN QUARTET at Symphony Space (Nov. 15, 8 p.m.). The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, among the most influential musician run organizations in American history, is now in its 54th year. Its New York chapter, which has been around since 1983, presents a series of concerts each fall, and this year's season comes to a close with this show: a double bill featuring one set from Ewart, a multi instrumentalist and global musical explorer, in duet with Colson, a pianist; and one from the organ quartet led by Lake, an avant garde alto saxophone luminary. That band includes Jared Gold on organ, Freddie Hendrix on trumpet and Pheeroan akLaff on drums. 212 864 5400, symphonyspace.org MATANA ROBERTS at Roulette (Nov. 17, 8 p.m.). Roberts is an alto saxophonist, electronic musician and multimedia artist who is now four albums into a planned 12 record exploration of her family's lore, one that merges improvised music with anthropological inquiry and speculative history. Each album in the continuing "Coin Coin" suite has a different sonic identity, but they are typically characterized by a mix of spoken word (often from the perspective of Roberts's relatives), free jazz and hauntingly beautiful, repetitious melodies. Last month she released "Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis," and she will draw upon that disc's material in this concert, where she'll be joined by the multi instrumentalist Hannah Marcus, the percussionist Ryan Sawyer, the trumpeter and reeds player Matt Lavelle and the guitarist and vocalist Kyp Malone. 917 267 0368, roulette.org CHUCHO VALDES WITH CHICK COREA at the Rose Theater (Nov. 15 16, 8 p.m.). A son of Bebo Valdes, one the most popular Cuban bandleaders from the mid 20th century, the pianist Chucho Valdes first came to prominence in his own right in the 1970s with Irakere, a band that fused Afro Caribbean tradition with American rock and jazz. In recent decades he has become known as a dean of Cuban pianism, typically working in more traditional and Latin jazz oriented styles. At Jazz at Lincoln Center's main stage this weekend, Valdes will begin each night with a set of solo piano, followed by one in duet with Corea, an eminent American jazz pianist. 212 721 6500, jazz.org BRANDEE YOUNGER at the Miller Theater (Nov. 16, 8 p.m.). Over the past 10 years, Younger has almost single handedly made a persuasive argument for the harp's role in contemporary jazz. She draws from the crisply rhythmic style of Dorothy Ashby and the immersive, swirling sound of Alice Coltrane the jazz harp's towering historical figures but also uses a hip hop mentality to think about how different instruments can come together in a hypnotic groove. At this concert she's likely to draw from her latest album, the impressive "Soul Awakening." Her band will feature Chelsea Baratz on saxophone, Anne Drummond on flute, Dezron Douglas on bass and E. J. Strickland on drums. 212 854 7799, millertheatre.com GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
For the last few weeks, Vivienne Zhao, an investment banker who lives and works in Manhattan, has spent each Monday on a cleanse, consuming over the course of the day five liquid based meals delivered in single serve plastic containers. Among those typically included on the menu: pinto and black beans cooked with tomatoes and morsels of spinach and bok choy; garlicky carrots mixed with onions and alkaline water; and pureed pumpkin spiked with cardamom and Saigon cinnamon. Like a growing number of people, Ms. Zhao came to the routine known as souping, or going on a soup cleanse after finding juice cleanses, which she tried several times, too extreme. "The juice cleanses are difficult because you don't chew, and you don't feel like you're eating anything for days at a time," she said. "You're just really hungry." Ms. Zhao orders from Splendid Spoon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which offers vegan, gluten free soups in single day cleanses, with the option of adding five hearty soups as meal replacements over the course of a week. Around three quarters of its clientele predominantly women choose the longer version, according to Nicole Chaszar, the company founder. Sales, she said, have tripled annually since the line was introduced in 2013. In January, Soupure, a company that opened in Los Angeles in 2014, expanded from local delivery to shipping its cleanses nationally. It also operates a popular outpost in Brentwood Town Center there. In Philadelphia, Real Food Works, a meal delivery service, added a soup cleanse to its menu in late 2013. The appeal of souping, in part, is that it promises an easier detox than a juice cleanse. "When you do juice cleanses, your blood sugar can spike really high," said Despina Hyde, a registered dietitian at NYU Langone Medical Center. "Soup cleanses are inherently lower in sugar over all because they're using more vegetables and complex carbohydrates versus fruit. They also tend to be higher in fiber, which has so many good benefits." Elina Fuhrman, who founded Soupelina in Los Angeles in 2013, chimed in similarly: "The juice cleansing trend started from a good place and evolved into something that's not so healthy, because there's a lot of sugar and not enough nutrients that the body needs." Soupelina offers soup cleanses of different durations as well as single serving soups, and business has doubled in the last 12 months, Ms. Fuhrman said. The soups are prepared mostly with produce from two local farmers' markets; the colorfully named offerings include Kale lifornia Dreamin', Lentil Me Entertain You!, and And the Beet Goes On, a borschtlike crimson concoction. For the most part, the soups that make up these cleanses tend to be quite flavorful, thanks in part to a liberal use of spices like turmeric and cumin. They are often made with seasonally grown ingredients. Packaged without preservatives and delivered chilled, they lack the higher sodium content of, say, a can of chicken noodle from a supermarket. Some are drinkable cold, although eating them warmed up, ideally out of a bowl with a spoon, arguably underlines the sense that they're a meal. Soupure includes hydrating, fruit flavored alkaline waters as part of its cleanses, and a couple of drinks that are challenging to describe as soup, like a thick, sweet blend of strawberries and cashews that tastes somewhat like a dairy free milkshake. "I would say that some of our cold products are cold soup smoothies," said Angela Blatteis, a Soupure founder. "We try to use the word 'soup' for 'juice' to just get across the point that it's thicker, it's more nourishing and it's more nutrient dense." Soup cleanses also tend to be quite low in calories, often hovering around the 1,200 mark for a day's worth of soup. "That's right at the borderline," said Ms. Hyde, the dietitian. "A lot of people I work with need between 1,400 and 1,600 calories a day. You're going to lose weight on low calorie diets, of course, but it can lead to muscle breakdown." For that reason, she doesn't advise souping for more than one full day at a time. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Television networks will draw hordes of advertisers to New York City this week for their annual bonanza of presentations and parties, a decades old tradition known as the upfronts that is meant to dazzle marketers and loosen their purse strings. New shows and top talent will be pitched from the stages of Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, followed by lavish evening affairs where marketers can eat lobster rolls and snag selfies with network stars. The fanfare will kick off weeks of negotiations, with networks aiming to get advertisers to commit to billions of dollars in spending for the year ahead. But beneath the sparkle and the canapes, the networks are also navigating a serious advertising upheaval. Ratings are on the decline, especially among young people, some of whom don't even own televisions. It's hard to keep up with the many devices and apps people now use to watch shows. And there is a host of material from Silicon Valley that is competing for viewers' attention, including Google's YouTube, Facebook and Netflix. It all adds up to a precarious situation for broadcast TV. National TV ad sales peaked in 2016, when they exceeded 43 billion, according to data from Magna, the ad buying and media intelligence arm of IPG Mediabrands. Sales fell 2.2 percent last year, and the firm estimates that they will fall at least 2 percent each year through 2022. Some of the decline could be mitigated through new business with platforms like Hulu, but "it's not yet enough to upset the decrease of traditional sales," said Vincent Letang, Magna's executive vice president of global market intelligence. At the same time, he said, while networks have raised the cost of advertising on their airwaves in recent years, ratings have declined sharply, including some in unexpected areas like the National Football League. TV is still a good value for plenty of advertisers. Mr. Letang said pharmaceuticals and personal care products were increasing their presences on TV. But the combination of rising prices and falling viewership is giving some big brands pause. The hottest shows on TV networks which command the highest ad prices are attracting older viewers, which is a challenge for brands that want to reach millennials and teens. For instance, this season's top rated show, the revival of "Roseanne," has a median viewer age of 52.9 years. The network show with the lowest median age is "Riverdale" on the CW, at 37.2. Google's YouTube, on the other hand, is wildly popular with much younger viewers. And the brands are so eager to reach those viewers that they have been willing to continue advertising on YouTube despite the issues it has faced around ads showing up on offensive content, like racist videos. As TV ad spending has begun to drop, marketers have been diverting more money to tech giants like Google and Facebook, which have increasingly focused on expanding their video and video ad business. 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. Companies love digital advertising because it gives them the ability to target ads based on their own lists of customers like holders of store loyalty cards and profiles like "first time car buyers" or "people who like foreign travel." And they want that kind of capability on TV, too. That desire has prompted four competing media companies NBCUniversal, Turner, Viacom and Fox to work to standardize the language and some of the data sets that they use, hoping to make it easier for brands to buy cross platform advertising with them. "When we say we buy TV, even within that, a percent of that buy is in the digital video space and is on platforms like Hulu and Google Preferred and programmatic buying and Facebook," she said. The company is focusing on figuring out where customers might see its content, whether that's on traditional TV or "digital TV," she said. Ms. Gersch said that on traditional TV, the company has been talking to networks about product integrations in TV shows similar to Procter Gamble's recent deal, where the company was written into the plot of the ABC show "Black ish." How viewers will react if more brands start showing up in the actual dialogue of their favorite shows remains to be seen. Those opting out of traditional TV packages are watching Netflix and videos on Amazon Prime, and to a lesser extent, paying for services like Dish Network's Sling TV, according to Kagan, a media research group within S P Global Market Intelligence. As networks navigate these changes, they are moving to reduce the number of ads they show. Ads, after all, make money, but they also annoy viewers. Last year, the average number of commercial minutes during an hour of broadcast TV was 13.6, according to Nielsen data. Both NBCUniversal and the Fox Networks Group have said they will trim the total time of commercials shown during some of their shows; Fox has announced a goal of reducing ad time to two minutes an hour by 2020. So if there are fewer commercials, how do companies market their products? Ralph Heim, vice president of media and sponsorships at Sonic Drive In, said he was intrigued by several of the new data targeting products for television ads. But he remains concerned about how the announcements on limited ads fit with a declining audience. "They're trying to create a more premium advertising experience for advertisers, and they're hoping that people will pay more," even though the audience is smaller, Mr. Heim said. He added, "At the end of the day, you're following the eyeballs, right?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
