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The Texas Board of Education on Friday delayed final approval of a widely used biology textbook because of concerns raised by one reviewer that it presents evolution as fact rather than theory. The monthslong textbook review process in Texas has been controversial because a number of people selected this year to evaluate publishers' submissions do not accept evolution or climate change as scientific truth. On Friday, the state board, which includes several members who hold creationist views, voted to recommend 14 textbooks in biology and environmental science. But its approval of "Biology," a highly regarded textbook by Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, and Joseph S. Levine, a science journalist, and published by Pearson Education, was contingent upon an expert panel determining whether any corrections are warranted. Until the panel rules on the alleged errors, Pearson will not be able to market its book as approved by the board to school districts in Texas. "It's just a shame that quality textbooks still have to jump through ridiculous hoops that have no basis in science," said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which monitors the activities of far right organizations. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
Credit...Chad Batka for The New York Times A Billboard No. 1 Is at Stake, So Here's an Album With Your Taylor Swift Hoodie For decades, the phrase "No. 1 with a bullet" has referred to a song or album that zooms to the top of the Billboard charts. Given current music industry practices, "No. 1 with a T shirt" may be more accurate. Lately, many artists and their record companies have been trying to game the system of ranking musical hits by including free downloads of new albums with sales of concert tickets, clothing and other merchandise. It's a widespread practice, and the result is some confusion about what, exactly, the weekly charts are measuring. Now some of the very people who have taken advantage of this strategy are complaining about it, and Billboard is under pressure to change the rules governing its charts. The use of so called album bundles tacking a download or CD to another purchase is an age old sales gimmick in the music industry, but now it's everywhere. Of the 39 titles that went to No. 1 last year, at least 18 were sold as part of ticket or merchandise deals. One of the most prolific bundlers has been the Houston rapper Travis Scott, who last year claimed the top spot by selling key chains, hats and access to concert tickets. At the same time, behind the scenes disputes have broken out between artists and Billboard's chart referees when the trade publication deems particular deals out of bounds, potentially costing musicians their shot at the top slot. Last month, there were two such disagreements: first when a Christian rock group, Hillsong United, lost out for No. 1 to Pink after some of its ticket deals were disqualified, and then in a bitterly contested race between DJ Khaled, a social media star in the orbit of Jay Z and Beyonce, and the eclectic rapper Tyler, the Creator. Bubbling under the weekly chart competition is the question of whether the top positions are being determined by the popularity of a new album or the swag sold with it. Billboard, whose charts are widely accepted as the last word in measuring the popularity of songs and albums, acknowledges the problem. It plans to announce this year that it will tighten the rules on merchandise bundling, said Deanna Brown, the president of the Billboard Hollywood Reporter Media Group, a division of Valence Media. Artists and people in the music industry, Ms. Brown added, "tell us week after week, month after month, that they want us to occasionally throw a flag on the field when necessary." The pandemic has been a time of renewal and reinvention for Taylor Swift. After releasing two quarantine albums, the singer is in the process of releasing the rerecordings of her first six albums. None A Fight for Her Masters: Revisit the origin story of Swift's rerecordings: a feud with the powerful manager Scooter Braun. Pandemic Records: In 2020, Ms. Swift released two new albums, "Folklore" and "Evermore." In debuting a new sound, she turned to indie music. Fearless: For the release of "Fearless (Taylor's Version)," the first of the rerecordings, Times critics and reporters dissected its sound and purpose. Reshifting the Power: The new 10 minute version of a bitter breakup song from 2012 can be seen as a woman's attempt to fix an unbalanced relationship by weaponizing memories. The rise of album bundles may be a response to the explosive growth of streaming and the rapid decline of album sales. From 2015 to 2018, revenue from album downloads plunged by about 53 percent in the United States and CD sales fell by 52 percent, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Over the same period, streaming revenue more than tripled. But the formulas that Billboard and Nielsen, its data partner, have adopted to reconcile the many ways that people consume music today have given artists and their marketers an incentive to push downloads and CDs, despite most fans' preference for streaming. When it comes to the charts, each album a fan acquires by itself or when tacked on to the purchase of a ticket or T shirt is worth about 1,400 times as much as any individual stream. That has made bundling more appealing than ever to artists even superstars like Ms. Swift, who could once reliably count on millions of CD sales. Not that she is new to bundling. In 2012, she had a deal with Papa John's Pizza to sell her album "Red" with a large one topping pie for 22. Two weeks ago, the chart was held up by several days while Billboard studied the sales data of two new albums: Tyler, the Creator's "Igor" and DJ Khaled's "Father of Asahd." Each had gotten an almost equal number of streams, so the contest for No. 1 largely came down to the validity of their bundles. Tyler offered clothing and even campaign style lawn signs ("Vote Igor!"), while DJ Khaled's album was included with sales of energy drinks through an e commerce site, Shop.com. 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. After scrutinizing the two campaigns, Billboard gave the victory to Tyler. The magazine disqualified most of DJ Khaled's bundled purchases, suspecting that some of the marketing by Shop.com and its corporate parent, Market America, had crossed a line by encouraging unauthorized bulk sales. One blog post from the company, for example, told its members to buy 12 packages to "push DJ Khaled and Market America to No. 1!" Ms. Brown, the Billboard president, defended the decision. "In this particular instance," she said, "we saw an organization encouraging purchases among their members by promising them material and organizational benefits." Both Market America and Roc Nation, DJ Khaled's management company, said the decision had blindsided them. Desiree Perez, Roc Nation's chief operating officer, also criticized the very practice of bundling, and Billboard's countenancing of it, as a kind of weekly arms race that should be banned. "We dispute their decision on behalf of DJ Khaled and, frankly, every artist who is forced to navigate bundling an album download with an inexpensive item that still effectively represents their brand," Ms. Perez said in a statement. "It's confusing and demeaning to the art." For those artists, a Billboard No. 1 album is a vital trophy. Despite the wide availability of streaming data from sources like YouTube and Spotify, the magazine's charts remain the most recognized sign of popular success, both inside the industry and among fans. Yet even that is changing, as new artists look for new strategies to engage with their fans and new indicators of success, said Brian Popowitz, the general manager of Black Box, a music marketing agency in Los Angeles. "This is a first class problem that affects the top tier, 1 percent of artists," Mr. Popowitz said. "I see a lot more artists saying, 'I really want to do Instagram,' versus saying, 'I want a No. 1 Billboard album.'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
As with most works once considered shocking, it's hard to imagine the original impact of Twyla Tharp's "Deuce Coupe." When she created it for the Joffrey Ballet, in 1973, she was an experimental modern dancer invading the kingdom of ballet with radical ideas: juxtaposing classical vocabulary with rock 'n' roll moves and pop recordings. During rehearsals, when she offered resistant dancers a chance to drop out, at least half of them left. Those who stayed were soon rewarded with the audience response of an instant hit, whistles and cheers for something both familiar and new. When American Ballet Theater performed "Deuce Coupe" for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera House on Thursday, in the middle of an all Tharp program the work couldn't carry the same charge. And not just because the graffiti artists who tagged a scrolling backdrop throughout the original performances have been replaced by a prettified replica design (by Santo Loquasto). The lines that Ms. Tharp crossed in this first "crossover" ballet have been blurred a long time. As the dancers boogie and slide, seeming to behave like teenagers at a sock hop, a music box ballerina in white (on Thursday, the pristine Christine Shevchenko) executes ballet steps in alphabetical order. She's the calm center, the ground bass, and though she acknowledges the looser culture around her with a shy shimmy, the influence flows more strongly in the opposite direction. By the end, to "Wouldn't It Be Nice," the kids are moving classically. Apart from that song, the Beach Boys tracks that Ms. Tharp chose aren't the Beatles influencing, "teenage symphony to God" stuff. They're some of the dumbest, corniest songs in the catalog (anyone remember "Take Good Care of Your Feet"?), including many goofy covers, and they're all chopped off, sped up and rearranged so as to leave no doubt about which artist is in charge: Ms. Tharp. The form is hers, complex, orderly and nearly dialectical: ballet, rock, synthesis. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have the order of ballet and the freedom of rock? That's the dream of "Deuce Coupe," and the Ballet Theater dancers embody it well. Except in the hardest because sparest moments, Misty Copeland looks relaxed and happy, like a sophisticated teenager. Isabella Boylston goes farther, disappearing into the dance in the most wonderful way. The rest of the program picks up Ms. Tharp's story. Her 1986 "In the Upper Room" a Ballet Theater staple that, perhaps for that reason, looked a little under rehearsed on Thursday returns to the doubleness of "Deuce Coupe." With clouds of stage fog instead of spray paint fumes, it juxtaposes sneakers with point shoes, using an intricate structure and all the resources of aerobics and bravura ballet to chase after a Philip Glass score that seems to rise infinitely. It's exciting and exhausting. "The Brahms Haydn Variations" (2000), by contrast, is untroubled and assured. The mix of classicism and vernacular motion is so smooth here, so casual and so classy that it's almost dull. The battle has been won, the interloper assimilated. This large scaled work is the rare dance piece that looks best on the Met stage. It's a masterly display of depth foreground, middle ground, background and of the company's deep bench. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
No one wants be that anxious host who hovers over guests in the living room, trying to slip coasters under their drinks when they're not looking. Then again, no one wants to see their furniture ruined by ring marks. The solution? Invest in interesting, well designed coasters that you'll be happy to leave lying around and guests will enjoy using. As Jacob Briars, the global advocacy director at Bacardi, pointed out, coasters aren't just functional: "They also have an aesthetic role, which is to frame the drink. It's a chance for you to show off with a little flourish." Given that, you may want to own several styles. "You might think about changing up the coasters depending on the sorts of drinks you're serving," said Mr. Briars, who is also an owner of a travel themed bar called Clipper, in Auckland, New Zealand, where bartenders have been known to match cocktails to coasters depicting the countries in which the drinks were created. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
"Ten for two" is an unofficial rallying cry for many lovers of sleepaway summer camps. In three words it reveals an unspoken bargain agreed upon for generations by many American children. They slog through the adult imposed rules, hypocrisies and indignities foisted on them during the 10 months each year when they're home with parents and in school with teachers in order to reap the sweet reward: two independent, friendship filled, technology free, teenager supervised, not completely hygienic, wholesome ish months spent at camp. Perhaps more than mothers and fathers tell their camper children, "ten for two" is a motivating mantra for parents as well. But at a time when many parents would already be preparing to sew name tags into shorts and order new flip flops for growing feet, the coronavirus pandemic has so far left the fate of the summer camp season of 2020 as murky as the waters of an algae filled lake. After long weeks of families being locked down at home and with most normal educational, athletic and social activities for children replaced by their zoning out in front of screens for hours, the release provided by camp seems more urgent than ever. "We are praying for two things right now," said Marnie Prisand, an actress and mother in Los Angeles whose two daughters, ages 16 and 12, have enthusiastically attended Canyon Creek Summer Camp in Lake Hughes, Calif., for several summers. "We are praying for health and we are praying for camp." Max Lasky, 18, is a high school senior (and Ms. Prisand's nephew) who is missing out on graduation and all the rites associated with leaving one chapter of life behind. He's hoping really, really hoping that he won't have to give up on his summer plans too. He is supposed to go to Iroquois Springs camp, in Rock Hill, N.Y., where he's been hired to work as a counselor after having spent seven summers as a camper. "For me, camp has always been a safe haven to be who you want to be and put all worries aside," Mr. Lasky said. "With everything that is going on in the world, camp would be a really nice break." "Camp is one of the few places in life where a young person can have a human centered experience," said Tom Rosenberg, the president and chief executive of the American Camp Association, which was founded in 1910 and counts more than 2,500 camps as accredited members. "As parents, we hold our kids back because we bubble wrap them. At camp, we encourage them to try new things, to really try hard at new things and to learn how to make mistakes. Where do we teach kids to fail forward? That's camp." This year, the metaphorical bubble wrap has been tightened to the point of suffocation, albeit for reasons of public health: playgrounds shut, sports teams and other beloved extracurricular activities paused, schoolwork mediated through the glare of a computer, social life flattened to social media which was already being blamed, fairly or not, for increased levels of depression and anxiety in children and teenagers (evidence has shown exercise can help). For the last 25 summers, Camp Barnabas in Purdy, Mo., run by a Christian ministry, has hosted at weeklong sessions children who are in wheelchairs, have Down syndrome, are blind, deaf or have cancer and other chronic illnesses. Last summer, 1,600 campers, 2,400 missionaries and a staff of 150 people sang songs under the stars and spent hot afternoons in the swimming pool. "The parents we serve never get a break," said John Tillack, the chief executive of the Barnabas Foundation. "Sending their kids to camp, it's a necessity. It is the only break they get all year." In early April, Mr. Tillack and his staff made the hard call to cancel the upcoming summer's program. Though most campers live in or nearby the surrounding Barry County, which has reported a total of just five confirmed cases of the coronavirus, the missionaries who work closely with the campers come from 33 states around the country. Barnabas executives were not sure they could both provide the necessary care for their campers while being responsible members of the broader American community. "Could we get physicians and nurses to come for the summer as they have in the past?" Mr. Tillack said. "Is it fair for us to be pulling medical supplies from communities that are having more cases of Covid than we are in the Midwest?" Camp Barnabas parents pay tuition of 1,300 per week; the operating cost is 1,500 per child per week, said Krystal Simon, the camp's chief operations officer. (Last summer, nearly every camper's family received some financial support to offset costs.) This summer, parents who request a refund will get one, minus a 55 registration fee. Otherwise, the tuition will be credited toward the 2021 camping season, she said. Earlier this week, the nonprofit Aloha Foundation, based in Fairlee, Vt., announced it was canceling on site programming for the 2020 summer at its five camps and would refund paid tuition. Elsewhere, plans remain in flux. "Most of our directors are still optimistic slash hopeful that they will get in at least part, if not all of their summer," said Mr. McEntire of YMCA. "The lead time gives us a lot of time to worry but also a lot of time to plan." Jay Jacobs owns three sleepaway camps in New York and Pennsylvania and he is confident based on epidemiological trends, the fact that working parents need child care and his Winston Churchill like optimism that his campers will get their summer. In an email to parents he sent this week, Mr. Jacobs wrote, "Camp will be opening on time this summer. Most people are now seeing the likelihood of that outcome." He said that summer camp is child care and that "child care has been deemed an essential business." (He added a quote from Churchill: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.") In an interview, Mr. Jacobs conceded there are some hurdles still to overcome. "Once the government says that camps can open, then we have to make sure camp will be safe for our campers and our staff, which I believe I will be able to do." The process will start on the federal level, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is expected in the next few weeks to release guidance to help camps understand, as fully as possible, the issues that they need to contend with while considering the possibilities for opening. "As part of the White House Coronavirus Task Force's recently announced 'Guidelines for Opening Up America Again,' C.D.C. is developing guidance specific to where people live, work, learn, pray and play in order to help communities 'reopen' as safely as possible during this unprecedented Covid 19 pandemic," a spokeswoman from the health agency said in an emailed statement, adding that the organization, while working with state and local governments, plans shortly "to publish guidance and decision tools related to several sectors and settings, including summer camps." They expect some of the guidance to be similar to what the C.D.C. provided in 2009, when H1N1, otherwise known as swine flu, threatened the camp season. Then, the agency told camps to "work with state and local public health officials" and to "develop plans for addressing potential disease outbreaks in camp settings." (Covid 19 symptoms tend to be relatively mild, if present at all, in children.) Hoping for a "proceed with extreme caution" signal from the C.D.C., the YMCA and the American Camp Association are preparing to help provide resources to camps and parents on how to make decisions. The two groups have retained Environmental Health Engineering, a consulting firm in Newton, Mass., to impanel experts, including those in the fields of pediatric medicine, infectious disease management and industrial hygiene, to create educational resources that camp directors can use to help guide their operations and train their staff. This year, camp directors are suggesting that they would also create a physical safe zone: where campers remain on the grounds of camp all summer (likely meaning no off site day or overnight trips) and counselors potentially would spend days off on the camp's site as well. Cabins would likely have fewer campers, allowing for spacing of beds. Meal times might be staggered to avoid overcrowding of dining halls. Supplies, like pottery wheels and archery arrows, would be wiped down between campers; personal hygiene would be enforced far more than usual. Many directors are also expecting that if they can open their camps, they will do so later than usual, possibly in July, in the hope that new cases of Covid 19 continue to diminish in identified hot spots like New York and New Jersey. (This timing could be challenging for camps in the south and southeast, which often open right after Memorial Day and wrap up in early August.) "There are scenarios where an overnight camp is about as safe as any place your child can spend the summer," Mr. McEntire said. Almost any plan to open this summer, camp officials say, is contingent on testing each camper and staff member before they arrive, and possibly again before they return home. Operators of private and nonprofit camps say they are in conversations with coronavirus test manufacturers about acquiring the necessary materials. "We still have eight or nine weeks and we're confident we can get the tests," said Mr. Jacobs, whose Timber Lake Camp in Shandaken, N.Y., normally accommodates 460 campers and 250 employees each summer. At Timber Lake, a normal camp season runs from late June to mid August and costs 13,950, putting it at the high end of the market. Mr. Jacobs said he plans to buy the equipment necessary to rapidly process coronavirus tests. "That's just the cost of doing business and running a safe camp," he said. The next hurdle will be convincing parents that it's safe to send their kids away. "The beauty of our business is that we have very close relationships with our families," said Nick Coffing, a director of Canyon Creek Summer Camp, which Ms. Prisand's daughters attend. Phoebe Yager and Steve Schrodel of Lexington, Mass., have been planning to send their older son, Graham, 13, to Camp Sangamon in Pittsford, Vt., for his fourth consecutive summer. Mr. Schrodel, the chief operating officer of a health care start up, and Dr. Yager, a pediatric intensivist (or, critical care doctor), said that they will be guided by the safety determinations of state and local health officials. "One thing we know is that this is a disease that is overwhelmingly affecting adults and is largely sparing children," Dr. Yager said, "though we must balance this with the understanding that children may serve as vectors, placing adult family members and the broader community at risk when campers return home." (Dr. Yager works in an I.C.U. that is now treating adult Covid 19 patients.) For so many reasons, they hope that come summertime, scientists and regulators believe it's safe for camp to open. "I think we are going to go crazy with kids at home without camp if we have continued quarantine and we would mourn the special opportunity for our kids to reinvent themselves and explore and take chances that I think are harder to take at home," she said. They're keeping in touch with Jed Byrom, who with his family owns Camp Sangamon and its sister property, Camp Betsey Cox. (The camps offer sessions lasting between two and eight weeks and tuition costs 1,200 to 1,500 a week, depending how long a camper stays.) "There is a lot of trust," said Mr. Byrom. "We are in the business of taking care of people's kids. People know we will make good decisions" though he's hoping for firm guidance from the C.D.C. and public health officials in Vermont. One thing he is not worried about is whether he will be able to find counselors to work. Most summers, Mr. Byrom hires a staff of about 50 people, with 20 of them coming from Asia and Europe, which he knows this year will be impossible. But he is hearing from former campers and former counselors who no longer have full time jobs or whose plans for the summer have fallen through because of the virus. He said: "They're calling me and saying, 'Can I come back to camp?'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Once a private mansion and for many years the Peabody Court Hotel, the Revival opened in early 2018, after a nearly two year renovation led by the hotel's owners, NuoveRE, and its new management team, the San Francisco based Joie de Vivre. It has quickly established itself as a neighborhood hot spot, with a buzzing rooftop restaurant, three private karaoke rooms and a fashionable crowd hanging out in the bookshelf lined lobby. But not all went smoothly on a recent stay. When I arrived in the early afternoon, there was no one at the front desk, just another guest waiting to check in. While she went off in search of a manager, the clerk returned, coffee in hand, having apparently made a quick trip to the hotel's cafe. The check in process went quickly from there, however, and the clerk made up for the wait by moving me to a higher floor, where my room had a sliver of a view of the 178 foot tall Washington Monument, a neighborhood landmark, as well as of Mount Vernon Place, which Paul Goldberger, a former architecture critic for The New York Times, once described as "one of the finest downtown squares in the United States." The 107 room hotel is ideally situated in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, one of the loveliest parts of Baltimore, and one with a rich cultural history. The Walters Art Museum, with a superb private art collection, is just a block away (and free!), as is the Peabody Library. The first Catholic cathedral in the United States and the church where the Unitarian movement was founded are both within a short walk, and the house where F. Scott Fitzgerald finished "Tender Is the Night" is about 15 minutes away. The immediate neighborhood is home to a wide variety of ethnic restaurants ranging from Ethiopian to Vietnamese and the hotel is a quick cab ride or a 20 minute stroll from the Amtrak train station. My 12th floor room was basic but pleasantly furnished, its distressed wood floor partly covered by a mottled blue and white rug, and with a small seating area off to the side, complete with two free bottles of water, copies of local magazines and a strong reading light. The bed was firm and comfortable, with an upholstered wooden bench at its foot, but was missing a blanket, which I thought I might need on what was forecast to be a chilly December night. I called down to the front desk to have one sent up, and was told it would soon be on its way. But when I returned from dinner several hours later, it had still not arrived. (I decided just to crank up the heat and go to bed.) There was a minibar in the room, but it was empty. Topside, the top floor bar and restaurant, with its glass walls giving a panoramic view of the city below, is a popular draw for locals and guests alike. On a recent Saturday evening, the bar was packed and every table had been booked for dinner . (Reservations are essential on the weekends.) One draw seems to be the extensive list of specialty cocktails and 13 offerings of locally brewed draft beer. Dining options ranged from striped bass yakitori ( 14) to braised rabbit with butter beans, bacon, kale and apples ( 29). In the morning, the room service menu was limited to just four choices (among them almond milk oatmeal and eggs with homemade sausage) so I decided to go down to the Square Meal, the ground floor "farm inspired" restaurant. The room resembled an upscale college cafeteria (you had to line up at the counter to place your order) and the menu was basically the same as the one in my room, with the notable addition of some freshly baked muffins. But my breakfast I went with the eggs and sausage ( 13) arrived 11 minutes after I ordered and was quite tasty. The orange juice was fresh; the flat white coffee expertly prepared. And it turned out I had made the right call. As I was paying my bill, another guest arrived and said he wanted to place a room service order. "No problem," the hostess replied, "but you know, you could have used the phone in your room to call us." "I did," he replied. "No one ever picked up." My breakfast of eggs and homemade sausage. It turned out that going down to the Square Meal cafe was probably a better decision than trying to place a room service order. Stuart Emmrich for The New York Times The hotel has a 24 hour gym, accessible by room key, with two treadmills, an elliptical machine and free weights. Use of the gym is included in the 12.95 daily resort fee which I noticed on my bill after I checked out as was the "free" Wi Fi and those bottles of water in my room. Location. Location. Location. The Revival has some kinks to work out, particularly in service, but the surrounding Mount Vernon neighborhood is an alluring weekend destination and this elegant but slightly flawed hotel is ideally situated to explore it. Follow NY Times Travel on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Get weekly updates from our Travel Dispatch newsletter, with tips on traveling smarter, destination coverage and photos from all over the world. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Though it is being marketed as a kind of tell all about the party (and there are some terrific table planning moments, as well as the revelation that having Rihanna play your gig costs more than even Vogue imagined), its real subject is the tension that still exists around fashion's place in a museum. The film's purpose is partly to put that issue to rest once and for all. To this end, it focuses on Andrew Bolton, the China show's curator, and on the extraordinary efforts he went to for the exhibition: securing the clothes, negotiating with the curator of the Met's Asian art galleries, where the exhibition was housed (the curator was naturally nervous about the art being overwhelmed by the fashion) and sidestepping the political risks. The end result was an enormously successful product that became one of the museum's most visited shows. Mr. Bolton is a charming, authentic presence. And the film is full of fashion world and celebrity cameos: John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Kate Hudson, the above mentioned Rihanna. However, none of them can compete with Ms. Wintour onscreen, in part because at this stage, and after all those films (and as her brief appearance in "Zoolander II" demonstrated), she has perfected playing her own character. As the director Baz Luhrmann, a consultant on the China show, pointed out in "First Monday," "Anna Wintour" is as much a creation as any dress: one that takes an external stereotype Mr. Rossi implicitly links it to the "dragon lady" of cliche and turns it to her own end. Watching her bend Met curators to her will provides some of the film's most dramatic moments whether telling Harold Koda, the then Costume Institute chief curator (he has since retired), that he will "figure out" how to disinvite some guests to the dinner to keep numbers down, or suggesting that the museum will have to close the Temple of Dendur the day before the party, even if that means barring tourists, or dismissing anyone's need to see a Tiffany pillar, because the space is needed for a table representing money for the museum. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. Another week on the 2019 tennis circuit, another different champion. April is just about here, and no man or woman has yet managed to win more than one singles title on the main circuit this season. "That's amazing, isn't it?" Ashleigh Barty said after keeping the streak alive on Saturday with a 7 6 (1), 6 3 victory against Karolina Pliskova in the Miami Open final. But though Barty, an Australian, was the 14th WTA champion in 14 events, her winning a title of this magnitude bore no resemblance to a fluke. Her game is a varied thing of beauty, mate, and though at 5 feet 5 inches she is far from the most imposing player on tour, her tennis has been standing taller and taller in 2019. She was a finalist in Sydney, a quarterfinalist at the Australian Open with many of her sports savvy compatriots piling on the pressure by tracking her every stroke. She was then the key figure in Australia's 3 2 victory over the United States on the road in the Fed Cup. Though Elina Svitolina stopped her in the round of 16 at Indian Wells by winning the longest match of the women's season (3 hours 12 minutes), there was no stopping Barty in Miami. There was no stopping Bob and Mike Bryan either. The twins, who have formed one of the greatest doubles teams in tennis history and will turn 41 on April 29, defended their men's doubles title with a 7 5, 7 6 (6) victory over Wesley Koolhof and Stefanos Tsitsipas. The title came eight months after Bob Bryan underwent hip resurfacing surgery on Aug. 2, 2018. He believed then that his playing career was over, but they have now won two titles since reuniting this season. The first came at the Delray Beach Open last month, but Saturday's victory was a step up, coming after they saved four match points in the semifinals against Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo. "If you would have told me in August when I was getting surgery that I was going to defend the Miami Open title I would have said you are full of it, really," Bob Bryan said. Barty, seeded No. 12, defeated three top 10 players: Kiki Bertens; Petra Kvitova, who had stopped her runs in Australia; and Pliskova. Already an established doubles champion, Barty will be a part of the singles top 10 for the first time on Monday, moving to No. 9 and becoming the first Australian woman to break into that group since 2013, when Samantha Stosur was at her peak. But Barty, now 22, is the undisputed leader of Australian women's tennis at this stage, as underscored by her 6 0, 6 3 victory over the 35 year old Stosur in the round of 32 in Miami. Her Australian roots go deeper than most: Her father, Robert, is an Indigenous Australian, a part of the Ngarigo people. She has embraced that heritage, taking on a role as a tennis ambassador in the indigenous community, joining the former champion Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who was a part of the Wiradjuri people and who won seven Grand Slam singles titles from 1971 to 1980. Barty is, in many respects, an old school tennis talent. Her off court demeanor is upbeat, articulate and modest. (She favors "we" and "team" more than "I" when discussing her rise.) Her on court demeanor is understated, close to stoic. There was barely a grunt and nary a shriek as she and Pliskova exchanged blows on the temporary main court that has been installed this year in Hard Rock Stadium. Even if there had been more shouts and murmurs, it would have been a challenge to make them out given the poor acoustics that muffle noise even when a crowd is much bigger and more boisterous than it was for Saturday's final. But it is Barty's tennis that is the true classic. She has pure technique, including a potent loop topspin forehand and a powerful, match winning serve full of disguise and power, which she generates with great leg drive and racket head speed. Pliskova, a former No. 1 who was seeded No. 5 in Miami, leads the tour in aces. But Barty won that duel within a duel, finishing with 15 aces to Pliskova's six and winning 86 percent of her first serve points to Pliskova's 66 percent. Barty can also thrive at the net (she won the United States Open doubles title last year with CoCo Vandeweghe) and can drive a two handed backhand or hit a one handed slice with enough bite to cause a world of geometric pain for tall players, like the 6 1 Pliskova, who thrive on higher strike zones and consistent pace. Variety, it seems, is all the rage in women's tennis. Bianca Andreescu, the 18 year old Canadian wild card who made a stunning run to the title at Indian Wells, also has a diverse array of weaponry and, like Barty, a pronounced midrally taste for changing rhythm. "I have always tried to bring as much variety onto the court as possible," Barty said. "It's always about trying to neutralize what your opponent's doing. Obviously, there was a bit of a phase in women's tennis where there was this big power and first strikers that were getting on top of rallies early. But I think the physicality in tennis, especially on the women's side, has grown, which has allowed more players to neutralize off that big first ball and work their way into points." She proved her point repeatedly on Saturday, displaying her improved returns and tracking down Pliskova's flat bolts in the corners and slicing them back into play. But she has ample punching power of her own and quite an upside. It is easy to see her thriving on clay (see the French Open) and grass (see Wimbledon). It is also easy to imagine that this breakthrough could have come earlier if she had not decided to step away from tennis after the 2014 United States Open and focus on cricket instead. But in her view, it was that break, which ended in 2016, that has allowed her to better manage the expectations and begin fulfilling her tennis potential. "I think I was an average cricketer, and I'm becoming a better tennis player," she said. "It was certainly an enjoyable time in my life. It was a time that I think I found myself a little bit more as a person, and I met an amazing group of girls and a new circle of friends, I suppose. But I think tennis was always my calling." So it seems after the most significant victory of her career: The Miami Open is a part of the top tier of events on the regular tour, below only the four Grand Slam tournaments and the season ending WTA Finals in prestige. Barty might be merely one of so many tennis winners in 2019, but she has the ability and the personality to not only be a serial champion but a popular one, as well. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
SQUARE HAUNTING Five Writers in London Between the Wars By Francesca Wade Imagine five pioneering feminist scholars and writers assembled into one enchanting group portrait: the American poet Hilda Doolittle (known as H.D.), the novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, the classicist Jane Ellen Harrison, the medievalist Eileen Power and Virginia Woolf, whose career changed so much for women in literature and public life. Francesca Wade, a British journalist and the editor of The White Review, brings these five together in her vividly written first book, "Square Haunting," because they all lived in Bloomsbury, on Mecklenburgh Square. Although they resided there at different times and, except in the case of one or two, it is unclear whether they ever met each worked to overturn obstacles that had long "kept women subordinate," forging new paths to the economic independence and intellectual fulfillment Woolf heralded in her landmark essay "A Room of One's Own." Francesca Wade's enchanting group portrait reveals that Hilda Doolittle, Dorothy Sayers, Eileen Power, Jane Ellen Harrison and Virginia Woolf had much in common, besides a London address. Wade presents her subjects in order of their residency on the square. H.D. moved there from the United States in 1916, while World War I raged and her marriage to the British poet Richard Aldington unraveled. It was a bitter, introspective time for H.D., which generated powerful poetry and luminous novels and led to her sexual liberation. In July 1918, she met Annie Winifred Ellerman, the daughter of a shipping magnate alleged to be England's richest man. Ellerman soon changed her name to Bryher (after one of the Isles of Scilly) in order to publish her fiction anonymously and "to escape ready identification with a single gender." She also married twice, the second time to the novelist Kenneth Macpherson, who too fell in love with H.D. Bryher and Macpherson adopted H.D.'s daughter, Perdita, and their communal life enabled the poet to combine "motherhood and creative work," to her satisfaction. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. After H.D. left London for Cornwall in 1920, Dorothy Sayers moved into her former apartment on the square. She arrived shortly after her official graduation from Somerville College, Oxford, with a First in modern languages, and five years after she had completed her studies 1920 being the first year Oxford acknowledged women graduates. Vera Brittain, in her book "The Women at Oxford" (1960), called Sayers the Somerville graduate who "made the most lasting impression on her contemporaries and on the outside world." Brilliant, musical and interested in theology, Sayers astonished her classmates when she became a professional writer of detective stories. But her books, featuring her sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, were immediately celebrated "renowned," Brittain wrote, "as the kind that great minds use for relaxation." Wade's portrait of Sayers, one of England's most private writers, perceptively illuminates her fierce independence, her complicated relationships and her often grotesque novelistic imagination. Like Sayers, Eileen Power remains too little known, even by those who have benefited from her splendid scholarship on medieval women. Wade writes that in 1920, while a lecturer at Cambridge, Power received a travel fellowship funded by Albert Kahn, whom she described as "an enlightened French banker who gave you 1,000 pounds and sent you round the world with instructions to widen your narrow academic mind." At 31, Power traveled alone to Egypt, India, China, Japan and North America. Already a pacifist and member of the Labour Party, she was delighted to meet with Gandhi as well as politicians and anticolonial activists. From Delhi, she traveled north along the Silk Road to the Khyber Pass, which was closed to women by British law. Power, Wade reports, "made the crossing in male disguise." While abroad, she read in The Times of India "the perfectly disgusting news" (Power's words) that Cambridge had refused to follow Oxford's example of admitting women to full membership in the university. She was subsequently pleased to be invited to join the faculty of the London School of Economics, an appointment that prompted her move to Mecklenburgh Square. Founded by Fabian socialists, the school was "the center of London's left wing activities." Although Power's sisters burned most of her papers after her sudden death in 1940, Wade insightfully documents her scholarly work, friendships with fellow "rebellious spirits" at L.S.E. and her acclaimed international lectures and BBC broadcasts. We learn that Power loved fashion, jazz and dancing; that she resigned from Soho's Gargoyle Club when she and her African American friend the singer and actor Paul Robeson were denied entrance; and that she rejected the idea of a "woman's perspective," insisting on "the outlook of a PERSON." Power's home was a social center; her "kitchen dances" attracted scholars, politicians and literary notables, including Woolf. In 1937, at the age of 48, she married her former student and longtime collaborator Michael Moissey Postan, a Russian born socialist activist. Power, a member of the League of Nations Society, agreed with her friend H. G. Wells that the organization might fulfill what he called "that great idea of World Peace and a unified mankind." Her goal was to educate people for "world citizenship." But Hitler's rise and war shattered that hope. In 1939 she wrote: "My mind has been blown out like a candle. I am nothing but an embodied grumble, like everyone else." The following year, while shopping at a department store, she died of a heart attack. Wade concludes her book with Woolf, who, along with her mentor Jane Ellen Harrison, opened new avenues for creative women in the early 1900s. Harrison moved to Mecklenburgh Square in 1926 at 75, after leaving an illustrious but embattled career as a classicist at Cambridge. In 1874, as "the best performing candidate" on Cambridge's General Examination for Women, she had been awarded a scholarship to Newnham College. But Victorian male chauvinism prevailed: Women were refused degrees and barred from the university library. Harrison traveled widely with archaeologists and made stellar scholarly contributions, particularly in the fields of ancient Greek art and religion, but for a long time she was unable to obtain an academic appointment. Then, at 48, Harrison was invited to return to Newnham as a fellow. According to Wade, she was immensely popular with students, "who would flock to her rooms" for "cigarettes and whiskey" and conversations about her research. Harrison found evidence of an ancient world order that included long ignored matriarchs at the heart of community life and religion. Dionysus was not merely the "Son of Zeus"; his mother, Semele, an ancient Thracian earth goddess, had been erased by male scholars. In 1904, while Woolf was in Cambridge recovering from a suicide attempt, a cousin took her to meet Harrison. The encounter marked the beginning of a 24 year friendship and collaboration. Like Woolf and H.D., Harrison connected militarism with "the tyrannies of patriarchy." Like Power, she was a member of the pacifist Union of Democratic Control, publishing blunt essays to explain why "with every nerve in my body I stand for peace." She also established a relationship with the poet, novelist and translator Hope Mirrlees, a former student. Wade's account of the couple's relationship, including of their contacts with the Russian exile community in Paris, where they lived for a period and which inspired several works of translation, is riveting. In 1926, Harrison and Mirrlees returned to London, where Harrison learned Icelandic and studied Persian, "the richest civilization I have touched yet." She was just beginning to explore the impact of Eastern religious writings on the Western classics when she died in 1928. Wade cites Woolf's essays "A Room of One's Own," initially delivered as a lecture at Newnham, and "Three Guineas," with its explicitly pacifist and feminist themes, as lasting markers of Harrison's influence. Virginia and Leonard Woolf moved to Mecklenburgh Square in August 1939. In their year on the square during the Blitz, Woolf completed what Wade rightly terms an "astonishing variety of projects," including a splendid biography of the painter and critic Roger Fry and her novel "Between the Acts." Just as Harrison, in 1914, had denounced the "herd mentality" that enabled an uncritical community to follow a treacherous leader into a disastrous war, similarly, in 1940 Woolf's essay "Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid" denounced Hitlerism as the aggressive manifestation of a society's "desire to dominate and enslave." The war could only be won by destroying the "insane love of power" everywhere in the home, where women are diminished, and in politics, where brutes triumphed. To succeed in this mission required people to "look back through our mothers" and rediscover the era when "art drew communities together." It was time, Woolf wrote, that "someone invented a new plot," to embody the concerns of women and regenerate creativity, cooperation, civility. During the nightly bombings of the Blitz, 13,000 Londoners were killed and Mecklenburgh Square was incinerated. The Woolfs were "marooned" in the countryside, where Virginia succumbed to despair. On March 28, 1941, she walked into the River Ouse, leaving notes to comfort her beloveds and her opus to inspire the future. In our own moment of global catastrophe, Wade offers us a timely invitation to join our literary foremothers in their rebellious journeys to achieve creative freedom and world harmony. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
"I can't even believe I'm writing this, or asking for this, but this is the reality." This appeal on GoFundMe appeared on Monday, like thousands of others showing up each day on that site and others like it. The Nowakowski siblings of Milwaukee were asking for 25,000 to help their parents, as their father struggled to pay for the care of their mother, who has dementia and mobility challenges and recently moved into an assisted living home. Their biggest goal is a wheelchair accessible van to restore some sense of normalcy to their parents' lives, allowing them to continue going to the farmers' market and to see their favorite band, the Whiskey Belles. The family's situation is not life or death, or even as severe as imminent eviction or lack of electricity, like some of the requests on older sites like Modest Needs. But it's not in the same category as art projects or entrepreneurial ventures either, such as those you'd see on Kickstarter. Charitable fund raising campaigns or requests for race for the cure pledges are a different type of plea, too. Instead, the increasing number of personal appeals like this represent a muddled middle, where people who do not have enough ask for help to make life better. The requests lie somewhere along the murky wants versus needs continuum, but it would be hard to agree on exactly where they sit. We are not used to this, the sheer nakedness of people putting a number to their problems and disclosing it to the world. But more financial transparency is almost always better than less, and the Internet provides an emboldening platform. Then, it is up to everyone to push the button to give money or not. Plenty of people are making the requests. GoFundMe plays host to about 3,300 new personal campaigns (as the company refers to them) each day. The most common category is medical expenses, followed by memorials and funerals, general emergencies and education costs. While not all requests are successful, people can keep whatever they take in, even if they don't hit their goal (and also if they exceed it). As of September, the askers had raised over 1 billion in the previous 12 months, though the for profit company does take about 8 percent in fees for customers in North America. The money it transfers for personal campaigns is a gift, so the givers get no tax deduction, and the company does not guarantee that people are telling the truth. It urges people to give money only to those they "know and trust." So who are these people who are giving and taking? There is something appealing about the idea that this is "really Midwestern," as a writer for the personal finance website The Billfold suggested earlier this year. Indeed, to the money talk isn't polite crowd, crowdfunding is often something to sneer at. But those of us reared far from moneyed coastal communities keep right on with our barn raisings, virtual or otherwise. It apparently isn't always easy to figure out just how bold to encourage people to be, though. One service called Present Value began as a registry where engaged couples could just ask directly for cash in lieu of upgraded kitchen appliances and more traditional wedding gifts. The platform is still there, but the company has shifted its focus toward helping users figure out how to put the money they receive to work, whether in stocks or college savings. Those gift requests were strictly wants. Other kinds of requests that are further down the necessity continuum began appearing on sites like Indiegogo a few years ago and complicated the proceedings. Yet it didn't make much sense for users to see requests for help with something like fertility treatments next to fledgling art projects in need of money. Plus, the branding was all wrong. "Indie" suggests filmmaking, and "go go" suggests movement and dancing, not eggs and sperm that are having trouble meeting let alone funeral expenses or missed college tuition payments. Indiegogo has now moved the more acute financial requests to Generosity.com. One advantage that all such sites offer is that you don't have to look anyone in the eye when making your request. You can ask everyone without having to ask anyone in particular. It's also less aggressive than making a one on one plea. Or perhaps it's just passive aggressive. There is always the possibility that the person who is asking is making a list and checking it twice (and then 50 times more) to see who has pitched in and who has not. But Dana Nowakowski, who made the van appeal with her brother, Luke, said that she was not doing that at all. "I dreaded doing it," she said. "I've been writing it in my head every morning for the last couple of weeks, in the shower, getting ready, just dreading writing this story." So why do it? "There is an element of desperation," she said. Hers, she explained, is a family that does not ask for things. They work for what they get and they buy what they can afford and that's just how it has always been. They do not expect things or feel entitled to them. But her parents, she said, had done so much for so many people for so long, baking cookies and making casseroles and giving rides and handing out gift cards. Her father is a retired teacher. And few people knew just how desperate things had become in recent weeks, when her mother moved into the dementia care home and the costs became clear. "They were the first ones there for friends and family," she said. "So I guess I kind of thought, 'Hey, it's their turn. It's time for everyone to return the favor.'" In an odd coincidence, Ms. Nowakowski works as a writer for an ad agency. So was this just another "campaign," as GoFundMe puts it, except one where she had to sell her family's plight? "Selling implies exaggerating, calculating, sometimes even manipulating the truth," she said. "The sad truth is I didn't have to sell anything. This crappy situation sells itself." Even introducing the idea of commerce here, however, ought to make us all deeply uncomfortable. Is this what we've been reduced to, weighing pitches for charity from people we know and pitting them against strangers online, or the needy whom more traditional charities serve? What was I to make of my own cynicism as I found myself deep in the weeds on these sites this week, evaluating a newly fatherless child. Should I support her, given that I was pretty sure that a seven figure settlement would be coming her way because of the circumstances of her father's accidental death? So here's another way to think about these sites. They don't replace traditional charity, or obviate the obligation to vote and lobby for policy changes that could reduce many of the needs they serve. But they can allow you to honor your own family's history of having been helped by letting you pay back those who have supported you in the past, or toss the rope to others who are in circumstances similar to ones that you once found yourself in. That, at least, is how family, friends and fans of the Nowakowskis seem to be seeing it. As of this writing, they've raised 20,830, more than 80 percent of their goal. And Ms. Nowakowski said she didn't feel a shred of regret. "The support we're getting from this is just as important to me as the money," she said. "You can really feel the love, the warmth, the fact that people have your back. And that's what we needed the most." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Your Money |
On New Year's Eve, as people around the world celebrated with a kiss or a glass of champagne, some partygoers in Nairobi celebrated a different way: with 12 grapes, one for each month of the year, as the clock ticked down to midnight. This Mexican tradition, which dates back to the Spanish colonial period and is said to bring good luck, arrived in Nairobi on the crest of a cultural wave that is taking over Kenya's trendiest corners. Mexican culture is everywhere: on restaurant menus, in dance clubs, on television. Although the number of actual Mexicans in Nairobi is small about 200 people, according to embassy estimates and they don't have a defined neighborhood, their influence on the city's cultural life is hard to miss (and that's not even including Lupita Nyong'o, the daughter of Kenyans who was born in Mexico City). Nairobians can drink tequila and dance to Mexican Kenyan fusion music at Blend Lounge on a Saturday night, then worship with Mexican Catholic priests at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish the next morning. Decent Mexican food is notoriously hard to find throughout Africa, but in Nairobi, hungry travelers don't even have to leave the airport: at Java House, East Africa's answer to Starbucks, they can feast on quesadillas, guacamole, and even huevos rancheros. The first Mexicans came to Kenya in the late 40s, as Catholic missionaries. Here's how their influence spread. The fusion of Mexican and Kenyan cultures began in the 1980s, as Latin American telenovelas, mostly from Mexico, took over Kenyan airwaves. The rights for these soap operas were cheaper to buy than those for United States shows, so networks snatched them up. Today, business is still booming: Caroline Mbindyo Koroso, a CEO and executive producer of African Voices Dubbing Company, says the company started out in early 2015 with two employees dubbing soap operas. Now it's the biggest dubbing company in East Africa, with 15 recording booths and four dedicated mixing stations. Born in Veracruz, Mexico, Edgar Manuel Vargas Gallegos, 28, had always idolized the Mexicans who had worked in Kenya as missionaries. After seminary school, but before his ordination, Mr. Gallegos followed their footsteps, intending to spread the Gospel . Instead Mr. Gallegos fell in love with genge, Nairobi's home grown genre that combines traditional hip hop beats with rap lyrics in Kiswahili and Sheng. With telenovelas popular, he reasoned: why couldn't Mexican Kenyan fusion be the next big thing in music, too? Mr. Gallegos ditched the priesthood and adopted the stage name "Romantico" to pursue a life in rap. His collaborations with Kenyan artists, including Samaki Mkuu (the Kenyan Olympic swimmer Jason Dunford), and the so called father of genge, Jua Cali, are addictive mash ups: in the video for his 2018 single, Mkora (which means "scoundrel"), Romantico raps in Spanish and Swahili while wearing a bright blue Mexican wrestler mask. In a forthcoming song, he reimagines the Veracruz classic "La Bamba" with genge soul. "We are starting a new movement here in East Africa: a fusion of Spanish and Swahili music," said Romantico, sitting outside a Nairobi taqueria where Kenyan employees clamored to take selfies with him. "The people can feel that it belongs to us. When we are singing, we are not singing for ourselves. We are singing for the people." And the people love it: already, Romantico has performed on two of Kenya's most popular TV shows, Ten Over Ten and The Churchill Show. The hype has spilled over into classical music genres, too. The Kenyan classical guitarist Kevin Munyi, who specializes in private performances and corporate events, said there is suddenly more demand for mariachi music than ever before. Ms. Chandra and her husband, Yash Krishna, lived in the United States for several years, including in California, before finally returning home to Nairobi. They missed the food they had fallen in love with abroad. "We couldn't figure out why there wasn't any really good, authentic Mexican food here," said Ms. Chandra. "It's really similar to Kenyan food, in terms of ingredients: corn, avocados, beans. We said, 'it should work really well with the Kenyan palate.'" Indeed, ugali (the stiff cornmeal porridge that is ubiquitous in East African cuisine) is reminiscent of Mexican corn masa, and kachumbari, a Kenyan fresh tomato and onion salad, is a dead ringer for pico de gallo. Ms. Chandra and the other co owners traveled to Mexico, where they ate their way around the country, then flew the acclaimed Mexican chef Juan Cabrera Barron to Nairobi for 10 days to help develop the menu. Authenticity was key: when certain ingredients, such as guajillo chilies and epazote herbs, weren't available in Kenya, Fonda NBO partnered with an organic farm to grow them. And after more than a dozen misfires, they finally found a local Kenyan cheesemaker to make perfect queso fresco and queso Oaxaca from scratch. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Hong Kong Ballet is an enigma, though not a particularly riveting one. At its Joyce Theater debut on Tuesday night, this company of lovely dancers seemed like a shiny white envelope without a stamp. As polished as its dancers are, its choreography washes them out. Formed in 1979 and led since 2009 by Madeleine Onne, a former artistic director and principal dancer of the Royal Swedish Ballet, the group led off with an excerpt by Fei Bo, who choreographed the National Ballet of China's production of "Peony Pavilion." He offers a pas de trois from "A Room of Her Own" (2011), inspired by Virginia Woolf's similarly titled essay. This homage is on the thin side, yet the problem could be walking in on the middle of it. Liu Yu yao, supple in blue, sits behind an austere table; two others, Liu Miao miao and Li Jia bo, both in white, enter backward from opposite sides of the stage and merge in swirling duets that Liu Yu yao, the obvious outsider and racked by jealousy, either instigates or interrupts. In the end, she crumples her papers, and the couple dash offstage. Nacho Duato's "Castrati" (2002), for an all male cast, looks at the practice of castrating young men to preserve their singing voices. Here, the boy is Shen Jie, who often lies on his back with his legs in the air; understandably, he wears an expression of anguish. (Bloody hands come later.) But Mr. Duato's melding of punctuated arm jabs, crotch grabs and swirling turns offers little rhythmic distinction. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Clockwise from top left: Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, by Soraya Ben Hadj; London by Sophia Goldberg; Brooklyn by Tamara Yurovsky; La Marsa, Tunisia, by Soraya Ben Hadj; San Francisco by Julie Gebhardt; Groznjan, Croatia, by Julieta Seba. Every morning Tamara Yurovsky takes her wire fox terrier, Oliver, for a walk in Vinegar Hill, an enclave of Greek Revival homes built in the 1830s along the Brooklyn waterfront. Along the way he preens for photographs posted by Ms. Yurovsky on the Instagram account oliver thewirefox. "He totally owns it," Ms. Yurovsky said, adding, "If Oliver feels like directing, then you have to go with the flow." Oliver is certainly a cute little guy, but the real stars of many of Ms. Yurovsky's photographs are the neighborhood's doors, windows and facades. "Doors say a lot about a place," she said. "But they also conceal many possible realities." Such photographs belong to a genre all their own ("doortraits," as they are called on Instagram), and they are surging in popularity. While much of the internet these days seems like a dysfunctional family split along social and political lines, the door crazed Instagram users belong to a harmonious community. You can find accounts focused on doors from Iran, Italy, Nicaragua, Stockholm and Stockton, Calif. Martha Reyes, who lives in Florida, and Katie Smith, from London, teamed up recently to start ihaveathingforwalls, an account that brings together photos of mostly doors and windows from Instagram accounts around the world. The two women have never met in person, but after seeing each other's photographs, they decided to collaborate. They communicate mostly using WhatsApp and split weekly oversight of the Instagram account, which has roughly 40,000 followers. For Ms. Reyes, who said that she suffers from kidney disease, Instagram is a welcome distraction. "I was getting depressed and the only thing to take me out of that was a picture," she said. "It took my thoughts away from the pain." Present day doortraits are rooted in painting's past. Seventeenth century Dutch painters portrayed doors and windows as a bridge between worlds: home and street life, worldliness and spirituality. In the 1800s, the first photographers harkened back to those themes, among them the British inventor William Henry Fox Talbot, whose "The Open Door," was a conscious mirroring of the Dutch masters. In the mid 1970s, the photographer Roy Colmer captured more than 3,000 doors in Manhattan, and the pictures are now part of the collection at the New York Public Library. Mr. Colmer's inspiration, according to Elizabeth Cronin, the library's assistant curator of photography, was Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception." Ms. Cronin said that Mr. Colmer was interested in street life, and photographing doors gave him a certain cover. "No one was noticing these doors, and it gave him a sense of freedom," she said. Andrew Howell, a graphic designer who lives in suburban London, said attending church services as a young boy sparked his interest in urban portals; for one, he wondered what mystery lurked behind the church tower's closed door. (Bells, he later found out.) Now he can be found, camera in hand, wandering East London for his doors of england Instagram account, which has more than 5,800 followers. "You could be in 18th century London," he said of the neighborhood he is chronicling. "I want to document it while it is still there." Julie Gebhardt, a hairdresser who works in San Francisco and has 47,000 Instagram followers for her door centric account, has started leading a neighborhood door tour for her new Instagram friends. "We go into a neighborhood they normally wouldn't go to," she said. "There is beauty in the ordinary. Maybe it is not super picturesque. But you can show the beauty of decay." Some of the doortrait takers find their friends and family puzzled by their obsession with something so far from the usual Instagram fare of rainbows, cute animals and Sunday brunch. Soraya Ben Hadj, a digital marketing consultant who grew up in Tunisia but now lives in Paris, said a friend chided her once because of the subject matter of her Instagram account, doorseverywhere. "He said: 'Look, you are taking pictures of closed doors. That means you are not open minded,'" she said. "For some people, that is something negative. For me, it's not at all negative. I use my imagination. I confess, sometimes I see someone going in. That gives humanity to the place. A door is a path to somewhere else." Abdullah Alriyami, a writer from Oman who lives in Rabat, Morocco, began taking doortraits in Morocco and Oman a few years ago when he got his first smartphone. He is concerned that globalization will obliterate local culture and with it, the doors and windows that make each place unique. In Morocco, for instance, many of the wooden doors he photographs are hand carved with elaborate decorations. Others are brightly painted or forged in metal and hammered into shape. Mr. Alriyami was interviewed by email, with translations by his daughter, Maryam Al Tubi, a student at the University of South Carolina. "Doors and windows in architecture are just like the eyes in people," Mr. Alriyami wrote. "It is through your eyes that I know about you and we communicate better. A door is not just a tool for security and protection, it is a cultural symbol of a human being." The one thing that distinguishes one door from another is the person behind it. Oliver, Ms. Yurovsky's terrier, has more than 11,400 followers and a canine buddy in Scotland with whom he swaps scarves. Ms. Yurovsky too helped create a hashtag for dog owners to share photos of dogs and doors; it already has nearly 1,000 posts. A worry shared by many of those who take part in this Instagram genre is that the people on the other side of the doors may not appreciate the intrusion of a stranger with a camera. "I do get worried in certain neighborhoods that people might get upset," said Ms. Yurovsky, who photographs her terrier in Brooklyn. Luckily, her dog is a polite New Yorker. "For the record," she said, "Oliver has never gone to the bathroom on anyone's door." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The Man Behind San Francisco's Facial Recognition Ban Is Working on More. Way More. SAN FRANCISCO As San Francisco's Board of Supervisors prepared to vote Tuesday on an ordinance forbidding city agencies to use facial recognition technology, some proponents of the measure were uncertain if they had the necessary support. Two of the legislators who were for it had called in sick. But Brian Hofer, a paralegal who had drafted the ordinance, seemed unfazed. Sitting in the back of a chamber in City Hall, he wrote and rewrote a draft of a post for Twitter in which he would proclaim victory after the ban passed. Mr. Hofer, 41, had reason to feel confident. Over the past five years, he has drafted 26 privacy laws for cities and counties in California. All were approved, 23 unanimously. And he had seen enough of the machinations of decision making to be certain that this one would go through. Facial recognition technology has stoked controversy over the years. Here's a look back. "He's just omnipresent and very effective," said Lee Hepner, a legislative aide to Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who sponsored the facial recognition ban. "He's great at bringing down the volume and making it a level headed conversation." Mr. Hofer is little known outside California, but his anti surveillance measures have been making waves in the state. He successfully pressed the Northern California cities of Richmond and Berkeley, which have sanctuary policies, to end their contracts with tech companies like Amazon and Vigilant Solutions that do business with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In Santa Clara County, in Oakland and elsewhere, he has secured transparency laws around surveillance technology. His campaigns are just beginning. In Berkeley and Oakland, Mr. Hofer is pushing for more facial recognition bans. He has two additional privacy proposals winding their way through the state's legislative process, focused on reining in surveillance technology. And he is establishing a nonprofit, Secure Justice, that will grapple with technology issues. "My primary concern is when the state abuses its power, and because of the age we live in, it's probably going to occur through technology and data mining," Mr. Hofer said. "That's where I see the most potential harm occurring. So I just wanted to jump right in." Get the Bits newsletter for the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry. From his earliest days, Mr. Hofer displayed his gadfly tendencies. He was raised in Weed, a small Northern California town where the politics lean libertarian and where the Jefferson movement, which proposes breaking off the northernmost bit of California and a slice of southern Oregon to form a new state, has long held sway. Mr. Hofer moved to the Bay Area in the late 1990s and studied economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and law at the University of San Francisco, though he delayed taking the bar exam when he began focusing on anti surveillance activism. He supported himself by working as a paralegal and now lives in Oakland with his younger brother, who is completing a degree at Berkeley. Mr. Hofer started to hold technology accountable in 2014 when he heard about a new surveillance system in Oakland. The system, the Domain Awareness Center, was designed to aggregate data from security cameras, license plate readers, gunshot detectors and other technology. "I had never walked into City Hall for any reason," he recalled. But Mr. Hofer soon joined a group of privacy advocates and started attending City Council meetings to voice his objections to the intrusiveness of the system. The Oakland project was scaled back after protests and Mr. Hofer was hooked. He began seeking out other ways to oppose surveillance initiatives. "It's forcing transparency into the conversation," he said. Mr. Hofer took on a range of anti surveillance initiatives. He began drafting legislation that would force cities to be transparent about the surveillance systems they deployed, or to cut technological ties with ICE. He said he did not consider himself anti tech and was just trying to prevent the authorities from abusing the power of technology. The facial recognition bans are Mr. Hofer's latest cause, partly because he sees an opportunity to cut off the technology before it becomes widespread and entrenched, he said. "On balance, it's such a dramatic shift in power that for the first time, aggressively, I want to say this is where we draw the line," said Mr. Hofer, who worked with the American Civil Liberties Union and others to push the San Francisco ordinance through. Last Thanksgiving, Mr. Hofer experienced the surveillance technology he has been examining firsthand. Police officers in Contra Costa County, using an automated license plate reader tool, pulled him over and accused him of stealing the rental car he was driving. Mr. Hofer said he had recognized the tool it was made by Vigilant Solutions, a target of his sanctuary city ordinances. "It showed me the real world consequences of these sometimes speculative, hypothetical arguments that I've been making," he said. Eventually, the officers realized that the car had been stolen months earlier and that, when it was recovered, its plates were not removed from a list of stolen vehicles, Mr. Hofer said. He was released and is suing the Contra Costa County sheriff's department, claiming civil rights violations. On Tuesday, Catherine Stefani was the lone supervisor to vote against the ban, which passed 8 to 1. The legislation was "well intentioned" but required more work before it could be put into effect, she said. She worried that city departments would need to hire new staff to manage the transparency requirements and that the ordinance would create budget problems. After the vote, Mr. Hofer and other supporters huddled in the hallway to debrief. He sent his victory tweet, crediting Mr. Peskin for championing the ban and noting that it was the first of its kind. Matt Cagle, an attorney with the A.C.L.U. who worked with Mr. Hofer on the ordinance, said he had already received phone calls from regulators across the country who were curious about it. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
THE BUYERS Bob MacLagger and Margo Christofer in their two bedroom in Hunters Point, Queens. Together in Queens, With Parking and a View Margo Christofer grew up in Astoria, Queens, but moved to a house in Manhasset on Long Island after she married in 1981. There, she and her husband raised two sons. Four years ago, she was widowed and bought a one bedroom in Citylights, a co op tower in Long Island City. Mr. MacLagger, who is retired from his job as vice president of planning for the Metro North Railroad, had been thinking of downsizing. In Park Slope, he raked and shoveled, and retrieved the trash cans that always ended up down the street. In the winter he had to remove the lids, which otherwise disappeared, he said, "because kids take the lids to go sledding in Prospect Park." And his house had plenty of stairs. "I know people who have a knee issue or a hip issue, and your own home becomes a problem," he said. Last year, the couple decided to consolidate and start fresh in a place of their own. For Ms. Christofer, who drives to her job as a middle school health education teacher in Great Neck, N.Y., a convenient parking spot was a must. Mr. MacLagger wanted a big kitchen. They knew the Park Slope house, steps from the park, would easily sell, so they set their budget for the new place at 1.5 million or more. The couple told Ms. Resnick that they wanted a three bedroom, two bathroom place in Brooklyn, planning ahead for visits from their children. Mr. MacLagger liked a three bedroom co op with a large dining room on Eighth Avenue near Grand Army Plaza. The price was just under 2 million, with monthly maintenance of a little more than 1,600. Ms. Christofer, however, was not a fan of the classic prewar style. And the co op did not have good parking options or a garage nearby. Few three bedrooms were available, so they decided two would suffice. In Greenpoint, Brooklyn, they checked out new construction, but were surprised to find small kitchens that often had wine coolers but seemed impractical for cooking. Some layouts didn't allow enough wall space for a television. Bedrooms were so small that they worried about the furniture fitting. Williamsburg they found to be too young "a millennial neighborhood," Ms. Christofer said. "We go to eat in Williamsburg, and everyone thinks we are the grandparents visiting the kids." The couple didn't hesitate to offer the asking price, which was accepted, and they closed on the apartment in the summer. Not surprisingly, Mr. MacLagger's rowhouse sold quickly, for 3.4 million; Ms. Christofer is renting her one bedroom. When they moved into their new place, Ms. Christofer and Mr. MacLagger were well aware of the Long Island Rail Road train yard directly across the street in Hunters Point, with its diesel locomotives that idle all day long during the week. Mr. MacLagger said he keeps the windows closed to muffle the noise. Another drawback is that few restaurants and food stores are nearby, whereas in Mr. MacLagger's previous neighborhood, Ms. Christofer said, "he could run out and get a lemon right on his corner." Now he has to plan: If he doesn't walk over the Pulaski Bridge to Greenpoint, he shops at Fairway in Douglaston, Queens, or Costco in Astoria, and unloads the car from the parking spot in the building's garage. But when Ms. Christofer returns home at the end of the school day, Mr. MacLagger has dinner ready. And "the fact that we now have one household," he said, "we're thrilled about." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
Hope Springs Early, but Not Eternal, for the Deadnettle or for Us The deadnettle is the Punxsutawney Phil of the plant world: short of stature but stout of heart. At the first hint of winter's wane, its stem rises from the ground and a green, grasping hand of sepals unclenches to divulge two silky white petals, one of which unfurls straight up toward the sky. These petals frame the flower's own beauty: The top one stands poised over the anthers, while the bottom one drapes the ovaries in modesty. I am not the only scientist to be struck by the power and meaning of Lamium album in bloom. A naturalist named Richard Fitter walked the fields of Oxfordshire, England, for more than half a century, faithfully recording the first flowering dates of 385 plant species. And it was the unassuming little deadnettle that stood out the most: its first flowering had been pushed back by a whopping 55 days. Since the 1990s, Lamium album has marked winter's end, on average, by Jan. 23 the day the plant looks up and declares its flower shop open for business. Back in the 1950s, it did not bloom before March. The long days of summer are the true theater of nature, its rising action having been blocked across eons of evolution. While both plants and animals awaken via distinct changes in metabolic functioning, most plants prefer to err on the side of caution, waiting for hints of full on summer before they bloom. Only a few, like the deadnettle, celebrate the end of winter with flowers, rising from the earth to observe their own private Groundhog Day. Unlike its rodent analog, however, Lamium album never, ever sees its shadow. It invariably proclaims spring, effective immediately, then sets about making itself irresistible to bumblebees who haven't even begun to think about pollen collection, by the way. The strategem makes a kind of desperate sense: After all, you might as well embrace the best case when you've absolutely no option to return underground. This is just one way that plants differ from animals: After they go forward, there's no going back. Plants are decisive to a fault. A stem produces a bud that flowers once and once only. It offers pollen that is either dispersed or goes nowhere. One pollen grain either enters a stigma or it falls upon stony ground. An ovum is either fertilized or the whole project stalls out. Only very rarely is a seed produced. And even more rarely does a seed successfully grow into a new plant. For the last 30 years, I have been searching for a scientific term that captures the plant's impetus for reproduction more robustly than the word "hope." I have not found one. Alas, disasters do occur. If the air should suddenly re freeze, as we saw last week, all of the soft, new and precious tissues of the optimistic plant buds, sepals, petals will break and bleed, finally rotting like the bag of celery you shoved too far back in your refrigerator and then forgot. Ironically, while decades of global warming have decreased the duration of cold air outbreaks in North America, they may very well be increasing in frequency and intensity, as climate change tampers with the polar vortex. That's the world we live in now: We drive and chop and burn and fly, while the plants around us freeze and die. We dance, and the plants pay the piper until they can't pay anymore. Then the bees pay. Then the farmer pays. Then we all pay. For more than 30 years, scientists have been warning us that global warming could decimate agriculture by leaving plants vulnerable to frost damage, with devastating consequences for a huge variety of cash crops, from apples to spruce lumber. The single spring freeze that swept across the continental United States over Easter weekend 2007 obliterated crops from Nebraska to Maryland, from Texas to South Carolina. The agricultural losses in North Carolina alone were estimated at over 110 million, causing the state's governor to request federal disaster assistance. More recently, after the biologist Carol Augspurger examined more than a century of weather and forestry records from Illinois, she concluded that the yearly probability of frost damage had increased by a factor of seven since 1980, compared to the odds of frost damage during the 90 years of weather that came before. Always pause when you see a flower, at least long enough to wish luck to the plant that made it. The flowers are going to need it. Because of you and me, and the 10 billion tons of carbon that we put into the atmosphere last year, the flowers of the near future must rely more and more on dumb luck as their tried and true blooming strategies leave them stranded and vulnerable to the unnatural climate that we have foisted upon them. This spring, take time to smell the flowers, and consider how not long after their luck runs out for good, ours will too. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Science |
The three giant drug distributors are negotiating a deal with the states to end thousands of opioid lawsuits nationwide, in which they would pay 19.2 billion over 18 years and immediately submit to stringent monitoring requirements to assure that suspicious orders for prescription opioids would be halted. But although pressure is building to settle the costly, protracted litigation and bring relief to communities hit hard by addiction and overdose deaths, another group of plaintiffs is objecting strongly to the terms of the deal. Cities and counties, which have brought far more cases than state governments, say they are being blindsided by state attorneys general because the proposed agreement would give states control over the money that would trickle down to them. So far, 31 states plus the District of Columbia have tentatively agreed to the deal, while 19 states, including Florida, Connecticut and West Virginia, have not. According to a confidential 21 page outline of the deal obtained by The New York Times, the companies would pay in full only when all plaintiffs including the cities and counties have withdrawn their lawsuits. Even after a majority of states sign up, the companies would guarantee payment of just 55 percent of the money and would release the remaining 45 percent only when each state can confirm that its cities and counties are on board. Although the companies would prefer that the municipalities sign on of their own accord, the proposal stipulates that states could compel them to comply through legislation or their courts. In lawyers' parlance, this type of deal is known as a "cramdown." The perception is that it is being crammed down from the most powerful plaintiffs to those on a lower rung. "The focus on the ability of the states to somehow drag the counties along or eliminate their rights by legislation or court rulings seems completely unbalanced," said Paul J. Hanly Jr., a lawyer on the negotiating committee for the municipalities. He noted that the municipalities have not even been shown the most recent proposal. The contentiousness between two muscular groups of plaintiffs has long been building. Years before the states had even begun to sue, Mr. Hanly noted, lawyers for the cities and counties had already spent millions of dollars and hours in opioid litigation. Moreover, many states have not even yet sued the distributors in their opioid lawsuits; most target manufacturers. Mr. Hanly also took issue with the 18 year payment period. The amount of money proposed would be acceptable, he said, "if it were paid over one, two or three years. But over a generation is too little, too long." But state attorneys general who favor the proposal say it offers immediate relief to the public. "The costs of litigation, both financial and personal like overdose deaths only multiply with time," the Tennessee attorney general, Herbert H. Slatery III, a Republican, said in a statement. "The current framework gets funds to communities in 2020." Laura Brewer, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina attorney general, Josh Stein, a Democrat, said in a statement: "It will also put strict new rules in place to help make sure that a crisis like this doesn't happen again." On Wednesday, Ohio, ravaged by the opioid epidemic, became the first state to announce that its attorney general, Dave Yost, and most of its communities would cooperate when opioid settlement offers are finalized. For now, Mr. Yost opposes the distributors' proposal. Between 2006 and 2014, the distributors McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health shipped more than 60 billion opioid pills nationwide. The states and the cities allege that the companies turned a blind eye to outsized orders and even encouraged them. For years, the distributors, routinely appearing on lists of the wealthiest American corporations, have characterized themselves as mere middlemen between pharmacies and manufacturers. Their proposed 19.2 billion total payout designates 1.2 billion for private lawyers who represent municipalities and even some states in the opioid cases. Some states have asked that perhaps 500 million of that amount cover the states' legal costs. The contours of the deal, absent the new leverage controls and extra money for lawyers' fees, were proposed in October. At that time, four attorneys general announced that Johnson Johnson, the health care giant that manufactures opioids through its pharmaceutical division, would contribute 4 billion in the first three years an offer that still stands. If this proposal does go forward, the entire package would come to 23.2 billion, including lawyers' fees. Another pressure to settle was a looming March 20 trial brought by the State of New York and Suffolk and Nassau Counties against the distributors as well as some opioid manufacturers. Earlier this week, the trial date was delayed over concerns about coronavirus. Letitia James, the New York attorney general, a tentative supporter, said in a statement: "As we continue negotiations, a majority of states have signaled their support for a framework that ensures funds move to affected communities as quickly as possible. While no amount of relief will ever make whole the millions of families and communities devastated by the opioid crisis, there is an immediate need to fund prevention, rehabilitation and recovery programs in our state." Although their revenues are soaring, the distributors say that because their profits are scarcely one percent, they have limited cash on hand. At a January earnings call to investors, Steven H. Collis, chairman of the board of AmerisourceBergen, was asked whether the company needed to accumulate a war chest to bear the brunt of the opioid settlement. Mr. Collis responded: "We don't feel the need at all," explaining that although the aggregate amount seemed hefty, it was divided among three distributors and spread over 18 years, and so would not have a big impact on his company. The money, called a common benefit fund, would be allocated to lawyers according to a formula that would consider how much work their firms contributed to the litigation. Some lawyers predict that amount could be as much as 3.3 billion, or even higher. Last month, 37 attorneys general signed a letter criticizing that amount, which, they said, siphoned off dollars that should go toward the public benefit. The cities' and counties' distrust of the states dates back at least to the tobacco litigation in 1998, when funds from that settlement went into the coffers of state legislatures to address budget shortfalls instead of helping localities with smoking related medical costs. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Antibodies attacking a virus. Our body's immune system naturally kicks in to fend off infection, but vaccines can do that better. Within the last couple of months, several scientific studies have come out some peer reviewed, others not indicating that the antibody response of people infected with SARS CoV 2 dropped significantly within two months. The news has sparked fears that the very immunity of patients with Covid 19 may be waning fast dampening hopes for the development of an effective and durable vaccine. But these concerns are confused and mistaken. Both our bodies' natural immunity and immunity acquired through vaccination serve the same function, which is to inhibit a virus and prevent it from causing a disease. But they don't always work quite the same way. And so a finding that naturally occurring antibodies in some Covid 19 patients are fading doesn't actually mean very much for the likely efficacy of vaccines under development. Science, in this case, can be more effective than nature. The human immune system has evolved to serve two functions: expediency and precision. Hence, we have two types of immunity: innate immunity, which jumps into action within hours, sometimes just minutes, of an infection; and adaptive immunity, which develops over days and weeks. Almost all the cells in the human body can detect a viral infection, and when they do, they call on our white blood cells to deploy a defensive response against the infectious agent. When our innate immune response is successful at containing that pathogen, the infection is resolved quickly and, generally, without many symptoms. In the case of more sustained infections, though, it's our adaptive immune system that kicks in to offer us protection. The adaptive immune system consists of two types of white blood cells, called T and B cells, that detect molecular details specific to the virus and, based on that, mount a targeted response to it. A virus causes disease by entering cells in the human body and hijacking their genetic machinery so as to reproduce itself again and again: It turns its hosts into viral factories. T cells detect and kill those infected cells. B cells make antibodies, a kind of protein that binds to the viral particles and blocks them from entering our cells; this prevents the replication of the virus and stops the infection in its tracks. The body then stores the T and B cells that helped eliminate the infection, in case it might need them in the future to fight off the same virus again. These so called memory cells are the main agents of long term immunity. Questions surrounding the Covid 19 vaccine and its rollout. If Covid 19 isn't going away, how do we live with it? Katherine Eban writes that a clear eyed view is required to organize long term against an endemic virus. Why should we vaccinate kids against Covid 19? The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics explains how vaccinating kids will protect them (and everyone else). Jessica Grose spoke with experts to find out what an off ramp to masking in schools might look like. Who are the unvaccinated? Zeynep Tufekci writes that many preconceptions about unvaccinated people may be wrong, and that could be a good thing. The antibodies produced in response to a common seasonal coronavirus infection last for about a year. But the antibodies generated by a measles infection last, and provide protection, for a lifetime. Yet it is also the case that with other viruses the amount of antibodies in the blood peaks during an infection and drops after the infection has cleared, often within a few months: This is the fact that has some people worried about Covid 19, but it doesn't mean what it might seem. That antibodies decrease once an infection recedes isn't a sign that they are failing: It's a normal step in the usual course of an immune response. Nor does a waning antibody count mean waning immunity: The memory B cells that first produced those antibodies are still around, and standing ready to churn out new batches of antibodies on demand. And that is why we should be hopeful about the prospects of a vaccine for Covid 19. A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection, generating memory T and B cells that can then provide long lasting protection in the people who are vaccinated. Yet the immunity created by vaccines differs from the immunity created by a natural infection in several important ways. Virtually all viruses that infect humans contain in their genomes blueprints for producing proteins that help them evade detection by the innate immune system. For example, SARS CoV 2 appears to have a gene dedicated to silencing the innate immune system. Among the viruses that have become endemic in humans, some have also figured out ways to dodge the adaptive immune system: H.I.V. 1 mutates rapidly; herpes viruses deploy proteins that can trap and incapacitate antibodies. Thankfully, SARS CoV 2 does not seem to have evolved any such tricks yet suggesting that we still have an opportunity to stem its spread and the pandemic by pursuing a relatively straightforward vaccine approach. Vaccines come in different flavors they can be based on killed or live attenuated viral material, nucleic acids or recombinant proteins. But all vaccines consist of two main components: an antigen and an adjuvant. The antigen is the part of the virus we want the adaptive immune response to react to and target. The adjuvant is an agent that mimics the infection and helps jump start the immune response. One beauty of vaccines and one of their great advantages over our body's natural reaction to infections is that their antigens can be designed to focus the immune response on a virus's Achilles heel (whatever that may be). Another advantage is that vaccines allow for different kinds and different doses of adjuvants and so, for calibration and fine tuning that can help boost and lengthen immune responses. The immune response generated against a virus during natural infection is, to some degree, at the mercy of the virus itself. Not so with vaccines. Since many viruses evade the innate immune system, natural infections sometimes do not result in robust or long lasting immunity. The human papillomavirus is one of them, which is why it can cause chronic infections. The papillomavirus vaccine triggers a far better antibody response to its viral antigen than does a natural HPV infection: It is almost 100 percent effective in preventing HPV infection and disease. Not only does vaccination protect against infection and disease; it also blocks viral transmission and, if sufficiently widespread, can help confer so called herd immunity to a population. What proportion of individuals in a given population needs to be immune to a new virus so that the whole group is, in effect, protected depends on the virus's basic reproduction number broadly speaking: the average number of people that a single infected person will, in turn, infect. For measles, which is highly contagious, more than 90 percent of a population must be immunized in order for unvaccinated individuals to also be protected. For Covid 19, the estimated figure which is unsettled, understandably ranges between 43 percent and 66 percent. Given the severe consequences of Covid 19 for many older patients, as well as the disease's unpredictable course and consequences for the young, the only safe way to achieve herd immunity is through vaccination. That, combined with the fact that SARS CoV 2 appears not to have yet developed a mechanism to evade detection by our adaptive immune system, is ample reason to double down on efforts to find a vaccine fast. So do not be alarmed by reports about Covid 19 patients' dropping antibody counts; those are irrelevant to the prospects of finding a viable vaccine. Remember instead that more than 165 vaccine candidates already are in the pipeline, some showing promising early trial results. And start thinking about how best to ensure that when that vaccine comes, it will be distributed efficiently and equitably. Akiko Iwasaki is the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor in the Department of Immunobiology and a Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale. Ruslan Medzhitov is a Sterling Professor in the Department of Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine. Both are investigators at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