When Don Diego de Zama stands on edge of the New World, what does he see? He sees a group of naked women bathing and chattering. It is the late 18th century, and he also sees native people walking along the crystalline water and under the endless, sheltering sky. Mostly, Zama an official of the Spanish empire born in the Americas yet proudly, insistently Spanish sees himself, as if gazing into in an enormous mirror. He sees a noble husband, father, magistrate, would be lover and defender of the crown. He sees a world that is being remade in his image, not grasping that his mirror is cracked. Lucrecia Martel's cinematic marvel "Zama" tells the dreamlike story of Don Diego (a wonderful Daniel Gimenez Cacho), a proud if beleaguered agent of Western colonialism. When you first meet him, Diego is waiting for a transfer from a desolate outpost. He has been waiting a long time. Over this pleasurably eccentric movie, Diego with his noble head held high, his tragically ill fitting wig and slow growing despair continues to wait, while simultaneously being assailed by slights, insults, rejections, humiliations, a comically inquisitive llama and catastrophic physical violence. Diego's tribulations are almost worthy of a Christian martyr except that he is suffering for sins of his own making. In "Zama," colonialism shapes every scene, exchange and body; it is the air that people breathe. Soon after the movie opens, Diego oversees the interrogation of a bound, near naked prisoner. The scene is brief, restrained; and its meaning as is sometimes the case in this movie seems oblique. The man's crimes remain unstated, though you infer that his great offense may be his skin color. When he doesn't confess, Diego decides to release the man, who runs right into a wall. He then haltingly speaks of a fish that swims to and fro, "fighting water that seeks to cast it upon dry land." The water rejects it. The prisoner disappears, but his story's allegorical power takes root. This elliptical approach is a familiar one for Ms. Martel, a well regarded Argentine director ("La Cienaga," "The Headless Woman") who conveys Diego's story piecemeal. What joins the seemingly disconnected parts in "Zama" what ties a sensual glance to a strange barking to a thief in the night to a desperate struggle is Diego or rather his adamant, increasingly desperate request for a transfer. His desire to leave propels and all but defeats him. It also becomes the narrative through line, connecting Diego to everyone and everything, tethering him to the past and inexorably pulling him toward his fate. "Zama" is based on the brilliant 1956 novel by Antonio di Benedetto (1922 1986), only recently translated into English. (Suggestion: See the movie, read the book and then, for pleasure, see the movie again.) Ms. Martel's "Zama," for which she wrote the screenplay, departs in detail from the novel, though the two are more spiritually alike than not. What's striking is how she conveys the novel's singular first person voice, one that is described in the introduction as "a certain abject nobility." On the page, that voice is at once imperiously self aggrandizing and unconsciously preposterous, with di Benedetto's ironic detachment reverberating in each of Zama's utterances. "My hand may strike a woman's cheek," Zama says in the novel at one point casually, unknowingly and ridiculously expressing power's terror "but it is I who will endure the blow, for I shall have done violence to my own dignity." Ms. Martel retains patches of di Benedetto's dialogue and the novel's overall arc. For the most part, though, because she doesn't use narration or scrolls of text, she expresses Diego's story its horrors, absurdity and her attitude toward each through her limpid visual choices and the performances. Ms. Martel has a wonderful eye and can generate tension as much from the arrangement of bodies in a frame and scene as from any spoken line. In one scene, Diego courts Luciana (Lola Duenas), a flirt in a preposterous wig worthy of Marie Antoinette. "Europe is best remembered by those who were never there," Luciana says while fanned by a silent, attentive, presumably enslaved black man. These kinds of juxtapositions the image of indolent whites served by enslaved blacks function much like the doubled voice in the novel. Nothing if not dialectical, "Zama" is filled with such meaningful oppositions: freedom and captivity; open, bright skies and closed, gloomy homes. Ms. Martel's cool approach fits di Benedetto's story and can be just as devastating, especially when she abruptly flips drama into comedy. In one scene, as Diego receives humiliating news from a superior, his eyes and voice filling with emotion, she sets loose a llama that after it slowly makes its way to the front of the shot to stand next to him turns the moment absurd and Diego along with it. Mr. Gimenez Cacho, who appears in nearly every scene, anchors "Zama" beautifully in an expressive yet reserved performance that pulls you in intellectually rather than emotionally. (Early on, when he stands in profile to the camera with his tricorn and aquiline nose, he suggests a misplaced George Washington.) This is crucial to how the movie works, particularly because it is told from the point of view of the colonizer, not the colonized. Ms. Martel is exploring the past, how we got here and why, but she is more interested in relations of power than in individual psychological portraits. The monstrous must be humanized to be understood, which doesn't mean it deserves our tears. Europe has doomed the colonized, and it will doom the colonizers. With their stiff manners and unsuitable clothing, Diego and the rest of the colonialists seem perpetually ill at ease. At other times they seem deranged, delirious. In "Zama," their wigs keep slipping; their humanity has already slid away. One man wants to enslave Indians to regain his status. Diego himself may be highly placed in the outpost, but his standing will always be suspect. As an Americano, he is caught or perhaps lost between the Old World and the New. He belongs to neither. And so Don Diego de Zama waits and he waits, marooned in a threatening, unwelcoming world that he himself helped create. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Before its rescue by Mr. Dine, the building, in a historic quadrant of Greenwich Village popular with artists like Jasper Johns and Julian Lethbridge, was a garage and plumbing supplies shop; after the owner had made an unsuccessful attempt to turn it into a restaurant, Mr. Dine happened along and bought it. For several years he used the ground floor, with its huge garage door providing easy egress for large art objects, as his studio. There was a nondescript apartment on the second floor, memorable only for its ancient arched windows facing Jane Street. In 2009, Mr. Dine and his wife, the photographer Diana Michener, decided to live in the house, not just create and store art there, so he commissioned the youngest of his three sons, Nick, a designer and furniture maker, to undertake a radical modernist makeover of the interior. A restoration of the brick exterior was part of the plan. Nick Dine Designs came up with the concept of a fluid, loftlike interior for the home, and Think Construction, a firm owned by Nick Dine and his partners Tim Moss and Matt Moss, did the installation. On the first floor is an open entertainment area that segues into the dining space and a brilliantly white state of the art kitchen. Downstairs, in a newly created expanse referred to as "the library," there is a full bath, a powder room, a media area, and space for a guest bedroom. The second floor has a master bedroom with two skylights and two bathrooms, as well as a front room used as a study/bedroom, with reproductions of the huge, historic arched windows. Throughout the home there is built in shelving to display Mr. Dine's ceramics collection, and all of the staircases (there are four) are strategically located so as not to disturb the internal flow of the rooms. "Minimalism without affect would be the way I would describe it," Nick Dine said. White is the dominant color with the exception of the multihued tile floor in the foyer, an innovation of Jim Dine, who devised the eye catching pattern (pure pop) and layout himself. A glass wall of movable steel framed doors separates the ground floor great room from the foyer: the objective was to let light stream in while providing a layer of soundproofing. "The house has the same lighting as MoMA for the art on the downstairs walls," Nick Dine added. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
After taking the Golden Globe for best comedy or musical earlier this month, "Green Book" now has two significant honors to its name. Still, the 1962 set film about the budding friendship between the virtuoso black pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and his white driver, Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), has faced more controversies than any other major awards contender this season. Read our review of "Green Book" and learn more about Don Shirley. Let's take a deep breath before running through them all. First, Shirley's family members disputed the facts of the film and said they were not consulted about it, which prompted Ali to reach out with an apology. Meanwhile, Mortensen had to issue a statement apologizing for using the "N word" at a post film Q A. More recently, Farrelly came under fire for his frequent habit of jokingly flashing his genitals to colleagues, while the co writer Nick Vallelonga (son of the film's protagonist) deleted his Twitter account after internet sleuths found an anti Muslim tweet he had made in 2015. (Ali, who many expect will win the supporting actor Oscar next month, is Muslim.) Still, the film's award season trajectory suggests it has weathered these controversies unscathed. The older, more traditional industry voters whom "Green Book" counts as its core audience are also the least likely to be affected by or even cognizant of the film's PR snafus. The academy has taken great pains in recent years to diversify its membership, but in a year when many filmmakers of color told acclaimed stories like "Black Panther," "If Beale Street Could Talk," "BlacKkKlansman" and "Crazy Rich Asians," it may still be "Green Book" a racial issues movie written and directed by white men that proves to be the ultimate winner. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The Anchorage Daily News with contributions from ProPublica The Anchorage Daily News, in collaboration with the nonprofit outlet ProPublica, won the prestigious public service award for a yearlong investigation of sexual violence in Alaska. The series, led by the reporter Kyle Hopkins, uncovered a "two tiered" criminal justice system in the state, in which rural communities, disproportionately populated by Indigenous people, had limited or no access to law enforcement and four times as many sex offenders as other areas in the United States, per capita. Finalists The New York Times; The Washington Post The staff of The Courier Journal uncovered how last minute pardons by Kentucky's outgoing governor, Matt Bevin, were made unilaterally and violated legal norms. In one case, The Courier Journal revealed political ties to a released prisoner: His family had contributed thousands to the governor's campaign. The paper's reporting led to an investigation by federal agencies. Finalists Staff of the Los Angeles Times; Staff of The Washington Post Brian M. Rosenthal of The New York Times Mr. Rosenthal, 31, received the award for a five part series on how reckless loans, dispensed by a small group of taxi medallion owners, put thousands of immigrants in debt while bankers made huge profits. Mr. Rosenthal revealed that government officials allowed lenders with political connections to skirt certain regulations and chronicled the devastating impact the debt had on drivers, causing several to die by suicide. This reporting led to local, state and federal investigations. Finalists Jay Hancock and Elizabeth Lucas of Kaiser Health News; Staff of The Wall Street Journal In its series "2degC: Beyond the Limit," The Washington Post examined the disastrous effects of global warming, analyzing nearly 170 years of temperature data, creating interactive maps and other visualizations, and compiling dispatches from a dozen hot spots. The sweeping reporting, which included stories about outdoor air conditioning in Qatar and fires in California, demonstrated how parts of the earth have already warmed by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) a threshold considered dangerous by policymakers worldwide. Finalists Rosanna Xia, Swetha Kannan and Terry Castleman of the Los Angeles Times; Staff of Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting The staff of The Baltimore Sun was honored for reporting that revealed that Mayor Catherine Pugh of Baltimore had no bid contracts with the University of Maryland's medical system to boost profits for her self published children's book. The reporting resulted in the mayor's resignation and a February sentencing of three years in federal prison. The story began with a tip to Sun reporter Luke Broadwater asking him to look into contracts at the state's hospital system. When he came across Ms. Pugh's name on the list and hundreds of thousands of dollars for her books, he knew the story was bigger than he anticipated. "The whole newsroom activated and everyone saw right away that this is going to be a big story and let's all roll," Mr. Broadwater, 40, said in an interview. Finalists Peter Smith, Stephanie Strasburg and Shelly Bradbury of The Pittsburgh Post Gazette; Staff of The Boston Globe Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times The reporting team for ProPublica's "Disaster in the Pacific" series spent 18 months investigating several deadly accidents involving the Navy and Marines in 2017 and 2018. While the military tried to block its reporting, the team used more than 13,000 pages of confidential records and interviews with hundreds of officials, exposing a trail of outdated equipment, insufficient training and warnings ignored by senior leadership. After 346 people died in two crashes involving Boeing's 737 Max jet, The Seattle Times began reporting on the manufacturer's many missteps leading to the accidents. In more than 150 stories, the reporting team described issues such as Boeing's problematic flight control system and the flawed regulatory process that delegated safety responsibilities to the company and allowed management to take shortcuts and ignore warnings. Staff of The New York Times State sponsored assassination campaigns; arms dealers tied to mercenaries; a military intelligence group deploying hackers to destabilize elections. It's not the plot of a spy novel; it's President Vladimir Putin's regime in Russia. The staff of The New York Times reported from Ukraine, Madagascar, Bulgaria, Libya and the Central African Republic, often at risk, to uncover the many layers behind Mr. Putin's globe spanning operations. The stories offered riveting accounts of the spycraft coming from the Kremlin. Finalists Staff of The New York Times; Staff of Reuters Ben Taub of The New Yorker Mr. Taub, who joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2017, told the harrowing story of Mohamedou Salahi, an engineer who was accused of aiding Al Qaeda and spent 15 years at the United States detention camp in Guantanamo Bay. There, Salahi was tortured and interrogated, even as he maintained his innocence and insisted he did not hold extremist views. By turns compassionate and investigative, Mr. Taub entwined his exploration of Salahi's plight with a broader examination of America's yearslong war on terrorism. Finalists Chloe Cooper Jones, freelance reporter, The Verge; Ellen Barry of The New York Times; Nestor Ramos of The Boston Globe Nikole Hannah Jones of The New York Times Ms. Hannah Jones, a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, mixed personal anecdote and history in her essay for the magazine's "The 1619 Project," which sought to re center the contributions of African Americans, including enslaved people, to American history . The project became part of the culture war and a partisan football, with conservatives including Newt Gingrich attacking it as part of what he said was the newspaper's campaign against President Trump. Five history professors signed a letter criticizing the initiative as praiseworthy but flawed in some particulars , homing in on a few points in Ms. Hannah Jones's essay . In a rebuttal, Jake Silverstein, the magazine's editor in chief, stood by the project. Finalists Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post; Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times Mr. Knight, who has been an art critic for the Los Angeles Times since 1989, was recognized for his critique of a proposal to overhaul the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In heartfelt and rigorous columns opposing the plan, Mr. Knight invoked the paramount role of the museum in his city's urban and cultural fabric. Mr. Knight has been a finalist for the criticism prize on three occasions, in 1991, 2001 and 2007. Finalists Justin Davidson of New York magazine; Soraya Nadia McDonald of The Undefeated 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. Mr. Gerritt writes for The Herald Press of Palestine, Tex., a town 100 miles southeast of Dallas. He was awarded for his series on deaths of pretrial inmates in jails. Of the death of one La Salle County prisoner in August 2017, a November editorial said, "An autopsy ruled Davis' death 'accidental,' but like most of Texas' annual 100 plus in custody deaths, it stemmed from a lethal mix of negligence, incompetence, and indifference." Finalists Jill Burcum of the Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minn.; Melinda Henneberger of The Kansas City Star Barry Blitt, contributor at The New Yorker Mr. Blitt's unflattering caricatures of President Trump frequently grace The New Yorker's covers. The judges said his cartoons skewered the Trump White House with a "deceptively sweet watercolor style." Mr. Blitt has contributed cartoons to the pages of The New Yorker for more than 30 years. He now has a series in the online edition as well. The photography staff of Reuters was cited for striking photographs of Hong Kong as citizens mounted mass protests against the encroachment of the Chinese government. The images of fire, tear gas and rubber bullets as riots broke out in the streets captured the escalating violence and turmoil of the clash. Finalists Dieu Nalio Chery and Rebecca Blackwell of Associated Press; Tom Fox of The Dallas Morning News With this year's Pulitzer Prize, Colson Whitehead becomes just the fourth fiction writer to win the prize twice (the others are Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner and John Updike). "The Nickel Boys" reimagines the real life horrors at a reform school in 1960s Florida. "Two heavy books in a row flowed out of me," Mr. Whitehead, 50, said on Monday. (He won for "The Underground Railroad" in 2017.) "And I was relieved to be done talking about them, actually, because they took so much energy out of me. The next book I'm working on has more jokes in it, and it does feel like those two books seem sort of remote now." Mr. Jackson, 39, is a gay, black, musical theater writer who wrote a musical about a gay, black, musical theater writer writing a musical about a gay, black, musical theater writer. "I was trying to speak about what it means to be a self in general, and a black and queer self in particular just expressing the joys and sorrows of the experience of being in this particular body," Mr. Jackson said in an interview. The musical is as zany as it sounds daring and self lacerating, outrageous and moving. The Times described it as "a self portrait in an endless hall of mirrors" and called it "jubilantly anguished." The show was produced Off Broadway last year by Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73. Finalists "Heroes of the Fourth Turning," by Will Arbery; "Soft Power," by David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori. "Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America," by W. Caleb McDaniel Henrietta Wood was born into slavery, legally freed in 1848, then abducted and sold back into bondage in 1858. She later sued her kidnapper and was awarded 2,500 the most ever awarded by an American court as restitution for slavery. The prize jury cited Mr. McDaniel, 40, an associate professor at Rice University, for "a masterfully researched meditation on reparations." Finalists "Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership," by Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor; "The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America," by Greg Grandin "Sontag: Her Life and Work," by Benjamin Moser Mr. Moser, 43, was cited for "an authoritatively constructed work" capturing Susan Sontag's "genius and humanity alongside her addictions, sexual ambiguities and volatile enthusiasms." To research the book, he interviewed nearly 600 friends, enemies, relatives, editors, lovers and others to capture an intellectual who shaped our thinking about everything from art to war to disease. "I hope her legacy won't be seen as a historical curiosity, but as something vital and ongoing," he said. Finalists "Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century," by George Packer; "Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me," by Deirdre Bair Jericho Brown spoke on Monday of being "overtaken and overwhelmed by" the process of writing his third collection. "This book wouldn't leave me alone," he said. "I was writing poems in elevators. I had to pull my car over to write poems. It was the most exhilarating and exhausting thing." The book covers subjects from the Trojan War to James Baldwin to, perhaps most centrally, the often unpunished violence that police commit against African Americans. "The recognition feels good," Mr. Brown, 44, said. "But I still have work to do. I want to continue being subversive, asking hard questions and answering them through poems." Finalists "Dunce," by Mary Ruefle; "Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems," by Dorianne Laux In this impassioned, jazz infused opera, Mr. Davis, 69, and the librettist Richard Wesley tell the story of the black teenagers wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1989 assault of a white woman in New York. The Pulitzer board praised the work, which premiered in June at Long Beach Opera, for its "powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration." In an interview before the premiere, Mr. Davis said, "I want people to experience the opera so they identify with them, so they think they're one of the five." Finalists "and all the days were purple" by Alex Weiser; "Sky: Concerto for Violin" by Michael Torke The journalist Ida B. Wells was awarded a posthumous special citation. Ms. Wells made it her life's work to write about the racist violence in the South and to destroy the stereotype that was used as an excuse to lynch black men: That they were rapists. Ms. Wells was 30 when she set out on a reporting mission to document and investigate lynchings. By talking to eye witnesses in dozens of lynching cases, she discovered that in most lynchings, rape was not an accusation. She owned and edited a newspaper, The Memphis Free Speech, and was called "The Princess of the Press" by her peers. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