In some ways, it looked as though the pandemic could be good for Vermont's ski season. With international destinations out of reach and domestic air travel feeling risky, the state had the biggest ski market in the nation New York and the Northeast corridor at its doorstep. "For the very first time Vermont and New England have access to the full Northeast market share," said Brian Maggiotto, general manager at the Inn at Manchester in southern Vermont. "And with many people writing off the idea of getting on a plane, this gives Vermont access to the highest concentration of skiers within a drive's distance." The state's 20 alpine and 30 cross country ski destinations were feeling optimistic, despite a warm fall that had already pushed back some areas' opening days for lack of snow. But the governor's announcement last Tuesday of virus containment measures, combined with a huge spike in cases across the Northeast, triggered a wave of cancellations at hotels and inns and fear among tourism dependent businesses that travelers would shun Vermont this winter because of the pandemic. "There's been a pretty consistent flow of cancellations since that day," Mr. Maggiotto said. Online ski chat rooms and social media erupted with rumors and angst, including worries that ski areas might not open at all. Among those posting was Bruce Levitus, a skier from Bucks County, Pa., who said on the Ski Vermont Facebook page that he wouldn't be coming to the state this winter. In a phone interview, Mr. Levitus, 56, said he has been skiing in Vermont since he was 7, first with his parents and then with his own family. "I respect what Vermont is doing, but we can't quarantine, it's just not possible for us," he said. "Hence we won't be coming to Vermont for the first time in over a decade." The Vermont economy depends on winter ski season visitors who spend more than 1.6 billion a year in the tiny state, according to the Vermont Ski Areas Association. Vermont is something of a crown jewel of Eastern skiing, annually recording the most skier day numbers in the East, around 4 million per season, a figure that rivals Utah. New Hampshire, by comparison, sees a little over 2 million per winter. The new rules hit hard at a big market for Vermont people who drive up for the weekend and who are unlikely to quarantine for a week for two or three days of skiing. A number of those "weekend warriors" and their families relocated to Vermont during the pandemic, working and studying remotely from vacation homes, especially in towns around the ski centers of Stratton, Killington, Mt. Snow, Okemo, Stowe and the Mad River Valley. And some innkeepers said they hoped that a trend toward longer visits, which started this summer and fall, might continue during ski season. "We had a family here from New Jersey for over a month this fall," said Rachel Vandenberg, the owner of the Sun and Ski Inn in Stowe. But ski resort operators, particularly in southern Vermont, which draws more weekenders from Connecticut, New Jersey and the Albany and Long Island areas of New York than their Northern counterparts, said the quarantine will hurt. "We're going to feel that," said Bill Cairns, the president of Bromley Mountain Resort. The state's spring pandemic lockdown closed restaurants and lodging establishments for months. The ski areas shuttered before the spring season was over, losing revenue. The combination of aggressive early shutdown measures and a deliberately slow reopening meant that Vermont came through the first wave of the pandemic better than many other places. It held cases and deaths 59 as of earlier this week far below those in neighboring states. When out of state plates poured into Vermont at the end of the summer with the virus on the wane, businesses breathed a sigh of relief, praying the trend would hold into the winter. Stowe's lodging occupancy rate had climbed to 36 percent in August, according to the Stowe Area Association, the town's marketing organization. But active cases spiked in late October and early November. This week the state recorded 122 cases in a single day, breaking a record previously set in April. Vermont is hardly alone. States across American ski country are wrestling with the nationwide spike and adjusting travel and gathering guidelines accordingly. New Hampshire requires all residents of non New England states to quarantine or test before arrival, as does Maine, which also requires Massachusetts residents to quarantine. In the West, Colorado and Utah remain open to visitors with cautions against nonessential travel, while ski resorts in New Mexico announced this week that they would not be opening for Thanksgiving under orders from state health officials. At the same time that he changed Vermont's quarantine rules, Gov. Scott closed bars, banned multi household gatherings and recommended that social get togethers be limited to 10 or fewer people. The state has dispatched enforcement officers to bars, hotels and restaurants to carry out compliance checks. Much of the thrust of the new regulations is directed at Vermonters themselves, since the state traced the recent spike to residents, not visitors. Hockey leagues in the state capital of Montpelier were found to be a chief source along with social gatherings, officials said. Even so, the prospect of out of state vacationers arriving for the holidays has locals worried. "As a Vermonter I feel fortunate to live in this snow globe, this haven, we have this sense of pride that we've done this right," said Eduardo Rovetto, the owner of Piecasso Pizzeria and Lounge, one of the biggest and busiest restaurants in Stowe. "But this is risky business. We are being abundantly cautious. But my lot is full of out of state plates," he said, adding there was no way to know if patrons are abiding by the quarantine rules. The lodging industry has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, and hoteliers and resort owners formed a lobbying group in April to work with the state on pandemic messaging and guidelines, and on needed relief funds for the industry. The state recently made 75 million available to the hospitality sector, and another 2.5 million for ski resorts. "A lot of businesses are going into winter with no money in their bank account," said Walter Frame, chief operating officer of the famed Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, "and many won't make it." "We're hanging on for dear life," said Hans VanWees, the general manager of the Hotel Vermont, a luxury lakefront hotel in Burlington, referring to the statewide lodging industry. The sector laid off about 65 percent of its staff statewide in the spring, said Mr. Van Wees, who has acted as a spokesman for the industry and a liaison with state government. Some properties have rehired some employees, but most hotels and inns continue to operate on bare bones staffing, he said. The Hotel Vermont belongs to a group of three Burlington area hotels where revenues for 2020 are down 75 percent year over year, Mr. Van Wees said. Ski resorts, meanwhile, have been preparing for a challenging season, running with reduced staffing amid uncertain prospects. Ski area operators across the state said they expected revenues and skier day numbers to be down significantly this season. Perhaps none more than Jay Peak Resort, where half of its business usually comes from Quebec. With the border closed "that's all smoked," said Steve Wright, Jay Peak's chief executive. There have been some bright spots. Season pass sales both of multi destination passes like the Epic and Ikon passes and those for independent areas like Bromley Mountain and Mad River Glen have been strong, driven in part by assurances that passholders will get guaranteed lift access and other privileges. Ski equipment has been flying off the shelves at many Vermont ski shops, owners reported. Cross country and backcountry gear has been particularly strong, as customers seek to avoid alpine resort crowds and Covid era rules such as reserving ski or parking privileges ahead of time. As of this week, ski areas across the state still had their opening days penciled in, with early season forerunners, Killington, Stowe and Stratton, cautiously aiming for Thanksgiving week, if the cold snap holds. Alpine and Nordic resorts have spent months laying the groundwork for a pandemic season. Distancing measures, including limits on unrelated parties sharing lifts, carefully designed distanced lift lines, limited lodge access, outdoor eating and warming spaces, and advanced online ticket purchases and parking reservations, are among the many measures resorts have adapted. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
For a young musician to crash, suddenly, into renown and adoration can be disorienting. Writing and performing songs may turn fraught with expectations. The road becomes home; communing with audiences of strangers stands in for human connection. It's a dream and also just plain weird. At least Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus have one another. Each in their early 20s, all three have emerged in the last few years as singular forces in indie rock, earning acclaim for preternaturally sharp lyrics and commanding voices on albums that have set the bar for a new generation of singer songwriters. They have also found common ground in their mutual isolation. "It feels amazing to have people understand that I'm simultaneously so anxious and so bored and so busy all at once," Ms. Bridgers said recently. "And so lucky." Ms. Baker explained: "Things were happening for us all at the same time and I think we've gravitated to each other. Our personalities are really similar, how we view the world and our artistry and our position as musicians." A monthlong tour together this November was an obvious move. But starting a band on top of that was just more fun. What began as a plan to record a collaborative promotional single to advertise the concerts bloomed into a six song EP by the trio, who have dubbed themselves boygenius an inside joke that evolved into an ethos. "We were just talking about boys and men we know who've been told that they are geniuses since they could hear, basically," Ms. Dacus said, "and what type of creative work comes out of that upbringing." Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. Women, Ms. Baker said, "are taught to make themselves small. So when you're a woman and there's a producer or engineer that's a man, you have to preface your ideas and seal them up in this little box of 'I'm sorry, this might not be a good idea, this is just my observation...'" For the "boygenius" EP, recorded over a few summer days in Los Angeles, the three musicians removed men from the equation, writing without their usual collaborators and self producing, while also trying to embody some of the very qualities they were avoiding. "If one person was having a thought I don't know if this is good, it's probably terrible it was like, 'No! Be the boy genius! Your every thought is worthwhile, just spit it out,'" Ms. Dacus said. "It was a way to do things quickly and confidently. We only had four days to go from zero to something, so we couldn't waste time self deprecating." The result was what the women described in separate interviews as one of the most fulfilling creative experiences of their lives, and each was giddy recalling the sessions. "I probably jumped up and down more times in that studio than ever in my life," Ms. Bridgers said. "When one of us would hit another high note ughhh, my God! So exciting." Ms. Baker called the process "extremely democratic." Each artist brought ideas "Like all great enterprises, we have a group text," as well as a Google Drive, she said and took the lead on two of the tracks. While writing, "I tried to think about them and what we shared," Ms. Dacus said. Distance, emotional and physical, was an overarching theme best encapsulated on the final song, "Ketchum, ID," in which each woman sings a verse about the melancholy of life on the road. Ms. Bridgers conceived of the song as a Carter Family number, and its refrain was sung by all three around one microphone: "I am never anywhere/anywhere I go/when I'm home, I'm never there/long enough to know." Still, the trio, similarly deliberate and measured in every action and utterance, cautioned that they did not want their camaraderie to be played as what Ms. Dacus referred to as a "marketing ploy." Ms. Baker said: "On one level I want it to be unremarkable that there's no male to attribute control to. I want it to be unremarkable that three women six with bass and drums and violin played on this. But it's a thing." She added: "We all felt more comfortable because we understand each other, because of our age and our careers, but also being women, the way we talk to each other is not with an inflation of ego or with a false persona of harshness, or some sort of weird bravado that does pollute interactions, even unknowingly, with dudes." They have similarly high hopes for the tour itself, growing animated at the idea of passing hours on the highway with a Dungeons Dragons campaign (Ms. Dacus has promised to teach), tarot card readings (sans Ms. Baker, who doesn't buy it) and chess tournaments (Ms. Baker has a travel set). "November is a glowing moment that we're all approaching," Ms. Dacus said. "Who knows what's going to happen after that? It doesn't matter." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
By the western coast of Manhattan, a kind of Hudson River Riviera, the black clad masses could be seen from blocks away, like ants. Their jeans were tight, their tops polka dotted, their hair lank and stringy, and they were lining up for passage not a yacht, but a ferry. On board, concession stands that usually sell pretzels and hot dogs were pouring flutes of Champagne. To one side, Louis Garrel, the brooding, dark eyed poster boy of cinematic hauteur, was vaping in thoughtful solitude. Charlotte Gainsbourg was on her way. Paris had relocated to New Jersey for an evening, at the behest of Saint Laurent. Since 2016, Saint Laurent has been under the direction of Anthony Vaccarello, a quiet designer with a taste for a high slit. But Mr. Vaccarello has not made much of a production of its men's wear, which he has shown, when he has shown it at all, wedged in among its women's. For the first full men's show, he made up for lost time, commandeering Liberty State Park in New Jersey, erecting an enormous silver scaffold, even going so far as to lay down a runway tiled in actual marble. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Long term care facilities must focus even more rigorously on prevention, given the risks faced by the elderly and those with pre existing conditions, and the propensity of this disease to spread within closed systems, such as the Diamond Princess cruise ship and prisons in China. In a number of places in the United States, public health agencies are keeping suspected cases isolated, retracing the interactions of Covid 19 patients, retracing family members, co workers and other people with whom the patient was within six feet for a sustained time, and ensuring that high risk contacts are isolated. If the number of cases increases significantly, however, that may no longer to be possible. At that point, public health agencies will need to focus on tracking the extent of Covid 19 in the larger population; ensuring that the public knows the importance of staying isolated when sick; and issuing instructions on how to proceed when someone is sick, but not sick enough to be in the hospital. It may seem too obvious to mention, but officials need to clearly tell people to wash their hands for at least 20 seconds after contact with others and before eating, to cough or sneeze into your sleeve, not their hands, and to understand symptoms of illness and how to get diagnosed in any given community. Public health professionals will also need to work with political leaders to make hard decisions on if or when large events should be canceled, workers should be told to telecommute, schools should change the way they operate or schools should close. While these actions may slow the spread of the disease, they could have negative consequences. If schools close, for example, many children will not get school meals they depend on, not to mention the learning time they will miss and the workers who will have to stay home to care for their children. Private companies will need to develop therapies and vaccines. While leading vaccine scientists have said it might take 12 to 18 months before a vaccine is ready to be given to the public, there may be antiviral or antibody based medicines that could be developed far sooner. The federal government has existing partnerships with a number of companies that are working or could work to develop therapies or vaccines. The government also needs to ensure that if these companies succeed, their products will be mass manufactured to be able to meet potentially extraordinary demand. Companies have been burned by governments before, when they have been asked to develop products during crises, only to have governments back away from commitments when the crises diminish. This work will be costly. Public health agencies already are scrambling to meet their normal responsibilities with too little funding, and the Trump administration's recent budget proposed cuts to programs that fund this work. The White House and Congress are negotiating on how much money to spend on these efforts. The emergency funding for the Ebola response in 2014 was 5.4 billion. Covid 19 will require twice as much money or more. Unlike Ebola, it is a new disease for which we have no countermeasures, it is transmissible through the air, and it is already present in many places around the world. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Of all the raucous parties in the apartment Sarah Dudley Plimpton shared with George Plimpton before his death in 2003, she loves the one on Sept. 10, 2001, the most. "Paul McCartney came," Ms. Plimpton said, "and sang, 'I Will' to me, my favorite Beatles song." She also got into an argument with Bill Murray about a comedian he didn't think was funny. That party, on the eve of a day that would end parties for a long time, was given for Billy Collins, the popular poet. He was one of countless writers celebrated in the storied East 72nd Street home that had also once housed the cramped offices of The Paris Review, founded in 1953 by Mr. Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, William Styron and others. The offices of the magazine moved downtown years ago, but embedded memories from the old glory days live on. She now owns a home in Santa Fe, N.M., and will be listing with Douglas Elliman in the coming weeks and leaving Manhattan. "Just after the Q train opened, the greatest thing to happen to me since George," she said. On Wednesday, she gave a Last Call party in honor of the magazine's 65th year. "I don't even know how many times I had to clean up vomit in the bathroom or watch people put out cigarettes on our Oriental rugs," she said. "My home was always inundated." Moments later the downstairs doorbell started ringing and didn't stop for hours, stuffing the well proportioned living room with former staff members, patrons, publishers and friends. Along with the living, some ghosts joined as well, including Truman Capote and W. H. Auden. Taylor Plimpton, a writer and the 41 year old son of Mr. Plimpton from a previous marriage, stood by the tall windows overlooking the East River, where there had been a fireworks display for Mr. Plimpton's 50th birthday. He recalled playing floor hockey with his procrastinating father and seeing very inebriated guests getting lost upstairs by his bedroom. Dick Cavett, who nursed a drink by the well stocked bar, recalled a barbed conversation with Norman Mailer about mutual frustrations with publishers. Gay Talese, nattily dressed in a pinstriped suit, remembered Jackie Kennedy encountering an unseemly landfill like heap for depositing her fur. "She shook her head and said, 'Oh my, George, that bed,'" he said. While Mr. Talese, the author of "Thy Neighbor's Wife," did not comment on the MeToo climate, Rose Styron remembered a night many decades ago when Terry Southern, the hard partying satirical writer, propositioned her as a young, married woman. "He told me I was the only woman in the room he hadn't already slept with," Ms. Styron said. She told him to get lost, but with more amusement than alarm. "We were smart young women who took literature seriously," said Jeanne McCulloch, a former managing editor of The Paris Review, now a writer on its board of directors. She remembered, in addition to mailbags of submissions, laying out interviews that had to be cut up and taped together on the pool table. And, of course, prodigious flirting at parties. "But as a young woman, I never felt threatened by anything I couldn't handle," Ms. McCulloch said. Respect, she added, dominated those parties more than anything, and it seemed to dominate Wednesday's party as well. That, lots of booze and plentiful old school canapes on trays served by besieged waiters pushing through the crowd as if onto a rush hour subway. "But no matter where I go," Ms. Plimpton said after giving a speech from the stairs and urging everyone to get back to drinking, "someone tells me they were at a party in my home." Even, one would assume, in Santa Fe. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
THE goal in designing the 2012 Civic Hybrid, Honda executives say, was to incorporate the hybrid virtue of superior fuel economy in a vehicle that drives like a conventional car. For the most part, Honda has accomplished that. The Hybrid is the most expensive Civic, and the least expensive Hybrid is 24,820. The model I tested, with a navigation system, was priced at 26,320. For comparison, a conventional Civic EX with similar equipment, including the navigation system and a 5 speed automatic transmission, would be 22,775. Honda says such a pricing comparison is not perfect because the Hybrid has additional features like LED taillights, turn signal indicators in the outside mirrors and automatic on off headlamps. The 2012 Civic Hybrid has a federal fuel economy rating of 44 miles per gallon in town and 44 on the highway. That's an improvement from 40/43 for the previous model. That's impressive, but if maximum fuel economy is your goal the Toyota Prius is much superior, with ratings of 51 m.p.g. in town and 48 on the highway. The least expensive Prius is 24,280, less than the most basic Civic Hybrid. The conventional gasoline only Civic with the 5 speed automatic is rated at 28 m.p.g. in the city and 39 on the highway. So while the hybrid's fuel economy is far better, will it save enough on gas to offset a 3,545 price difference? According to the Environmental Protection Agency's fuel calculator ( the hybrid would save 575 a year if you drove 15,000 miles a year, 45 percent of it on the highway, and if gas prices climbed to 4.50 a gallon. (I used such a high gas price in the calculation to give the hybrid its best shot.) So unless there is a huge increase in gas prices it would take about six years to break even, according to the E.P.A. calculator. But if one puts aside such cold calculations and finds a compensating green warmth from driving a hybrid, the news about the Civic Hybrid is good, though not great. The ride is comfortable and the body feels solid. While the steering has ample weight, the effort decreases as the wheel is turned. Little road feel comes through. Like its predecessor, the new model has 59 percent of its weight up front. The car changes direction as quickly as most front drive sedans and is an agreeable if not enthusiastic partner on mountain roads. A big change is the use of lighter lithium ion batteries instead of nickel metal hydride units. Because of improvements to the electric motor, including reduced friction, it is now rated at 23 horsepower, up from 20 last year. Honda says the 1.5 liter 4 cylinder, with the electric motor helping out, is rated at a combined 110 horsepower and 127 pound feet of torque between 1,000 and 3,500 revolutions per minute. That's the same horsepower and 4 more pound feet of torque than the previous model. The car weighs a few pounds less than before. Acceleration is adequate for common sense demands, thanks to an instant boost from the electric motor. Going from zero to 60 m.p.h. takes 9.7 seconds, according to Edmunds's InsideLine.com. I drove nearly 300 miles on two lane roads, including eight miles up the steep Mount Washington Auto Road in New Hampshire, and easily averaged 43 m.p.g. On one 86 mile stretch I averaged 46 m.p.g. The usual odd sounds and sensations of a hybrid system are largely absent, save for the auto stop feature that ratted out the dual powertrain. At a stop, the engine is automatically shut off to save fuel. Lifting a foot off the brake pedal starts the engine with a lumpy stumble, as if it had been rudely awakened. The overall dimensions of the new model are almost identical to the old one, but rear legroom grew by 1.6 inches, making the back seat suitable for 6 foot adults. The trunk, at 10.7 cubic feet, is almost 2 cubic feet smaller than the regular Civic's largely because of space taken by the battery pack. The interior is convenient and comfortable, although backing up is tricky because of limited sight lines the deck lid is high and the rear window is smallish. As for aesthetics, the passenger cabin simply can't compete with the new (and less expensive) Hyundai Elantra. For a serious driving enthusiast, the new Civic is no match for the Ford Fusion Hybrid. But on the other hand the Honda's fuel economy is far superior. While not sporty, the Civic Hybrid is a well mannered and likable sedan that squeezes a lot out of a gallon of gas. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
"Nomaden," which was written for the French cellist Jean Guihen Queyras and the Atlas Ensemble, a group of 18 musicians from Asia, the Middle East and Europe, had its premiere at the Cello Biennale in Amsterdam in 2016, where it was received enthusiastically. It pairs its cello soloist with musicians who play instruments from China (erhu and sheng), Japan (sho and shakuhachi), India (sarangi), Turkey (kemenche), Armenia (duduk), Iran (setar) and Azerbaijan (tar and kamancha). "'Nomaden' is not a traditional concerto, but a work for cello and instruments from cultures around the world," Mr. Bons said in a statement. "I imagined an unlimited potential of combinations and an unheard spectrum of timbres. My aim was to create a piece in which the musicians and the instruments, in all their cultural differences, could bloom in full glory." Mr. Bons, a professor of composition at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, attributes his interest in music in world music to his parents' wide ranging record collection. In 1980, he was one of the founders of the Amsterdam based contemporary music group Nieuw Ensemble, and in 2002 founded the Atlas Ensemble. He has championed works by contemporary Chinese composers, and his musical travels have taken him to Syria and Iran. Marc Satterwhite, a music professor at the University of Louisville who directs the award, cited Mr. Bons's musical juxtapositions in a statement. "Art of all kinds is becoming more and more eclectic, juxtaposing materials and influences in increasingly new ways," Mr. Satterwhite said. "'Nomaden' is one of the most successful musical examples of this trend in recent years." The Grawemeyer has been awarded to some of the most important composers of our time, including Gyorgy Ligeti, Harrison Birtwistle, John Adams, Tan Dun, Thomas Ades, Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, Gyorgy Kurtag, Brett Dean, Louis Andriessen and Esa Pekka Salonen, among others. Mr. Bons will accept the prize in Louisville in April. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
THE JESUS LIZARD at Brooklyn Steel (Dec. 31, 10 p.m.). Though they haven't released an album since 1998's "Blue," this raucous noise rock group from Chicago has yet to fall entirely dormant; for signs of life, look to the reunion tours they've scheduled sporadically over the past 11 years. While no plans for new material have been announced, fans at these shows seem perfectly content to hear decades old cuts like "Then Comes Dudley" and "Puss," which showcase the band's signature blend of pungent guitars and pummeling drums topped with the deliberately grating vocals of their frontman, David Yow. The post punk quartet Protomartyr will open this New Year's Eve gig at Brooklyn Steel. 888 929 7849, bowerypresents.com PHISH at Madison Square Garden (Dec. 28 31, 7:30 p.m.). Of the city's many New Year's offerings, this annual residency by America's quintessential jam band is among the most mellow, though they do have a habit of pranking the audience with nonsensical gags during the New Year's Eve gig (past antics have involved golfers driving balls into the crowd and cat and dog inflatables falling from the ceiling like rain). Whether you opt for the main event or the lower profile warm up shows, expect multiple sets of extended, improvised grooves and psychedelic visuals. All four shows are sold out, but tickets are available from resellers. Homebodies may also purchase passes to live stream any (or all) of the performances from the comfort of their couches. 212 465 6000, msg.com PNB ROCK at Brooklyn Steel (Dec. 27, 8 p.m.). One of Philadelphia's brightest new hip hop stars, this 28 year old artist comes from a city steeped in a battle rap tradition that rewards sharp rhymes and quick wit, but he is just as nimble with melody. Born Rakim Allen, he broke out in 2014 with "My City Needs Something," an emotive track about Philly's gun violence epidemic that paired trap production with R B inspired vocals a winning combo that he returned to for "Selfish," his hit from 2016. In titling his latest album "TrapStar Turnt PopStar," Allen has signaled a full embrace of his singing abilities, which will be on display at this Friday night performance. 888 929 7849, bowerypresents.com Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. SLEIGH BELLS at Brooklyn Bowl (Jan. 1, 12:15 a.m.). When this Brooklyn based duo released their debut album, "Treats," in 2010, its immediate success was largely due to its novelty. The singer Alexis Krauss, who once fronted a teen girl group, and her partner Derek Miller, a former hardcore guitarist, smashed together sounds sourced from disparate genres, producing unexpected pairings like jangly Funkadelic samples with sing songy vocals ("Rill Rill") and distorted, punk inflected guitar with cheerleader chants ("Infinity Guitars"). That spirit of eclecticism will come in handy when the pair plays a New Year's D.J. set in their home borough. Doors are scheduled to open when the ball drops. 718 963 3369, brooklynbowl.com ST. PAUL THE BROKEN BONES at Brooklyn Bowl (Dec. 30, 8:30 p.m.; Dec. 31, 9 p.m.). This eight piece from Birmingham, Ala., has benefited from a compelling founding myth (their singer, Paul Janeway, went from accounting student to dynamo frontman) and an underdog spirit. But the star ingredient in their recipe for success is nostalgia: Janeway takes vocal cues from the likes of Al Green and Sam Cooke, backed by brass laden arrangements that hark back to Southern soul of the 1960s. The band's down home roots provide thematic as well as sonic inspiration: Their most recent album, "Young Sick Camelia," from 2018, confronts the fraught politics of their home state. Expect to hear selections from that album during the group's two night stand in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 718 963 3369, brooklynbowl.com THE STROKES at Barclays Center (Dec. 31, 8:30 p.m.). An ill timed downpour prevented this headlining band from taking the stage at this year's Governors Ball, much to the chagrin of fans hoping to catch a rare performance. The onetime fixtures of New York's indie rock scene, which their seminal 2001 album "Is This It" helped revitalize, have made themselves scarce over the past several years, releasing no new music and playing only a handful of gigs. Those disappointed by the cancellation should be placated by this New Year's performance, at which the band is expected to play their hits many of them odes to drunken revelry and thus perfectly suited to the occasion. 917 618 6100, barclayscenter.com OLIVIA HORN KENNY BARRON TRIO at the Village Vanguard (through Dec. 29, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.). At age 76, this piano eminence and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master remains an exemplar of pianistic intellect and poise. Last year Barron put out a collection of new originals and diverse covers in "Concentric Circles," his (belated) debut as a leader for Blue Note Records; in March he will release "Without Deception," a fine new album on which he is joined by the bassist Dave Holland and the drummer Johnathan Blake. At the Vanguard this weekend he is appearing with an equally redoubtable rhythm section: the bassist Buster Williams and the drummer Jeff Watts, known as Tain. 212 255 4037, villagevanguard.com PETER BERNSTEIN at Mezzrow (Jan. 1 2, 7:30 and 9 p.m.). Few guitarists put as much care, sensitivity and subtle strength into every single note as Bernstein does. Among the finest melodists in jazz, he has a full breadth command of his instrument, but his biggest assets are his knack for crisp understatement and simplicity. At Mezzrow Bernstein will be joined by the bassist Omer Avital, whose playing verges more toward the rambunctious and ecstatic. On the first evening, the piano chair will be held by the pianist Aaron Goldberg, and on the second by Miki Yamanaka. 646 476 4346, mezzrow.com CHET DOXAS TRIO at Smalls (Jan. 2, 7:30 and 9 p.m.). A Canadian born tenor saxophonist on the rise in New York, Doxas boasts a tonally rich, flexible style of improvising and a willingness to blend influences from jazz, Western classical and prog rock. You can get a sense of the breadth of his interests by listening first to "Landline" the self titled debut of a collective quartet that features Doxas and came out this fall and then to "Rich in Symbols," his own surging jazz rock fusion effort from 2017. Here Doxas leads a trio with two expert musicians of similarly diverse proclivities: the bassist Michael Formanek and the pianist Ethan Iverson. 646 476 4346, smallslive.com EDDIE HENDERSON AND ERIC REED at Smoke (Dec. 26 28, 7, 9 and 10:30 p.m.). Henderson, a trumpeter, and Reed, a pianist, are a generation apart but both play with understatement and grace, placing an emphasis on where funk and swing converge. Here they perform as part of Smoke's annual John Coltrane Festival in a quintet featuring the tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, the bassist John Webber and the drummer Joe Farnsworth. 212 864 6662, smokejazz.com HYPNOTIC BRASS ENSEMBLE at the Knitting Factory (Dec. 30, 8:30 p.m.). This group consists of seven brothers from the South Side of Chicago whose father was the influential organizer, educator and multi instrumentalist Kelan Philip Cohran. Hypnotic's work stretches the brass band sound, often exploring the junction between classic hip hop, greased up funk and traditional jazz. Elsewhere, the band works in a quieter, more abstract tone painting style. At this concert, Hypnotic which has a new album, "Bad Boys of Jazz," coming in early 2020 will share the bill with D.J. Pudgemental and the electronic musician, singer and multi instrumentalist Thomas Piper. 347 529 6696, knittingfactory.com GRETCHEN PARLATO at the Jazz Gallery (Dec. 27 28, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). Few vocalists have as distinctive a sound as Parlato, whose sibilant, sighing soprano and querying, half spoken inflection influenced by Brazilian bossa nova, folk and romantic crooners past have made her one of the most immediately recognizable figures in jazz. She won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in the mid 2000s, then put out a run of acclaimed releases, but Parlato has not made a new album under her name in years. Maybe that will soon change: Here she will debut a work commissioned by the Jazz Gallery titled "The Stars or Space Between." Camila Meza will join in on guitar, Chris Morrissey on bass and Mark Guiliana on drums. 646 494 3625, jazzgallery.nyc GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Starvation in northern Nigeria's Borno State is so bad that a whole slice of the population children under 5 appears to have died, aid agencies say. As the Nigerian army has driven the terrorist group Boko Haram out of the area, about two million people have been displaced. Many are living in more than 100 refugee camps. Doctors Without Borders, which has been in Borno State since 2014, reported in November that it was seeing hardly any children under age 5 at its clinics, hospitals and feeding centers. "There are almost always small children buzzing around the camps," Dr. Joanne Liu, the agency's president, and Dr. Natalie Roberts, an emergency operations manager, wrote then. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
The long, slow performance of a piece by the American composer John Cage is scheduled to run until 2640. On Saturday, an audience in Germany heard a sound change the first since 2013. HALBERSTADT, Germany This year, there was no Bayreuth Festival, no Mostly Mozart, Tanglewood, or Aix. But one concert, in a dilapidated medieval church in eastern Germany, could not be canceled, because it had already started more than 18 years before the coronavirus pandemic struck. And it's not scheduled to end until the year 2640. On Saturday, a small crowd of mask wearing music enthusiasts gathered in the church, St. Burchardi, in the town of Halberstadt, about 120 miles southwest of Berlin. The occasion was the first sound change in almost seven years in the slowest concert in the world: an organ recital of a piece by the American composer John Cage. It was the 14th chord change since the concert began on Sept. 5, 2001, on what would have been Cage's 89th birthday. (He died, at 79, in 1992.) "The chord change had to go ahead," he said. "It's in the score." Cage first wrote the piece, for piano, in 1985; the tempo instruction was, "As slow as possible." He then reworked it for the organ in 1987, and it became known as "Organ2/ASLSP." But that raised questions. On piano, the sound fades after a key is hit; on the organ, notes can be held indefinitely. Or can they? What about when the organist needs to eat, or go to the bathroom? Or dies? Those questions occupied a group of composers, organists, musicologists and philosophers, some of whom had worked with Cage, at a conference in the town of Trossingen, in southern Germany, in 1998. They developed the idea of a performance calibrated to the life expectancy of an organ. The first modern keyboard organ is thought to have been built in Halberstadt in 1361, 639 years before the turn of the 21st century so they decided the performance would last for 639 years. But a lot can change with the passing of the years, as the history of the St. Burchardi church shows: It was built around 1050; partially destroyed in the Thirty Years' War; deconsecrated in 1810 by Jerome Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon; and since then has served as a barn, a distillery and a sty. Its organ is not a standard keyboard operated instrument. Pipes tuned for the notes of the score are added or subtracted as required at each sound change. There is no organist requiring bathroom breaks; the pedals that activate the pipes are held down by sandbags. The ceremony to accompany each change has become a ritual for the piece's fans. While some regular attendees from abroad were unable to make it on Saturday because of the pandemic, there were spectators from countries including the Czech Republic and Denmark. The church's small gift shop did a brisk business in commemorative masks. With the number of people allowed into the church restricted, some followed on a large screen in the courtyard outside. At 3 p.m., the composer Julian Lembke and the soprano Johanna Vargas, both wearing white gloves, lowered two new pipes onto the body of the organ, which sounded a G sharp and an E. These created a new, seven note chord, together with the five notes that have been sounding since October 2013: C, D flat, D sharp, A sharp and E. Andreas Henke, the town's mayor, said that most of Halberstadt's inhabitants probably didn't even know about the piece, or, if they did, they referred to it as "that cacophony." But, he added, "John Cage carries Halberstadt's name out into the world." He said the performance raises "philosophical questions about how we confront time." "We are all so consumed by our daily working lives," he said. "This forces us to stand back and slow down." The most immediate threat to the project is a banal one that has plagued it since the start: running out of money. "Sometimes we say this project needs only time and air, but we have to talk about money too," Mr. Neugebauer said. Day to day running costs are financed almost exclusively by private donors, he said, who can purchase a plaque displayed in the church representing a year in which the piece will play. The year 2580, for example, has been acquired by a couple identified as Silvia and Jorg, to mark their 600th wedding anniversary. The Dresdner Kreuzchor, a famous boys' choir in Dresden, Germany, has bagged 2539 to commemorate what will be the 1,000th anniversary of a central local event in the history of the Protestant Reformation. About 1 million euros, around 1.2 million, has been raised this way, Mr. Neugebauer said, but recently, donations have been dwindling. Mr. Neugebauer said the project was a hand to mouth operation, reliant on volunteers, including himself. "In three and a half years, I will turn 70, and I would like to stop," he said. "It would be great to hand it over to the next generation in good shape." If all goes according to plan, it will be the first handover of many. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
"M. Butterfly," the gender bending play about a French diplomat who has a lengthy affair with a Chinese opera singer, will be revived on Broadway this fall with Clive Owen starring and Julie Taymor directing. The drama, inspired by a true story, won the Tony Award for best new play in 1988, when it starred John Lithgow and B. D. Wong (who won a Tony). The playwright David Henry Hwang is making significant revisions to the script for the revival, incorporating recent discoveries about the relationship between Bernard Boursicot, who was an embassy worker, and Shi Pei Pu, a man whom Mr. Boursicot had believed for years to be a woman. The two were convicted of espionage in 1986. They were pardoned a year later. Mr. Owen, a British actor ("Closer"), will play the diplomat, named Rene Gallimard in the play. The play will be his second on Broadway he made his Broadway debut in a 2015 revival of "Old Times," by Harold Pinter. The role of the singer, named Song Liling in the play, has not yet been cast. The revival will mark Ms. Taymor's first return to Broadway since "Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark," a troubled production from which she was dismissed. She is best known as the creative genius behind the stage adaptation of "The Lion King," for which she won two Tony Awards in 1998, for direction and costume design, and which is still going strong on Broadway and in productions around the world. Her most recent Off Broadway productions, including "Grounded" at the Public Theater and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Theater for a New Audience, won significant critical praise. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
There was a time in the 1980s when Dr. Ruth Westheimer, petite sex guru and irrepressible advocate of democratized pleasure, seemed to be everywhere. In bookstores and on the radio, or perched alongside a squirming Johnny Carson or David Letterman, she thrust the female orgasm to center stage while reassuring men that its achievement didn't require supersized equipment. It's hard to explain how revolutionary her humor, candor and sexual explicitness seemed for the time. Nothing was off the table: when H.I.V./AIDS and homosexuality were barely acknowledged publicly, she was there with fact based advice and warm encouragement. Now the woman who just wants everyone to feel good gets an equally flushed tribute in "Ask Dr. Ruth," Ryan White's rose tinted overview of a remarkable life. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Just over a year after Travis Kalanick was ousted as chief executive of Uber, the ride hailing company released new financial results that showed continued growth and narrowing losses as it advances toward an initial public offering. On Wednesday, Uber posted a loss of 891 million for the second quarter, compared with a loss of more than 1 billion during the same period a year earlier. The company took in 12.01 billion in gross bookings in the quarter or the amount of passenger fares and food delivery fees up 41 percent from a year ago. After paying out fees to drivers, revenue was 2.7 billion. When Uber turned a profit last quarter because it offloaded businesses in Russia and Southeast Asia, it cautioned that that bump would not last because it planned to reinvest the money. Uber is not required to disclose earnings because it is privately held, but it has made a habit of publicly releasing its numbers. Investors are closely scrutinizing Uber's financials because the company is one of the world's most highly valued private firms, at 62 billion, and is preparing to go public by the end of 2019. Its I.P.O. is expected to be one of the biggest ever for a tech company. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Gone are the days when a hotel meant simply a bed, a desk and perhaps a minibar. A new wave of accommodations has bumped traditional lodging out of the way by offering unique experiences that are endlessly, irresistibly Instagrammable. Want to cozy up in a glass igloo to watch the Northern Lights? Or hang on for dear life from the side of a cliff in a transparent capsule? You can do all that these days for a price, of course. Getting close really close to wildlife Africa is dotted with luxurious safari lodges for guests who want to get as close as possible to the continent's incredible animal life. But some get you closer than others. At Mfuwe Lodge in Zambia, 18 chalets are arranged around two large lagoons, creating the perfect setting for watching elephants as they visit in the late afternoons. But Africa isn't the only continent to offer such close encounters of the animal kind. The Jungle Bubbles, at the Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp Resort in Chiang Rai, Thailand, offers resort guests the chance to spend a night in a transparent bubble, witnessing elephants pass by. But if you live in the United States, you don't have to travel far to get close to animal life. At the Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, N.Y., guests can reserve one of a handful of tiny houses and mingle with some of the 800 farm animals rescued from abuse and mistreatment. On the porch of a chalet at the Mfuwe Lodge in Zambia. Mfuwe Lodge, from 400 per person; Jungle Bubbles, doubles from 567 plus resort costs; Farm Sanctuary, doubles from 275 per night. Regardless of where you are in the world, there's a good chance you can stay in a treehouse style accommodation. At Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge in the Amazon region of Brazil, guests can find themselves cocooned in the canopy of the Amazon, high above the Rio Negro river. Up in the tall trees of the pine forests of Northern Sweden, the Treehotel posits guests in mirrored cubes and cabins perched in the treetops, one of which is even shaped like a U.F.O. On the edge of Kruger National Park in South Africa, the new Beyond Ngala Treehouse opens this month, giving guests a chance to take a game drive out to the treehouse where they spend the night up high in the bush in a private tower. A different kind of treehouse greets guests in Costa Rica at Hotel Costa Verde, where a decommissioned airplane was reconstructed in the jungle canopy, so that guests actually sleep in a plane in the jungle canopy. But some travelers want to go even higher than the treetops. At Skylodge Adventure Suites in Peru, guests arrive either by hiking over 1,300 feet or 400 meters up, or by zipping in like a superhero on a series of zip lines. The rooms themselves are transparent capsules hanging on the side of a mountain with panoramic views of the Sacred Valley. Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge, from 325 per person for a panoramic suite; Treehotel, doubles from 540; Beyond Ngala Treehouse, from 695 per person; Hotel Costa Verde, doubles from 260; Skylodge Adventure Suites, from 467 per person with transport. Not into heights? You can always go deep thanks to lodging options that offer an underwater experience. At Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, guests can reserve the Muraka, a two level hotel room that includes an infinity pool and also reaches 16 feet below sea level. At The Manta Resort, off the coast of Pemba near Zanzibar, a butler boats out to meet guests on their private underwater island. And in Key Largo, Fla., travelers with scuba certifications can dive down for a stay at Jules' Undersea Lodge. Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, from 9,999; The Manta Resort, doubles from 1,900 per night with three night minimum; Jules' Undersea Lodge, singles from 675. A new group of hotels that have cropped up in some of the world's coldest places provides travelers the chance to experience hygge, the Danish concept of cozy contentment. At Cielo Glamping Maritime in New Brunswick, Canada, guests can cuddle up inside domes nestled in the forest, with clear sides for views of the snowy sunsets. Want to see the Northern Lights but don't want to feel cold? Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort in Finland is designed for you. Featuring glass igloos (for lying in bed to watch the lights) and snow igloos (caves dug out of a snow bank), it's the perfect place for fancy snow bunnies. If you find yourself in the middle of the Gobi desert, stay warm under a camel hair blanket in a traditional Mongolian tent (called a ger) at the eco lodge, the Three Camel Lodge. Catch the Northern Lights with three of your closest friends in a glass igloo at the Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort in Finland. Cielo Glamping Maritime, doubles from 311 for two nights, Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort, glass igloos from 566; Three Camel Lodge, tents with full board, activities, and transfer from 1,000 per person. And if animals, treehouses or the cold really aren't appealing, you can always settle for royalty. You may have heard of the famed Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, India, the landmark hotel that since 1903 has signified luxury tourism. But you might not know that in Jaipur, India, you can reserve a room in a palace once home to the city's maharajah, Sujan Rajmahal Palace. And for some British royalty vibes, check into The Newt in Somerset, where you can roam the grounds of the manor's English gardens and sip tea in your castle. Or for Scandinavian style galore, try Nimb Hotel in Copenhagen, a 1909 castle with exteriors inspired by Moorish architecture. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Mambety sticks close to the original while transforming the drama into a village folk play, interspersed with songs and dances. (The score, which mixes traditional music with Western movie motifs, is by his younger brother, the singer songwriter Wasis Diop.) He cast nonactors in the film's two lead roles, with the lean and dignified Mansour Diouf as Dramaan Drameh, the chosen victim, and Ami Diakhate, discovered by Mambety selling soup in a Dakar market, playing Linguere Ramatou, the old woman. At once symbolic and concrete, the film is further punctuated by images of watchful animals "frequent shots of fiery eyed hyenas restlessly stalking the outskirts of the town like evil spirits alert to the scent of decay," as Stephen Holden wrote in his New York Times review. Durrenmatt's play is, among other things, a satire of bourgeois democracy. "Hyenas" evokes a more archaic form of governance. Although the film's ending, when Dramaan is put on trial, is reminiscent of Greek tragedy, the justice meted out observes local custom. The drama of "Hyenas" is given a specifically developing world significance. Described as "richer than the World Bank," Linguere effectively seduces the villagers with consumer goods like air conditioners, refrigerators and TVs. Not just money but modernization is the bait. (In interviews, Mambety suggested that Linguere is the grown version of the radical student Anta who leaves Africa for Europe in "Touki Bouki.") Not above such temptation, Mambety pointedly casts himself in a small but significant role as a former judge who serves as Linguere's retainer. The final shot has an earth mover bulldozing a field outside the town. Mambety never made another feature, although he did leave a 45 minute short meant to be part of a larger trilogy. A bold and splashy homage to Dakar's street children, "The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun" (which can be streamed via Kanopy) is as affirmative as "Hyenas" is pessimistic. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Among all the tools that health agencies have developed over the years to fight epidemics, at least one has remained a constant for more than a century: paper vaccination certificates. In the 1880s, in response to smallpox outbreaks, some public schools began requiring students and teachers to show vaccination cards. In the 1960s, amid yellow fever epidemics, the World Health Organization introduced an international travel document, known informally as the yellow card. Even now, travelers from certain regions are required to show a version of the card at airports. But now, just as the United States is preparing to distribute the first vaccines for the virus, the entry ticket to the nation's reopening is set to come largely in the form of a digital health credential. In the coming weeks, major airlines including United, JetBlue and Lufthansa plan to introduce a health passport app, called CommonPass, that aims to verify passengers' virus test results and soon, vaccinations. The app will then issue confirmation codes enabling passengers to board certain international flights. It is just the start of a push for digital Covid 19 credentials that could soon be embraced by employers, schools, summer camps and entertainment venues. "This is likely to be a new normal need that we're going to have to deal with to control and contain this pandemic," said Dr. Brad Perkins, the chief medical officer at the Commons Project Foundation, a nonprofit in Geneva that developed the CommonPass app. The advent of electronic vaccination credentials could have a profound effect on efforts to control the coronavirus and restore the economy. They could prompt more employers and college campuses to reopen. They may also give some consumers peace of mind, developers say, by creating an easy way for movie theaters, cruise ships and sports arenas to admit only those with documented coronavirus vaccinations. But the digital passes also raise the specter of a society split into health pass haves and have nots, particularly if venues begin requiring the apps as entry tickets. The apps could make it difficult for people with limited access to vaccines or online verification tools to work or visit popular destinations. Civil liberties experts also warn that the technology could create an invasive system of social control, akin to the heightened surveillance that China adopted during the pandemic only instead of federal or state governments, private actors like employers and restaurants would determine who can and cannot access services. "Protecting public health has historically been used as a proxy for discrimination," said Professor Michele Goodwin, a law professor who directs the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California, Irvine. "That is the real concern the potential to use these apps as proxies for keeping certain people away and out." In the U.S., for instance, the federal government plans to give out personal record cards to people receiving coronavirus vaccinations to remind them of their medical provider, vaccine manufacturer, batch number and date of inoculation. But federal health agencies have not yet issued guidance on third party digital vaccination credentials, leaving it open for companies and nonprofits to introduce Covid 19 health pass apps. Neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responded to requests for comment. Nonprofits and tech companies developing Covid 19 health pass apps say their aim is to create credentials as trustworthy as the W.H.O.'s paper yellow card. And they argue that the smartphone apps which people may use to retrieve their virus test results and immunizations directly from their heath providers are more reliable than paper health documents, which may be forged. "To restart the economy, to save certain industries, I think you need a solution like this," said Eric Piscini, a vice president at IBM who oversaw the development of the company's new health passport app. IBM recently completed a pilot test of the app, called Digital Health Pass, with an employer, he said, and is in discussions with a major sports stadium. Without such apps, Mr. Piscini said, "people will limit their engagement in travel and entertainment because of lack of confidence." Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. Clear, a security company that uses biometric technology to confirm people's identities at airports and elsewhere, is already operating a Covid app. Called Health Pass, the app has been adopted by some professional sports teams and insurers, where employees may use it to confirm their coronavirus test results. Once vaccines become available, the company said, the app will be able to check users' immunizations as well. But no Covid 19 health pass has received as much fanfare as the CommonPass app, developed by the Commons Project, a nonprofit focused on building technology for public use. The group began developing software to help people retrieve and use their medical data well before the start of the pandemic. But spikes in virus cases around the world this spring accelerated its work. First, the group helped build a health pass app for some East African nations that aims to verify truck drivers with negative coronavirus test results, enabling them to pick up food shipments at ports and deliver them across borders to landlocked countries. A few months later, the group partnered with the World Economic Forum to build a more global digital health pass system for Covid 19. Their first target: international air travel. The resulting app, CommonPass, notifies users of local travel rules like having to provide proof of a negative virus test and then aims to verify that they have met those rules, enabling them to board international flights. In October, United Airlines tested the app on a flight from Heathrow Airport in London to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. Peter Vlitas, an executive at Internova Travel Group, a travel services company based in Manhattan, signed up for the United flight. He said he first downloaded the app, which informed him that he needed to test negative for the coronavirus before traveling. Next, he said, the app directed him to a rapid testing center at the airport. Soon after he took the test, the app displayed his negative test results and generated a confirmation code. United and four other airlines plan to start using the CommonPass app in the coming weeks on some international flights. Passengers may be asked to show their confirmation codes at airline check in counters or departure gates. Dr. Perkins said the Commons Project designed the app's credentialing system to work for a broad audience. If international air travelers who lack smartphones need to confirm their health status, he said, they could print their confirmation codes and show them at an airport much as they would a paper boarding pass. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
For Negin Mirsalehi, a 30 year old beauty guru, life, business and Instagram are inseparably intertwined. Ms. Mirsalehi, a fetching Dutchwoman who built a hair care brand on the hives of her father's apiary outside Amsterdam, is an entrepreneur, but the sort of entrepreneur whose looks, love and workout routines are shared daily on Instagram with 5.3 million fans. Ms. Mirsalehi is an influencer. Instagram recognizes the power of those influencers and "super influencers," as Eva Chen, its director of fashion partnerships, called stars like Ms. Mirsalehi (though she acknowledged there is no precise minimum for that particular title). The platform, with revenues that are still largely generated by advertising, has recognized the opportunity that in app shopping presents. In March, it announced that it would begin testing in app shopping with about 20 retail partners, including Zara, H M, Dior, Oscar de la Renta and Nike. Now it is allowing those brands to team up with what it calls content creators (influencers, yes, but also established media companies like Vogue, Elle and GQ) to extend the in app shopping function what Instagram calls Checkout from a brand's own feeds to those of its chosen influencers. For Ms. Mirsalehi, who is teaming up with Oscar de la Renta to create shoppable posts on her feed, the new function will help bring her community even closer to her. She will field followers' questions about the outfits she posts daily, she said on a video chat from Amsterdam , in "DMs, comments underneath photos, whenever I see them outside." "They really want to know the entire lifestyle," she said. "It's about where are you, what are you wearing, what do you believe in, what do you support?" For Oscar de la Renta, she'll be supporting the Nolo bag, a new purse style. "This is not something where we're expecting to materially influence the sales of that product, though one always hopes," Alex Bolen, the chief executive of Oscar de la Renta, said. "We're hoping to learn and bring what we learn to larger projects." Oscar de la Renta was earlier than many luxury brands to experiment with Instagram, and Mr. Bolen said that those experiments have enabled the label to better compete against bigger players. Ms. Mirsalehi will be the first of a handful of influencers and accounts it is teaming up with in this program; Chriselle Lim, Elle magazine and Laura Kim, Oscar's own creative director, will be others. "An important part of this is really data," Mr. Bolen said. "We get lots of new information. What we're doing with it is what we're still, to be honest, trying to figure out." For the initial rollout, 55 accounts are working with the 23 brands already using Checkout to test shoppable posts. They include celebrities whose followers number among the platform's highest, like Kim Kardashian West, Kylie Jenner and Gigi Hadid; influencers who already command audiences bigger than most magazines, like Ms. Mirsalehi and Chiara Ferragni; and more boutique creators like Kimberly Drew and Katie Sturino. The development underscores the growing awareness that Instagram's power users are increasingly using the platform to develop not only stand alone brands, like Ms. Mirsalehi's hair care line, but also personal brands they can leverage in sponsorship and endorsement deals for fun and profit. (In Ms. Mirsalehi's case, she already has a business relationship with Oscar de la Renta, as well as with Dior and Revolve for sponsored content.) Making content that is immediately and seamlessly shoppable a move from spokeswoman to saleswoman, in a sense is only the next step. "A lot of these conversations were happening offline between creators and brands already," said Ms. Chen, who added that Instagram was not involved in the financial negotiations between the brands and their influencers. "That will continue to be the case." At present, Instagram does not receive a commission on sales made through the Checkout program; it does assess a fee for the brands that use the service (with or without influencers), which Ms. Chen said goes to covering credit card processing fees. The very real business considerations of influence have made moguls of users whose public facing personas are often more about fun and frolic than consumer marketing. "We never try to see them as a number," Ms. Mirsalehi said about her followers. "These are real people we're talking about." With the shoppable posts, she said, "I'm going to be able to get to know my audience even more. Which outfits do they really like more?" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Harry Evans at a dinner for Al Gore's film and book "An Inconvenient Truth," in 2006 at the home he shared with his wife, Tina Brown, in New York City. One of Harry Evans's gifts as a journalist was his understanding of power: who had it, why they got it, and most significantly how they misused it. His career as perhaps Britain's most accomplished newspaper editor took off in the '60s, when, as the editor of The Northern Echo in Darlington, he helped turn the wrongful conviction of a man hanged for murder into a crusade that culminated in the end of the death penalty. As the editor of The Sunday Times in the '70s, he forced an international reckoning with Big Pharma, taking on drugmakers who played down the substantial health risks of the tranquilizer thalidomide. But at the Sutton Place ground floor duplex apartment he shared with his wife Tina Brown from the fizzy late '90s till the somewhat more chastened late '10s, Mr. Evans, who died last Wednesday at the age of 92, became a premier salonist of a generally post salon era, hosting authors, media personalities, politicians and dignitaries, the more powerful the better. There was usually a guest of honor and more often than not, the peg (as it's called in journalism) was a book, like Simon Schama and "The Story of the Jews," published in 2014. Or a victory, like the Labour candidate Tony Blair's election to prime minister in 1997. The morning of a party, Mr. Evans and Ms. Brown would head to the Sutton Cafe, on First Avenue, where they'd eat breakfast, and read about 14 newspapers. Then, they would come home and Mr. Evans would play Ping Pong before jumping into the bath, where he'd spend a few hours reading the book being celebrated and prepare his toast. She worked on the seating arrangements. In the afternoon, a moving truck would arrive and extract the furniture from the common areas of the apartment. Mr. Evans, a 5 foot 7 cannonball of energy whose suits were as dapper as his hair was messy, seemed to float above the crowd, sprinkling buoyancy, and too fast to catch. The recipients of his mischievous, alliterative toasts were usually on the friends list, but it said something about the power he and Ms. Brown wielded in New York that many of those in attendance were people who had been scorched in publications she presided over (most notably Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Daily Beast) or in books he edited at Random House (which he headed from 1990 to 1997). In 1996, Mr. Evans published "Primary Colors," the best selling roman a clef that turned out to be by Joe Klein, about a southern governor running for president, bulldozing everyone in his wake. Yet there was Bill Clinton some years later, standing in the garden with Mr. Evans and Ms. Brown on behalf of their mutual friend Sidney Blumenthal. And there at another party was Roger Ailes, regaling guests about his accomplishments at Fox News, despite the fact that Mr. Evans in 1983 wrote "Good Times, Bad Times," an account of being defenestrated at The Times of London after it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch. In 2004, Mr. Evans was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to journalism. Yet his biggest pet peeve, according to his good friend, the writer Marie Brenner, was the "snobby class society of England. Many of his most hilarious toasts were about that." Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, became friendly with Mr. Evans and Ms. Brown in 2017, shortly after he was fired by the Trump administration. Upon the publication of his book, a not quite a memoir called "Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law," released in 2019, the couple hosted a party for him at the apartment. The book, Mr. Bharara said in an interview, touched on high profile cases involving "insider trading and public corruption," but Mr. Evans chose in his toast to focus on a chapter involving "the least famous case, this woman who'd lost 11,000 and been brutally beaten. It had never been in the newspaper but it was about someone powerless getting their case in court." Mr. Evans did not have to be an expert on a subject to monopolize the microphone. Occasionally, Ms. Brown held a party for someone whose career had nothing to do with Mr. Evans' main interests. Their friend Gabe Doppelt, the former magazine editor, said Mr. Evans would suggest that he take his computer into the moving truck and ride around with the drivers, getting his work done. But he never did. The relationship between him and Ms. Brown was too symbiotic for that. One of her gifts was making the fun stuff serious, turning pop culture into sociology. One of his was making the serious stuff fun. So at parties for fashion designers and Hollywood actresses, he would manage during the toasts he wasn't delivering to do what Ms. Doppelt described as a "little heckling." It wasn't meanspirited. In fact, Mr. Evans had an enthusiasm for his wife's career big enough to rival Martin Ginsburg, the highly successful tax lawyer who, as Linda Greenhouse wrote in a recent obituary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, became his wife's chief booster, "happily giving up his lucrative New York law practice to move with her to Washington," and lobbying "vigorously behind the scenes for her appointment to the Supreme Court." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
In this 55 minute webinar, recorded live in Oct. 2017, the Times Op Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof talks to teachers about the art of writing arguments that raise awareness about global issues like disease, poverty and illiteracy. In addition, Learning Network editors and Kabby Hong, a high school English teacher, explain how you can use the Times Opinion section and the Learning Network to find mentor texts, analyze claims and evidence, help your students practice persuasive writing for a real audience, and more. Finally, we discuss ways to weave the Learning Network's annual Student Editorial Contest into your curriculum, no matter what you're teaching. 10 Ways to Teach Argument Writing With The New York Times Original Webinar: You can watch the original, unedited webinar here and download a professional development certificate at the end. The webinar is free, but registration is required. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Sometimes you go to a dance and a concert breaks out. In "There Might Be Others," performed Wednesday at New York Live Arts, the choreographer Rebecca Lazier collaborates with the composer Dan Trueman for an ambitious work inspired by Terry Riley's trailblazing "In C" from 1964. Composed of 53 short musical phrases or modules played according to a set of open instructions, "In C" is regarded as a Minimalist masterpiece. Created as a choreographic adaptation of the score or what the collaborators refer to as a collective composition "There Might Be Others" features sound and movement modules arranged in real time by the performers. Even moments of the lighting, designed by Davison Scandrett, are decided on the spot. So what does this look like? At times, a college improvisation class. The movement sections, despite being executed by Ms. Lazier's charismatic cast of 14 including dancers she worked with in residencies in Poland, Canada and Turkey are a less than enthralling set of phrases that multiply at a pace more insistent than intriguing. But what does it sound like? Heaven. The dancers share the stage with the ensembles So Percussion and Mobius Percussion and four other musicians. No matter if they're shredding newspapers, cranking sirens or pounding on drums, the musicians who mercifully take up a third of the stage attract your gaze. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
How does one follow the most visited Costume Institute show in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the top three most visited exhibits over all, one that grappled with the sacred questions of God, biblical allusion and religious ornamentation? How does one top "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination"? With, apparently, an about face to the profane. On Tuesday, the museum announced its major Costume Institute exhibition for 2019: "Camp: Notes on Fashion," a play on Susan Sontag's 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp,'" the 58 point treatise that arguably brought the concept into the mainstream and helped make Sontag a literary celebrity. "The essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration," she wrote in Partisan Review, at a time when the boundary between elite art and mass culture was disintegrating. Cut to 2018. "We are going through an extreme camp moment, and it felt very relevant to the cultural conversation to look at what is often dismissed as empty frivolity but can be actually a very sophisticated and powerful political tool, especially for marginalized cultures," said Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute, who said he had been exploring the idea for the last few years. "Whether it's pop camp, queer camp, high camp or political camp Trump is a very camp figure I think it's very timely." In this, the exhibition is fully in line with his mission to use the deceptively popular lens of fashion to take on challenging topics, from the rise of China to religion, thus placing the museum at the center of a broader cultural conversation instead of aloof on the intellectual and academic heights. "At moments like this, fashion is very powerful because of its ability to convey very complex ideas about our cultural mores in seemingly accessible ways," Mr. Bolton said. "One of my favorite definitions from Susan's essay is when she talks about the idea of camp as failed seriousness. When it is 'campy,' it is more self conscious, but we are going to look at both." There will be about 175 pieces in the show, including men's and women's wear, sculpture, paintings and drawings, divided into two sections. The first will deal with the origins of camp, which Mr. Bolton traces to Versailles, through its inclusion in the dictionary of Victorian slang in 1909, and the Stonewall riots and "the use of camp as a language in the queer community," he said, adding that he thinks camp's storied history may surprise some people. The second half of the exhibition will focus on camp as expressed in the work of contemporary designers, from the use of trompe l'oeil to pastiche, irony, theater and exaggeration. Names from Charles Frederick Worth and Balenciaga to Miuccia Prada and Demna Gvasalia will be represented. "Sontag in her essay said not everything is camp, but since I have been working on the show, I have started to think it is everywhere, and that all fashion is on some level camp," Mr. Bolton said. "It has gained such currency it has become invisible, and part of my goal is to make it visible again." The exhibition will be designed by the scenographer Jan Versweyveld, who also created David Bowie's "Lazarus." It will take place in the Iris and Gerald B. Cantor galleries, where the Alexander McQueen and "Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art of the In Between" shows were held. Coincidentally (or not), Ms. Kawakubo, the first living designer to be granted a show at the Costume Institute in over 30 years, also had a recent inspiration moment with Sontag's essay, and in February based her autumn 2018 show on it. (She will probably have one piece in the exhibition, Mr. Bolton said; in total, the show will include around 37 designers.) At the time, Ms. Kawakubo wrote in a statement, "Camp is really and truly something deep and new and represents a value we need." Mr. Bolton is hoping this show sparks a similar realization in its viewers. The exhibition is being underwritten by Gucci, the Italian brand that has experienced an extreme renaissance over the last few years under the creative director Alessandro Michele, with his vision of a grab bag world of muchness that includes boys and girls and sequins and tennis sweaters and granny glasses, an aesthetic that has effectively been a celebration of the power of camp. Mr. Michele wanted to be involved, he said, because "there are frequently huge misunderstandings about the real meaning of this word." He continued: "Camp really means the unique ability of combining high art and pop culture; it is not kitsch. The Met exhibition will give contemporary significance to Sontag's perspective." The show is to be unveiled at the annual gala party on May 6 co chaired by Anna Wintour (who is herself something of a camp icon), editor of Vogue and artistic director of Conde Nast (which is also supporting the show); Lady Gaga, the superstar whose personal presentation and career are practically an ode to the transformative power of camp; Mr. Michele; the pop singer Harry Styles (a star of a current Gucci ad campaign); and the tennis star Serena Williams. Ms. Williams's relationship to camp is somewhat unclear, but presumably that mystery will be solved as she stands at the top of the marble staircase in the receiving line. Indeed, an argument can be made that the gala, in which guests are often urged to dress in the theme of the exhibition, is arguably the ultimate high camp parade, ogled by millions. Just consider Katy Perry's archangel wings of last May or Rihanna's version of papal robes. Then consider the possibilities this time around. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
LONDON Europe's top court said on Thursday that individual countries can order Facebook to take down posts, photographs and videos not only in their own countries but elsewhere, in a ruling that extends the reach of the region's internet related laws beyond its own borders. The European Court of Justice said Facebook could be forced to remove a post globally by a national court in the European Union's 28 member bloc if the content was determined to be defamatory or otherwise illegal. Its decision cannot be appealed. The ruling stemmed from a case involving an Austrian politician, Eva Glawischnig Piesczek, who sued the social network to expunge online comments that called her a "lousy traitor," "corrupt oaf" and member of a "fascist party." After an Austrian court found the comments violated defamation laws, she demanded Facebook erase the original comments worldwide, not just within the country, as well as posts with "equivalent" remarks. The decision sets a new benchmark for the purview of European laws that govern the internet, giving European countries the power to apply takedown requests internationally. That foreshadows future disputes over Europe's role in setting rules on the internet, especially as other nations increasingly pass their own laws to deal with privacy, hate speech and disinformation. The judgment deals a blow to big internet platforms like Facebook, placing more responsibility on them to patrol their sites for wrongdoing as they contend with the swell of often competing laws and regulations. "There is this impulse in Europe that is trying to set global regulatory standards," said Ben Wagner, director of the Privacy and Sustainable Computing Lab at Vienna University. The effort, he said, is a "pushback against the self regulatory impulses of these platforms." Facebook said in a statement that the European court's decision "undermines the longstanding principle that one country does not have the right to impose its laws on speech on another country." It added that the judgment raised questions about freedom of expression and "the role that internet companies should play in monitoring, interpreting and removing speech that might be illegal in any particular country." Later on Thursday during an all hands meeting with employees, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, predicted challenges for his company and for the industry, as well as lengthy litigation. "I think it's a very troubling precedent to set," he said. Ms. Glawischnig Piesczek, the former leader of the Austrian Green Party, who brought the original lawsuit, did not respond to requests for comment. Europe has long been more proactive than other regions including the United States in passing laws that regulate the internet. As Europe has enacted tougher policies, its courts are being asked to clarify their scope, including whether Facebook, Google and others must apply the rules beyond the European Union's borders. Last week, the European Court of Justice limited the reach of the privacy law known as the "right to be forgotten," which lets European citizens demand that Google remove links to sensitive personal data from search results. The court said Google could not be ordered to remove links to websites globally, except in certain circumstances when weighed against the rights to free expression and the public's right to information. On Thursday, the Luxembourg based court turned its attention to the reach of European defamation laws through Ms. Glawischnig Piesczek's case, which she filed in 2016. Facebook initially refused to take down the post that criticized her. In many countries the comments about her would have been considered acceptable, if vulgar, political speech. Ms. Glawischnig Piesczek then sued Facebook in Austrian courts, which concluded the comments were defamatory and intended to damage her reputation. She also demanded that Facebook remove posts that were similar in tone to the original insults, taking the case all the way to the European Court of Justice. The court said on Thursday that while Facebook wasn't liable for the disparaging comments posted about Ms. Glawischnig Piesczek, the company had an obligation to take them down after an Austrian court found them defamatory. Facebook, the court said, "did not act expeditiously to remove or to disable access to that information." The court left to national court systems in each European Union country to decide what cases merit forcing an internet company to take down content in foreign countries. That raised questions about what other laws Facebook and other internet platforms can be forced to comply with by governments in Europe. French regulators have tested the expansion of privacy laws beyond the European Union. Germany has adopted strict laws to remove hate speech from social media platforms. Britain is considering new restrictions against "harmful" internet content. "The key thing about this case is what preventive measures can be imposed on Facebook," said Martin Husovec, an assistant law professor at Tilburg University's Institute for Law, Technology and Society in the Netherlands. But the decision is not likely to not lead to a flood of orders against Facebook to take down content globally, said David Erdos, deputy director of the Center for Intellectual Property and Information Law at Cambridge University. The opinion was narrowly crafted, he said, and urged national courts to weigh any bans carefully against international laws. "Courts will be feeling their way for years to come," he said. Critics of the ruling said a global ban would require the use of automated content filters. Civil society groups and others have cautioned that such filters are ineffective and could lead to the takedown of legitimate material because filters cannot detect nuances in satire and some political commentary. They also argued that calling for the removal of posts considered "equivalent" added further confusion. Supporters countered that defamation laws hadn't been enforced appropriately in the internet age and were needed to force companies like Facebook to do more to combat internet trolls, hate speech and other personal attacks that spread on the web. Facebook has long argued that it should not be held legally responsible for material posted by its more than two billion users. Yet with increased scrutiny from policymakers around the world, the social network has taken steps to limit hate speech and extremism on its site. Last month, it outlined its plans for an oversight board to review content decisions. Dr. Wagner at Vienna University said Thursday's ruling raised broad concerns about restricting political speech, especially because Ms. Glawischnig Piesczek is a public figure. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
WASHINGTON President Obama had just finished taking the oath and the Marine band played "Hail to the Chief" and the cameras panned to children waving little flags. Inaugurations are momentous things. And then, after the benediction, I opened an e mail from my friend Matt, who had extracted another unalienable truth from the proceedings: "Biden is a testament to the transforming power of successful hair plugs." Well yes, he is, though the hair plugs are not a new Biden phenomenon. What's telling here is that at a spectacle so potent and on a stage so crowded, the eye would be so naturally drawn to the goofball understudy. In that sense, Matt represents a cultural wave. "Transforming" is the key word. In a few short months, the motor tongued, muscle car loving heartbeat away hell raiser has been transformed from gaffe prone amusement to someone whose star shines as brightly as his teeth. He is the subject of viral C Span videos, sitcom infatuations and an "autobiography" of his Onion inspired alter ego, "Diamond" Joe Biden, "The President of Vice." (In his spare time, Mr. Biden also helped avert the fiscal cliff, is spearheading the White House plan to reduce gun violence and might even run for president in 2016.) He may not be the most popular politician in America. Mr. Biden's approval rating stands at 49 percent in the latest New York Times/CBS poll; not bad, but still a shade lower than his boss's (51 percent). Mrs. Clinton trounces him in early surveys of Democrats eyeing the prospective field for 2016. Yet Mr. Biden wins in a landslide in an unscientific snapshot of comic appreciation, cult appeal and of the moment awesomeness. The White House recently received a petition from citizens insisting that a new reality show be created featuring the vice president (2,482 signatures at this writing). Here is one theory on why. In 1968, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey spoke of something he called "The Politics of Joy," a slogan he adopted to accentuate his trademark zest and enthusiasm as he ran for president. In fact, the notion was dreadfully off pitch given the war, assassinations and upheaval of the day, and Mr. Humphrey took some ridicule for it. Mr. Biden, however, represents an updated standard bearer for the politics of joy, said Joel K. Goldstein, a law professor at Saint Louis University and an expert on the United States vice presidency. (Disclosure: I quote Mr. Goldstein whenever possible, just so I can type the words "expert on the United States vice presidency," which never fails to amuse me.) While these are not exactly joyous times either politicians are often reviled and voters are no picnic Mr. Biden is the one major Washington figure who consistently evokes a sense of thrill in what he is doing. Through receiving lines, pro forma thank you calls and random glad handing, he conveys an aura that he would rather be doing nothing else. The video of Mr. Biden swearing in newly elected members and greeting their families in the Old Senate Chamber this month provided 86 minutes of viral eloquence on this. "Spread your legs you're going to be frisked," Mr. Biden ordered the husband of the new North Dakota senator, Heidi Heitkamp, after he was instructed by a photographer to put his hands at his side. Ms. Heitkamp cracked up, and Mr. Biden then explained helpfully! that when someone says "drop your hands to your side" to "somebody in North Dakota, they think it's a frisk." Now better informed, the Heitkamps went on their way. Mr. Biden also told the brother of the Republican senator Tim Scott that he could "help with" his "pecs." As everyone knows, Mr. Biden is a fitness god. And not in that trendy P90X Paul Ryan way. "There's gym strong and there's old man strong," explained the "Saturday Night Live" Biden, played by Jason Sudeikis, last October. "When the Amtrak breaks down during my morning commute, I strip down to my tighty whiteys" and push it "all the way to Washington!" Can't really see Mitch McConnell doing that, can you? Indeed, the Biden Moment is also born of contrast. Would The Onion put a shirtless John Kerry washing a Trans Am in the driveway of the State Department? Speaker Boehner wearing a ponytail at the Inauguration? Harry Reid getting banned for life from Dave Buster's restaurants ("following dozens of complaints from wait staff and numerous incidents")? Actually those last few might be pretty funny. "You must be Leslie Knope," Mr. Biden says. "Welcome." "You're ... my name just came out of your mouth," Leslie swoons. Leslie stammers, clutches the V.P., demurs on his nonexistent offer of Hillary Clinton's secretary of state job. She caresses Mr. Biden's face. Nonplused but still welcoming, his reaction is perfect. "You're very handsome, by the way," Leslie adds, clutching his arms. Walking out, she turns sharply to a Secret Service agent. "Don't let anything happen to him, you understand me?" she says firmly. "He is precious cargo." The scene was shot in two takes last July and was broadcast a few days after the election in November. Ms. Poehler praised Mr. Biden on the NBC Web site for keeping his composure "while I harassed him and invaded his personal space." Personal space invasion is also a big part of Mr. Biden's repertory. His relentless flirtation with the mother of Senator John Barrasso at the swearing in was particularly for the ages: it included Mr. Biden touching her face, resting his hand high under her arm during the photo pose, throwing his arm around her at various times, speaking about two inches from her nose and pulling her close for another hug while the two of them posed for a special photo. "I'm 90 years old," Louise Barrasso told him, to which the V.P. said, "I'll tell you what, 20 years from now, when I show my kids this picture, you will have to come and sign it." He gave her one last peck on the cheek and a "God love ya." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
President Trump and his allies have continuously amplified false and unsubstantiated claims about voting as they wage a multi front assault on the legitimacy of the 2020 election. A pre election analysis from the Election Integrity Partnership found that posts from 20 Twitter accounts, including 13 verified and Mr. Trump himself, accounted for a fifth of all shares of voting related misinformation in its database. Of the 13 verified accounts, all but three had tweeted at least one claim of election misinformation this week. Mr. Trump was one of the most frequent purveyors. This week, he has falsely accused Detroit of reporting more votes than people (it did not), wrongly declared that Michigan "refused to certify the election results" (it is not scheduled to do so until Monday), claimed a "big victory" after a Nevada commission declined to verify the results of a local race (it did not affect the presidential election), and shared an image purporting to show that President elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. received a "dump" of more than 143,000 votes in Wisconsin a day after the election at 3:42 a.m., "when they learned he was losing badly" (Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold, continued to count votes throughout that night). | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
After a distinguished academic career, he brought his love of baseball to a position that he considered a dream job but that was eliminated five years later. Gene Budig, the soft spoken former chancellor of the University of Kansas who in 1994 became the final president of baseball's American League, died on Tuesday at his home in Charleston, S.C. He was 81. His wife, Gretchen Budig, said the cause was complications of fatty liver disease. Dr. Budig (pronounced BYOO dig) did not expect to be the last to hold his position (nor did Leonard Coleman Jr., his National League counterpart). The job, which included supervising umpires, disciplining players and owners, and arranging schedules, was created in 1901 when Ban Johnson founded the American League and became its first president. But in 1999, five years after Dr. Budig's appointment, Major League Baseball owners voted to eliminate the league president positions and fold their functions under Commissioner Bud Selig. That left Dr. Budig and Mr. Coleman jobless. "He loved that job it was his dream job," his daughter Kathryn Budig said in an email. Championing diversity, Dr. Budig hired Larry Doby, the first Black player in the American League, as his special assistant in 1995. "Larry Doby is a historic figure, a treasure who deserves to be remembered," Dr. Budig told The New York Times shortly after naming him to the position. "This appointment will call attention to his contributions. He will provide unique insights." Dr. Budig took his disciplinary duties seriously. In 1998, he imposed a five game suspension on Mike Stanton, a relief pitcher for the Yankees, for hitting Eric Davis of the Baltimore Orioles with a pitch. George M. Steinbrenner, the Yankees' owner, responded angrily. "I'm not sure what Dr. Budig's experience is," said Mr. Steinbrenner, who had clashed several times with Dr. Budig but who later became friendly with him. "But I'm not sure when the last time he wore a jockstrap was." Dr. Budig, who was known for his reserve, did not reciprocate with similar thunder. Instead, he asked someone at the athletic department at Kansas to send him the largest jockstrap the department had. He autographed it and shipped it to Mr. Steinbrenner. Gene Arthur Budig was born on May 25, 1939, in Lincoln, Neb., and raised in McCook, in the western part of the state. His birth parents gave him up to an orphanage, and he was adopted by Arthur Budig, an auto mechanic, and Angela (Schaff) Budig, a nurse who worked at the hospital where Gene was born. When he was 12, Gene sent a letter to Bill Veeck, the maverick owner of the St. Louis Browns, asking if he could try out for the team; Gene had learned that Mr. Veeck had once sent the 3 foot 7 Eddie Gaedel to pinch hit as a gag. "He said, 'I'm pretty good at second base. Can I come for a tryout?'" Mrs. Budig said in an interview. "Bill wrote back and said, 'Sure, when you get out of high school.'" Gene never tried out for Mr. Veeck, with whom he later became friends. But he played for his high school team and at the University of Texas, Austin, during his only semester there. He graduated from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, in 1962 with a bachelor's degree in journalism and remained there to earn a master's in English and a doctorate in education. At Nebraska he was assistant vice chancellor and then assistant vice president before leaving for Illinois State University in 1972 to be vice president, dean and professor of educational administration. He was named president the next year. Dr. Budig was subsequently president of West Virginia University, appointed in 1977, before joing Kansas as chancellor four years later, remaining there until 1994. While there he helped secure an 18 million state grant to rebuild Hoch Auditorium, which had burned down in 1991. It was renamed Budig Hall in 1997. And he approved the hiring of two high profile men's basketball coaches: Larry Brown in 1983 and Roy Williams in 1988. By 1994, Dr. Budig had become known in baseball circles as a member of the board of the Kansas City Royals. He was chosen that year to replace Dr. Bobby Brown, a former Yankees infielder, as American League president. He followed another academic in baseball's hierarchy, A. Bartlett Giamatti, who had left the presidency of Yale to become the National League president in 1986 and was named baseball commissioner three years later. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