WASHINGTON President Trump suggested on Tuesday that the United States was likely to impose restrictions on imported metals, reviving the prospects for a continuing investigation whose future has been called into question amid months of pushback and delays. Meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers, the president said such restrictions would help save struggling steel companies from foreign competitors that "dump" low priced metal on American markets. "What we're talking about is tariffs and/or quotas," Mr. Trump said. The White House had billed the meeting as a listening session to let lawmakers air concerns about pending actions on aluminum and steel imports, as well as Mr. Trump's infrastructure plan that was proposed on Monday and current trade measures like the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In April, the president began twin investigations into imports of steel and aluminum under the little used Section 232 of a 1962 trade law, which permits sweeping restrictions to protect national security. Supporters of the action say American metal makers badly need the assistance to survive and continue producing planes, armored vehicles and other products for the military. But the measure also has plenty of critics, who fear that such restrictions amount to a protectionist grab by metal makers and will raise prices for steel and aluminum. They argue that because the metals are widely used to make other products, other industries including automobile manufacturers and food packagers would suffer. That pushback, which has garnered the sympathy of many pro trade Republicans, appears to have turned a trade action that the White House initially viewed as relatively straightforward into a more extended affair. In speeches in May and June, Trump administration officials implied that action on steel would soon be forthcoming. But in the months that followed, little information emerged about the investigations. In September, the commerce secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr., said that a decision on the steel measure would be delayed until after Congress approved a new tax law, because the administration did not want to "unnecessarily irritate" lawmakers. The Commerce Department formally submitted the results of its investigations into steel and aluminum imports to the White House in January. The president now faces a deadline of April 11 for a decision on the steel case, and a deadline of April 20 for a similar decision on aluminum. Republican and Democratic lawmakers who gathered at the White House on Tuesday are generally split along party lines on the restrictions. Most Democrats voiced support for the president's action on metals, and Republicans, with the exception of Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, urged caution. Representative Jackie Walorski, Republican of Indiana, warned that price increases could affect the recreational vehicles made in her district. Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan, noted that the auto parts industry relied on inexpensive metals. And Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said that past tariffs imposed in 2002 by President George W. Bush on steel had cost jobs for auto parts companies. 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. In a statement after the meeting, Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said that the Trump administration needed to hold China accountable for unfair trade practices. But he urged the president to "avoid any action" that could reverse what he described as the benefits of lower taxes and lighter regulation under the Trump administration. "I committed to continuing to work with him to identify a narrow and targeted remedy that is balanced, effective, protects national security and economic interests across America, and addresses the root problem of China's distortive practices," Mr. Brady said. The president listened to their comments but occasionally offered some pushback, saying he believed foreign steel manufacturers would absorb the cost of the tariff, rather than raising their prices. "You may have a higher price, but you have jobs," Mr. Trump said. Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, suggested that the president focus specifically on countries that have unfair trading practices. "I would urge us to go very, very cautiously here," he said. The United Steelworkers, the country's largest industrial union, and companies that forge steel and aluminum have united in pushing for import restrictions. But they have faced opposition from a broad array of industries that argue tariffs could hurt their ability to compete and cost more jobs than they would save. On Monday, a collection of 15 trade associations representing more than 30,000 businesses that use steel to make products warned the White House in a letter that such restrictions could undermine their ability to manufacture goods in the United States. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Mike Birbiglia is bringing his latest solo show, "The New One," to Broadway. The play, a comedy about his own reflections on fatherhood, will run for nine weeks at the Cort Theater, with previews beginning Oct. 25 and an opening on Nov. 11. It is being produced by Kevin McCollum, a Broadway veteran ("Rent," "Avenue Q"), along with Ira Glass, the host of "This American Life," a radio show to which Mr. Birbiglia has contributed. The show had a sold out Off Broadway run this summer at the Cherry Lane Theater. A New York Times critic, Alexis Soloski, called it "at first excruciatingly funny and then just kind of excruciating," but other critics were more enthusiastic. (The New Yorker called it "a sustained demonstration of effective comic writing and acting.") The play was written by Mr. Birbiglia, a comedian, actor and author, along with his wife, Jennifer Hope Stein, and is directed by Seth Barrish. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
She will not use fashion as a shield against the world. She will not gird herself in glamour, or arm herself with gilded European brand names. She is certainly not a trophy sitting on a shelf. As the Democratic Party's experiment in remote conventioning continued with Day 2 on Tuesday, Dr. Jill Biden brought the effort to present her husband, Joseph R. Biden Jr., as the anti Trump in character and conviction to a personal close, and played her part in the drama. After all, if he is the presidential alternative, so she, too, is the current first lady's. First lady is an odd role, as many historians have pointed out: unelected, yet also crucial to fleshing out the humanity of a president, and the parts of a candidate that resonate with voters. That's why the spouse gets a keynote during the convention, and also why traditionally so much attention paid to what she wears: why, for example, her clothes can end up in a museum, and why the first lady is sometimes treated like the first influencer. (Why, when it comes time for a first man, his clothes will matter, too.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
The 90 minute drive from Tucson to Rancho de la Osa, a recently reopened dude ranch on the border with Mexico, is a lonely one. Turning onto Highway 286, your car may be the only southbound vehicle for 44 miles while the occasional U.S. Border Patrol van trolls north. The road runs directly to the border fence, here made up of eerie metal posts spaced less than a foot apart, at the town of Sasabe. Minutes before reaching it, a right turn onto a dirt road delivers you to the historic adobe ranch, painted a warm terra cotta, with a porch lined with turquoise Adirondack chairs. "You got the right place, and we got the right horse," said a cowboy in the driveway, when I pulled in last winter, fully living up to wrangler stereotype with a handlebar mustache and weathered 10 gallon hat. "Like Trump or hate Trump, now the border is an attraction," said Russell True, who with partners, bought Rancho de la Osa at auction complete with its vintage western furnishings and period art in late 2016. They don't publicize the ranch's proximity to the border fence and had hoped the border would be a neutral feature of the ranch. Instead, Mr. True said it has piqued the interest of guests. "The first thing they want to do is see the wall," he said. "We could not have planned for the political shift and that it would become interesting." Originally opened in the 1920s, Rancho de la Osa drew many celebrated guests, including Joan Crawford, Cesar Romero and John Wayne, for whom three of the 18 bedrooms are named (double room rates from 235 a person, all inclusive). The cowboy actor of the silent film era, Tom Mix, made one of his many films here. Authors checked in too, including the western novelist Zane Grey and Margaret Mitchell. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson led the political A list along with William Clayton, who drafted the Marshall Plan to aid European countries after World War II in a two bedroom house on the property. More current events also helped drive the ranch out of business, according to Mr. True, who also co owns White Stallion Ranch near Tucson. In 2010, Jan Brewer then the governor of Arizona, decried beheadings in the desert she said were linked to illegal immigration and drug trafficking, allegations that were never corroborated and that she later called an error on her part. "We just had an absolute, possibly even slightly irrational need to save it," Mr. True told me as we sat in the main lodge, where the adobe walls are washed in orange, red and yellow hues and an antique leather sofa is embossed with an image of a saddle. "Somebody else would have bought it, but nobody else was going to run it as a dude ranch." As a dude ranch, the 590 acre Rancho de la Osa, restored and reopened in 2017, offers more than vintage charm. Beyond the central compound, which includes an outdoor swimming pool and a bar in a building dating back to 1720, lies some of the lushest areas of the Sonoran Desert, at about a 3,500 foot elevation, and the distinctive Baboquivari Peak, which is considered sacred to the indigenous Tohono O'odham people. In addition to exploring the desert, morning and afternoon rides introduce guests to the ranch's veteran wranglers Ross and Lynne Knox. The couple's stories, including his close brushes with death running pack mule trains in the Grand Canyon, conjured a western past that doesn't seem so distant here in some of the more desolate parts of the southern border. "If you're not living on the edge," he said with a chuckle about his daring cowboy lifestyle, "then you're taking up too much space." Of course, the degree to which the desert is deserted is up for debate, and on my first ride I spotted the well patrolled fence mostly out of sight from the ranch dwellings that undulates east with the hills as far as the eye can see. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