NOW LIVES In a one bedroom apartment in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, with her husband, Russ Armstrong. Her dog, Batman, keeps watch. CLAIM TO FAME Ms. Lee is a comedic actress who specializes in kooky, devil may care characters. She played the ditsy, entitled gallerist Soojin in HBO's "Girls," and various high strung characters on "Inside Amy Schumer" on Comedy Central. She also starred as Homeless Heidi in the cult web series "High Maintenance." BIG BREAK After graduating from Northwestern in 2005 with a theater and art history major, Ms. Lee moved to New York and landed several roles in plays Off Broadway and on. In 2012, her performance in Amy Herzog's "4000 Miles" at Lincoln Center Theater caught the eye of Lena Dunham, who invited her to appear on "Girls." "That was pretty crazy," Ms. Lee said. "I definitely had that moment when my manager called as I was driving and said, 'Pull over.' " LATEST PROJECT She is midway through a five episode guest arc on Fox's "New Girl," as Kai, a wealthy but lazy love interest for Nick (played by Jake Johnson). She also appears opposite Bill Murray in "St. Vincent," which was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (musical or comedy), and makes a cameo in Chris Rock's "Top Five." Ms. Lee is also a witty writer, and contributed an essay to Elle magazine in October titled "Why I'm Glad Hollywood Is Skipping the Stoner Chick Genre." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Unbeknown to most patients, their race is incorporated into numerous medical decision making tools and formulas that doctors consult to decide treatment for a range of conditions and services, including heart disease, cancer and maternity care, according to a new paper published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The unintended result, the paper concludes, has been to direct medical resources away from black patients and to deny some black patients treatment options available to white patients. The tools are often digital calculators on websites of medical organizations or in the case of assessing kidney function actually built into the tools commercial labs use to calculate normal values of blood tests. They assess risk and potential outcomes based on formulas derived from population studies and modeling that looked for variables associated with different outcomes. "These tests are woven into the fabric of medicine," said Dr. David Jones, the paper's senior author, a Harvard historian who also teaches ethics to medical students. "Despite mounting evidence that race is not a reliable proxy for genetic difference, the belief that it is has become embedded, sometimes insidiously, within medical practice," he wrote. The paper is being published at a tense moment in American society as black communities, disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, protest unequal treatment in other areas of their lives. Dr. Jones said he believed the developers of the tools, who often are academic researchers, are motivated by empiricism, not racism. But the results, his analysis found, have often led to black patients being steered away from treatments or procedures that white patients received. The paper included a chart listing nine areas of medicine where there are race based tests, and it analyzed the consequences. For example, it reported, labs routinely use a kidney function calculator that adjusts filtration rates for black patients. With the adjustment, black patients end up with slightly better rates than whites, which can be enough to make those with borderline rates ineligible to be on a kidney transplant list. An online osteoporosis risk calculator endorsed by the National Osteoporosis Foundation, among others, calculates chances of a fracture differently for black and white women. Black women end up having a score that makes them less likely to be prescribed osteoporosis medication than white women who are similar in other respects. An obstetric calculator based on observational data concludes that black women who had a previous cesarean birth are less likely to have a successful vaginal birth in a subsequent pregnancy. Dr. Jones added that it is time to stop what amounts to racial profiling in medicine. "We need to get off this train," he said. The New England Journal paper built on a collection of recent findings and assessments, including those in a recent paper about kidney function by Dr. Nwamaka Denise Eneanya and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. To determine how well kidneys are working, doctors use a blood test that measures a protein called creatinine to estimate kidney filtration rate. Low filtration rates indicate a kidney problem. Dr. Eneanya's team noted that patients with a filtration rate of less than 30 were referred to kidney specialists. They gave an example of a white patient whose level was 28, according to the calculator. A black patient with the same creatinine level would get a race correction under the formula that raises the level to 33. Consequently, the black patient would not get a referral to a specialist. The same effect could make some black patients ineligible to be put on a list for a kidney transplant those with filtration rates of 20 or above are ineligible. The formula originated with data from a federal study more than two decades ago that asked if a low protein diet reduced the risk of kidney disease (it did not, the study showed). The study included precise measures of kidney function and creatinine levels, which let researchers use creatinine to estimate kidney function. The formula fit the data best when they included an adjustment for black patients. In a more recent paper, in 2009, the researchers combined data from a number of studies to devise an improved formula, asking which variables made the formula best fit the data. Race popped up again. "The formula was widely adopted," said Dr. Melanie Hoenig, a kidney specialist at Harvard Medical School. One of its principal authors, Dr. Lesley Inker, a kidney specialist at Tufts Medical Center, said she hears the critics. "What we say is, 'You're right. I understand the difficulty in assigning race,'" Dr. Inker said. She is working on developing a more accurate formula that does not include race. She added that black patients should be told that their race alters the calculation and should be given an option to have their race excluded. But, she says, the current formula also can be an advantage for black patients. Those with filtration rates below 30 are ineligible to be prescribed metformin, the first line drug for diabetes, and SGLT2 inhibitors, a more recent class of diabetes drugs. One problem, is that it is not clear how race is determined. It shows up in medical records but, said Dr. Peter Reese, a kidney transplant specialist and epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, "I worry that in some situations they look at you and assume." With the formulas, there is no accounting for people of mixed race, as the authors of the New England Journal paper and other doctors have noted. Even if race does have a real effect on lab values for creatinine, why assume it is because of the genetics that determine skin color, some experts asked. "It could be diet or any of a number of things," Dr. Hoenig said, noting that a large protein heavy meal can temporarily raise creatinine levels. One often cited explanation is the belief that black people are more muscular than white people, and muscles can release creatinine into the blood. In a recent paper, Dr. Vanessa Grubbs, a kidney specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, tried to trace the origins of that belief and found only a few decades old studies that did not even measure muscle mass directly, including one saying black children are thinner than white children. A group of medical students at Harvard has been trying to change the approach to assessing kidney function, with some success. The group, including Leo Eisenstein, Danika Barry and Cameron Nutt, had heard Dr. Jones in lectures saying race was a social construct and then went into the clinic, where they were told to use a formula that corrects for race in assessing kidney function. Instead of complaining, Dr. Hoenig told the students, why not go to the leadership and suggest a change? Labs could simply not list race when sending in blood tests for creatinine in that case the formula's default would be the level for whites. Or they could give results as a range and explain to patients that the numbers are an estimate. A few years ago, Dr. Hoenig and the students made the rounds to executives at Beth Israel Medical Center. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
Our guide to plays and musicals coming to New York stages and a few last chance picks of shows that are about to close. Our reviews of open shows are at nytimes.com/reviews/theater. 'ADRIENNE TRUSCOTT'S (STILL) ASKING FOR IT' at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater (in previews; opens on Oct. 3). Subtitled "A Stand Up Rape About Comedy" (plus some more words that aren't publishable), this update of the cabaret performer's 2015 show approaches gendered violence and toxic masculinity with savage wit and a surprising number of brassieres. Bring your own rape whistle! Ellie Heyman directs. 212 967 7555, publictheater.org 'BELLA BELLA' at City Center Stage I (previews start on Oct. 1; opens on Oct. 22). Bella Abzug, the radical lawyer and politician, had a signature style jaunty hats, vibrant blouses, the occasional strand of pearls. Harvey Fierstein may not dress the same (well, maybe a hat), but he will channel her spirit in his affectionate tribute to Battling Bella, set at the close of a hard fought senate campaign. Kimberly Senior directs. 212 581 1212, nycitycenter.org 'DUBLIN CAROL' at the Irish Repertory Theater (in previews; opens on Oct. 1). Before Conor McPherson's "Girl From the North Country" transfers to Broadway, audiences can catch the Irish Rep's revival of this drama, which made its stateside debut at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2003. Set on Christmas Eve, the spare, talky play stars Jeffrey Bean as an undertaker's assistant muddling through a hangover and an encounter with his estranged daughter (Sarah Street). Ciaran O'Reilly directs. 212 727 2737, irishrep.org | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
The gray matter of the nucleus accumbens, the walnut shaped pleasure center of the brain, was glowing like a flame, showing a notable increase in density. "It could mean that there's some sort of drug learning taking place," speculated Jodi Gilman, at her computer screen at the Massachusetts General Hospital Harvard Center for Addiction Medicine. Was the brain adapting to marijuana exposure, rewiring the reward system to demand the drug? Dr. Gilman was reviewing a composite scan of the brains of 20 pot smokers, ages 18 to 25. What she and fellow researchers at Harvard and Northwestern University found within those scans surprised them. Even in the seven participants who smoked only once or twice a week, there was evidence of structural differences in two significant regions of the brain. The more the subjects smoked, the greater the differences. Moderate marijuana use by healthy adults seems to pose little risk, and there are potential medical benefits, including easing nausea and pain. But it has long been known that, with the brain developing into the mid 20s, young people who smoke early and often are more likely to have learning and mental health problems. Now researchers suggest existing studies are no longer sufficient. Much of what's known is based on studies conducted years ago with much less powerful pot. Marijuana samples seized by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency show the concentration of THC, the drug's psychoactive compound, rising from a mean of 3.75 percent in 1995 to 13 percent in 2013. Potency seesaws depending on the strain and form. Fresh Baked, which sells recreational marijuana in Boulder, Colo., offers "Green Crack," with a THC content of about 21 percent, and "Phnom Penh," with about 8 percent. The level in a concentrate called "Bubble Hash" is about 70 percent; cartridges for vaporizers, much like e cigarettes, range from 15 to 30 percent THC. High THC marijuana is associated with paranoia and psychosis, according to a June article in The New England Journal of Medicine. "We have seen very, very significant increases in emergency room admissions associated with marijuana use that can't be accounted for solely on basis of changes in prevalence rates," said Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a co author of the THC study. "It can only be explained by the fact that current marijuana has higher potency associated with much greater risk for adverse effects." Emergency room visits related to marijuana have nearly doubled, from 66,000 in 2004 to 129,000 in 2011, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Higher potency may also accelerate addiction. "You don't have to work so hard to get high," said Alan J. Budney, a researcher and professor at Dartmouth's medical school. "As you make it easier to get high, it makes a person more vulnerable to addiction." Among adults, the rate is one of 11; for teenagers, one of six. Concerns over increasing potency, and rising usage among the young, is giving new urgency to research. A Harvard Northwestern study has found differences between the brains of young adult marijuana smokers and those of nonsmokers. In these composite scans, colors represent the differences in the shape of the amygdala, top, and nucleus accumbens. Yellow indicates areas that are most different, red the least. For the Harvard Northwestern study, published in the April issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, the team scanned the brains of 40 young adults, most from Boston area colleges. Half were nonusers; half reported smoking for one to six years and showed no signs of dependence. Besides the seven light smokers, nine used three to five days a week and four used, on average, daily. All smokers showed abnormalities in the shape, density and volume of the nucleus accumbens, which "is at the core of motivation, the core of pleasure and pain, and every decision that you make," explained Dr. Hans Breiter, a co author of the study and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern's medical school. Similar changes affected the amygdala, which is fundamental in processing emotions, memories and fear responses. What is already known is that in casual users, THC can disrupt focus, working memory, decision making and motivation for about 24 hours. "The fact that we can see these structural effects in the brain could indicate that the effects of THC are longer lasting than we previously thought," said Dr. Gilman, an instructor in psychology at Harvard's medical school. The study was preliminary and small, and attempts to replicate it are underway. Meanwhile, Dr. Gilman is trying to figure out how the findings relate to brain function and behavior. One day in September, she was assessing Emma, a student who said her smoking almost every day didn't interfere with school, work or other obligations. For 100 to go toward study abroad plans, Emma politely plowed through nearly three hours of tests on cognitive functions that are or might be affected by THC, like the ability to delay gratification (would it be better to have 30 tonight or 45 in 15 days?) and motivation (a choice between computer games, the harder one offering a bigger payoff). For memory, Emma listened to lists of words, repeating back those she recalled. Next came risk. Would she bungee jump? Eat high cholesterol food? ("These kids tend to be risk takers, particularly with their own health and safety," Dr. Gilman said.) A final test: Did Emma crave a joint? Her response: somewhat. Dr. Gilman is concerned about pot's impact on the college population. "This is when they are making some major life decisions," she said, "choosing a major, making long lasting friendships." Dr. Volkow noted another problem: Partying on a Saturday night may hinder studying for a test or writing a paper due on Monday. "Maybe you won't have the motivation to study, because there's no reward, no incentive," she said. Evidence of long term effects is also building. A study released in 2012 showed that teenagers who were found to be dependent on pot before age 18 and who continued using it into adulthood lost an average of eight I.Q. points by age 38. And last year at Northwestern, Dr. Breiter and colleagues also saw changes in the nucleus accumbens among adults in their early 20s who had smoked daily for three years but had stopped for at least two years. They had impaired working memories as well. "Working memory is key for learning," Dr. Breiter said. "If I were to design a substance that is bad for college students, it would be marijuana." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
LOS ANGELES For the past five years, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have hammered Hollywood with annual reports on its exclusion of women and minorities. Academics at the University of Southern California and San Diego State University have done the same. The public has weighed in with OscarsSoWhite. The pressure has changed the business a tiny bit. That is the conclusion of the fifth annual U.C.L.A. report on diversity in Hollywood's entertainment industry, which was released on Tuesday by the university's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. "Over the five year run of the report, areas where women and people of color saw sustained progress were rare," Ana Christina Ramon, an author of the study, said in an interview. "You'd think there would be better results, especially given the public pressure and the ratings and box office evidence, which clearly show that diversity sells. Audiences want it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
For Sharon Goldfarb, a nurse educator in California, crisis care is second nature: She worked at a Harlem H.I.V. clinic during the AIDS epidemic, at ground zero after Sept. 11 and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. When the coronavirus outbreak began to spread, she was ready to prepare her 85 nursing students for front line care, if necessary. Then the calls came from local hospitals: They no longer wanted nursing students to come for clinical rotations, primarily because of public health advisories on limiting the spread of the virus. Not only would her students be unable to help most would not be able to graduate on time. The United States is facing a nursing shortfall, and California will be especially hard hit; the state's vacancy rate for registered nurses is now above 4 percent. The coronavirus will place a tremendous strain on already understaffed hospitals. Yet a growing number of hospitals are discontinuing clinical rotations for the state's nursing students. The California Board of Registered Nursing requires that 75 percent of a nursing student's clinical education be completed with patient contact during hospital rotations. Dr. Goldfarb, dean of health sciences at College of Marin, said that if the state did not change that requirement or encourage hospitals to find clinical roles for nursing students, there would be few nursing students graduating in the coming months. "They're trying to marshal the resources they have as wisely as they can," Dr. Goldfarb said of the nursing schools' clinical partners. "They're working with limited resources, in people and supplies." Still, she added, "We're looking at 14,000 nursing students not graduating in the time of most dire need I've seen in my years as a professional nurse. It's incredibly shortsighted." For their part, the facilities that typically take in nursing students are scrambling to protect the health of their patients and work force. "In accordance with directives from county and state officials, we have restricted all nonessential personnel from our inpatient facilities, which includes students in clinical nursing rotations," said Anna Kiger, chief nurse officer at the North California health system Sutter Health. She added that some student involvement in ambulatory settings could be arranged, with proper precautions. A spokesman for Kaiser Permanente, another clinical partner for the nursing schools, said that all of the decisions they had made were meant "to limit the spread of the virus to our members, staff and the public." California's nursing students, for their part, are frustrated that their hands are tied as the number of coronavirus cases rises. "We see all the posts about staffing shortages, and I'm sitting at home thinking I could be helping," said Sarah Joseph, 27, a nursing student in the health sciences department at the College of Marin who was supposed to graduate in May. "The nurses in clinical settings are on the front lines and we desperately want to be with them, because that's what we went into nursing to do. But we're being pushed out." In a letter last week to Gov. Gavin Newsom, the deans of several nursing schools called on California to temporarily lift the rule requiring 75 percent in person care and instead allow nursing students to complete their graduation requirements through 50 percent simulations, which use mannequins, videos and online platforms for training. "With swift and temporary action, we can keep California's nursing students on track and prevent a decline in the overall number of registered nurses in our state," wrote Robyn Nelson, dean of the College of Nursing at West Coast University. Dr. Nelson has had more than 3,600 nursing students displaced by the clinical policy change; she said the temporary rule change can be enacted through use of the governor's emergency powers. On Sunday, California nursing students released a petition on Change.org asking the Board of Registered Nursing to "find an alternate solution" to clinical hour requirements; it has gathered more than 43,000 signatories so far. A spokesman for the California Department of Consumer Affairs said on Wednesday that the department and the nursing board "are monitoring the situation and are looking into various options," adding, "To date, we are still bound by our regulation." Donna Meyer, chief executive officer of the Organization for Associate Degree Nursing, said that allowing nursing students to temporarily meet requirements through simulations was a simple solution, and desperately needed. A 2014 study from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing found that substituting 50 percent of clinical experience with simulations had no significant effect on "knowledge acquisition and clinical performance." But many nursing students and educators are not just calling for a change in licensing requirements; they also want to return to rotations, to provide clinical assistance where possible as hospital intake surges. In a survey of nursing students at the College of Marin this week, 85 percent of respondents reported that they would be willing to provide front line care throughout the coronavirus outbreak. Ms. Joseph, the nursing student, was scheduled this spring to complete her preceptorship in labor and delivery, which is now canceled. Her disappointment at the delayed graduation quickly turned to frustration. She said that she could play a useful role at a clinic without directly treating coronavirus patients helping the triage nurses take patient vitals, distributing masks, assisting with screening questions, communicating with patients' families and visitors. Instead, she is in her apartment, wondering when she will be able to return to work. Paige Hilt, 24, another nursing student in California, was set to graduate in May. "Of course it's scary, but as nurses we encounter people with different illnesses all the time," she said. "We don't know how bad this is going to get, and we need as many people as possible. Not to mention a lot of nurses are older, and what happens when they get sick?" Joanne Spetz, a professor at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco, said her research indicated that patient numbers would far outstrip hospital staff capacity in the coming months, as coronavirus cases continue to rise. There are nearly four million registered nurses in the United States, but only 20 percent work in critical care. More nurses will need to be freed to move into intensive care units, meaning others will need to be ready to take their places. Dr. Spetz said that states and nurse licensing boards should be preparing by easing licensing requirements for registered nurses who need to cross state lines, and ensuring medical workers have emergency child care. In the meantime, the need is simple: to prepare as many nurses and nursing students as possible to help. "Students of all health professions have knowledge and training already," Dr. Spetz said. "There are going to be many roles they'll be useful in as we rapidly deploy in an emergency." Each day on her way to the office, Dr. Goldfarb passes a poster with the face of a smiling World War I nurse. "Wanted: 20,000 nurses," it reads. A sense of duty is ingrained in the nursing profession, she said. Even during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, student nurses were called to hospitals to care for the ill. "We walk toward what most people walk away from," Dr. Goldfarb said. Now she wonders: Will her students be able to do the same? | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
On the campus here, students are forbidden to listen to popular music or watch television or movies; the student handbook tells them to avoid clothing brands that "glorify the lustful spirit of our age in their advertising"; they face sharp limits on dating and even leaving campus; and they are told which churches in town usually run by pastors tied to the university they may attend. Faculty members and other employees are expected to adhere to the university's literal interpretation of the Bible and are forbidden to drink alcohol. And the university, with about 4,000 students and an affiliated primary and secondary school, is having no ordinary version of the conflicts that have rocked colleges around the country over their treatment of claims of sexual assault. Those controversies usually begin with outrage over highly publicized offenses on campus, followed by an investigation. But at Bob Jones, most of the stories that have been made public do not involve assaults on campus. They are about people who were abused as children and then looked for help in college. Nor is there much sign of outrage on the immaculate campus of low rise beige brick buildings, covered walkways, spreading oaks and manicured lawns (off limits to foot traffic). Several students interviewed said they had known little or nothing about the charges and were not concerned about them. Mr. Jones said that the university began the investigation not because of any particular allegations, but because of the trouble it had seen at other schools, and that it rewrote its policies on responding to sexual assault in 2012. But its attitude toward sexual assault and bad publicity had come under increased scrutiny by then because one of its board members, an alumnus and the pastor of a large church, had been accused of covering up a rape within his congregation and publicly shaming the victim. A group of alumni called for the university to dismiss the man from the board; he eventually resigned. A student who had criticized the university over the affair was not allowed to graduate and alleged retaliation. Catherine Harris, who attended the university in the 1980s, is one of several people who said it was very hard for her to talk to Grace investigators about being abused and she now feels betrayed that Grace has been sidelined. "Nearly everyone at Bob Jones grew up in a fundamentalist environment, so if you were abused, your abuser probably came from inside that bubble, too, which is what happened to me," she said. "The person who supposedly counseled me told me if I reported a person like that to the police, I was damaging the cause of Christ, and I would be responsible for the abuser going to hell. He said all of my problems were as a result of my actions in the abuse, which mostly took place before I was 12, and I should just forgive the abuser." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
An unusual school year has started in earnest, and with it has come the return of digital proctoring programs. This is software that can lock down students' computers, record their faces and scan their rooms, all with the intention to thwart cheating. These programs, with names like ProctorU and Proctorio, first raised alarms about privacy as they were adopted by schools. Now many students are finding that the programs they're required to use may not have been well designed to consider race, class or disability and in some cases, simply don't work. Many are organizing on and across campuses for alternatives or for their eradication. The rigidity of online proctoring has exacerbated an already difficult year, students say, further marginalizing them at the very moments they're trying to prove themselves. Here are some things that can go wrong with testing and digital surveillance. 'It Feels Like an Invasion of Privacy' Before the pandemic, Sabrina Navarro, 20, a junior at California State University, Fullerton, hadn't thought to register her chronic tic disorder with her university's disability services office. The disorder, which she'd lived with since she was 6, hadn't ever affected her education. "I'm good at covering it up," she said of her disorder. "A lot of my friends don't even know that I have it." This semester, though, scared that her involuntary mouth movements would get her flagged for cheating, she went to get medical records to prove her diagnosis and request accommodations. If the majority of her classes didn't require Proctorio, this wouldn't be a concern, she said. But Ms. Navarro feared Proctorio would record her tics and send her professors footage for review. Ticcing happens more frequently for her during stressful situations, like an exam. "Just the fact that professors might have access to seeing me ticcing, over and over again it feels like an invasion of privacy with something that all my life, I've been pretty good at hiding," she said, speaking from her family home in Alhambra, Calif. that smelled "like fire" because of blazes raging nearby. "It can be difficult not only to request, receive and use accommodations," she said. "If you are then accused of cheating on an exam that you worked really hard for because it's not accessible, its just going to amplify all those emotions." Proctorio's chief executive, Mike Olsen, said in an interview that his software did not penalize students for perceived infractions, but instead relied on faculty to make judgment calls about test taking behavior. "We ask the faculty before they review the footage, what they're interested in," he said. "That could be getting up and leaving the exam session, it could be other voices in the room. When they set that, what we're going to do is identify those moments in time. For the example of a child coming and asking a question or saying they want a drink of water, the faculty is going to see that and generally I can't speak for all faculty generally the faculty is going to say that's not an issue." 'Why Is This So Hard?' Jazi, 19, a student at the University of Texas at San Antonio, finished her freshman year remotely after in person instruction was suspended in March. (The New York Times agreed to not use her full name because she was afraid of retaliation from the school.) Doing class work from home, she was also charged with taking care of her younger siblings, ages 12 and 8. Students using Proctorio are generally recommended to find quiet, well lit places to take exams. Moving offscreen or speaking to someone else in a room, both things Jazi needed to do while watching her siblings, can be flagged as suspicious. When her youngest sibling would bang on doors in the middle of an exam, she'd try not to look away from her screen. "I was ignoring him the entire time, just saying, 'Please, God, don't let them email me about the sound,'" as her mic levels spiked onscreen, she said. Jazi hadn't previously felt out of place as a first generation student on scholarships at the school, where a number of her peers come from a similar background. But being sent home to juggle school and child care on camera made her feel like she didn't belong. "Some of my classmates were sent back to a full home. Two parents. They don't have to work. They just focus on their classes," she said. When her sophomore year started in the fall, Jazi emptied her savings account to move back to campus. "I knew that if I had stayed home, there was no way I would pass," she said. "You constantly ask 'Why is this so hard?' Because you know it doesn't have to be that way. But it is." 'It Doesn't Seem Worth It to Me' T. Sydney Bergeron Mikus, 25, started studying for the LSAT in 2016. They (Sydney uses gender neutral pronouns) have a spate of chronic illnesses, coupled with cognitive impairments that they describe as similar to A.D.H.D. It adds up to a laundry list of conditions that can be difficult to explain to others. Accustomed to being doubted, when Sydney was scheduled to take the LSAT Flex this fall an adjusted version of the test for law school they got a jump on the paperwork that would allow them some accommodations. This includes extra water and snacks on their desk. But when the time came, the test's proctor, from the company ProctorU, was not aware that those accommodations had been approved. During the 360 degree room scan required by the company before testing, Sydney's proctor questioned the water and food, forcing them to pull up documentation during the test period. Things got worse from there, Sydney said. The software glitched frequently, switching from the LSAT screen to the ProctorU setup screen. "Every time it would interrupt me, I would lose my train of thought and had to reread the passage," Sydney said. Then, during a break between test sections, the software kicked Sydney out entirely. They sought help from ProctorU's support staff. They were connected to a new proctor, again having to explain the food and water on the desk. After they finished the second section, they were once again booted out of the test. Overall, the test "took an hour longer than I expected total," Sydney said. (ProctorU did not return a request for comment on experiences like Sydney's.) Sydney has not yet decided whether to retake the test, though they are leaning toward keeping whatever score they receive. "It doesn't seem worth it to me to risk experiencing issues with ProctorU yet again," they said. The chief executive of ProctorU, Scott McFarland, said in a statement that privacy issues restrained the company from commenting about specific experiences, but that "ProctorU takes accommodation exceptionally seriously." "It is our policy to not only make approved accommodations but investigate and make changes any time a test taker or testing institution feels those accommodations have not been met completely," his statement said. "There is no excuse for doing otherwise. When an error does occur, we apologize and pledge to not only fix it but do better in making remote testing and assessment the best possible experience for everyone." Sergine Beaubrun, 30, graduated law school in May. Before taking the bar exam in New York, she had to complete a "mock exam" from ExamSoft, a much criticized company administering the exam remotely this year. One facet of the mock exam involves that the software "identify" the tester's face. It could not recognize Ms. Beaubrun, who is Afro Latina. "It couldn't see me at all," she said. "It was the middle of the day so the sun was still shining. I was in a boardroom, so bright lights, fluorescent lights. The ones that make you look really ugly. I was sitting directly under them." "I cannot imagine any larger disaster than spending the last four months of my life unemployed and uninsured during a global pandemic in order to study for an exam that I cannot take on exam day because of racist technology," he said. Asked about experiences like Ms. Beaubrun's and Mr. Khan's, Nici Sandberg, a spokeswoman for ExamSoft, said "the vast majority of those who have attempted to complete a mock exam have successfully done so. We're working around the clock to ensure a successful exam experience for all bar candidates." This article was updated after publication to provide comment from ProctorU. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
"Open your joints," the choreographer Shen Wei quietly exhorted his troupe recently in a large, airy studio at the Mark Morris Dance Center. "Drop your weight, stretch and go down even deeper, so your body is completely free." Mr. Shen was preparing the dancers for a run of performances of his 2005 work "Map," opening on April 29 at Judson Memorial Church, a stately neo Romanesque pile on Washington Square The company, Shen Wei Dance Arts, last performed the piece four years ago, and in some ways, it's as if he were starting again from scratch, laying out the basic mechanics of its moving parts. Many of his suggestions require a heightened sensitivity to the body's inner workings. The dancers keep their gazes low, with a soft inward looking focus, like practitioners of meditation or tai chi. "There's definitely a Zen feeling," Catherine Coury, who joined the company last year, said via Skype a few days after the rehearsal. "The technique is all about the natural body and the natural world: wind, momentum, water." Many of its principles are built on the visualization of breath and energy, as with martial arts and yoga. The result, according to Kathleen Jewett, one of Mr. Shen's longtime dancers and his rehearsal director since 2009, is a "continuous quality in which nothing has an end point, and one movement flows into the next, like a ribbon." Mr. Shen, 45, was born in Yueyang in Hunan Province to a family steeped in the traditions of Chinese opera. His father was the director of the local opera house and a former performer who later turned his hand to calligraphy. At the age of 9, the younger Mr. Shen was sent to the Hunan Arts School in the provincial capital for training in singing, dancing and acrobatics for the opera. He has often spoken of the rigor and hardships, like long hours the first lessons of the day were at 5:30 a.m. the lack of hot water for bathing, and the infrequency of visits home. This focus on discipline and inner strength has surely influenced his approach to his work single minded, ascetic and the controlled nature of the pieces themselves. "My life is extremely simple," Mr. Shen said, "and all my thinking, every day, is about creating art." He lives in a tiny studio in the West Village where he listens to music, writes and comes up with the ideas for his intricate dances. He spends the rest of his time working with his performers or painting in a large studio space in Jersey City, Mana Contemporary. He considers himself as much a painter as a choreographer, and from the beginning he has created the visual designs for all his works. Early on, these were epic surrealistic tableaux vivants washed in unearthly colors with names like "Folding," "Near the Terrace" and "Behind Resonance." The dancers wore engulfing fabrics, and sometimes headdresses, that transformed them into strange, almost creaturely beings: Their skin was coated in white body paint, and they moved with a floating quality like figures in a dream. These dance spectacles were arresting their endings were especially striking but also characterized by what some saw as a dogged aestheticism that could feel heavy handed and lacking in dynamism or momentum. His work has also been faulted by some reviewers for its evenness of tone, often magnified by the use of ethereal minimalist music by composers like Arvo Part, David Lang and Kevin Volans, as well as Buddhist chants. Mr. Shen's other main influence is American modern and postmodern dance. Since 2003, when he created his "Rite of Spring," set to the four hand piano version of Stravinsky's score, his works have moved from his epic early style and its operatic echoes toward abstraction and the mirroring of musical structure. His training in American modern dance began in China, when, after four years performing at the provincial opera company in Hunan, he left at 21 to study at the Guangdong Dance Academy, the first modern dance program in the country. His teachers included former members of the Jose Limon, Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham companies and practitioners of the loose limbed "release" technique, whose traces are evident in his dances. After a few years, Mr. Shen again found himself at a crossroads and departed in 1995 for the United States with a scholarship to study at the Louis Nikolais Dance Lab. (He did not work again in China until 2007, when, much to his surprise, he was invited to create the dances for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In this work, seen by millions, the dancers created living calligraphy on a surface that had the appearance of a never ending Chinese scroll. The idea was based on his 2004 piece "Connect Transfer," in which the dancers smeared paint on the stage with their bodies.) As a newcomer in New York, he danced with Murray Louis and then with Martha Clarke, whose movement based theater had a major influence on his early dances. In two decades, he has progressed from an imagistic approach to the more technical layered patterning of works like "Map." The 40 minute dance consists of seven sections that chug along with the Steve Reich score to which it is set, "The Desert Music." Each is based on a single category of motion, from the rotation of joints (Part 1) to movement propelled by bouncing or rebounding (Part 2) to spiraling patterns (Part 4) in which the body's extremities circle around its core like planets around a sun. In the final section, everything is combined. It's like watching the inner workings of a complicated machine. At Judson, "Map" will be performed in the round, which means that its original scenery, a colored backdrop covered with hand painted numbers, lines and arrows inspired by Mr. Shen's composition notes, cannot be used. Instead, he will apply his jottings to large colored polyurethane balloons of different shapes that will hover above the performers. The costumes are also new, more textured and semitransparent. Mr. Shen loves the human form: "I see the beauty of line and skin and bones," he said. (In some of his works, his dancers have performed nearly nude.) In addition to "Map," Mr. Shen will perform a 10 minute solo. Nothing illuminates his ideas about movement more clearly than his own dancing, which appears as effortless and molten as water flowing over rocks. It will be set to yet more minimalist music: John Adams's "China Gates" and Mr. Part's "Variations for the Healing of Arinushka," both for piano. With his smooth face and pliant musculature, Mr. Shen looks two decades younger than his age. "I think it is a really healthy technique," he said. Watching him dance, you are inclined to believe him. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
SAN FRANCISCO Uber is still working to stem its losses ahead of going public next year. The ride hailing company said on Wednesday that it lost 1.07 billion in the third quarter, more than in the prior period and slightly less than in the same period a year ago, as it has invested heavily outside of its core business in areas such as bicycles, scooters and freight shipments. At the same time, Uber's growth appears to be slowing. The company's revenue rose 38 percent in the third quarter from a year ago to 2.95 billion, down from a gain of 51 percent in the prior quarter. Gross bookings, which is what Uber earns before paying commissions to drivers and delivery people, totaled 12.7 billion, up 34 percent from the previous year. The report card comes as The I.P.O. is set to be a litmus test for other highly valued private tech companies, such as Airbnb and Lyft, which are also considering the public markets in 2019. As a private company, Uber is not obligated to publicly report its earnings, but has made a habit of doing so. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Even as the coronavirus continued to ravage American communities, the N.F.L. last week released a full schedule of games that on the surface included no obvious backup plan in case the pandemic prevents the season from starting on Sept. 10. But the odds that the league will be able to keep to its schedule are decreasing by the day. Before games can be played, teams must first open their offices and training facilities, which have been shut since mid March, then hold training camps, which are to begin in mid July. To keep what they call "competitive equity," league executives say teams can reopen their offices and training facilities only when it is safe for every team to do so. The N.F.L. is also requiring its teams, scattered across two dozen states, to follow local and state guidelines, including frequent testing and limits on the size of gatherings, to determine when it will be safe enough for coaches, staff and players to return. "The reality is when we look at the numbers there's substantial uncertainty in the predictions," said Gerardo Chowell, the chairman of the Department of Population Health Sciences at Georgia State's School of Public Health in Atlanta. "Even looking six or eight weeks ahead is very difficult right now." To understand the hurdles in the way of the N.F.L.'s return, Chowell reviewed the number of infections since Jan. 21, when the first Covid 19 infection was reported in the United States, as compiled by The New York Times. The data, sorted by county, shows a wide variety of conditions, with the virus devastating big cities and small communities alike, largely disappearing in some places and refusing to leave others. New hot spots are emerging in places once considered safe. Here are the number and rate of growth of coronavirus cases in counties and parishes where N.F.L. team facilities are located. Growth rate shows how frequently the number of cases has doubled over the previous seven days. The fastest rate color shows when cases are doubling in fewer than three days, while the slowest rate color shows when cases are doubling much more slowly, once every 30 days or longer. Data is from a New York Times database and is as of May 10, 2020. Charts are through May 9, 2020. Data for Kansas City, Mo. is reported at the city level. Growth rate shows how frequently the number of cases has doubled over the previous seven days. The fastest rate color shows when cases are doubling in fewer than three days, while the slowest rate color shows when cases are doubling much more slowly, once every 30 days or longer. Data is from a New York Times database and is as of May 10, 2020. Charts are through May 9, 2020. Data for Kansas City, Mo. is reported at the city level. Growth rate shows how frequently the number of cases has doubled over the previous seven days. The fastest rate color shows when cases are doubling in fewer than three days, while the slowest rate color shows when cases are doubling much more slowly, once every 30 days or longer. Data is from a New York Times database and is as of May 10, 2020. Charts are through May 9, 2020. Data for Kansas City, Mo. is reported at the city level. Smith declined to quantify the comfort of players in regard to returning to team facilities. But some players said they were nervous they could be infected. "I think for us it doesn't make any sense to play games unless it's completely, 100 percent safe for us to go out there," Kareem Jackson, a 10 year veteran who plays for the Denver Broncos, told reporters. "If there's any threat of us being able to contract Covid in any way and spread it to our families or anybody else, it just doesn't make sense." It is impossible to eliminate the risk of infection if players congregate. But there are ways to reduce the risk of infection by sequestering, testing and other steps. Teams could isolate players and coaches, even from their families, inside closed facilities. Or players and staff could return to their homes at night and be encouraged to stay in. Playing in stadiums without fans is no guarantee against the risk of infection, either, as the Ultimate Fighting Championship found out Saturday, when it canceled a bout after a fighter and two of his cornermen tested positive for the virus. "It's difficult for me to imagine what the league and, broadly, leagues do when one or two of their key personnel or players have tested positive," Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who has said it will be many months before fans fill stadiums in his state, told reporters last week. "Do they quarantine the rest of the team? If an offensive lineman is practicing with a defensive lineman, and they have tested positive, what happens to the rest of the line? What happens to the game coming up the next weekend?" Even if teams are sequestered, injured players may need to go to a hospital, which are hotbeds for the infection. Players acquired in a trade or through free agency may need to be quarantined before joining their new team. Extra steps will be needed to protect teams traveling to away games. The number of cases is expected to spike in the fall and winter, in the heart of the N.F.L. season. "Boundaries are artificial, and a virus doesn't care about city, state borders," said Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist at Emory University who focuses on sports. "The real test will be when training camp starts. But I don't know what the country is going to look like then." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
PARIS IS BURNING (1991) Stream on Netflix. Jennie Livingston's influential documentary featured 1980s New York drag ballroom culture and helped lay the groundwork for shows like "RuPaul's Drag Race" and "Pose." Stream it, or better yet see the new restoration, which is currently at Film Forum in New York. "I stepped into a community where people were geniuses at becoming themselves," Livingston told The Times recently, "geniuses at using words and far beyond brilliant at using dance forms to express themselves." SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (1978) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. In "Yesterday," the new movie from Danny Boyle, an English singer songwriter discovers that he's living in a world where nobody remembers that the Beatles existed. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the much maligned musical comedy with covers of songs by the Fab Four, is a movie that many might be happy to forget existed. (In her review for The Times, Janet Maslin concluded that "watching it feels like playing shuffleboard at the absolute insistence of a bossy shipboard social director.") But it's also one that younger fans who have already seen "A Hard Day's Night," "Help!" and "Yellow Submarine" might not be familiar with. And there's at least some fun to be had here: "Yesterday" might have Ed Sheeran playing a version of himself, but only "Sgt. Pepper's" has Alice Cooper playing a cult leader. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Apple's iPhone X, the most anticipated iPhone since the original debuted a decade ago, is set to arrive in stores Friday. But unlike past releases, this iPhone may be extra hard to get and it might not even be right for you. With a starting price of 999, the iPhone X is Apple's first premium tier iPhone. Its higher price and cutting edge features skew the device toward early adopters and technology enthusiasts with disposable income. And because of reports about supply constraints, some analysts predict that many iPhone X orders may not be fulfilled until next year. So should you even bother trying to buy one? Here's what you need to know about the premium iPhone. Apple opened online orders for the new iPhone last Friday. Just hours after it began taking orders, the website began quoting a shipping time of roughly five to six weeks. In other words, your best bet to get an iPhone X right away is to line up at a retail store on Friday. In a statement, Apple encouraged customers to arrive early its stores open at 8 a.m. You could also try your luck at a third party store, like your carrier or Best Buy, though third party stores tend to carry fewer units. Apple is selling the iPhone X with two options for storage capacity: 64 gigabytes for 999 and 256 gigabytes for 1,149. There are various ways to pay that hefty price. The simplest route is to pay for the device outright. This is the least confusing option because your wireless bill will contain charges only for your phone plan, and you can do whatever you want with the device like sell it or switch to a different wireless carrier whenever you want. You can also opt to spread out the payments with a monthly installment plan. For example, if you are a Verizon customer, you can choose to pay off the 999 iPhone over 24 months for 41.62 a month. This is a nice option because spreading out the payments does not incur interest fees. Another option is to go for an early upgrade plan, which lets you pay a flat monthly rate and upgrade to a new iPhone annually. It's essentially leasing a new phone every year. There are various early upgrade plans on the market. With Apple's early upgrade program, you can pay 49.91 a month, and once you've made 12 payments, you can trade in your iPhone to upgrade to the next one and continue paying that monthly rate. (I'm not a fan of this path because I suggest cherishing your devices for as long as you can before upgrading.) Before you splurge, consider your options. Apple's iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, which share many features of the iPhone X, have starting prices of 699 and 799. The cheaper iPhones have the same computing processor as the iPhone X, so they are just as fast, and their 12 megapixel rear cameras are on a par with the rear camera on the iPhone X. So what's the difference? Mainly, the screen. The iPhone X has a 5.8 inch screen that takes up the entire face of the device, with the exception of a notch at the top containing an infrared camera system. The iPhone 8 has a 4.7 inch screen, and the iPhone 8 Plus has a 5.5 inch screen. Both of the cheaper iPhones have bezels the border surrounding the display whereas the iPhone X has eliminated the bezel. Other than screen size, the screen technologies differ. The iPhone X is the only Apple phone that uses OLED, a type of display that can be made thinner, lighter and brighter, and with better color accuracy and contrast than its predecessor, LCD. So the screen on the iPhone X looks more vibrant than the iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone 8, which still use LCD. Last but not least, the iPhone X has a unique infrared face scanner. The technology, called Face ID, uses the infrared camera system on the front of the phone to scan the contours and shape of a person's head to unlock the device and authorize mobile payments. The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus have normal front facing cameras for snapping selfies. The primary way you can unlock an iPhone X is with the face scanner. The premium phone lacks Touch ID, the fingerprint sensor that has been a popular feature on iPhones for several years. Face ID is brand new there hasn't been anything like it on a smartphone before. It works by spraying an object with infrared dots to gather information about the depth of an object based on the size and the contortion of the dots. The imaging system can stitch the patterns into a detailed 3 D image of your face to determine if you are the owner of your smartphone before unlocking it. Because the shape of a person's head is unique, the likelihood of bypassing facial recognition with someone else's face is one in a million, according to Apple. Older facial recognition systems worked by using the camera to take a photo of yourself and comparing that with an image that was stored on the device. All a thief would need to do to fool the system was hold a photo of your face in front of the camera which some people already did with Samsung's facial recognition feature. The false acceptance rate of older face recognition systems was one in 100. It will be interesting to see how early adopters react to Face ID, and whether it will work well with many different kinds of faces. If you're skeptical or turned off by the idea of your phone constantly scanning your face to unlock your phone, you could always get an iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus, which still have Touch ID. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
IT was another hectic morning in the pediatric clinic of Bellevue Hospital Center, where the clamorous waiting room had been transformed into a reading room. Toddlers sat crowded onto blue mats as volunteers read loudly from children's books. Dr. Perri Klass weaved in and out of the steady traffic of strollers. She hovered over one mat, where a 1 year old named Bella used a pincer grip to lift a board book titled "Let's Go to the Park," pointed at pictures and then looked at her mother. "Her ability to communicate and draw her mother's attention is totally on target," Dr. Klass said, nodding. "If you're a doctor, you don't have to wonder about her communication skills. And her fine motor skills are good." The children's book, as it turns out, is a valuable tool for both parent and doctor. "Using the book, the pointing and identifying, is a way of helping parents understand the job of naming the child's world, helping the child learn that everything has a name," Dr. Klass said. "It's a big cognitive, developmental and communicative step. It's a huge step for a baby." Bellevue is a leading laboratory in the promotion of early childhood literacy. Doctors at the hospital prescribe books as routinely as immunizations as part of a national nonprofit program called Reach Out and Read. They are taught to use those books to assess a child's development, including fine motor skills in the way a child holds the book. Doctors also evaluate language, social and emotional skills based on the way the child communicates about the book with parents. By melding reading into the practice of pediatric medicine, Reach Out and Read aims to bring about a new understanding of what the pediatrician's role should be, said Earl M. Phalen, the organization's chief executive, who was visiting the Bellevue pediatric clinic from the program's Boston headquarters on a recent morning. "We're absolutely trying to change the way doctors are trained," he said, "because we know and pediatricians know that one of the most important things they can do to impact the long term health of their patients is to make sure their patients are literate." Mr. Phalen, an energetic man who was a foster child, has been mentoring schoolchildren, many of them poor, since he was a Harvard law school student in the early 1990s. He said nearly half of the funds for Reach Out and Read come from the federal government, and it has been incorporated into more than 80 percent of the nation's pediatric residency programs. It is part of the curriculum at New York University, where Dr. Klass teaches pediatrics and journalism (she contributes a monthly column to The New York Times on youth and medical issues) and lectures on promoting literacy in primary care. She is the national medical director of Reach Out and Read. The program's strategy was developed in Boston in 1989. Nearly 7 million free books are handed out a year, to 3.8 million children, most from low income families. Patients receive books at every checkup from 6 months to 5 years of age. Doctors are trained to give age appropriate advice to encourage parents to read to their children. "From everything we know about brain development, children can learn skills that lead to reading right from birth, and it's important especially in the first three years of life," said Dr. Barry Zuckerman, who along with Dr. Robert Needlman founded Reach Out and Read. "It's a special opportunity for pediatricians because pediatricians see children frequently and parents value their suggestions." Increasingly, research has supported the idea that children should be exposed to a language rich environment as soon as they are born because it can significantly improve cognitive and language development and readiness for school. In an influential 1995 study by child psychologists at the University of Kansas, vocabulary growth was shown to differ sharply by class. By age 3, children whose parents were professionals had vocabularies of about 1,100 words, and children whose parents were on welfare had vocabularies of about 525 words. The researchers concluded that the size of each child's vocabulary correlated most closely to the number of words the parents spoke to the child. Low income children hear as many as 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers before kindergarten. And it's not only the quantity of the words but the quality that counts, said Harriet Meyer, head of Ounce of Prevention, a nonprofit organization. "You find mostly directional language among the poor 'Go over there,' 'Sit down' and not those questions so common in middle class families, like 'What shape is the Cheerio? Is it round or spherical?,' representational versus directional, open ended questions. Children learn there's a much bigger world than the small one they appear to live in. " The literacy problem is compounded by the lack of children's books in low income homes, where reading is often not a parental priority. "When we talk about developing literacy," said Jacqueline Jones, senior adviser for early learning at the United States Department of Education, "we have to understand it has to be grounded in a rich language understanding so that young children, and infants, need to be surrounded by people talking and talking a lot." Back in the waiting room at Bellevue Hospital, Monica Bastidas, Bella's mother, said a bit sheepishly that she was never able to find the time to read to her daughter. That is, until the pediatrician impressed upon her its importance. "I wasn't doing it until they encouraged me. It was like, 'I do have to read to my baby.' I go a lot by the doctor. The doctor is telling you to do it for a reason, and you take it more seriously." During lunch hour at Bellevue not long ago, about two dozen pediatric residents packed into a conference room. Some looked sleep deprived as they popped open soda cans and grazed at a buffet of sandwiches, eggplant lasagna and salad. They flipped through children's board books "Corduroy," "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" on display on a long table. They were attending Dr. Klass's lecture, "Reach Out and Read in the Exam Room: Making It Work." A few blocks away, at the Tisch Hospital at N.Y.U., another dozen residents watched Dr. Klass's PowerPoint presentation by videoconference. "We think of ourselves as busy professionals, and why do this in a clinical setting?" Dr. Klass began. "For many families, the primary care practitioner and the people in the clinics are the people that they're seeing most frequently in the early years of life." Dr. Klass ticked off a child's development steps and how a board book could be used to keep track of such things as gross motor skills and fine motor coordination: a 6 month old puts books in the mouth, a 12 month old points with a finger, an 18 month old can turn the pages, a 2 year old may not sit still or listen to a reading. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Education |
So it stands to reason, then, that although "Claire's Camera," the latest of Mr. Hong's films to open in New York, was shot in Cannes, a little beach town on the French Riviera known for hosting perhaps the most famous film festival in the world, there's nary a glimpse of ritz and glamour to be seen. Yes, the movie opens in a makeshift Korean film sales office, and on one of its doors hangs a poster for Mr. Hong's 2016 movie, "Yourself and Yours." But there's no red carpet, no paparazzi, and the beach the characters visit seems far from the cinema palaces of Cannes. The relatively plain settings allow the filmmaker to do what he does best: focus on his characters, whose befuddlement is sometimes funny and sometimes troubling. In a maddeningly elliptical conversation at a cafe table outside, a young assistant, Man hee (Kim Min hee, of the 2016 film "The Handmaiden"), is fired by her boss, Yang hye (Chang Mi hee). As it happens, Man hee had a one night stand with the director So Wan soo (Jung Jin young), who is officially dating Yang hye, albeit perhaps on the sly. "Ninety five percent of the mistakes" in his life, he muses, have been because of drinking. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
"Every day with this guy is like 'Fight Club.' One of these days we're going to find him in the parking lot outside the White House beating the crap out of himself." SETH MEYERS "One day he's threatening war with Iran, the next day he's claiming he stopped a war with Iran. One day he's threatening to deport millions and rip apart migrant families, the next day he's saying he delayed the deportations. It's almost like he saw the polls and instead of running against the Democrats in 2020, he decided to run against himself. Imitating Trump: Vote for me! I'm the only one who can stop Donald Trump!" SETH MEYERS "The point is we are at peace, thanks to and in spite of President Trump." TREVOR NOAH "Donald Trump likes the decisiveness of calling off the terrible command Donald Trump just gave." STEPHEN COLBERT | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
The other type, from a so called radical feminist tradition, argues that trans women's requests for gender recognition are incompatible with cis women's rights to single sex spaces. At its core, such an argument is not at odds with the first type both rely on the conceit that trans and nonbinary people should not determine their own gender identities but it is this second strain that is often expressed on the British left, from the communist Morning Star to the liberal New Statesman and The Guardian. Imported from American feminist circles during the 1970s, the argument is largely disowned in the United States. But it remains stubbornly persistent in Britain. That is has done so owes much to the longevity of a generation of journalists who established themselves when the argument was orthodox. Many still hold influential roles as columnists or editors and have used their positions to keep the argument in the mainstream, while favoring a younger generation of writers who share their antipathy to trans people. Younger trans and nonbinary people and their feminist allies have tried to shift the discussion onto the challenges we face in a transphobic society with some success, especially in the early 2010s, when Trans Media Watch submitted a report to the Leveson inquiry into abuses of power by the British press. But that provoked an avalanche of commentary insisting that any discussion be returned to the intractable "debate" about whether trans and nonbinary identities (and especially those of trans women) were valid. Trans "activists" anyone who questioned the terms of this "debate" were characterized as an abusive mob and accused of silencing their critics, despite the fact that these critics could be heard advancing the same views in all major newspapers, every day, throughout the decade. This counteroffensive reached its height in autumn 2018, as the Conservative government held consultations on reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, which had been passed in 2004. In response to demands for the bill to allow self determination of trans and nonbinary identities, The Guardian which as the country's only center left broadsheet newspaper plays an outsize role in political debate published an editorial that attempted to find a center ground. But to do so, it took its framing and talking points from organizations implacably opposed to trans rights, as the writer Jules Gleeson noted. Many British trans writers, including me, have since declined to contribute to The Guardian, repeating a pattern played out in the New Statesman several years earlier. The reforms to the Gender Recognition Act were shelved, topping off a dispiriting few years: The Leveson inquiry changed nothing, and none of the recommendations in a 2016 parliamentary report on transgender equality were brought in. Effectively excluded from mainstream liberal left discourse and despairing of the possibilities for change under any Conservative government, trans and nonbinary people turned back to Labour as the only political institution potentially able to change both the conversation and legislation. That seemed especially possible after the narrow electoral defeat in 2017 offered hope that the party could soon take power on a platform of social democratic reform led by someone who offered vocal, unwavering support for trans rights. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
Maureen Dowd: You've been on the same dose of Klonopin for the last 25 years straight. Sheila Nevins: Yes, 1 milligram. I never changed it. I probably wouldn't be here today if not for Klonopin. I like Ambien when I'm having trouble sleeping. Oh, melatonin, I take it all the time. I think it's because I'm in the dark so much in the editing room. It messes me up on light and dark. Way, way more. I can have anything I want at T.J. Maxx. I can have one thing in every aisle and I love it. And I love the shopping bags. They have great shopping bags. Here, look at this bag and this passport folder. They're T.J. Maxx. You would be happy to wear the same thing every day. Curiosity is the fountain of youth. Yes, I believe it. And a good plastic surgeon. As a child, you picketed in Union Square against executing the Rosenbergs. Yes. My mother went to school with Ethel Rosenberg. She made me go to Union Square the day they were executed. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
"Always Be My Maybe" feels a lot like a movie propped up by a stunt, a high gloss romantic comedy so mired in triteness and unconvincing emotions that its main recommendation is the appealing diversity of its cast. That stunt is a wonderfully self deprecating appearance by Keanu Reeves, but we'll get to him in a moment. The early scenes, set in San Francisco in the 1990s, have a charming ease as young Sasha (Miya Cech), a lonely only child, finds solace at the home of her friend and neighbor, Marcus (Emerson Min). The enticing Korean meals cooked by Marcus's mother (Susan Park) are especially consoling, so it's no surprise to find the adult Sasha (the dauntingly confident Ali Wong) swanning around Los Angeles as a glitzy celebrity chef. One pot comfort food, though, has been replaced by elaborate plates of Instagrammable art, which is how we know that Sasha has lost touch with her roots. The movie is rife with this kind of shorthand, sketching characters' flaws and attributes in broad sitcom strokes: Sasha's faithless and short lived fiance, a restaurateur who practices capoeira, gives Daniel Dae Kim little to play but an empty suit. Even so, he's a more credible partner for Sasha than Marcus (a bashful Randall Park), who might look like an adult but hasn't yet figured out how to behave like one. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
Last week, the nation's leading heart organizations released a sweeping new set of guidelines for lowering cholesterol, along with an online calculator meant to help doctors assess risks and treatment options. But, in a major embarrassment to the health groups, the calculator appears to greatly overestimate risk, so much so that it could mistakenly suggest that millions more people are candidates for statin drugs. The apparent problem prompted one leading cardiologist, a past president of the American College of Cardiology, to call on Sunday for a halt to the implementation of the new guidelines. "It's stunning," said the cardiologist, Dr. Steven Nissen, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. "We need a pause to further evaluate this approach before it is implemented on a widespread basis." The controversy set off turmoil at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association, which started this weekend in Dallas. After an emergency session on Saturday night, the two organizations that published the guidelines the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology said that while the calculator was not perfect, it was a major step forward, and that the guidelines already say patients and doctors should discuss treatment options rather than blindly follow a calculator. Dr. Sidney Smith, the executive chairman of the guideline committee, said the associations would examine the flaws found in the calculator and determine if changes were needed. "We need to see if the concerns raised are substantive," he said in a telephone interview on Sunday. "Do there need to be changes?" The problems were identified by two Harvard Medical School professors whose findings will be published Tuesday in a commentary in The Lancet, a major medical journal. The professors, Dr. Paul M. Ridker and Dr. Nancy Cook, had pointed out the problems a year earlier when the National Institutes of Health's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which originally was developing the guidelines, sent a draft to each professor independently to review. Both reported back that the calculator was not working among the populations it was tested on by the guideline makers. That was unfortunate because the committee thought the researchers had been given the professors' responses, said Dr. Donald Lloyd Jones, co chairman of the guidelines task force and chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern University. Drs. Ridker and Cook saw the final guidelines and risk calculator on Tuesday at 4 p.m., when a news embargo was lifted, and saw that the problems remained. On Saturday night, members of the association and the college of cardiology held a hastily called closed door meeting with Dr. Ridker, who directs the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He showed them his data and pointed out the problem. On Sunday, officials from the organizations struggled with how to respond. Other experts said there has not been a real appreciation of the difficulties with this and other risk calculators. "I don't think people have a good idea of what needs to be done," said Dr. Michael Blaha, director of clinical research at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at Johns Hopkins University, who was not associated with forming the new guidelines. Dr. Blaha said the problem might have stemmed from the fact that the calculator uses as reference points data collected more than a decade ago, when more people smoked and had strokes and heart attacks earlier in life. For example, the guideline makers used data from studies in the 1990s to determine how various risk factors like cholesterol levels and blood pressure led to actual heart attacks and strokes over a decade of observation. But people have changed in the past few decades, Dr. Blaha said. Among other things, there is no longer such a big gap between women's risks and those of men at a given age. And people get heart attacks and strokes at older ages. "The cohorts were from a different era," Dr. Blaha said. This week, after they saw the guidelines and the calculator, Dr. Ridker and Dr. Cook evaluated it using three large studies that involved thousands of people and continued for at least a decade. They knew the subjects' characteristics at the start their ages, whether they smoked, their cholesterol levels, their blood pressures. Then they asked how many had heart attacks or strokes in the next 10 years and how many would the risk calculator predict. The answer was that the calculator overpredicted risk by 75 to 150 percent, depending on the population. A man whose risk was 4 percent, for example, might show up as having an 8 percent risk. With a 4 percent risk, he would not warrant treatment the guidelines that say treatment is advised for those with at least a 7.5 percent risk and that treatment can be considered for those whose risk is 5 percent. "Miscalibration to this extent should be reconciled and addressed before these new prediction models are widely implemented," Dr. Ridker and Dr. Cook wrote in The Lancet. "If real, such systematic overestimation of risk will lead to considerable overprescription." In a response on Sunday, Dr. Smith of the guidelines committee said the concerns raised by Dr. Cook and Dr. Ridker "merit attention." But, he continued, "a lot of people put a lot of thought into how can we identify people who can benefit from therapy." Further, said Dr. Smith, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina and a past president of the American Heart Association, "What we have come forward with represents the best efforts of people who have been working for five years." The chairmen of the guidelines panel said they believed the three populations Dr. Ridker and Dr. Cook examined were unusually healthy and so their heart attack and stroke rates might be lower than expected. Asked to comment on the situation on Sunday, some doctors said they worried that, with many people already leery of statins, the public would lose its trust in the guidelines or the heart associations. "We're surrounded by a real disaster in terms of credibility," said Dr. Peter Libby, the chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. What are patients and doctors to do? On Sunday, there seemed to be no firm answers, except that those at the highest risk, like people who have had a heart attack or have diabetes, should take statins. The guideline developers said they were not totally surprised by the problems with the calculator. "We recognize a potential for overestimates, especially at the high end of risk," said Dr. David Goff, the dean of the University of Colorado School of Public Health and the co chairman of the guidelines' risk assessment working group. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
What's on TV Wednesday: 'War for the Planet of the Apes' and Amy Hoggart None Andy Serkis in "War for the Planet of the Apes." WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (2017) 9 p.m. on FXX. The new big screen adaptation of Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" shares an actor with "War for the Planet of the Apes," but you won't see his face in either movie: He's Terry Notary, a motion capture performer whose movements provided the basis for the digital dog that stars opposite Harrison Ford in "The Call of the Wild," and who played one of Andy Serkis's chimpanzee companions in the "Planet of the Apes" movies of the 2010s. "War for the Planet of the Apes," the most recent one of those, completes the story of Caesar, the chimpanzee revolutionary played by Serkis. It hinges on a rivalry between Caesar and an angry human colonel played by Woody Harrelson. (Caesar spends much of the series proving that he has more humanity than the humans in it, who want to wipe out his species.) "The motion captured, digitally sculpted apes are so natural, so expressive, so beautifully integrated into their environment, that you almost forget to be astonished by the nuances of thought and emotion that flicker across their faces, often seen in close up," A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (2016) 5:30 p.m. on TNT. More digital apes and human villains can be found in this Tarzan rethink, which casts Alexander Skarsgard as a version of that literary son of nature. Directed by David Yates, this take on the story is built loosely around history: It pairs Skarsgard's Tarzan with a fictionalized version of the 19th century American George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson), who publicly denounced the violent colonialism led by King Leopold II of Belgium in Central Africa. The plot pits Tarzan and Williams against Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz), an oppressor in a white suit. IT'S PERSONAL WITH AMY HOGGART 10 p.m. on TBS and TruTV. The sometimes "Full Frontal With Samantha Bee" correspondent Amy Hoggart helps a New York executive develop her sense of humor in the first episode of this new comedy documentary series, which chronicles Hoggart's attempts to help people work through common issues. Highlights of the episode include a scene in which an expert breaks down the psychological effects of a goofy knock knock joke. Its punchline revolves around Sean Connery. WEST SIDE STORY (1961) Stream on Starz platforms; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. The Times's dance critic, Gia Kourlas, wrote an article this week about how Jerome Robbins's choreography is missed in the current production of "West Side Story" on Broadway. "What Robbins created wasn't just a series of dances, however peerless," she wrote, "but an overarching view of how, beyond anything else, movement could tell a story." See some of that choreography in action in this classic film version of the musical, which followed Robbins's original Broadway production. This isn't purely Robbins's vision, though: He was fired before the film was completed, and shares the directing credit with Robert Wise. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
PARIS Bruno Sialelli does not look like a knight in shining armor. Clean cut and solidly built, dressed in a blush colored sweater, checked blouson jacket, wide cut trousers and sneakers, with a diamond stud and three thin gold hoops gleaming in one earlobe and an array of rings on his fingers, Mr. Sialelli, 31, looks the kind of cool millennial you might spot in SoPi (the trendy neighborhood south of Pigalle) or hanging out with friends in a cafe along the Canal St. Martin. But for Lanvin, Mr. Sialelli, its new creative director, could be a savior. A relatively unknown and untested designer, he is the French fashion house's fourth in less than four years, and something of a Hail Mary pass. His appointment was announced officially only last month, following Mr. Sialelli's release from a noncompete clause with his previous employer, the Spanish house Loewe, owned by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. On Wednesday at the Cluny Museum, the French national museum of the Middle Ages, exactly what it all means will begin to become clear as the designer introduces his first collection for the beleaguered brand. That is a lot of pressure but 10 days before the debut, sitting in Lanvin's light filled showroom, Mr. Sialelli allowed that his youth, his obscurity and the recent downward trajectory of the brand might ultimately work to the house's advantage. In any case, he personally has nothing to lose and everything to gain. "We can't be one of those houses where there's something for everyone," Mr. Sialelli said, speaking with animation and the occasional broad gesture. "We take compelling archetypes and make them our own. I have a way of thinking that's intrinsic to my age. I believe it's possible to find modernity and come up with new ways of doing things that recreate desire." Jean Philippe Hecquet, Lanvin's chief executive and the man who selected Mr. Sialelli for the job, weighed in, saying, "Youth is necessary to fashion, I think, but Bruno is unique for his age." Mr. Hecquet himself was appointed only last August by Lanvin's new owner, the Chinese group Fosun International; he previously had been C.E.O. of the accessible fashion brand Sandro, owned by another Chinese conglomerate, Shandong Ruyi. "Knowing fashion is one thing, but understanding fashion and being aligned with your times is another," Mr. Hecquet added. "Bruno has the ability to understand trends and reinterpret important elements of our history." That history, however, has not always been smooth. Meryl Streep wore Lanvin. So did Natalie Portman, Amy Adams and Emma Stone. Then, in October 2015, to the shock of the fashion world, Mr. Elbaz was fired, and what had been a fairy tale devolved into a nightmare of plummeting sales and designer exits. Last February, Fosun bought Lanvin for a reported 120 million. But by then, France's grande dame was considered damaged goods. Mr. Sialelli, however, described the situation as "a beautiful challenge." He also described his application for creative director as a last minute, dark horse bid. "They had a spectrum of shortlisters, and I guess mine was the color that was missing," he said. He credits his natural enthusiasm and expansiveness for helping him land the job, as well as an "all terrain" portfolio spanning women's and men's wear with a taste for storytelling rather than, say, a specialization in techniques like tailoring or flou. "It all needed to come together with a shared story and vocabulary," he said, "from the aspirational image of the brand down to the shop floor." Raised in Marseille, France, Mr. Sialelli began his career with a part time student job working on costumes for his hometown's opera before moving to an internship with Christian Lacroix in Paris. After studying at Studio Bercot, a fashion design academy in Paris, he landed a job in the women's wear studio at Balenciaga (spanning the Nicolas Ghesquiere and Alexander Wang eras), Acne and Paco Rabanne. Most recently, he spent four years working under the designer Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, focusing on what Mr. Sialelli called "a new masculinity" for men's wear. The designer describes himself as compulsively curious. While visiting the Lanvin archives a few months back, he said, he derived several ideas and not just for clothing that he considered valid for our times. "Jeanne Lanvin traveled all over, brought things back and made them hers," Mr. Sialelli said, referring to a folkloric print from Egypt as an example. "Some of it's surprising but it's legitimate. It would be fun to explore." Julien Mignot for The New York Times One day earlier this month Mr. Sialelli was in a small room at the atelier, adjusting garments on a fit model with the help of a stylist and three members of his design team. The mood was almost Zen: Everyone had put their phones on a conference table to concentrate on the work. A smattering of looks already were hanging on several racks. "Reality with an element of surprise" is how Mr. Sialelli described his lineup, a narrative that ranged from day wear in ethereal layers of chiffon ("grounded flou") to spliced together tartans, medieval manuscript style prints and a few long dresses with holographic fringe or metallic embroidery that seemed to nod to Klimt. He called those his "Elizabeth Taylors and Romy Schneiders." Even Babar made an appearance, albeit not exactly as one might expect. On the walls, a mood board mapped Mr. Sialelli's vision for the season in a magpie collage of vintage magazine spreads, archival motifs and what Mr. Sialelli called "a fracas of archetypes": Fassbinder meets "Ladyhawke" meets Jean Genet meets manga. If you can't quite picture it, never mind. Mr. Sialelli can, and he seems comfortable conflating heritage Lanvin signatures a velvet yoke, a gathered sleeve with anime, whether on a flowing dress or fur coat. Prints and embroidery techniques lifted from the archives nod to the show venue, with stylized riffs on labyrinths, illuminated manuscripts and dragon slayers, tweaked for the street with gold finger caps and ear shields. "We're not out to revolutionize design but there are infinite combinations," he said. "The angle is what makes the proposition new." In keeping with a trend, and following the departure in November of Lanvin's longtime men's wear designer, Lucas Ossendrijver, Mr. Sialelli's presentation will include looks for women and men, making him the first designer in a generation to produce both collections for the house. "Women and men cohabitate," he said. "They're not a couple; it's more nuanced than that. They are young people who are woke, they express diversity, they're a little masculine and a little feminine. The brand experience should express that, too." When it comes to the house's organization, one of his hopes is to reprise the kind of "flat hierarchy" he said he experienced at the Acne Studio in Stockholm. "There was this idea of democracy in fashion that feels really modern. Everyone has the chic to speak to everyone else in the same way," he said. "Today, transparency is an obligation on many levels. Respect for self, respect for others is the energy we're after." In the days before the show, the in house atmosphere appeared to be cautiously optimistic and even upbeat. The industry, however, was somewhat skeptical. "It's important to remember that fashion, in some cases, is no longer about the clothes," said Helene Le Blanc, a luxury branding and communications consultant. She noted that Lanvin failed to produce an "It" bag at a time when handbags contribute substantially to the bottom line or, more recently, a monster sneaker. Lanvin's relatively small perfume business, including its classic Arpege fragrance, is under license to Interparfums. Serge Carreira , a lecturer in fashion and luxury at the French university Sciences Po, thinks the brand still has resonance. "What's particular about Lanvin is that it still means something without being stuck on a particular image," he said. "It's very malleable and open to interpretation. It's still very feminine but it has meaning in men's wear. Now all they need is the daring to write a new page." Now that design duties have been consolidated, Mr. Hecquet said the brand would turn its attention to key categories, including the imminent appointment of what he described as two "top talents" to design handbags and shoes. He also said Lanvin is rethinking the house web strategy. Of Lanvin's brick and mortar stores, the Paris flagship is scheduled for a revamp, as is the Los Angeles store on Rodeo Drive. It also is considering new locations for its London, New York and Milan stores and an aggressive expansion in Asia, including three new stores in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. The Shanghai store is scheduled to open by the end of the year, to coincide with an exhibition at the Fosun Foundation for contemporary arts that will be designed to illustrate Lanvin's heritage and position within the international fashion landscape. In Hong Kong, the new men's and women's shop is to open Oct. 19 at K11, the trendy new mall in Kowloon. But while finding success in China is essential to Lanvin's future, Mr. Hecquet said, he stressed that the brand would remain true to its French roots, with European production and a unified, upscale product offered worldwide. In Paris, Lanvin has winnowed staff and office space. After renovations to offices at 15 and 22 Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, home to Lanvin's men's and women's boutiques, the brand will centralize its teams in those two buildings, vacating a third at number 17. "We're big in terms of history but small and beautiful, which means we can be agile like entrepreneurs. That's a strength. We can move fast," Mr. Hecquet said, gazing over the Paris skyline from his office's seventh floor terrace. "We have a view over our ambitions," he added, gesturing toward the lushly cultivated garden on the terrace of the Hermes flagship opposite. Beyond were the headquarters of Chanel and Celine and a smattering of Dior boutiques, with the Sacre Coeur Basilica as a backdrop. Madame Lanvin, the house's founder, once traveled in the same circles at the Hermes family, Mr. Sialelli said. For him, the woman herself may hold the key to reviving the house. "When I looked into what Lanvin represented then, the way she traveled and how she explored what we now call lifestyle, I realized she was a true modern, self made woman," he said. "It opens up all sorts of venues to express different subjects and moments in life. Hopefully we can preserve the know how we have and maybe bring in fresh ones. It just have to pass through the right prism." On Wednesday, Mr. Sialelli gets to show the fashion world his true colors. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
The Machine is back. But does it still creak? This question loomed over the return, on Saturday afternoon, of Robert Lepage's production of Wagner's "Das Rheingold" to the Metropolitan Opera after a six year absence. Mr. Lepage's ambitious staging of Wagner's four opera "Ring" cycle relies on a massive, complex set: 24 planks that rotate like seesaws on an axis that can rise and fall. This 44 ton "Machine," as it became widely known, was prone to glitches on a Wagnerian scale, starting when "Das Rheingold," the first installment, was introduced in 2010. The planks can be twisted into sculptural set pieces and bathed in intricate video imagery. Debate among Wagner lovers over the Lepage "Ring" was heated from the start. But there was one thing everyone agreed on: The Machine too often squeaked and groaned when it kicked into action. After a major retooling, it has been tamed well, mostly. There were occasional creaking sounds on Saturday. But things seemed to work smoothly. Those who were captivated by the staging years ago will be pleased to see the three mermaidlike Rhinemaidens, suspended from wires, seeming to cavort in the actual waters of the river, video projection oxygen bubbles floating from their mouths to the surface, and pebbles on the riverbed rustling to their touch. We get an aerial view of the god Wotan and his trickster ally Loge walking sideways on a grand staircase down to the realm of Nibelheim in search of the dwarf Alberich. But for me, the noises and the glitches were never the real problem with this production. My main issue was that Mr. Lepage seemed to have scant interpretive insight into a work that, since its 1876 premiere, has been seized upon by generation after generation as an allegory about roiling issues of the time: a Marxist narrative of class struggle; a cautionary tale about the corrupting influence of power; a warning about environmental destruction; an absurdist reflection of nihilistic leadership. There's certainly much in our world with which the "Ring" resonates. But if Mr. Lepage has ideas about the relevance of the cycle today or even about who Wagner's characters are and how they relate to each other little of that comes through. Even though the set seemed to be working, the cast is clearly distracted by the physical demands of the production. It was hard not to fear for the feisty tenor Norbert Ernst, making his Met debut as Loge, when he had to walk backward up steep planks to report on the approach of the two giants. Why backward? Well, the wire securing him was attached to his back. There was no way Mr. Ernst could make this moment look natural. The good news is the eloquent and urgent performance of Wagner's score that the conductor Philippe Jordan drew from the orchestra. Back at the Met for the first time since 2007, Mr. Jordan, 44, currently the music director of the Paris Opera, will assume the directorship of the Vienna State Opera in 2020. I hope this busy conductor can make time to appear at the Met in the future. He led a refreshingly lithe and transparent account of "Rheingold," keeping things fleet and colorful during playful stretches, but drawing out dark, heaving undercurrents when the music turned ominous. There were a few too many passing fumbles in the brasses to ignore. Still, Wagner's two and a half hour score seemed to flow right by. The standout member of the cast was Tomasz Konieczny, a powerhouse bass, in a breakthrough Met debut as Alberich. I tend to prefer portrayals that bring out Alberich's suffering and bitterness; with a big, penetrating voice that can slice through the orchestra, Mr. Konieczny made Alberich sneering and dangerous. Once he steals the gold, forges the magic ring and becomes the gods' powerful nemesis, this Alberich dominated the rest of the opera, rather than, as usual, a stentorian Wotan. In that role, the bass baritone Greer Grimsley was solid, but for whole stretches his voice was leathery and dry. He came across as the suffering one, a god who already feared his time had come and gone. He seemed outmatched by this Alberich, with a breast plated costume, looking like a kitschy reject from "Game of Thrones," that didn't lend him dignity. As Fricka, Wotan's wife, the mezzo soprano Jamie Barton seemed to be holding back some of the natural power in her voice. The result, though, was an unusually lustrous toned and feminine Fricka. The soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer brought gleaming sound and intensity to the frantic goddess Freia, whom Wotan glibly promises to the giants Fasolt and Fafner (Gunther Groissbock and Dmitry Belosselskiy, both excellent) as payment for building his castle in the sky. The rich toned mezzo soprano Karen Cargill, as the all knowing earth goddess Erda; the reedy tenor Gerhard Siegel, as Mime, mercilessly bullied by his brother Alberich; Adam Diegel and Michael Todd Simpson, as the gods Froh and Donner; Amanda Woodbury, Samantha Hankey and Tamara Mumford, as the three Rhinemaidens: All sang strongly. But the singers never came together as a cast and seemed too often stranded on their own, a continuing shortcoming of this production. During the ovation at the end, the backstage crew came onstage to share in the applause. It was a generous gesture. They are the real heroes of Mr. Lepage's "Ring." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Before the pandemic, I wasn't exactly an art world jet setter, but I did travel somewhat regularly. This year, being homebound for the better part of nine months has left me feeling loopy and itching for escape. I want to get away, not just from my apartment but from my own brain. Looking at art helps with that, as does scrolling through social media and these Instagram accounts, in particular, transport me. Existential, fantastical, searching and silly, they reconnect me to the world by shifting my perspective on it. The impetus of Random Man Editions is to promote "the overlooked, underrepresented, the hybridized and the fringe," according to its website. This art publisher releases all kinds of editions but leans heavily into analogue items, like hand stitched zines and video compilations on VHS tapes. It's amusing, then, that I learned about Random Man on Instagram, but the platform is a good place to see the obscure gems it's dug up from the past and the unusual projects it's promoting in the present. Recent highlights include a video CD of the 1999 Bollywood horror movie "Bhoot Ka Darr" and "Patient 'O,'" a collection of coronavirus themed erotica edited by the writers Hyunjee Nicole Kim and Dana Kopel. Such breadth is one of the delights of following Random Man, along with its offerings of radical creativity. Eden Seifu's debut solo show took place at Deli Gallery in Brooklyn earlier this fall, and it was enthralling. Her Instagram account, filled with images of her otherworldly work, is equally so. The artist seems inspired by a host of sources Surrealism and Romanticism, fantasy illustration and anime but the results are wholly hers, a blend of styles that culminates in psychedelic color and an enigmatic, sometimes ecstatic, passion and spirituality. Ms. Seifu animates her scenes with both action and symbolism; looking at her work often feels like entering a story midstream, when you don't know the setting, but it's clear that the stakes are high. One of my recent favorites, "Two Fools Evade Buffoonery by Praying and Making as the Asteroid Approaches," could be a haunting metaphor for continuing to make art during a pandemic. The Instagram account of the artist Jaakko Pallasvuo has a nonsensical name Avocado Ibuprofen but its contents blend that sense of absurdity with introspection. Perhaps the defining attribute of this feed is its meta ness: Pallasvuo (who uses the pronouns they and their) grapples in funny and brooding, often caustic, yet always genuine, ways with the realities and doubts of being an artist and a human (as well as someone who makes work for social media). While those concerns have stayed constant, their style has changed radically over the past few months. Messy, hand drawn panels have given way to typed text that coexists more abstractly alongside found and digital imagery. The new comics feel almost collagelike, which suits the associative, existential nature of Pallasvuo's musings. Visually, Christine Shan Shan Hou's work is quieter than everything else on this list. That's a big part of why I like it: With minimal means, she conjures a searching, often playful tone. Ms. Hou is a poet, and her collages, which she posts on Instagram under the title Hypothetical Arrangements, reflect that. Some are punlike, clever plays on words and visual tropes; others feature cutout images of objects arranged against the white background of a blank page, leaving viewers to create a context and imagine connections on their own. With suggestive titles like "how i used to think" and "old hurts," the project sometimes feels diaristic, as if Ms. Hou were using mass media imagery to channel a transmission from her brain. Cats of Brutalism is unabashedly silly; it also feels like it could have been tailor made for me, an art critic with two cats. The account, which is the project of three architecture students, with two of their professors at the University at Buffalo, taps perfectly into the magic of the internet, where the unlikeliest things get mashed together. Here, images of cats are photoshopped onto, into and around photographs of Brutalist architecture from around the world. Entertaining enough, but what puts it over the top is the scale: The buildings are shown in exterior shots while the cats get supersized, turning them into absurd feline King Kongs. At the same time, their presence makes the structures, which have often been dismissed as ugly monoliths, appear lighter and more playful like the expressions of imagination they were intended to be. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Art & Design |