SEATTLE Amazon has asked a federal court to let it depose President Trump and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, arguing that hearing from them is essential to determining if they intervened against the internet company when the Pentagon awarded a multibillion dollar contract to a competitor. The request, which was unsealed on Monday, escalates a legal battle over a major cloud computing contract to modernize the Pentagon's operations, called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, or JEDI. Amazon Web Services, the largest cloud provider, was widely considered the front runner for the 10 billion contract, but in October, the Defense Department surprised analysts when it awarded the project to Microsoft, the No. 2 provider in the market. Amazon challenged the decision in December, claiming that Mr. Trump used "improper pressure" on the Pentagon to prevent Amazon from winning the contract as part of an attempt to harm the company's chief executive, Jeff Bezos. Mr. Trump has criticized Mr. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, a publication that has reported aggressively on the Trump administration. "The question is whether the president of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the D.O.D. to pursue his own personal and political ends," Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, said in a statement. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
GRACE WILL LEAD US HOME The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness By Jennifer Berry Hawes For an idea so fundamental to Western morality, forgiveness is remarkably poorly grounded. Nietzsche, wary of all such sentimental ideas, argued that moral mandates like forgiveness are drummed into us by the beneficiaries of dominant ideologies. He had a point. If we're honest about forgiveness, the reasons in its favor are really variations on two themes: It's what is expected of me, and it shows I am the better person. So when one has been irreparably and tragically wronged by another, it bears asking: Who benefits from my forgiveness, and what does being the better person have to do with my loss? These are questions Jennifer Berry Hawes means for us to linger on in "Grace Will Lead Us Home," her soul shaking chronicle of the 2015 Charleston massacre and its aftermath. Her book begins with a grisly, yet not gratuitous, retelling of the events at Charleston's historically black Emanuel A.M.E. Church on the evening of June 17 that year, when Dylann Roof walked into a Bible study meeting equipped with a loaded Glock and eight magazines of bullets a total of 88 rounds, a number neo Nazis use to signify "Heil Hitler." Roof spent his arsenal until he was satisfied that his racist work was done. He left nine dead and three living witnesses to his carnage. "Grace Will Lead Us Home" recounts not just what happened that night but afterward, to the families and friends who were forced to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives or were unable to do so. Hawes, a reporter for The Post and Courier in Charleston, was part of a team that won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for public service for a series investigating domestic violence against women in South Carolina. She's a writer with the exceedingly rare ability to observe sympathetically both particular events and the horizon against which they take place without sentimentalizing her subjects. In "Grace Will Lead Us Home," the sorrow of the massacre's three survivors, and that of the relatives left to mourn the dead, is vividly rendered but not to the point of caricature. Similarly admirable are moments when she depicts the difficulties faced by Roof's family without compelling us to feel for them what we feel for the victims and their relatives. Such skill is essential for Hawes's enterprise. She is determined that we gain a comprehensive understanding of the story: Why did Roof do it? Why is America a place where such a crime can happen? Why was Charleston a horrifically poignant location for Roof's terrorism? And, most important: Why did the survivors and family members who spoke at Roof's bond hearing forgive him, and did he deserve it? Hawes attempts to answer all but the last of these questions, ultimately leaving that one to the reader. Here is what one will learn along the way: Roof walked into Mother Emanuel with the express purpose of eliminating black lives. Every time he is asked why he did it, he responds, "I had to." In his first interview with the F.B.I., he added, "Somebody had to do something because, you know, black people are killing white people every day on the streets and they rape, they rape white women." Roof was radicalized by websites like the white supremacist Daily Stormer and accepted without reflection the claim that whites are in real danger from black people. While he was an awkward loner, and despite his defense team's attempt to posit both mental illness and autism as explanations for his behavior, a court appointed physician found him fit for trial. Roof's act happened in America, a nation in which blacks were long denied not only rights but status as human beings. It is also a nation for which guns remain a stubbornly romantic symbol of freedom. As Hawes observes of South Carolina, "A year before the Emanuel massacre, one state lawmaker even raffled off an AR 15 semiautomatic rifle at a campaign rally, and Governor Nikki Haley tweeted about the firearm her husband gave her for Christmas one year: 'I must have been good Santa gave me a Beretta PX4 Storm.'" Charleston's role as the backdrop for Roof's murders is especially unsettling. The city, Hawes reminds us, served as the most important receiving station for imported slaves. Charleston was also home to Denmark Vesey's doomed slave rebellion, for which he was hanged. Before the Civil War, nearly three in four white families there owned slaves. The street where Mother Emanuel is also houses a square with a statue honoring the pro slavery South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, and the church itself was a focal point in the civil rights movement. Thus Roof symbolically brought to bear nearly 400 years of America's worst sins and fears every time one of his bullets plunged into one of his victims' bodies. Roof became the most visible embodiment of disdain for blacks in a nation that perfected that attitude, in a city that peddled that attitude and that remained at best ambivalent about atoning for that attitude. Hawes emphasizes the role of forgiveness in two registers. On the one hand, she writes, it was a personal issue, involving the reconciliation of faith with rage: Forgiveness, for the survivors of Roof's massacre, became the idea the faithful mobilized to in order to be avatars of God's loving grace. Felicia Sanders's son Tywanza died mere feet from her. Hawes recounts her thoughts after she spoke at Roof's bond hearing, following family members of victims who had just publicly forgiven him: "Roof's destiny was in God's hands now. Her destiny remained in her own. What if she didn't forgive this killer? She wouldn't go to heaven, and that's where she would find her baby boy." On the other hand, there were national consequences to such actions, as the country latched onto the spectacle of blacks forgiving a murderous racist as inspiring and appropriate. Inspiring because it takes a herculean effort to not indulge rage at a man like Roof. Appropriate because forgiveness allows us all to move on. And this is where readers will have to make a choice about the costs of moving on. I wonder at white (and some black) Americans who cheered the act of forgiving Roof. He was the crystallization of a culture of racism that not only daily endangers black Americans but that also bolsters white privilege of all sorts. To forgive Roof is to extend an act of kindness to that culture and its beneficiaries. Moreover, this is an act that has been expected of blacks enduring racism in this country since the 17th century. Do the folks who applauded forgiveness grasp that historical dynamic? Hawes is so admirably steadfast in her commitment to bearing witness that one is compelled to consider the story she tells from every possible angle. In doing so, one could be persuaded by a third rationale cited by the survivors in favor of forgiveness: that it leads to closure. Yet one of the most haunting threads in Hawes's book concerns the way none of the people deeply touched by all the death Roof dealt has achieved anything like closure. Roof himself was sentenced to death, which would bring the death toll of his massacre to 10. Of those people, nine did not deserve what they got. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Among the prominent supporters of the "We See You, White American Theater" coalition are the playwrights Lynn Nottage (left) and Dominique Morisseau. Rename half of all Broadway theaters. Impose term limits for theater industry leaders. Require that at least half the members of casts and creative teams be made up of people of color. A coalition of theater artists, known by the title of its first statement, "We See You, White American Theater," has posted online a 29 page set of demands that, if adopted, would amount to a sweeping restructuring of the theater ecosystem in America. The coalition, made up of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) theatermakers, has declined to make anyone available to answer questions, and says on its website that it has no leadership or spokesperson. "We understand the desire for individual interviews, but this is a collective movement and it would not be appropriate for any of us to speak on behalf of the all," the group said in response to an email inquiry. The group's initial statement was signed by more than 300 artists and then endorsed by thousands online; among its more visible supporters are the playwrights Lynn Nottage and Dominique Morisseau, who on Wednesday called attention to the list of demands online. Stephanie Ybarra, the artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage, said she too is a supporter of the demands. "We're in the business of reflecting on the human condition, and the fact of the matter is that Black folks and Indigenous folks and non Black people of color are telling us the conditions they're working under in the theater are not humane in a lot of ways," she said in an interview. "I believe them and I think that their lived experiences should be taken seriously." An Off Broadway nonprofit, Ars Nova, also welcomed the document. The demands are wide ranging and far reaching. Among them: None Black, Indigenous and People of Color should make up "the majority of writers, directors and designers onstage for the foreseeable future." At nonprofit theaters they should also make up a majority of organizational leadership and middle management, as well as of literary departments. None Theater organizations should stop working with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which represents stagehands, unless it makes a series of changes to its leadership and practices, including instituting an anti nepotism policy. (A spokesman for the union said "We have no comment at this time.") None Broadway producers should stop relying on the Casting Society of America until it diversifies its leadership and membership and changes many of its employment practices. (The society's president, Russell Boast, responded by email that the organization was aware of the document and that continuing to create "visibility and opportunity for BIPOC" is an "immediate and ongoing priority.") None Theaters should end all security arrangements with police departments. None