At the Sundance Film Festival , shorts have to gasp to get any of the high altitude oxygen; journalists tend to lavish their hype on features. So the festival's annual traveling shorts program functions as a kind of counterweight. This year's grab bag, like those of years past, is a mixed one, of award winners, nonwinners, promising shorts and meh shorts. Say this for the lineup: Of the seven movies here, no two are remotely alike. Things kick off intriguingly with Stefanie Abel Horowitz's "sometimes, i think about dying," a portrait of a suicidal office worker (a very fine Katy Wright Mead). Her introverted routine is disrupted when a colleague (Jim Sarbh) asks her out on a date and tries to coax her out of her shell. This 12 minute film ends with a powerfully abrupt cut to black, but with such a brief buildup, the catharsis feels premature. (Kevin Armento's "Killers," the play on which the film is based, seems to have had an additional layer; it contrasted two pairs of characters.) Next up is a Canadian documentary, Alexandra Lazarowich's "Fast Horse," which follows a Siksika Nation horse riding team as it prepares to compete in the annual Calgary Stampede. It's mainly notable for some dangerous looking jockey's point of view shots. Nikyatu Jusu's "Suicide by Sunlight" begins with a premise that could sustain an entire series. It's set in a world where vampires exist but white vampires, who can't go out in the daytime, are the second class citizens of the undead, while black vampires, protected by their melanin, can roam during the day. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Movies |
The N.F.L. playoff picture should come into sharp focus this weekend, with several division titles and wild card spots likely to be decided. There will be games on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and while a few of them are irrelevant, most can have an impact on the standings. Here is a look at N.F.L. Week 16, with all picks made against the spread. Indianapolis has won five of its last six games, getting contributions from newcomers (the rookie running back Jonathan Taylor, quarterback Philip Rivers, defensive tackle DeForest Buckner) and mainstays (linebacker Darius Leonard, wide receiver T.Y. Hilton). A tiebreaker has the Colts trailing Tennessee in the A.F.C. South, but there is no question Indianapolis did a fine job of rebuilding its team in the last off season. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is falling apart. There was a sense during the team's 11 0 start that the Steelers (11 3) were being overrated, but no one expected three straight losses. Before this year, only nine teams had opened with an 11 0 record in the 16 game era, and just one of those the 2009 New Orleans Saints lost three of its final five games. That Pittsburgh matched that ignominious feat with two games remaining is humiliating, but the Steelers can take solace in the fact that the Saints won the Super Bowl that season. Being a favorite on the road in Pittsburgh this late in the season is unusual territory for the Colts, but based on what we have seen in recent weeks, it seems justifiable. Pick: Colts 1.5 Only three teams are averaging more than 30 points a game, and two of them face off here. Oddsmakers are expecting it to be the highest scoring game of the week, and while 56 is a respectable number, you have to wonder how much higher that would be if the forecast in Green Bay didn't call for temperatures in the 20s and a chance of snow. None Week 11 Takeaways: Here is what we learned this week. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Jets Lose Again: Falling to the Miami Dolphins, the Jets' receiver Elijah Moore offered consolation. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. The Titans (10 4) have been on a roll, with Derrick Henry running roughshod over all comers and Ryan Tannehill making opponents pay for stacking the box by stretching the field with the passing game. That recipe has led to five straight games in which Tennessee had at least 420 yards of total offense and 30 points. The Packers (11 3) have been enjoying an M.V.P. level season from Aaron Rodgers and a career year from wide receiver Davante Adams, leading to Green Bay's being held to fewer than 30 points just three times. And while Aaron Jones has fewer rushing touchdowns than he did last season, he is on track to surpass last year's rushing total while averaging 5.4 yards a carry. Both teams have a great deal of motivation to win, with Tennessee trying to fight off Indianapolis for the A.F.C. South title and Green Bay on the verge of securing the N.F.C.'s first round bye. But the Packers' experience in poor weather could be what decides this one. Pick: Packers 3.5 You have to assume the Rams (9 5) squandered their chance at an N.F.C. West title with last week's abject failure against the Jets. Los Angeles could have come into this game with the same record as the Seahawks (10 4). Instead, Seattle can clinch the division with a win at home. The Rams are still overwhelmingly likely to make the playoffs a win for them or a loss by Chicago will be enough to get them there but it is hard to be enthusiastic about a team that allows itself to be beaten by the Jets, who had a talent deficiency at every position. Pick: Seahawks 1.5 There is little at stake in this game. The Falcons (4 10) have been eliminated from playoff contention, and while the Chiefs (13 1) can clinch the A.F.C.'s lone first round bye with a win, they would still have a 98 percent chance of the top seed even if they lost both of their remaining games, according to The Upshot. With stakes that low, there is no reason to rush the return of running back Clyde Edwards Helaire, and Kansas City should be considering resting other key players as well. That could open the door for Atlanta to cover, but the Chiefs should still win. Pick: Falcons 10.5 The Giants (5 9) are clinging to a shred of a chance at winning the N.F.C. East, but they are running into the Ravens (9 5) at the wrong time. Baltimore is through its tough patch and appears to have its offensive issues worked out at least against the league's lesser teams and that takes this game from potentially interesting to a comical mismatch. The Ravens need to keep winning if they want to overtake Miami for the A.F.C.'s last playoff spot, and a home game against a team that is coming apart at the seams is an excellent opportunity for them to flex their muscles. Pick: Ravens 11 The late night escapades of Dwayne Haskins resulted in the young quarterback being fined, but he wasn't suspended. That leaves the Footballers (6 8) with a decent enough option should Alex Smith be unable to return from a calf injury. Smith is the team's best option, and gives Washington its best chance of making the playoffs, but his health casts doubt on this game against the Panthers (4 10) that wouldn't be there if he were 100 percent. The combination of a Washington win and a loss by the Giants would secure the N.F.C. East title for the Footballers, and having that decided this week would be welcome for a team that is trying to get healthy. Pick: Footballers 2.5 The Jets (1 13) had no motivation to beat the Rams last week beyond avoiding a winless season, but that was enough to power them to the most surprising result of the year. The victory, however, splashed cold water on their future. Combined with tiebreaker scenarios, the win meant the Jets were no longer in line for the No. 1 pick in next year's draft. Despite a recent surge, the Bears (7 7) are on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. While a win over the Jaguars (1 13) is certainly attainable if Jacksonville loses out, it will have the No. 1 pick in next year's draft Chicago's only real shot at the playoffs is to have Arizona fall apart. It's still nice to see the Bears right the ship, even if it leads to nothing, as the team's defense deserved much better than it got from its offense during a six game losing streak. The Bears should win, but there are too many variables to assume they will cover. Pick: Jaguars 7.5 The ridiculous nature of the N.F.C. East means that neither of these teams has been officially eliminated. But the Eagles (4 9 1) have only a 10 percent chance of capturing the N.F.L.'s worst division, according to The Upshot, and the Cowboys (5 9) have a 6 percent chance. The game is worth watching to see Philadelphia's Jalen Hurts continue to grow into his role as a starting quarterback, and Dallas's skill players are good enough to make Andy Dalton serviceable on a good day. Pick: Eagles 2.5 Come for the meeting of promising young A.F.C. West quarterbacks. Stay if it is your local broadcast and you don't have access to out of market games. The Broncos (5 9) and the Chargers (5 9) have been eliminated from playoff contention, but these will be teams to watch for next season. Pick: Chargers 3 The Bengals (3 10 1) are fresh off an upset of Pittsburgh, and thanks to Deshaun Watson, the Texans (4 10) can often do an impression of a competent team. There isn't a lot of motivation to go around, which makes a hefty point spread a bit curious. Pick: Bengals 8 Even though two of the three favorites won, Saturday was still a fairly surprising day of football. The day started with Detroit's Matthew Stafford getting injured on the first series of a game between the Lions and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. We expected Tampa Bay to win easily, but the combination of Stafford's absence and perhaps the best day of the season from the Buccaneers' offense resulted in a final score of 47 7 that blew the 9.5 point spread out of the water. Tom Brady appears to be hot going into the playoffs, throwing for 348 yards and four touchdowns even though he sat out the entire second half. The day's lone upset came in a matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals in which C.J. Beathard outplayed Kyler Murray and the 49ers got to play spoilers to a division rival. We expected Arizona to have more motivation, resulting in a pick of Cardinals 5, but the letdown results in Arizona no longer controlling its playoff fate. The Chicago Bears can earn a wild card by winning their last two games. The night closed with a wild game between the Miami Dolphins and the Las Vegas Raiders. Feeling his team needed a boost in the fourth quarter, Coach Brian Flores of the Dolphins brought Ryan Fitzpatrick in to replace Tua Tagovailoa and the quarterback switch worked, with Fitzpatrick leading three scoring drives the last of which included a no look 44 yard pass to Jason Sanders that Fitzpatrick completed even though he was being dragged to the ground by his face mask. The Dolphins didn't cover the 3 point spread, but the win gave them a leg up on the Ravens, who have not played this week, for the A.F.C.'s final playoff spot. A quick primer for those who are not familiar with betting lines: Favorites are listed next to a negative number that represents how many points they must win by to cover the spread. Colts 1.5, for example, means that Indianapolis must beat Pittsburgh by at least 2 points for its backers to win their bet. Gamblers can also bet on the total score, or whether the teams' combined score in the game is over or under a preselected number of points. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Tr ans fatty acids, known to i ncrease the risk for heart disease, stroke and diabetes, have now been linked to an increased risk for dementia. Researchers measured blood levels of elaidic acid, the most common trans fats, in 1,628 men and women 60 and older and free of dementia. Over the following 10 years, 377 developed some type of dementia. Trans fats, which are added to processed food in the form of partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, increase levels of LDL, or "bad" cholesterol. Meat and dairy products naturally contain small amounts of trans fats, but whether these fats raise bad cholesterol is unknown. After controlling for other factors, the scientists found that compared with those in the lowest one quarter in blood levels of elaidic acid, those in the highest were 50 percent more likely to develop any form of dementia and 39 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease in particular. Elaidic acid levels were not associated with vascular dementia considered alone. The study is in Neurology. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
WASHINGTON Since the death of the choreographer George Balanchine (1904 83), his legacy has both receded and grown. The last of Balanchine's own dancers have retired. Certain aspects of Balanchine technique have lost their gleaming edge (as he himself often predicted). Yet there's been a vast posthumous Balanchine surge. I've seen more than 60 of his ballets in the last 10 years; Balanchine Without Balanchine is a growth industry. Both trends were evident in recent days, when two of his last ballerinas Suzanne Farrell and Kyra Nichols staged his works. Both dancers were in their prime when he died; many of us remember them sharing the stage in several Balanchine ballets, taking the complex facets of his work classical, Romantic, modernist to new peaks. At the Kennedy Center in Washington this past weekend, the experienced Ms. Farrell added new repertory (the Faure "Emeralds" and the Gounod "Walpurgisnacht Ballet") to her company's already extensive Balanchine store; her Suzanne Farrell Ballet also revived the divertissement pas de deux from Act II of his Mendelssohn "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in this engagement. And the week before, Ms. Nichols a novice at staging Balanchine produced the Bach "Concerto Barocco" for the Pennsylvania Ballet, a company with a long Balanchine history, at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. What these and other stagings teach us is that there's no one definitive Balanchine style any more. You find different facets of it in different cities around America, even abroad. Within the first few seconds of the Pennsylvania Ballet "Concerto Barocco," the eight women of the corps exemplified many of the virtues of Ms. Nichols's own dancing: singing lines, long phrases, springing rhythmic brio, easy spaciousness. This was marvelous to see, and it continued into the brightness of the pairs of lead women. This "Barocco" nonetheless scaled no heights. Unnecessarily bright smiles grew more tense as the ballet proceeded; the lead ballerinas seemed guarded. The Pennsylvania company, now in its second season under Angel Corella's direction, is in transition, and it may be moving away from the Balanchine style that was its bedrock. In the spring, Ms. Nichols will be staging Balanchine's "Serenade," a ballet even more central to her career than "Barocco." That will reveal more. The Suzanne Farrell Ballet its repertory is always largely, sometimes solely, Balanchine is not a year round institution, but it has given annual seasons at the Kennedy Center since 2001. These have shown how Ms. Farrell's comprehension of Balanchine extends far beyond the roles she danced herself. This program ended with "Emeralds," the first of his three "Jewels" ballets (1967). Though she always danced the last, "Diamonds" (which she has staged at the Kennedy Center in the past), her company delivered "Emeralds" with real nuance, sensitivity and freshness. You could feel the many layers of Balanchine's musicality: rhythmic play, harmonic tension, complex phrasing. In the role created for Violette Verdy, Heather Ogden (first cast) danced with something of the communicative eloquence associated with the ballerina who inspired it, and in the second part, made for Mimi Paul, Natalia Magnicaballi's beauty and quiet demeanor found a worthy vehicle. Better yet were Valerie Tellmann and Allynne Noelle in the second cast. Ms. Tellman did not dance with unbroken confidence, but wonderfully partnered by Kirk Henning she had moments of incisive grandeur and sweep, while Ms. Noelle, a company debutante, cast a consistent spell delicate and sure at the same time. (In the first cast she also brought particular sparkle to the pas de trois.) Another welcome company newcomer is the tall, long limbed, handsome Thomas Garrett, who partnered Ms. Ogden. Most members of the Farrell troupe show a relaxed grasp of basic Balanchine style. Several marvelous features were notable: With many dancers, you could see how movement continued through the arms, even when they were holding fixed positions. And I'd send most of today's City Ballet dancers to study the way the Farrell performers use their eyes seldom seeming fixed on a classroom mirror but instead opening up the distances of the auditorium. Few of Ms. Farrell's dancers, however, have full Balanchine virtuosity. This became an issue in the program's opening "Walpurgisnacht Ballet," a work in which Balanchine ballerina technique reaches its most exuberantly rococo: Some steps come in huge flourishes, others in tight knots. The central role has had three superlative interpreters at City Ballet: Ms. Farrell herself, Ms. Nichols, and, today, Sara Mearns. Although, at the Kennedy Center, Violeta Angelova (excellent in less full throttle roles) and Ms. Magnicaballi both delivered it with light charm, they lacked the strength to bring it either heroic swagger or coloratura force: without which it's hard to see why Ms. Farrell wanted to present this piece. The exquisite, gossamer like divertissement pas de deux was well served by two casts. Again, Ms. Noelle quietly rapt enchanted. Still, New Yorkers know that this is another dance that has recently regained peak form at City Ballet, notably with Tiler Peck. In Washington, Ms. Farrell followed this with the cute and gushy sensationalism of the Scene d'Amour from Maurice Bejart's "Romeo and Juliet" (to Berlioz music), the sole non Balanchine offering on this year's quadruple bill. Ms. Magnicaballi and Michael Cook and, in another cast, Ms. Angelova and Mr. Henning, danced it eagerly, as if released; the Washington audience gave both the program's warmest ovation. Few dancers in my lifetime have been as inspiring as Ms. Nichols and Ms. Farrell. Many of today's dancers still recall Ms. Nichols's performances (she retired in 2007); many who were born after Ms. Farrell retired in 1989 now watch videos of her dancing with awe. Yet neither is currently working in ideal circumstances. Even though Balanchine's domain has been enlarged far and wide, these performances remind us that the possibility of recession is always present. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
Infiniti was in the process of completely re crafting its lineup when Mr. de Nysschen abruptly vacated the executive suite. He was replaced by a Nissan executive, Andy Palmer, who decamped for Aston Martin after two months. Roland Krueger, a BMW executive, was subsequently hired as Infiniti's third chief executive in the space of about 90 days. Mr. Krueger was not available for comment. So exactly whose baby the Q80 Inspiration is seems to be a touchy subject. "The Q80 Inspiration concept was born to disrupt the premium sedan category," Mr. Bancon said. "We aim to do this with elegance, style, and emotion." It is definitely a reflection of Mr. de Nysschen's belief that Infiniti needs to advance from near luxury status to go head to head with other premium sedans from marques such as Porsche, Aston Martin and Mercedes Benz. Whether that will be Mr. Krueger's game plan, too, remains to be seen. Besides a suite of full on luxury features, the Q80 Inspiration offers strong performance from a 550 horsepower, twin turbo 3 liter V6, bolstered by a hybrid electric system. The engine heralds a new portfolio of powertrains that are expected within the next two years. "The fact that we are entering this category, a challenging category from a business perspective, and to do so in such a brave fashion demonstrates Infiniti's confidence," Mr. Bancon said. "This is the highest portfolio entry for Infiniti and our vision is to compete with a unique approach. This car is not the traditional premium sedan." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. on AMC. Steven Spielberg's depiction of American soldiers fighting their way up Omaha Beach in one sequence helped "Saving Private Ryan" pick up Oscars for sound mixing, film editing, sound editing, cinematography and directing. The moments, near the start of the movie, leave an audience shell shocked and peppers its disorienting intensity with distinct acts of courage a hallmark of the movie, which is led by Tom Hanks as an Army Ranger captain. In her review for The Times, Janet Maslin noted the frankness with which Spielberg depicted conflict. "This film simply looks at war as if war had not been looked at before," she wrote. THE LONGEST DAY (1962) 8 p.m. on TCM. Henry Fonda, John Wayne and Sean Connery are among the ensemble cast of this classic D Day movie. (Also featured: Gert Frobe, who would square off against Connery two years later as the villain in "Goldfinger." He plays a German officer here.) The movie reconstructed the Normandy landings with an enormous budget and striking black and white imagery; it clocks in at around three hours. After its opening in Manhattan, Bosley Crowther wrote in The Times that "it is hard to think of a picture, aimed and constructed as this one was, doing any more or any better or leaving one feeling any more exposed to the horror of war than this one does." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
, a prominent gynecologist who developed minimally invasive techniques that helped many women avoid hysterectomies, died on Dec. 17 in Newark. He was 80. The cause was complications of a stroke, his son Michael said. Dr. Neuwirth, who for much of his career was chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan as well as a professor at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, was both a doctor and a tinkerer. He spent decades inventing, refining and revising his own techniques with the goal of finding simpler, more efficient ways to reduce painful and excessive menstrual bleeding. One of the earliest methods he developed was to remove fibroids, the benign tumors that grow in the wall of the uterus and that can cause excessive bleeding. In the past, surgeons who wanted to remove fibroids did so by removing the entire uterus. That procedure, a hysterectomy, required a large abdominal incision and could carry increased risks of infection and complications, and also meant the woman could not become pregnant. In the late 1960s, Dr. Neuwirth developed an alternative method that used a camera and tiny instruments, inserted through the vagina, to remove fibroids individually, leaving the uterus in place. The recovery time after the procedure, called an operative hysteroscopy, was much shorter, and many women were able to become pregnant afterward. By the 1980s, operative hysteroscopies were becoming common. Hundreds of thousands are now performed in the United States each year, many by doctors first taught by Dr. Neuwirth. His innovations often involved what is known as endometrial ablation, in which the tissue lining the uterus is deliberately reduced or destroyed to combat heavy bleeding, called menorrhagia. Several years after popularizing hysteroscopy, Dr. Neuwirth received a patent for a technique that involves inserting a balloonlike device into the uterus and filling it with hot water to essentially burn away part of the uterine wall. That procedure, which can be done in a doctor's office, has become commonplace. In recent years he was working on still another method, a chemical treatment that involves applying silver nitrate to parts of the uterine wall. One of his consistent goals was to create treatments that were relatively easy and inexpensive, in part so they could be used in countries with less sophisticated medical care. "He didn't want to make these complex," said Dr. Jacques Moritz, a longtime colleague who is director of the gynecology division at St. Luke's Roosevelt. "He always wanted to keep it as simple as possible so that more people could do it." Robert Samuel Neuwirth was born on July 11, 1933, in Floral Park, N.Y., the only child of Phyllis and Abraham, a doctor. He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Yale in 1955 and a medical degree from Yale in 1958; he completed his residency at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in 1962. He was named head of the obstetrics and gynecology department at St. Luke's in 1974, and he stayed in that position until 1991, well after the hospital had become St. Luke's Roosevelt. From 1977 to 2000 he was a professor at Columbia. He served as an examiner for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology from 1982 to 1988. "He was a brilliant physician scientist, pushing forward new knowledge, but he was also a brilliant physician educator," said Dr. Frank A. Chervenak, a former student who is chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at NewYork Presbyterian Hospital and at Weill Cornell Medical College. In addition to his son Michael, survivors include four other children, Susan Neuwirth Guerra, Jessica, Laura and Alexander; and six grandchildren. Dr. Neuwirth was married twice; both marriages ended in divorce. He lived in Tampa, Fla., and had a home in Englewood, N.J. Dr. Neuwirth often did follow up studies to test the long term consequences and safety of his techniques. He studied menstrual function in women who had hysteroscopic surgery, and he tested whether ablation techniques could mask cancer. He found that they did not. Dr. Alan DeCherney, the program director for reproductive biology and medicine at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, was among several people who emphasized that Dr. Neuwirth was a modest man who was not inclined to professional networking or self promotion. "He didn't sell his ideas, he just did his stuff," Dr. DeCherney said. "People saw it was good and they picked it up." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Health |
A roundup of motoring news from the web: With only 500 Z28 Camaros planned for this year and about 2,500 for the 2015 model year, General Motors is certainly limiting the new pony car. According to a report by GM Authority, the company intends to keep things that way: Building Z28 clones out of stock Camaros and aftermarket parts will now be virtually impossible. There is a list of 35 parts mostly the visual cues that can be sold only to Z28 owners. (GM Authority) Anthony Foxx, the secretary of transportation, wants to increase the amount automakers pay for failing to recall defective equipment in a timely manner. Calling for a maximum fine of 300 million, he called the current 35 million maximum a "rounding error." (The Detroit News) According to a report by Bloomberg, the new Chrysler 200 sedan is an important part of Chrysler's continued sales growth. IHS Automotive, an analysis firm, predicts that Chrysler may sell 180,000 of the cars over the next two years. Bloomberg says the 200 is Chrysler's toehold in the competitive American midsize sedan market. (Bloomberg) Bloomberg says that Ford Motor will probably hire 12,000 new hourly workers in North America, an increase to which the automaker committed in its 2011 contract with the United Automobile Workers union. The first of the surge came today: Ford announced that it hired 2,000 new workers at its truck plant in Claycomo, Mo., where the Transit cargo van will be built. (Bloomberg) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Automobiles |
After deadly terrorist attacks and a nationwide election, Britain is once again focusing on a controversial plan: to regulate the internet. Lawmakers from across the political spectrum are promoting some of the widest ranging plans anywhere in the western world to rein in the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter, setting up a likely standoff. On one side are British policy makers and law enforcement officials, who want to crack down on how extremist messaging and communication are spread across the internet. On the other are privacy and freedom of speech groups alongside the tech giants themselves who say that the government's proposals go too far. Similar debates are popping up around the world. The Federal Bureau of Investigation took legal action against Apple last year to force the company to decrypt a suspected terrorist's iPhone. American law enforcement eventually used a third party service to gain access to the smartphone. In Germany, lawmakers are pushing ahead with fines of up to 50 million euros, or 56 million, if Silicon Valley companies do not limit how online hate speech circulates on their social networks. Recent legislation already gives Britain's law enforcement officials some of the world's strongest powers to read and monitor online chatter from potential extremists. Now the country's politicians want to go further. In its electoral manifesto and in speeches by senior politicians, the governing Conservative Party outlined proposals to offer security officials more ways to keep tabs on potential extremists. Theresa May, the prime minister, raised the issue at a recent Group of 7 meeting and in talks with President Emmanuel Macron of France. But if the proposals are pushed through, there will be costs. The Conservatives now rule with a minority in Parliament, and will most likely have to rely on other parties for support. That may necessitate compromise or horse trading. And the additional measures could hurt Britain's effort to court new investment from the global tech sector as it prepares to leave the European Union. Who Should Have Access to Your Messages? Mrs. May had a simple message after the recent deadly terrorist attack in London. "We need to do everything we can at home to reduce the risks of extremism online," she told the British public, echoing a similar message by her government after a previous attack in Manchester. Part of that plan is to demand that companies such as Apple and Facebook allow Britain's national security agencies access to people's encrypted messages on services like FaceTime and WhatsApp. These services use so called end to end encryption, meaning that a person's message is scrambled when it is sent from a device, so that it becomes indecipherable to anyone but its intended recipient. British officials, like their American counterparts, would like to create a digital backdoor to this technology. Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life None With Apple's latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here's what to know. A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties' unwanted attempts to access your data. Here's a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online. Ever considered a password manager? You should. There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet. Yet an opening for intelligence agencies, experts warn, would also allow others, including foreign governments and hacking groups, to potentially gain access to people's digital messages. "If the British government asks for a special key like this, what stops other governments from asking for the same access?" said Nigel Smart, a cryptology professor at the University of Bristol. "You need end to end encryption because it stops anyone from listening in." British lawmakers say law enforcement and intelligence agencies need such access to foil potential terrorist plots. But Facebook and others respond that they already provide information on people's online activities, when required, including the I.P. address a pseudo fingerprint for digital devices of machines from where messages are sent. And in a letter sent to British politicians in late 2015 just as an earlier debate about tech regulation was bubbling to the surface Apple made its views clear. "We believe it would be wrong to weaken security for hundreds of millions of law abiding customers so that it will also be weaker for the very few who pose a threat," the company said. Extremist Messages: What Should Be Controlled? British politicians have another target in policing the internet: extremist messages that are circulated on Facebook, YouTube and other social media. While other countries have taken steps to control how such material is shared across the web, tech executives and campaigners say that Britain has gone further than almost any western country, often putting the onus on companies to determine when to take down content that while offensive, does not represent illegal or violent messaging. "I'd like to see the industry go further and faster in not only removing online terrorist content, but stopping it going up in the first place," Amber Rudd, the country's home secretary, said before meeting with tech executives this year. At the time, she called on them to take further steps to counter such extremist material. Mrs. May also had discussions with Mr. Macron, the French president, last week about holding tech companies legally liable if they fail to remove content. The British government's stance has put tech companies in the difficult position of having to determine what should, and should not, be allowed online. Britain's freedom of expression laws are not as far reaching as those in the United States, allowing British lawmakers to push for greater control over what is circulated across the web. In recent months, companies like Facebook and Twitter say that they have taken additional steps to remove illegal extremist material from their social networks, and are giving users ways to flag potentially offensive content. That includes Facebook announcing on Thursday that it would use artificial intelligence technology to flag, and remove, inappropriate content. Google has also provided financing to nonprofit organizations aimed at countering such hate speech online. Some other European lawmakers have warned that too strict limits on what can be shared across the web may hamper freedom of speech, a touchy subject for many people who grew up behind the Soviet era iron curtain. "For me, freedom of expression is a basic fundamental right," Andrus Ansip, the digital chief at the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said in an interview this year. "Nobody wants to see a Ministry of Truth." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Most cases in which cars kill pedestrians surely reflect negligence: drivers who were too busy talking on their cellphones or thinking about their golf games to notice the senior citizen crossing the street in front of them. A handful are acts of murder, like when a man killed a woman by plowing his car into counterprotesters at a neo Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va. But sometimes drivers end up killing other people because they were engaging in clearly dangerous behavior, like driving well above the speed limit and running multiple red lights. The resulting deaths aren't considered murder. But they might be considered manslaughter, which is when you didn't specifically intend to kill someone but your irresponsible actions killed them all the same. Until this week I thought that Donald Trump's disastrous mishandling of Covid 19 was basically negligence, even if that negligence was willful that is, that he failed to understand the gravity of the threat because he didn't want to hear about it and refused to take actions that could have saved thousands of American lives because actually doing effective policy isn't his kind of thing. But I was wrong. According to Bob Woodward's new book, "Rage," Trump wasn't oblivious; he knew by early February that Covid 19 was both deadly and airborne. And this isn't a case of conflicting recollections: Woodward has Trump on tape. Yet Trump continued to hold large indoor rallies, disparage precautionary measures and pressure states to reopen business despite the risk of infection. And he's still doing the same things, even now. In other words, a large fraction of the more than 200,000 Americans who will surely die of Covid 19 by Election Day will have been victims of something much worse than mere negligence. Let's be clear: A private citizen who did what we now know Trump did would definitely be in big legal trouble. For example, think of the lawsuits likely brought against a corporate C.E.O. who knew that his company's workplace was dangerous, but lied about it, refused to take any precautions and threatened workers with dismissal if they failed to come in. Now, Trump won't face comparable accountability, partly because of the office he holds, partly because the party he leads is totally supine and won't hold him accountable for anything. But let's hold off on the savviness for a moment, OK? The enormity of Trump's malfeasance should be the main story here, not speculation about whether he'll face any consequences. Are there any excuses for Trump's actions? One argument you sometimes hear is that once you adjust for population you find that some European countries have lost around as many people to Covid 19 as Trump's America although our recent rate of new deaths is much higher, so we'll soon be pulling away from the pack. But when an ordinary citizen's actions lead to someone else's death, both circumstances and motivation matter. Of the other high death countries, Italy was the first Western nation to have a large outbreak, suffering many deaths before even the experts fully grasped what needed to be done. Sweden and Britain suffered badly because they initially relied on the doctrine of "herd immunity" to resolve the pandemic. This was terrible policy, which Britain eventually abandoned. Sweden never officially changed its policy, although in practice it has ended up practicing a lot of social distancing. But there's a big difference between mistakes, however deadly, and deliberate deception. Only in America did the head of state know that he was reassuring people about a disease he knew was both deadly and easily spread. Trump justified his concealment of Covid 19's dangers as a desire to avoid "panic." That's pretty rich coming from the guy who began his presidency with warnings about "American carnage" and who's currently trying to terrify suburbanites with visions of rampaging Antifa hordes. But what exactly were the dangers of panic that worried him? After all, telling the truth about the coronavirus wouldn't have been like shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. The only things the truth might have scared people into doing would have been staying home where possible, avoiding crowds, washing their hands and so on. And these were all things people should have been doing in fact, once people started "panicking" in places like New York, infection rates came way down. Of course, we all have a pretty good idea what Trump was actually talking about: All through this crisis credible sources have reported that he wanted to downplay the crisis out of fear that bad news might hurt his beloved stock market. That is, he felt that he needed to sacrifice thousands of American lives to prop up the Dow. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Opinion |
On Friday, a show with the blandest title on television ("How To With John Wilson") dedicated an episode to the most boring subject imaginable (scaffolding) and produced the most fascinating comedy I have seen in years. This startlingly original new series, airing Friday nights on HBO, has no stars or any kind of traditional story, and its main character, John Wilson, who co writes, directs and narrates, stays offscreen. That it manages to be a poignant, hilarious and topical self portrait is a small miracle. Like the best art, "How To With John Wilson" defies categorization, but as a critic, I can't resist. It joins a growing genre of documentary comedy, which uses tools of journalism (like interviews with real people) for comic ends. The most famous examples, like the work of Sacha Baron Cohen, have a streak of cruelty that is absent here. Wilson's sensibility is more humane than harsh, poetic than prankish. The show is far more abstract than either of those forerunners; it's rooted in deep dives into idiosyncratic themes. Friday's episode examined the wood and metal structures erected throughout the city to protect people from getting hit on the head. Scaffolding seems like a mundane subject, but through close attention, Wilson proves otherwise, finding it to be a source of safety and danger, a blight and a work of art, a big business, a cinematic cliche and a symbol of paralysis. What really fascinates him about scaffolding, and the core preoccupation of the show, is how easily something short term becomes permanent. In a pocket history, Wilson explains how the death of one New Yorker in 1979 spawned an 8 billion a year industry that has built hundreds of miles of structures. Scaffolding workers, he argues, "do more to alter the landscape of New York than any other group." He makes the point in myriad images, including a funny series of juxtapositions of famous buildings in movies versus real world versions blanketed in metal rods and green wood that calls to mind the 2003 documentary essay "L.A. Plays Itself." Wilson's montages do what great chroniclers of the city accomplish: Make you see the familiar anew. The comedy is desert dry old school wit. His deadpan narration spoofs the voice of God of many documentaries, often mumbling, shifting gears, tripping over itself. His voice is gentle, even uncertain, as if he's thinking aloud. He delights in mismatches: when he says "beloved businesses," he shows a Chase bank. Some of the jokes are so oblique they're easy to miss. When he's denied entry to a scaffolding convention, Wilson says wryly: "I was crushed." There's also humor out of magical realism. Wilson has a knack for finding bizarre and resonant moments in the everyday: An air conditioner dangling from a window is as terrifying as a horror movie. A woman on a park bench calmly covered in birds is a still image from a child's dream. An overweight man suddenly kicking the air flashes the grace of Bruce Lee. These stunning shots, each packing a feature film of mystery into a few seconds, come and go with dizzying speed, and are presented almost offhandedly, his camerawork aiming for a verite vibe. Early on, Wilson asks a stranger if he has strong thoughts on scaffolding and the response is a baffled no. Then the camera stays on him for an additional beat, adding a pointed awkwardness and poking fun at this entire enterprise. At the core of the episode is an extremely relevant question for a moment when people are debating whether to take the train home for the holidays: What price safety? Everyone in New York is going to die, Wilson tells us at the start of the show, and there are times when he seems to be arguing that what began as a noble interest in avoiding injury is now driven primarily by business interests. Scaffolding obscures views, clutters streets and can even, when it breaks, kill. "You can waste your life playing it safe," he says, "and the real danger is never what you expect it to be." But this is no polemic against safety measures. You can also find arguments for the beauty and necessity of scaffolding and hear from pedestrians sentimental about it. One has a B.D.S.M. story about it told with a matter of factness that feels quintessentially New York. There's a healthy realism from a blind man who says scaffolding makes it more difficult to get around the city. "You work with what you got," he adds, holding a stick to feel his way around. Wilson is an entertainer and he isn't trying to persuade. And while he makes it seem like he is just a lucky and persistent voyeur, an aimless wanderer who stumbles into these crazy stories and beautiful images, that is the real prank. Look closer and there is purpose in every shot. The home movie aesthetic hides the instincts of a Hollywood showman. The first thing Wilson shows us is a jarring image of a wire toppling over a Mercedes Benz on the streets of New York and the final shot is of a skyscraper being blown up. That makes it sound like an action movie, but it's more of an inaction movie, a meditation on the allure and perils of not changing. By staying off camera, John Wilson makes the city seem like the focus, but the more you watch, the more prominent his voice becomes. He's an unlikely romantic, one who sees excitement in tedium, beauty in trash and possibility everywhere. The show is more personal than political. Wilson emerges as an obsessive loner looking to make a connection. This becomes most evident in the sixth and final episode, when the crowded city streets transform as Covid 19 invades the picture and he becomes concerned about the health of his elderly landlord downstairs. We also see glimpses of his romantic life, but in Friday's episode, scaffolding is a metaphor for his own lack of commitment in his work life. In one tangent, he explains how to survive in the city, he made money filming infomercials for products like Roast Beef atopia. He said he knew he was "helping to create some of the most grotesque content on the planet," but justified it by saying it was only for a short time. Then he did it for five years. Money jobs can operate like a kind of scaffolding, providing brief support, but stick with them long enough and they can become central to what you do and who you are. Life is funny like that, especially these days when security of any kind seems elusive and nothing is guaranteed. Toying with these darker currents, John Wilson seems melancholy but not despairing. He even finds hope in strange places, and an unexpected reminder: We are all ultimately temporary. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
Emergency care has always been expensive. Recently, though, a perfect storm of high deductible insurance plans, new venues of care such as stand alone emergency departments, and insurers who deny payment based on retrospective review that is, based on the patient's final diagnosis rather than the original complaint has elevated concerns about cost to a level that might best be described as sticker shock. But people might be less likely to face sticker shock in the emergency room if they recognized that it isn't always the best place to go for treatment. Depending on what a patient's symptoms are, it may be worth considering other options for same day care. In order of increasing services that can be provided, and increasing price, the options are: primary care, virtual care, retail clinics, urgent care centers, and emergency departments (E.D.s). None Primary care: Although it may be difficult to see a physician on short notice, primary care providers can often handle the problems of established patients by telephone at no cost. None Virtual care: Accessible by smartphone, tablet or computer, virtual care is available in most states and is usually the least expensive option for unscheduled care. Websites such as Doctor On Demand and UCHealth Virtual Visits are staffed by physicians or advanced practice providers and are aimed at providing treatment for simple medical problems. Virtual care is covered by most insurance. Costs are typically 40 to 80 per visit. None Retail clinics: For unscheduled, in person care, retail clinics found in pharmacies, supermarkets and other retail locations are the least expensive option. They are designed to provide quick care for minor problems like sore throats. As an example, CVS Minute Clinics typically charge 99 to 129. Care is typically rendered by a nurse practitioner or physician assistant. None Urgent care: Urgent care centers such as Concentra and CityMD offer walk in care for illnesses and injuries that are not life threatening. Charges for simple complaints, such as sore throats, run 150 or more. Urgent care centers may be staffed by a physician assistant, a nurse practitioner or a physician. None Emergency rooms: There are now three types of emergency departments: stand alone E.D.s, mini hospital E.D.s and traditional hospital E.D.s. All are staffed 24/7 by board certified emergency physicians. All are able to deliver lifesaving care. And all are similarly expensive. Stand alone E.D.s are usually the quickest and most convenient. Traditional hospital E.D.s are best equipped to handle severe emergencies, such as major trauma. Using sore throat as an example, health insurers reimburse emergency departments at an average of 956 for a sore throat, compared with 131 at an urgent care center. While the patient's financial responsibility varies from insurer to insurer, emergency room co payments are generally higher than they are for urgent care, and the bill will be higher than it would be at a retail clinic or urgent care center. But cost cannot be the sole concern. Potentially serious problems require a visit to the emergency room. For example, adults with chest pain particularly those with a history of cigarette smoking, diabetes or other cardiac risk factors should be evaluated in an emergency room. Visiting one of the other venues risks turning one bill into two, as a referral to an emergency room is likely. It also risks a delay in receiving potentially lifesaving care. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Well |