Theater leaders should have term limits. Those who have served more than 20 years (that includes the heads of many New York nonprofit theaters) should view it as "an act of service to resign." And top paid staff members should make no more than 10 times the lowest paid staff members. None Theater owners should rename half of Broadway theaters after artists of color, and ensure that half of Broadway shows are "stories written by, for and about BIPOC." (A spokesman for the Shubert Organization, which with 17 Broadway houses is the largest of the theater owners, declined to comment.) None Tony Awards administrators should appoint a group of nominators that is at least half people of color, and increase the number of voters of color. (The producers of the Tony Awards responded by email: "Every path to equity will be fully explored. These ideas and others will be presented to the Tony Management Committee for further review and discussion.") None Influential news outlets, including The New York Times, should stop funding salaried critics and feature writers, and instead "invest in contract based positions that are filled with at least 50% BIPOC writers." And theater producers and presenters should stop buying ads in publications, including The New York Times, unless at least half of the feature writers and critics are people of color. (A spokeswoman for the newspaper said "The Times is committed to a diverse staff in all parts of our newsroom, one that reflects the society we report on.") None Productions should provide on site counseling for those working on shows that deal with "racialized experiences, and most especially racialized trauma." None Theaters should acknowledge Native peoples who have lived on land being used for theatrical endeavors, and offer free tickets to members of those communities. The We See You coalition is one of several pressing for change in the theater industry as the nation grapples with its history of racial injustice in the wake of a series of killings of Black men and women by police officers. Another new organization, Black Theater United, on Thursday held what it said would be the first of a series of virtual town halls; at the event, the actors Audra McDonald, Wendell Pierce and LaChanze interviewed Sherrilyn Ifill, president of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., who encouraged the establishment of specific goals for change. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
A PALO SECO FLAMENCO COMPANY at Queensbridge Park (July 12, 7 p.m.). This New York group, which strives to blend traditional flamenco techniques with a modern touch, performs with live musicians as part of SummerStage. Its artistic director, Rebeca Tomas, takes a bare bones approach to her art; her company's name refers to music that is sung a cappella or only with percussion to reveal the raw emotion within the fiery steps. Before the show, Tomas presides over a free 45 minute dance workshop. (All are welcome.) cityparksfoundation.org COMPANY XIV at Company XIV (through Aug. 18). "Queen of Hearts," a multidisciplinary work directed and choreographed by Austin McCormick, has just been extended at this troupe's space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Inspired by Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," the production unfolds in a blend of circus, opera, magic, baroque dance and burlesque. As usual, McCormick likes to keep the stage on the decadent side of exotic. In other words, a striptease won't be out of the question. companyxiv.com MERCE CUNNINGHAM: SUMMERCOOL at Rumsey Playfield (July 17, 8 p.m.). The choreographer is the subject of another tribute in his centennial year. On Wednesday, SummerStage unveils a program put together by Catherine Tharin of the 92nd Street Y. Along with a selection of solos and duets performed by Melissa Toogood, a former Cunningham company member, and Calvin Royal III, a soloist at American Ballet Theater, the A Y/dancers, a repertory group, presents "A to Y MinEvent." In addition, Stephen Petronio Company offers another showing of "Tread," a sleek charmer from 1970. cityparksfoundation.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
"It is very Tumblr friendly," said Whitney Robinson of "Valley of the Dolls," the novel by his stepgrandmother Jacqueline Susann that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. With 31 million copies sold to date and 30 foreign editions that place the book in the best selling ranks of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Gone With the Wind," "Valley" is hardly obscure. It's a coming of age story that follows Anne, Jennifer and Neely, friends who contend with pretty much all seven deadly sins on their path to fame, from 1945 to 1965. The cult 1967 movie version starred Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate and Patty Duke, and their big haired, Pucci swathed looks and melodramatic lines are frequently invoked by entertainment and design professionals to this day. Lee Daniels of "Empire" is working on a TV series to be called "Star" that will be "a little 'Valley of the Dolls,' a little 'Dreamgirls,' a little Supremes, a little bit of TLC and a little bit of me," Mr. Daniels, 56, said at the Middleburg Film Festival last fall. "'Valley' hits on all levels," said Jonathan Adler, 49, whose 28 ceramic pillbox marked Dolls (a nickname for barbiturates), has done a brisk business for a decade. "Canonical gay things tend to have tragic heroines, check; outre hair, check; glamour, check. And most importantly, that ineffable thing: camp." But if you ask people younger than 30 who Susann is, "you'd probably get a blank look," said Brooke Hauser, who has written a book to be published in April called "Enter Helen," about Helen Gurley Brown, Susann's contemporary and the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan. Enter also Mr. Robinson, 33, by day a contributing editor to Town Country magazine, who is taking on, with gusto, the role of brand ambassador of "Valley" to the millennial generation. "Valley of the Dolls" to be released July 4. He helps manage the estate of Susann (who died of breast cancer in 1974) with his aunt Lisa Bishop, the stepdaughter of Susann's husband, the publicity agent Irving Mansfield, who died in 1988. The couple had one son, Guy, who was born in 1946, diagnosed with autism and institutionalized; Mr. Robinson confirmed the son is alive but declined to comment further. On July 4, Grove Press will release a new edition of "Valley of the Dolls," with an introduction by Mr. Adler's husband, the Barneys fixture Simon Doonan. (Liza Minnelli declined because, according to her publicist, "Liza's mother was famously fired from the movie of 'Valley,' causing her a lot of stress.") The cover will be designed by Teddy Blanks, who did the retro, Gurley Brown inflected one for Lena Dunham's best seller, "Not That Kind of Girl." Ms. Dunham has herself name checked "Valley," though not entirely favorably, posting a photo on Instagram of Patty Duke portraying Neely with a comment that read in part: "Lately I've been noticing that nearly every pop cultural image we see of a woman on psychiatric medication is that of an out of control, exhausting and exhausted girl who needs help." But Judy Hottensen, the associate publisher of Grove Atlantic, hopes that people raised on "Girls" and "Sex and the City" will discover "Valley" as a positive antecedent. "It is the same women being honest about how they're behaving," she said. Of Anne, Jennifer and Neely, Ms. Bishop said: "They're the three archetypes: a brain, a beauty and a talent. That holds true today as in any other day." The jury is still out, though, on whether Generation Y will take to "Valley," a book that includes passages like: "A man must feel he runs things, but as long as you control yourself, you control him," and "Close friendships with girls come early in life. After 30 it becomes harder to make new friends there are fewer hopes, dreams or anticipations to share." This is where a few well placed collaborations may come in handy. Mr. Robinson said he has felt both delighted and frustrated seeing "Valley" become part of the aesthetic vernacular: on runways like Alessandro Michele's Gucci, Tom Ford and Mulberry's fall 2010 ready to wear show. "Every year it reasserts its relevance," Mr. Robinson said. "Valley" has perennial commercial appeal, said Mickey Boardman, the editorial director of Paper magazine. "For some reason, that era speaks to me aesthetically much the way 'Downton Abbey' speaks to Ralph Lauren," he said. "There will always be a market for that look, which is very hard and slick in the sense that it's the opposite of the hippie." But until now the estate has not been involved in that potentially lucrative market, other than Mr. Adler's pillboxes (beginning in 2011) and some minor merchandise like mugs, notebooks, T shirts and tote bags. "It seems like it's up for grabs," Mr. Robinson said of the image. "I want to create a language for the brand. My involvement in the estate is to make sure we can work with these collaborators and help them. We have an incredible archive, and it would be great to go back to the original source material and base something off that." He has been in talks with companies, including IT'SUGAR, NARS cosmetics, Christian Louboutin and Stubbs Wootton footwear, Pantone for a custom color, the Beverly Hills Hotel (where Susann lived in the Paul Williams suite during the filming of the movie), Warby Parker, Minnie Emma for cellphone cases and notebooks, and the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Fashion Targets Breast Cancer initiative for a capsule collection. New products aside, there is much for younger generations to learn from the story of Susann, who was born in 1918 and acted in films and on Broadway before turning to writing. (Though Gore Vidal scoffed Susann "doesn't write, she types," echoing a line that Truman Capote once used to describe the work of the Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, that's typing.") Susann and Mansfield lived a high wattage life: a penthouse on Central Park South, dinners ordered in from Sardi's, a wardrobe of psychedelic Pucci prints and a poodle named Josephine that became the protagonist of Susann's first book, "Every Night, Josephine!" Her publisher was Bernard Geis. "Bernie bought it because he was smitten with Jackie and the pizazz he was a sucker for good looking women," said Letty Cottin Pogrebin, who was the director of advertising, publicity, promotion and subsidiary rights and worked on both "Every Night, Josephine!" and "Valley of the Dolls." It was the kind of Swinging Sixties office whose two floors were joined by a firepole; young employees, often clad in the miniskirts so popular at the time, went from one floor to the next on it. Ms. Pogrebin, who would go on to become a founding editor of Ms. magazine and whose daughter Robin Pogrebin is a reporter for The New York Times, said that Susann required a great deal of editing but had a knack for dialogue. "She had a very good ear for how these Broadway babes talk," she said. "She had been part of a pretty hot crowd and knew these characters and all the dirt on them." Ms. Pogrebin said that she sent out 1,500 review copies, which came with a tantalizing note written on a doctor's prescription pad that instructed, in part, "take 'Valley of the Dolls' in heavy doses for the truth about the glamour set on the pill kick." Susann, a tireless self promoter who pioneered the modern book tour, kept a file on booksellers and wouldn't hesitate to bring, say, a monogrammed blanket for a buyer who had a new baby. "She would go into bookstores and not only talk to the clerks and buy her book, but sign it for the clerk they were talking to," said Esther Margolis, who worked on the publicity campaign for the paperback publication at Bantam and is consulting on the new edition. "They are techniques I would pass on to other authors later." The critical reception, though, was distinctly less fervid than the popular one. Reviewing the novel for The New York Herald Tribune, Gloria Steinem wrote that it was "for the reader who has put away comic books but isn't yet ready for editorials in The Daily News." "These literary giants who were blazing trails became so jealous because she was out earning them all and taking away the publicity spotlight," said Matt Tyrnauer, the director of the documentary "Valentino: The Last Emperor." He is developing a documentary on Susann and "Valley of the Dolls," and believes she was the trailblazer for Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel. "In her period, she was seen as an anti feminist in a certain way," Mr. Tyrnauer said. "But with hindsight, I think you could make an argument of Jacqueline Susann as an almost unintentional feminist leader, who redefined a genre and book publishing and was a street smart, intuitive self publicist." Meaning she surely would have reveled in modern social media. "She would have loved Twitter and Instagram," Ms. Hauser said. "What would her selfies be like? Probably full splendor in Pucci with her pet poodle Josephine. She was a cottage industry before the Kardashians." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
It was an irony lost perhaps only on the White House that, almost nine months after he entered office, President Trump's official photographic portrait was finally released ... on Halloween. After all, it presented a very different image of the president than had most of his previous snaps. It is unlike the portrait that had often been used in the past few months on Mr. Trump's Twitter profile, showing the president with a fearsome "You're fired!" look on his face, and unlike the one on his White House Twitter account, in which his hands are clasped and he has a look of deep concern. The portrait, taken by the White House photographer Shealah Craighead, is also unlike the highly airbrushed official portrait of Mr. Trump's wife, Melania, which was released in April and features a Sphinx like first lady, albeit with a soft focus. It does not include his trademark red tie (like the one he wore at his inauguration), nor a "Make America Great Again" baseball cap. It does not remotely resemble the famous portrait of Winston Churchill you know, the one taken by Yousuf Karsh in 1941, in which the former prime minister of Britain is scowling, with one hand on hip who, The New York Times reported in March, was Mr. Trump's model of choice. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
LONDON The internet went into its now de rigueur frenzy recently after Balenciaga released a blue, roughly 2,000, trapezoidal tote, created by the artistic director Demna Gvasalia, that bore more than a passing resemblance to a classic plastic Ikea shopping bag (price: 99 cents). The general online response? "How dare they?" But as a new exhibition on the life and work of the designer Cristobal Balenciaga at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London makes clear, such behavior is actually in line with the core principles of the Parisian fashion house, founded in Spain almost 100 years ago. "Cristobal Balenciaga was very unique for his time in that he was so modern looking and avant garde in his vision," said Cassie Davies Strodder, curator of the exhibition, "Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion." "Occasionally this made him unpopular, particularly with the press, whom he always liked to keep at arm's length. He only gave one newspaper interview in his entire life." The exhibition, which opens on Saturday and runs through Feb. 18, begins with an exploration of how the couturier reached the zenith of his career in the 1950s and '60s, largely thanks to innovative materials and revolutionary new shapes, including the tunic, the "baby doll" and shift dresses. Glass cabinets show multiple examples: a 1961 lurid green strapless evening gown formed from three tiers of gazar puffballs (known as "the caterpillar"); the 1967 "envelope" cocktail dress, a black architectonic sleeveless structure that completely abstracted the body; and a 1954 floor length gown in vivid magenta, its cascading balloon hem (a Balenciaga signature) made possible by swaths of fabric supported by hoops, allowing the material to billow for dramatic effect. Next to that gown are X ray technical drawings, design sketches, fabric swatches and photographs, the better to illuminate the invisible engineering magic behind the lavish folds. Paradoxically, Balenciaga remained an ardent traditionalist when it came to the construction of garments. Born to a Basque seaman and a seamstress in 1895, he became an apprentice to a tailor at age 12. He set up his own house in San Sebastian, Spain, in 1917, but in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, moved to Paris, where his reputation was made. A couturier's obsession with cut and fit, combined with his modern vision of how to clothe the female body, garnered Balenciaga respect and reverence from contemporaries and clients. Christian Dior called Balenciaga "the master of us all ... haute couture is like an orchestra whose conductor is Balenciaga," while Diana Vreeland, then the editor of American Vogue, deemed him "the prophet of nearly every major chance in silhouette in 20 years." In the latter stage of the museum exhibition, which includes 120 pieces, a newer selection of ensembles offer a strong explanation for Mr. Balenciaga still being seen as a leading influence on fashion design today. Garments by designers as varied as Azzedine Alaia, Roksanda Ilincic, Oscar de la Renta, Gareth Pugh and Molly Goddard pay admiring homage to the Balenciaga oeuvre. A work by Mr. Gvasalia also makes an appearance in the show: an off the shoulder ski jacket laden with an appropriately outlandish approach to structure and volume, given the setting. "Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion" comes just two months after Mr. Gvasalia's most recent catwalk collection for the house, which was inspired in part by the Balenciaga archives. The collection included nine outfits based on original Balenciaga designs, which are available as made to measure orders in the Balenciaga atelier with traditional couture house skills. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Despite tens of millions of Americans hunkering down in their homes because of the coronavirus pandemic, the CNN debate on Sunday between Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders attracted a smaller live audience than the last two Democratic matchups. About 10.8 million people watched the candidates spar inside a closed Washington television studio, an unusual format without any in person spectators that was widely praised for its substance and solemnity. It was the highest rated television program of the night, just slightly ahead of "60 Minutes" on CBS. But viewership fell short of the huge audience that tuned in for the last two Democratic debates in Nevada (19.7 million) and South Carolina (15.3 million), according to Nielsen. The NBC News debate in Las Vegas on Feb. 19, featuring Michael R. Bloomberg's debut as a candidate, set a record for Democratic primary debates, and outscored the Grammy Awards and the Golden Globes. The ongoing public health crisis over the coronavirus has seemingly outstripped even the presidential race in terms of Americans' current events interests. The Democratic field has also narrowed since the debate in South Carolina three weeks ago, with Mr. Biden establishing a consistent lead ahead of Mr. Sanders in polls. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
It's a film as much about Bergman's love of the opera as it is a film of the piece itself. The director sets it in a theater, presenting both his vision for a staging and the experience of putting on a performance. During the overture, you never see the orchestra; instead, the camera settles on the face of a young girl experiencing Mozart's magical score for the first time. Then you see other faces: young, old, male, female, white, brown. This is music for everyone. Throughout the show, Bergman moves fluidly between onstage action and backstage humor. Papageno nearly misses his entrance because he is napping. He rolls out of his dressing room and runs to the wings, where is outfitted with his birdcage backpack and pan flute just in time to play the flute's famous upward scale. During intermission, the Queen of the Night is seen smoking under a sign that says "Smoking strictly forbidden," while the dragon walks awkwardly down the corridor and Tamino and Pamina play chess to pass time. This is nothing like the opera films of Franco Zeffirelli, which are lavishly literal minded. It's much stranger and smaller, and endlessly endearing. JOSHUA BARONE | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985) 7:30 p.m. on Showtime 2. In a recent video published on YouTube, the performer Josh Gad hosted a discussion with members of the cast and creative team behind the "Back to the Future" trilogy, including Michael J. Fox (who starred as the time traveling protagonist Marty McFly), Lea Thompson (who played Marty's mother) and the director Robert Zemeckis. Among the questions Gad asked the team: What would they pitch as a story for a possible fourth installment? "I'd like it to go back to, like, January," Thompson said, "where they could warn us about the coronavirus." In lieu of that fictional sequel, consider revisiting this original installment in the series, in which Marty's greatest worry is whether he can save himself from being stranded in the past. 30 ROCK: A ONE TIME SPECIAL 8 p.m. on NBC. It's been about seven and a half years since the final episode of "30 Rock" debuted, which means that the show has been off the air for longer than it was on it. But many will surely still flock to this hourlong special, which will remotely reunite members of the show's cast including Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan, Jane Krakowski and Jack McBrayer. NBC is using the special as a virtual industry "upfront event" to promote its next year of programming, so expect a heavy dose of forward looking marketing alongside the nostalgia. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Each Friday, Farhad Manjoo, The Times's technology columnist, reviews the week's news, offering analysis (and maybe a joke or two) about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here. The HomePod reviews are in, and the verdict is: It's middling! Apple's smart speaker was originally due to ship last year. Now, after a delay and lots of speculation that it would face a rough go against Amazon's Echo, Apple's device is finally on sale. But most reviewers appraising the device this week suggested that it was best to wait. There are some interesting features in HomePod, but it has a long way to go to beat the competition. What does it do well? It sounds great. Every reviewer among them Nilay Patel at The Verge, Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal and my New York Times colleague Brian X. Chen found that HomePod beat Echo, Google Home and a comparable Sonos device in audio quality. What doesn't it do well? Pretty much everything else, reviewers said. It's expensive 349 versus 85 for an Echo. It's locked into Apple's music service, while competing systems let you play songs from a variety of sources. And most frustratingly, it's not very smart. Where Amazon's and Google's devices can answer a variety of questions and perform lots of different tasks (like order up an Uber or Lyft), HomePod's brain, Siri, needs evolution. Brian was particularly upset that the device kept playing music he didn't like. And for Nilay, the biggest complaint was that HomePod couldn't set two timers at once basically table stakes in the smart speaker game. None of these are fatal. Siri is a cloud based service, which means Apple can keep improving it from afar. Echo, too, wasn't so great to begin with. So I wouldn't count Apple out. The smart assistant war has barely started. Travis Kalanick took the stand, drank a whole lot of water, offered his thoughts on greed and Google, and introduced the world to the crazy lexicon of tech bros: "unpumped," "angsty" and, most mysteriously of all, "laser is the sauce." At the heart of the case is one question: Did Uber steal trade secrets from Waymo, Google's self driving car spin off, when it purchased Otto, a self driving company founded by former employees of Waymo? The trial is expected to go on for weeks, but early on, Waymo seemed to score some wins. Kalanick conceded that during a "jam sesh" with Anthony Levandowski, the former Waymo engineer alleged to have stolen its secrets, he discussed the key technology at issue in the case, laser sensors. That's apparently when Kalanick jotted a note that included his conclusion that "laser is the sauce" it suggested Levandowski had convinced Kalanick of the importance of Waymo's tech. I'm sure Uber's lawyers were unpumped about that. Here's something noteworthy from social media land. Snap and Twitter have long appeared at a disadvantage to the 800 pound social media gorilla, Facebook, and the smaller companies' financial results often proved it. But this week surprise! Snap reported robust revenue and user growth, and Twitter posted its first quarterly profit as a public company. Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX and Tesla, launched a huge rocket into space! Not only that, but he also put a cherry red Tesla in it, and a mannequin wearing a space suit inside the Tesla. The whole thing will orbit the sun. There's some serious stuff here. This is the biggest rocket ever launched by a private company, and it paves the way for an even larger rocket planned by Musk, called B.F.R., which could help realize Musk's dream of colonizing Mars. (As my colleague Kenneth Chang explained in this family friendly newspaper about B.F.R.: "The B stands for big; the R for rocket.") | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Toby Walsh, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, is one of Australia's leading experts on artificial intelligence. He and other experts have released a report outlining the promises, and ethical pitfalls, of the country's embrace of A.I. Recently, Dr. Walsh, 55, has been working with the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of scientists and human rights leaders seeking to halt the development of autonomous robotic weapons. We spoke briefly at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he was making a presentation, and then for two hours via telephone. Below is an edited version of those conversations. You are a scientist and an inventor. How did you become an activist in the fight against 'killer robots'? It happened incrementally, beginning around 2013. I had been doing a lot of reading about robotic weaponry. I realized how few of my artificial intelligence colleagues were thinking about the dangers of this new class of weapons. If people thought about them at all, they dismissed killer robots as something far in the future. From what I could see, the future was already here. Drone bombers were flying over the skies of Afghanistan. Though humans on the ground controlled the drones, it's a small technical step to render them autonomous. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. So in 2015, at a scientific conference, I organized a debate on this new class of weaponry. Not long afterward, Max Tegmark, who runs M.I.T.'s Future of Life Institute, asked if I'd help him circulate a letter calling for the international community to pass a pre emptive ban on all autonomous robotic weapons. I signed, and at the next big A.I. conference, I circulated it. By the end of that meeting, we had over 5,000 signatures including people like Elon Musk, Daniel Dennett, Steve Wozniak. The technical argument is that these are potentially weapons of mass destruction, and the international community has thus far banned all other weapons of mass destruction. What makes these different from previously banned weaponry is their potential to discriminate. You could say, "Only kill children," and then add facial recognition software to the system. Moreover, if these weapons are produced, they would unbalance the world's geopolitics. Autonomous robotic weapons would be cheap and easy to produce. Some can be made with a 3 D printer, and they could easily fall into the hands of terrorists. Another thing that makes them terribly destabilizing is that with such weapons, it would be difficult to know the source of an attack. This has already happened in the current conflict in Syria. Just last year, there was a drone attack on a Russian Syrian base, and we don't know who was actually behind it. Why ban a weapon before it is produced? The best time to ban such weapons is before they're available. It's much harder once they are falling into the wrong hands or becoming an accepted part of the military tool kit. The 1995 blinding laser treaty is perhaps the best example of a successful pre emptive ban. Sadly, with almost every other weapon that has been regulated, we didn't have the foresight to do so in advance of it being used. But with blinding lasers, we did. Two arms companies, one Chinese and one American, had announced their intention to sell blinding lasers shortly before the ban came into place. Neither company went on to do so. Your petition who was it addressed to? The United Nations. Whenever I go there, people seem willing to hear from us. I never in my wildest dreams expected to be sitting down with the under secretary general of the U.N. and briefing him about the technology. One high U.N. official told me, "We rarely get scientists speaking with one voice. So when we do, we listen." So far, 28 member countries have indicated their support. The European Parliament has called for it. The German foreign minister has called for it. Still, 28 countries out of 200! That's not a majority. The obvious candidates are the U.S., the U.K., Russia, Israel, South Korea. China has called for a pre emptive ban on deployment, but not on development of the weapons. It's worth pointing out there is going to be a huge amount of money being made by companies selling these weapons and the defenses to them. Proponents of robotic weapons argue that by limiting the number of human combatants, the machines might make warfare less deadly. I've heard those arguments, too. Some say that machines might be more ethical because people in warfare get frightened and do terrible things. Some supporters of the technology hope that this wouldn't happen if we had robots fighting wars, because they can be programmed to abide by international humanitarian law. The problem with that argument is that we don't have any way to program for something as subtle as international humanitarian law. Now, there are some things that the military can use robotics for clearing a minefield is an example. If a robot goes in, gets blown up, you get another robot. Robotic warfare has long been the subject of science fiction films. Do you have a favorite? No, most A.I. researchers myself included dislike how Hollywood has dealt with the technology. Kubrick's "2001" is way off, because it is based on the idea that there will be machines that will have the desire for self preservation, and that will result in malevolence toward humans. It's wrong to assume they'll want to take over, or even preserve themselves. The intelligence we build is going to be quite different from what humans have, and it won't necessarily have the same character flaws. These machines don't have any conscience, and they don't have any desire to preserve themselves. They'll do exactly what we tell them to do. They are the most literal devices ever built. They'll follow those instructions, however perverse they may be. I dislike "The Terminator," too. That technology is far, far away. There are more mundane technologies we should be worried about now, like the drones I mentioned earlier. Now, I do like "Her," because it is about the relationships we'll have in a future when we'll be increasingly interacting with machines. It will be possible, as in the movie, that we will develop feelings for them. That movie is about how A.I. is going to be a pervasive part of our existence in every room, every car. They will be things that listen to us, answer our questions, and "understand" us. Since 2013, you've been spending as much time on your activism as you have on scientific research. Any regrets? No. This is important to be doing right now. Twenty years ago, like many of my colleagues, I felt that what we were doing in A.I. was so far from practice that we didn't have to worry about moral consequences. That's no longer true. I have a 10 year old daughter. When she's grown, I don't want her to ask, "Dad, you had a platform and authority why didn't you try to stop this?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
Tracey Davis, who turned her often painful experience as the child of the entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. into a tale of reconciliation across two memoirs, died on Nov. 2 at her home in central Tennessee. She was 59. Her ex husband Guy Garner confirmed the death but said he did not know the cause. In "Sammy Davis Jr.: My Father," written with Dolores A. Barclay and published in 1996, Ms. Davis described growing up with a frequently absent father well known for his workaholism and his nightlife exploits; the anger she felt over the years when reflecting on her childhood; and the ability she gained, toward the end of Mr. Davis's life, to forgive him and reconnect. "I said things like, 'Dad, I always loved you, but I didn't like you that much,'" Ms. Davis told The Los Angeles Times in 2014. "He said, 'Well, I didn't like you that much either.' It turned out the air needed to be cleared." Her second book, "Sammy Davis Jr.: A Personal Journey With My Father" written with Nina Bunche Pierce and published in 2014 quoted from conversations the two had during that period, when, Ms. Davis wrote, "my father became particularly nostalgic about the past." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
Breaking from tradition and bowing to the moment, Casey Affleck will not be attending this year's Oscars, ending months of speculation over whether the Academy Award winning actor would be a disruptive presence at the ceremony during a season dominated and defined by MeToo. Mr. Affleck won the Oscar last year for his performance in "Manchester by the Sea," and by academy tradition, the best actress is handed her statuette by the previous year's best actor winner. But following an extraordinary few months of revelations of widespread sexual harassment, and a concerted effort by powerful Hollywood women to rebalance the scales of power to end discrimination and abuse, many felt it would be inappropriate for Mr. Affleck to attend the ceremony. Two women sued him for sexual harassment during the production of the 2010 film "I'm Still Here," which Mr. Affleck directed and which starred Joaquin Phoenix. Mr. Affleck denied any wrongdoing but settled with both women. Although the allegations continued to hang over him, they were not enough to derail his Oscar campaign. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
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