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. Many of us are stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. The White House reportedly inquired about the process of being added to Mount Rushmore in the hope that President Trump could be immortalized on the monument. "I think we should put Trump on Mount Rushmore, but not a carving," Trevor Noah said on "The Daily Show" on Monday. "I think we should actually put him on Mount Rushmore no phone, no internet, problem solved." "That's like going up to a priest after Mass and asking him, 'So what's the process for adding someone to the trinity?'" SETH MEYERS "And even if there was a process to get on Mount Rushmore, I am pretty sure presiding over the preventable deaths of 160,000 Americans and the worst economic crash since the Great Depression would be disqualifying. That's like asking your boss at Chipotle when you're getting your employee of the month plaque after you get caught stirring guacamole with your skateboard." SETH MEYERS "Besides, I'm pretty sure the other presidents would be weirded out having Trump next to them. They'd all scooch over to one side of the mountain like passengers on the F train after a dude takes a dump." SETH MEYERS "Apparently, Trump said it was his dream to have his face added. Yeah, that's sort of like Dr. Fauci saying it's his dream to play center for the Los Angeles Lakers." JIMMY FALLON "Turns out a fifth president can't be added to Mount Rushmore because the rocks around it are unstable. Actually, the more I think about it, having something unstable means he's already a part of Mount Rushmore." JIMMY FALLON "I think Trump's wasting his time at Mount Rushmore. If he wants something carved into rock that looks like him, the orange hue of the Grand Canyon is a much better option." JIMMY FALLON "Just so we're all clear, during a historic pandemic that has crippled the economy, the president of the United States signed four executive orders to help the unemployed from his private country club. Even Marie Antoinette was like, 'Come on, man, read the room.'" JIMMY FALLON "Also, nothing says 'man of the people' like doing a press conference at your 350,000 a year private golf club." SETH MEYERS "Trump also signed other executive orders including a payroll tax holiday, student loan relief and eviction moratorium. Of course he wants that come January, everyone in his family might need it." SETH MEYERS "That's not how it works. For one thing, only Congress can appropriate money. For another, this isn't one of your businesses. You can't just move money around to cover your losses. As Trump 'I got it. We're just gonna move money from the tax fund, to the casino fund, to the hotel fund, to the slush fund, to the porn star fund. Boom, done.'" SETH MEYERS "And don't get me wrong some of these ideas that Trump proposed are actually good ones. I mean, suspending student loan payments makes a lot of sense right now, and banning evictions is a great idea, even though I'm pretty sure that Trump only wants that because he thinks it means that he can't get kicked out of the White House." TREVOR NOAH "Among the many problems with Trump's payroll tax holiday is that ending the tax could have catastrophic fiscal effects on programs, especially Social Security. As Trump 'But don't worry, old people, something tells me you won't be needing that Social Security. Come to my rally. Leave the mask at home.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "Trump's so called eviction moratorium is really more of a suggest atorium, because instead of banning the practice, he instructs key officials to consider whether there should be a ban on evictions. Consider? These people need to be rescued. It reminds me of the classic film 'Considering Saving Private Ryan.'" STEPHEN COLBERT The "Daily Show" correspondent Jaboukie Young White makes the case for the rapper Cardi B as Joe Biden's pick for the Democratic vice presidential nomination. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Television |
HONG KONG While developed economies have worried whether international investors will keep showing up at their bond auctions if their central banks keep printing money, China has had a different worry. So many speculators want to move money into China that its biggest problem has been how to keep them out. In the United States, the European Union and Japan, central banks have struggled with hangovers from past housing bubbles, anemic or no economic growth and even deflation, in the case of Japan. In China, a possible housing bubble is still going strong. The central bank is keeping interest rates low partly to discourage speculators from pushing even more money into China. But low mortgage interest rates as little as 5.2 percent, in an economy with consumer price inflation running at 2 to 4 percent a year have set off further surges in home prices. After a sharp slowdown last summer, economic growth rebounded vigorously last winter in China. But an unexpected weakening of growth in recent weeks has created a problem that the People's Bank of China, the central bank, is just starting to acknowledge. Further monetary stimulus which might seem to be the answer for a slowing economy could drive housing prices even higher. Rising home prices are a source of tremendous anxiety across China, because very few young people can afford to buy an apartment when even an 800 square foot unit can cost 35 times a young college graduate's first year salary. China's banking system has been awash with credit for years, with one result being that financing has been provided for even seemingly uneconomical projects like skyscrapers in third tier cities or high speed train lines to economically depressed areas. But the government's response to economic weakness in recent weeks has been to encourage the state controlled banking system to engage in another round of heavy lending at low rates. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. Clearview AI does well in another round of facial recognition accuracy tests. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. "It's very disappointing; this splurge in credit creation has taken off again," said George Magnus, a senior economic adviser to UBS. "What you need to put this genie back in the bottle is quite a stern application of oversight and supervision." In its recent quarterly report on monetary policy, the People's Bank of China warned against being "blindly optimistic" that inflation was under control, given continued brisk growth in lending and the money supply. The central bank has allowed lending to race ahead while pursuing an unexpected approach to trying to limit inflation: letting the renminbi appreciate gradually against the dollar, which makes imports less expensive and helps them compete on price with domestic goods. The renminbi has climbed 1.3 percent against the dollar, mostly since the start of April. Chinese central bankers face another puzzle that their Western and Japanese counterparts have not had to worry about: mysterious mass deaths of pigs and their effect on inflation. Video of thousands of dead pigs floating in a river near Shanghai in March temporarily made pork much less appetizing for tens of millions of Chinese. The occurrence of a new form of bird flu in the same area several weeks later turned many people away from chicken. Because meat makes up one of the largest slices of household spending, the abrupt national experiment in something approaching vegetarianism beef and lamb are much less popular in China has sharply slowed consumer price inflation, to 2.4 percent in April. That has made it hard for the central bank to argue that inflation is a problem. But no one knows not veterinarians, not the World Health Organization and certainly not the central bank how long livestock will continue to be infected, much less how much longer Chinese families will be put off chicken or pork. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Global Business |
SAN FRANCISCO In June, Mark Zuckerberg spoke about "community" with a gathering of influential Facebook users in Chicago. It was an important moment for the 33 year old chief executive of the social media company. He was promoting Facebook Groups, a product that millions of people on Facebook used to talk about shared interests, debate, discuss and maybe debate some more. This type of activity, he believed, was one of the keys to his sprawling company's future. The goal of Facebook, he told his audience, which included many Groups leaders, was to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." Inside Mr. Zuckerberg's company, however, there was already growing concern among employees that some of that content was having the opposite effect. Foremost among the offending material: Posts and memes touching on hot button issues like race, gender and sexuality that were secretly created by Russian organizations with ties to the Kremlin to influence the 2016 presidential election. Now there is an ongoing debate among Facebook employees over how to handle this so called organic content, or posts from users that are not advertisements and can be freely shared across Facebook, according to a dozen current and former Facebook employees. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were prohibited by nondisclosure agreements from talking about the company. On one side are employees who idealize Facebook's lofty goals of unfettered speech and do not think the company should be in the business of censoring what its users have to say. On the other side are workers who worry that the company's hands off approach has already caused problems ones that will grow worse if nothing is done. "The algorithms Facebook sets up that prioritize and control what's shown in its powerful newsfeed are a lot more consequential than the ads," said Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who closely follows social media and technology. "The company seems stuck between exercising this massive power as it wishes, but also terrified about the conversation about its power and how to handle it." Next week, Facebook's general counsel will be among several tech industry executives expected to testify at a series of Congressional hearings about the role the technology industry played in Russian interference of last year's election. Facebook has acknowledged that an organization with ties to the Kremlin purchased 100,000 worth of ads related to the election and has promised to crack down on such advertising. Since Facebook disclosed the existence of those ads and posts with Russian ties last month, the company has attempted to tamp down fears it abetted interference in the election. It has also added rules meant to improve disclosures of political advertising in an attempt to show users exactly who is behind the ads they saw run through their newsfeeds. And on Friday, the company began a test of new features designed to give users a better understanding of the people and organizations buying advertising on Facebook. That included providing users with a searchable database of ads being served to them. But misleading ads were often a small component of the misinformation campaign. Investigators believe the Internet Research Agency, a so called troll farm that has been linked to the Kremlin, amassed enormous followings for various Facebook Pages that masqueraded as destinations for discussion about all sorts of issues, from the Black Lives Matter movement to gun ownership. Aided by Facebook's finely tuned ad targeting tools, the Russian firm would pay to place posts in the News Feeds of users. The ad product, called a "promoted post," was designed to look little different than the rest of the content flowing through the News Feed. Users who responded in a positive manner to the advertisements were prompted to subscribe to related Facebook Pages or Groups run by the Russians. If they did, it meant that nonpaid, "organic" posts would begin to appear in the users' News Feeds. From there they spread, being shared and reshared among the user's network of friends. The tactic was effective. Some of the pages, like "Blacktivists," which focused on racial issues, had more than 360,000 users who "liked" the page even more than the main "Black Lives Matter" page. Facebook is not the only big internet company wrestling with the issue. But at Mr. Zuckerberg's company, the issue has been particularly troublesome, given how easy it is to spread messages to tens of millions of Facebook users. Whether something is removed from Facebook is often dictated by its terms of service, which define standards of behavior on the network. Those standards prohibit posting nudity and threats of violence. But misleading users even outright lying aren't necessarily against the rules. And that's hard to police. So far, Facebook has focused on the issue of authenticity and identity on the platform. Facebook removed hundreds of ads last month, not because of the content they contained, but because the Russians running the pages did not disclose their real identities. "We want people to be able to come to Facebook to talk about issues of public interest, and we know that means people will sometimes disagree and the issues they discuss will sometimes be controversial," Monika Bickert, head of product policy and counterterrorism at Facebook, said in a statement. "That's O.K. But it's important to us that these conversations happen in an authentic way, meaning we have to be speaking as ourselves, with our real identities." That line of reasoning may not hold up for long, as Facebook is being forced to deal with policy discussions outside the United States. In Myanmar, Facebook is caught between the government and a persecuted minority group of Muslims, the Rohingya, who face a misinformation campaign on Facebook in posts often from top government leaders. Facebook has said little publicly about the situation but there is intensifying pressure to respond. One of the solutions discussed internally at Facebook has been "whitelisting," in which algorithms would decide which content makers would be allowed to publish or advertise on Facebook, according to two people familiar with the company's internal deliberations. They have also discussed "blacklisting," in which the algorithms would decide which content makers could not post. But in closed door meetings at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters and in Washington, Facebook employees have expressed concern that such a move could have effects on other publications and content makers that are not spreading false or divisive news. Others worry that acting too hastily could establish precedents that would lead to a situation, for example, where human rights activists using Facebook to coordinate protests in Syria would be forced to identify themselves. They also worry that any effort to quash certain content in the United States could only aid censors in other countries. As for a technical solution, some hope artificial intelligence can help Facebook sift fact from fiction. But today's A.I. technology is not advanced enough to do the work on its own. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr. Zuckerberg's solution is to double down on his community concept. He has said publicly that strengthening social bonds on Facebook will lead to a positive outcome, despite whatever reservations his employees and the general public may have. "Every day, I say to myself, 'I don't have much time here on Earth, how can I make the greatest positive impact?' Some nights I go to bed and I'm not sure I made the right choices that day," Mr. Zuckerberg said at the June conference. "I can tell you, those doubts don't go away, no matter who you are. But every day you just get up and try to make the world a little better." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
Who says stars' autobiographies don't sell? There are three new ones on the hardcover nonfiction list this week 's "Hindsight," "Beastie Boys Book" and Abbi Jacobson's "I Might Regret This." To be fair, these aren't standard issue tell alls, ghostwritten and burnished to a high gloss. "I Might Regret This" is an illustrated essay collection; the Beastie Boys and Timberlake, to a far lesser extent have delivered memoirs with a technicolor, scrapbooky feel. "Beastie Boys Book," chockablock with personal snapshots, punchy, stream of consciousness memories and stories from friends, is especially raw, a deeper way for the band's fans to engage. "These guys are great storytellers and they've amassed stories both epic (known moments in the band's history) and intimate (memories, observations, pranks, etc.) that all together tell the story of the band," says the book's editor, Julie Grau, adding that there were a few things that guided the 592 page book's aesthetic: the band's short lived zine, Grand Royal, the encyclopedic heft of "The Whole Earth Catalogue" and an R. Buckminster Fuller book called "Your Private Sky." How the Beastie boys put down their mics and picked up their pens. Timberlake announced "Hindsight" in an Instagram post and gave his fans a sneak peek a few days before it came out. It documents his musical ability from the age of 2, when he was singing along to an Eagles track in the car and his uncle, who was driving, pulled over and said to his mother, "Do you hear that? Your son is singing harmony with Don Henley." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
PRINCETON One day, I'd like to see a dinner party onstage where everyone is still on good terms by dessert. Or a tragedy where the soothsayer's prophecy doesn't come true. Or a work presentation that goes off hitchless, a cross dressing disguise that fools no one, a gun that misses. Formulas work; that's why they became formulas in the first place. But they still need subverting. "Goodnight Nobody," Rachel Bonds's restless, friable, finely acted play at the McCarter Theater here sometimes manages to distrupt old tropes, mostly because it feels like two shows carpentered together, with rough joints. It begins as a romantic tragedy, unfolds as a melancholy country house comedy, then skitters back to tragedy again. I couldn't always tell where the play was going, which was invigorating. But I wasn't confident that Bonds, a nimble writer, and Tyne Rafaeli, her skilled director, knew either. It's about old secrets, new motherhood, art making, sex having, nature, nurture and mental illness. Let's put it this way: At one point, I had four of the five characters on suicide watch. Haunted by Chekhov's "The Seagull" (consciously or otherwise), "Goodnight Nobody," gathers a group of mostly artists at a lakeside retreat. Reggie (Nate Miller), a standup comedian in his 30s with substance abuse issues, has invited two old friends to an upstate farmhouse. Nandish (Saamer Usmani), who goes by Nan, is a painter with a troubled interior life and an apparent devotion to arm day at the gym. K (Ariel Woodiwiss) is a new mother with postpartum depression. (The script identifies her as a teacher, but the play never mentions her work, which seems odd or maybe telling.) They are joined by Mara (Dana Delany), Reggie's art star sculptor mother, and Bo (Ken Marks), her painter boyfriend. Some people might pack Pictionary or fishing tackle for the weekend. Bo brings an ax. Bonds has a talent for naturalism, and the chatter among the three friends crackles with lived experience and imaginative sympathy. As the mother of a preschooler, Bonds is beautifully specific about the isolation and occasional despair of young motherhood. (K describes herself as "a fragmented zombie milk person with a baby who I love like an animal, but who makes me so, so tired, like a thick, leaden, gray tired I have never felt.") But the revelation of acute mental illness feels stagy. And the conversations around visual art sound as empty as those conversations usually do. "It impacted my whole being," Nan says of Mara's work. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Theater |
Because a love seat is intended for only two people, it might seem like the ideal piece of furniture to curl up on for Valentine's Day. But for city dwellers trying to make the most of small scale rooms, love seats are appealing year round, and may even take the place of larger sofas. Perhaps that's why furniture makers and retailers have so many other names for them: apartment sofas, two seaters, settees. No matter what the seats are called, Kati Curtis, an interior designer in New York, has a rule of thumb for distinguishing a (two person) love seat from a (three person) sofa: "Anything under 72 inches long." Length isn't the only consideration, though. "One of the big things I look at is the arm thickness, because that's going to increase or decrease the overall seating area," Ms. Curtis said. "Especially here in the city, I always look for thin arms to get more seating space out of it." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Real Estate |
SUSANA BACA at Sony Hall (Feb. 12, 8 p.m.). This 74 year old Peruvian singer songwriter started her career as an ethnomusicologist, specifically focusing on Afro Peruvian culture. But when David Byrne featured her recording "Maria Lando" on his 1995 compilation "Soul of Black Peru," she was thrust upon the international stage. Since, she has recorded six albums for his Luaka Bop label and won two Latin Grammys. Baca's repertoire includes both traditional Peruvian songs and her own originals, but the sound is consistent thanks to her ensemble's elegant acoustic instrumentation and her superlative, powerful voice. 212 997 5123, sonyhall.com ANITA BAKER at Radio City Music Hall (Feb. 13 14, 8 p.m.). At 61, this R B legend concluded what was billed as her farewell tour in 2018 with a star studded finale in September that included appearances by Stevie Wonder, Lalah Hathaway and Kelly Rowland. Thankfully for fans, she's back with this two night run at Radio City. The "Giving You the Best That I Got" singer's roster of hits may have helped define the quiet storm era, which started in the 1970s, but at recent live shows, she has sounded as vital and captivating as ever. 212 465 6000, radiocity.com TALIB KWELI at the BRIC House Ballroom (Feb. 14, 8 p.m.). A Brooklyn native, this rapper gives an interesting spin to Valentine's Day concerts: His is a love letter to his home borough. Brooklyn specifically Park Slope, where Kweli grew up, and Fort Greene, where this concert will take place has changed dramatically since he first rose to prominence in the late 1990s as half of Black Star, which he formed with the M.C. Yasiin Bey (then known as Mos Def), a fellow Brooklynite. Kweli's message, though, has remained the same: He's still using his technical mastery to push for social and political reform in Brooklyn and beyond. 718 683 5600, bricartsmedia.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. LIFE AND DEATH X SONAR at the Avant Gardner (Feb. 8, 10 p.m.). The influential electronic music label Life and Death is partnering with the Spanish festival Sonar to curate a night of D.J.s from around the world at this multiroom Brooklyn club. The lineup includes Life and Death's co founder, D.J. Tennis (a.k.a. Manfredi Romano), who specializes in techno; the Los Angeles based producer Daedelus, who makes experimental electronic music; the London based house D.J. Call Super; and the Israeli D.J. Mor Elian, whose recent work skews toward electro and ambient music. 347 987 3146, avant gardner.com SARAH SHOOK THE DISARMERS at the Knitting Factory (Feb. 14, 8 p.m.). With a rare combination of deft, classic country sounds and plain spoken storytelling, Shook bucks both Nashville's mainstream and the overly self aware Americana scene. The twist comes from Shook's unconventionally compelling voice, which is low, steady and a little nasal, recalling Appalachian yodeling but with a grungy edge. Plentiful slide guitar and a reliance on barn dance ready shuffle rhythms ground the songs in tradition, and the execution is sharp enough that the band's old school approach is convincing, a believable transformation of country's vintage melancholy. 347 529 6696, knittingfactory.com SHARON VAN ETTEN at the Beacon Theater (Feb. 9, 8 p.m.). Van Etten's new album, "Remind Me Tomorrow," is receiving rave reviews, thanks in part to the New Jersey bred singer songwriter's fairly dramatic stylistic shift. On her most recent releases, her confessional, poetic songs are bolstered by a slew of different electronic effects and synths instead of basic rock instrumentation. "I found that I was more drawn to the darkness and the driven synths and the syncopated beats," she told The New York Times last month. The elaborate production, though, does little to obscure her music's potent vulnerability. 212 465 6000, beacontheatre.com NATALIE WEINER CLAUDIA ACUNA at the Birdland Theater (through Feb. 9, 7 and 9:45 p.m.). Last week Acuna released "Turning Pages," her first album in a decade and her first to consist of mostly original tunes. It finds the Chilean born vocalist luxuriating in the breadth of her powers, whether covering Abbey Lincoln or unveiling her own compositions; she's equal parts taut rhythm, flowing largess (think Cassandra Wilson in the 1990s) and sky seeking mountain folk. Acuna performs songs from that album here with her band, featuring Juancho Herrera on guitar, Pablo Vergara on keyboard, Carlos Henderson on bass and Yayo Serka on drums. 212 581 3080, birdlandjazz.com ITAMAR BOROCHOV at Nublu 151 (Feb. 13, 9 p.m.). An Israeli born trumpeter, Borochov plays contemporary jazz that's easy to enjoy. His melodies are direct and often plangent, his harmonies and rhythms sturdy and repetitious. His latest album, "Blue Nights," draws together influences from the Middle East and North Africa with jazz academy thinking. He performs here, using his signature quarter tone trumpet (a custom instrument that allows him to play more fluidly in Middle Eastern modes), with Rob Clearfield on keyboard, Sam Weber on bass and Jay Sawyer on drums. The North African folk band Innov Gnawa, which was featured on one track on "Blue Nights," will appear as special guests. nublu.net DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER at 92nd Street Y (Feb. 14, 7:30 p.m.). A recently minted National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, Bridgewater is one of jazz's most beloved straight ahead veterans of the 1970s and '80s, with a style that's rooted in theater; she carries forth the storytelling legacies of Dinah Washington and Nancy Wilson. Her most recent album, "Memphis," is a homage to the soul music of the city where she was born, but at this Valentine's Day concert joined by her typical backing trio of the pianist Carmen Staaf, the bassist Tabari Lake and the drummer Tyson Jackson expect a more standard serving of romantic jazz fare. 212 415 5500, 92y.org RUDRESH MAHANTHAPPA'S INDO PAK COALITION at the Miller Theater (Feb. 9, 8 p.m.). Mahanthappa, an alto saxophonist, has been working with his Indo Pak Coalition for long enough now that the group is starting to subtly outgrow the initial mission statement. They are no longer simply jazz improvisers combining musical traditions from across the Indian subcontinent. The trio which also includes the guitarist Rez Abbasi and the drummer and tabla player Dan Weiss has the restless, unboxable rapport of musicians broadly exploring musical sounds and strategies, with Indian classical as its launchpad. 212 854 7799, millertheatre.com THUNDERCAT at the Blue Note (Feb. 12 14, 8 and 10:30 p.m.; through Feb. 17). Thundercat, a six string electric bass wunderkind and merry prankster, might be the most hopelessly enjoyable artist currently making music in jazz's crossover territory. He will do a six night run in the coming week, welcoming a range of unannounced special guests throughout. Expect wry, hilarious non sequiturs muttered in between songs like "Them Changes" and "Show You the Way" that will be full of elastic funk grooves and blistering bass solos. Thundercat, whose birth name is Stephen Bruner, has been improving his vocal chops recently; his singing still has an unpretentious, conversational allure, but now there's more body and breath behind it. 212 475 8592, bluenote.net WING WALKER ORCHESTRA AND BRIAN KROCK'S LIDDLE at Threes Brewing Gowanus (Feb. 12, 8 p.m.). Led by the young multi reedist Drew Williams, the Wing Walker Orchestra is about to release a remarkable debut album, "Hazel." The music stays tightly woven, even as Williams switches up the grooves and harmonic palettes constantly; there's almost always a sharp, biting cadence coming from some part of the band (though not necessarily the rhythm section). The group shares this bill with Liddle, a combo fronted by the alto saxophonist Brian Krock, playing music that draws in equal measure from Charlie Parker, Anthony Braxton and Battles putting checkered rock rhythms underneath pelting, hard edge melodies. 718 522 2110, threesbrewing.com GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
Back we go to Bach. Musicians everywhere seem to be turning to his music as the soundtrack of despair and hope, for both private solace and public streams. One such artist is the cellist Alisa Weilerstein, whose 36DaysOfBach project has her streaming a daily live performance on social media of one movement of the six cello suites often following the music by chatting with those tuning in. And two weeks ago, Pentatone released Ms. Weilerstein's richly emotive studio recording of the suites, made in Berlin last year. Listen to the Fourth Suite's Prelude, from the studio ... We talked about the Bach suites in an interview almost exactly three years ago, and back then recording them was not on your mind. Why did you decide to? That was the first season that I was doing all six suites in one go in concert, so I was living with them in a very different way, and thinking about them in a very different way. Having them flow into one another, chronologically, gave me a better perspective on them. I thought I would only record them when I was very old, and hopefully a bit wiser than I am now. Then I thought, I'm at an interesting point of my life I have a young child so I wanted to document this moment. You're far from the only the artist turning to Bach at the moment. Why is he still such a touchstone? I think each person really listens to it with a personal take on it. I suppose that can be applied to any music, but there's something about Bach which is so timeless, and so sublime, and so human, that it's universally touching. There are other composers, sometimes, who I am much more in the mood to hear, and he's certainly not the only composer who can give solace, but there's something else about his music, which can really reach into a very direct place, into a much calmer space of mind not to say that it's escapist, although it has that element, but it can make one think very deeply, and very clearly. The Fifth Suite Prelude, two ways. So how has being cooped up at home changed your understanding of this music? One of the things that was stopping me from recording the Bach was that I worshiped this music so much, and wanted to do so well by it but, at the same time, I'm going to be studying this music all my life and I'm never going to be able to do justice to it. That feeling never leaves anybody, but it has retreated. Right now all I really want to do is give. I know it sounds really cheesy, but that's honestly how it feels to be doing it. I just want to have a kind of outpouring of music, of thoughts, and everything else. That forces me to be completely direct with it. What does that sound like in the pandemic recordings, compared to the studio one? Certain dynamic choices have happened spontaneously. Some tempos are different; the sarabandes might be slightly slower now than they were. Everyone is having a different relationship with time now: The world has basically stopped, and we are forced to reassess what's important and how we experience how we are perceiving literally everything. So how can it not extend to music making? You picked a few examples of where the difference between your studio recordings and your pandemic videos might be audible, one of which is the Prelude to the Suite No. 4. Again, it's about timing and dynamics, a different emphasis. It's funny, I used to always wait for the really dramatic second half, because the first half of the movement floats around E flat major, gives different permutations of it. But it's a different appreciation of it now. I am really relaxing into it. I had always thought of this prelude as a very regal, very intense movement, which it is, but there is another element breathing differently, enjoying it more. The Fifth Suite Sarabande, two ways. The other two examples come from the Fifth Suite, the Prelude and the Sarabande. This is already such sad, painful music, cast in C minor, but the temptation must be to pour even more emotion into it. You know, I thought about that, but in a way, it's kind of the opposite. We've all had tragedy in our lives; I don't know a single person who hasn't. But to be living in a moment which is so uncertain, having this collective experience, you think of it less in a personal way, and more in a universal sense. So I think that made it less indulgent than before; of course I always try not to make it indulgent, but it happened more easily. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Music |
DUBLIN Ireland was a hub for clockmakers in the 18th century, a fact often forgotten in the current industry focus on technological innovation and high end collaborations. Also, the country's earliest records of watchmakers were destroyed in the early 1920s during the conflict that surrounded the creation of Northern Ireland, so details are elusive. (The 1901 census showed 690 watchmakers and 36 clockmakers in Dublin alone.) "It's basically detective work," said Kevin Chellar, a horologist and proprietor of Timepiece Antique Clocks here. He has spent three decades finding and restoring antique Irish clocks and researching their makers. Fittingly, his small, crowded shop is in the former clockmakers' quarter between the cathedrals of St. Patrick and Christ Church, in the old Viking settlement area of Wood Quay. Such clocks are rare he now has three, the first time he has had so many at once so they account for only about 10 percent of Mr. Chellar's business, which primarily focuses on British and European clocks. But, he added, the Irish clocks "elevate the status of the shop." The third is a grandfather clock from 1725 that Mr. Chellar calls "an absolute miracle" even though it will take him two or three weeks of full time work to restore it. Mr. Chellar is a 1978 graduate of the Irish Swiss Institute of Horology, which closed in 2004, and he repaired clocks and watches for many jewelers before establishing his business in 1986. It was 10 years later that he began to find enough Irish clocks to start selling them. The grandfather clock, which Mr. Chellar recently bought from the widow of a Dublin collector, was made by Joseph Booth, whom he described as one of Dublin's master clockmakers. It has "J Booth Dublin" engraved beneath the Roman numerals on the chapter ring, the circular feature around the edge of the brass clock face. And its case was made of walnut. "Walnut lasted 'til 1730 and then was superseded by mahogany," Mr. Chellar said, explaining that the hardwood from the Americas was more resistant to pests like the woodworm that can destroy walnut. "The walnut veneers on the door are wafer thin," he said, pointing to the clock case. "They're set in pine. It's nearly three centuries old and there's no warp at all." Also, he added, the clock has its original feet, the first time he has seen that on a grandfather clock of the period. "It might seem mundane to most but to us it's mind blowing!" he said. In 2005, Mr. Chellar sold another Irish made walnut grandfather clock for 80,000 euros, the equivalent of 94,125 today. But prices have declined, he said, and the Booth clock is listed at EUR35,000, which includes its restoration. The Irish clockmaking industry really began to prosper, Mr. Chellar said, after King William III of England had a decisive victory over the deposed King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. And he believes that Booth, originally from northern England, was one of William's soldiers who accepted land in Ireland in lieu of pay. "There was a huge influx of migrants," Mr. Chellar said, "Hugenots, Danes, Austrians, Scots, all bringing their own ideas" on clockmaking as well as the secondary skills it requires, such as carving, engraving and goldwork. Clocks became status symbols and, Mr. Chellar noted, Irish clocks of the era are taller and have larger faces and hands than their British counterparts. The Booth clock, for example, is eight feet tall and typical of the size of grandfather clocks at the time. "I think it was a nouveau riche thing," he said, "bigger was better. Simple as that." Despite the success of the early clock makers, Mr. Chellar said he has located only a few dozen in the last 20 years. He said that he and his wife, Carol, "had to dig in every hole around the world New York, Houston, Paris, Stockholm," he said, scouring antique fairs and studying auction catalogs to find good pieces. His latest find was the 1730 bracket clock, which came from a small art auction in Britain. He has priced it at EUR22,000. It was signed Johnson of Gallway, the Irish port now known as Galway, and has a 12 inch mahogany case and a pull repeat facility that sounds hours and quarter hours on a descending scale of five bells. The third clock now in the shop was made by Samuel Lahee of County Wexford in 1760. Mr. Chellar got it from a collector's estate. Mr. Chellar said that all three clocks really belonged in an Irish museum but that neither the government nor the museums had the money to buy them. Colman Curran, one of the country's best known collectors of Irish clocks and a frequent customer of Mr. Chellar's, is working with the city government of Waterford and the county council to open what he said would be Ireland's first clock museum. The site in the city's museum quarter is being prepared for construction, fund raising is continuing and Mr. Curran hopes that the Irish Museum of Time will open toward the end of 2018. Mr. Curran and his wife, Elizabeth Clooney, intend to give the museum about 20 grandfather clocks, 20 bracket clocks, 20 wall clocks and 100 pocket watches, all Irish antiques and many bought from Mr. Chellar over the years. (Since retiring from his law practice, Mr. Curran has been spending two days a week with Mr. Chellar, learning to restore clocks.) The museum "is not going to be a dusty collection of clocks in a room," Mr. Curran said. "It's going to be interactive and exciting, exploring the stories and science of time." Mr. Curran said the three clocks now in Mr. Chellar's shop would "take pride of place in any Irish museum; they are super, super pieces." But the clocks still could end up abroad. (In August alone, Mr. Chellar said, he sold five clocks to American tourists who happened to walk into the shop.) He admitted, however, that he was in no rush to sell the pieces: "I have to tell myself, you are a dealer, you are not a collector!" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
A. My mom used to rent us movies of musicals when we were little, but at one point it was "Nutcracker." I watched it and told her: I want to do that. My first role with City Ballet was a mouse in the ballet. It took quite a long time for you to get solo roles. Was that frustrating? The real frustration was that I was continually injured in the first years. First one sprained ankle, then the other, a herniated disc, lots of things. Every time I was starting to get somewhere, I'd get injured again. How did you feel when you were cast in "Davidsbundlertanze"? I thought I'd be lucky to get these roles seven to 10 years from now. When I was learning "Davidsbundlertanze," I realized that I wasn't going to be able to bring the kind of maturity and experience to it that dancers like Charles Askegard or Adam Luders could bring. It is so dramatic and heartfelt, and it has to come from a real place. I can only bring what I have to it. Were you surprised when Peter Martins promoted you midway through the season? Yes. It was a pretty awesome moment. After our bows, Peter turned to Sara and said: "Congratulate him. I've just promoted him!" Do you go to other kinds of live performance? I try to see as much contemporary dance as I can, and I've been making an effort to get to more plays. One summer I did a Gaga workshop with Batsheva dancers. It's a way of moving that is personal and not restrictive. I was feeling down about my dancing, and it really helped. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Dance |
SEATTLE Jeff Wilke, the chief executive of Amazon's vast consumer business, said on Friday that he planned to retire early next year after more than two decades with the company, in a rare changing of the guard at the top of the e commerce giant. Mr. Wilke, 53, has been one of two chiefs of specific businesses at Amazon who report to Jeff Bezos, the company's founder and chief executive. (The other is Andy Jassy, who leads Amazon's cloud computing division.) Mr. Wilke is the most senior executive to leave Amazon amid a wave of departures from Mr. Bezos' leadership team in recent years, with the men who built the company retiring or turning to other ventures. Dave Clark, 47, the senior vice president who has run Amazon's operations, including its logistics and supply chain, will take over Mr. Wilke's role. "So why leave? It's just time," Mr. Wilke wrote in an email to staff. He said he did not have another job lined up and had been "as happy with and proud of Amazon as ever." He added that he was ready to have "time to explore personal interests that have taken a back seat for over two decades." Mr. Wilke "is simply one of those people without whom Amazon would be completely unrecognizable," Mr. Bezos, 56, said in a separate email to the company. Amazon and Mr. Wilke did not have any comment beyond the emails. When Mr. Wilke was hired to run operations in 1999, Amazon had just expanded into five warehouses and had little operational expertise, said Dave Glick, a 20 year Amazon veteran who is now an executive at Flexe, an e commerce fulfillment start up. "Wilke came in with a steady hand, an emphasis on safety and on metrics and process, which allowed us to scale the business," Mr. Glick said. "When he took over retail, he brought the same level of focus on people, process and metrics, which allowed us to grow that business as well." In 2016, Mr. Bezos named Mr. Wilke chief executive of the consumer business, a new role. Under Mr. Wilke, Amazon's consumer business has turned into one of the most powerful forces in retail by acquiring the grocery chain Whole Foods, expanding its vast third party marketplace and turning an event known as Prime Day into a shopping holiday that rivals Christmas. In 2019, the consumer business pulled in 245 billion in revenue globally, compared with 124 billion in 2016. As Mr. Bezos increasingly stepped away from the day to day of running Amazon, Mr. Wilke took on a broad array of work. He flew to New York to meet with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to discuss building a second headquarters in Queens. He has also grappled with counterfeit products on its marketplace, delays in its drone delivery plans and growing antitrust scrutiny. Most recently, the coronavirus pandemic strained Amazon's operations, as consumer orders soared and Amazon struggled with the safety of its warehouse workers. At one point, Mr. Bezos called the period "the hardest time we've ever faced." Mr. Wilke is known for an aggressive and at times argumentative approach in meetings. He has helped shape a generation of leaders at Amazon, some of whom have stayed with the company while others have gone on to be executives at other major businesses. Amazon is based in Seattle, but Mr. Wilke has been living part time in Los Angeles for family reasons. He has made more than 200 million from Amazon, according to Equilar, which tracks executive compensation. Mr. Bezos' S team, the senior leadership team that runs the company, has seen other departures in the past few years, largely of men who spent the better part of their careers building Amazon. Last year, Jeff Blackburn, a senior vice president, went on a sabbatical and has not yet returned, and Steve Kessel, who ran Amazon's physical stores, retired. They, along with Mr. Wilke, all started at Amazon in the late 1990s, a critical time in the company's expansion. Mr. Clark has been ascendant in recent years as Amazon has invested billions of dollars in expanding its operations, building hundreds of warehouses as well as its own network of trucks and last mile delivery. He was widely seen as Mr. Wilke's successor as he took on more responsibility, including the Prime membership business, marketing and the physical store business, including Whole Foods. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Technology |
We'll probably never know exactly what sorts of documents were incinerated at China's Consulate in Houston in the days before the United States forced it to close on Friday, after accusing it of being a hub of espionage. We may also never know what caused this month's catastrophic fire aboard the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard, a massive amphibious assault ship that was being fitted out to double as a small aircraft carrier, in the port of San Diego. What we should know is that the two fires are actually one. We are racing toward a conflict with China we may be ill prepared to wage. The closure of the consulate comes on the heels of a quad of bellicose speeches from top administration officials, collectively amounting to a declaration of Cold War against China. Robert O'Brien, the national security adviser, painted China's leadership as unreconstructed Marxist Leninists. The F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, spoke of China's practice in the art of "malign foreign influence." Attorney General Bill Barr accused China of "economic blitzkrieg." And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hinted the free world may need a new version of NATO, this one aimed at Beijing instead of Moscow. Given that the source is Team Trump and the timing is an election year, it's tempting to dismiss the speeches' warnings as cynical, hypocritical, political and therefore wrong. Why complain about civil liberties in Hong Kong when we have goon squads in Portland? Why accuse China of trashing global norms when that's been Trump's ambition from the beginning? Why characterize Chinese President Xi Jinping as a linear ideological descendant of Joseph Stalin when, as we know from John Bolton, Trump was fulsomely praising him and soliciting his help for his re election bid? And why all of this now, when Trump needs enemies both foreign and domestic to rescue his flagging re election bid? But the problem with these questions is that however on point they are as criticisms of Trump they obscure two hard facts a Biden administration will also confront. The first is that, under Xi, China has become drastically more repressive at home, more aggressive abroad, and more shameless about both than at nearly any point since the death of Mao. This is not a matter of Beijing reacting badly to Trump (as the early Obama administration erroneously supposed that bad relations with Russia were a matter of Moscow reacting badly to George W. Bush). Some of China's biggest digital heists date to the Obama years including the 2015 hack of the Office of Personnel Management, which gave Beijing the background security files for nearly 22 million current or former U.S. government employees and their family members. China's outrageous and illegal claims to most of the South China Sea also predate Trump and will fester long after he's gone. What stands out now is just how brazen Beijing has become. Take one detail from Wray's speech: "We have now reached the point where the F.B.I. is opening a new China related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours," he said. In one case, a single scientist, Hongjin Tan, pleaded guilty to stealing an estimated 1 billion in trade secrets from an Oklahoma based energy company. Multiply that hundreds if not thousands of times over, and what you have is arguably the largest single theft of foreign property since Germany looted Europe in World War II. Whatever else one might say against the Trump administration, it isn't lying about China. But this brings us to the second blunt fact. U.S. power in East Asia is waning. Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Trans Pacific Partnership the single best hedge the U.S. had against Chinese economic dominance of the region may, in hindsight, prove to be his single worst policy mistake. He has tried to shake down both South Korea and Japan to pay more for basing U.S. forces: penny ante politics that only raise doubts about America's reliability as an ally. And then there's the degraded state of the U.S. Navy, epitomized by the fire on the Bonhomme Richard (itself the latest in a string of corruption, leadership, cost over run and competency scandals to bedevil the service). Trump came to office with grand plans to build a 355 ship Navy, up from the current 300. The Pentagon all but admits it has no hope of reaching that goal. Meanwhile, the Chinese Navy which isn't stretched around the world has 335 ships, a 55 percent increase in 15 years, If the U.S. and the People's Republic were to come to blows after some incident over some atoll in the South China Sea, are we confident we'd prevail? When (fingers crossed) Joe Biden is president, he needn't ask his cabinet members to deliver philippics against Beijing. But, as George Kennan once wrote about another regime, he must be prepared to confront China with "unalterable counter force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world." 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 |
At the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, things look much as they did a half century ago. The site is now home to the National Civil Rights Museum, a remarkable collection that includes a replica of a firebombed bus ridden by the Freedom Riders as they traveled through the South protesting segregation in 1961. Inside the museum the other day, a woman sat down beside me and wiped away tears. "I'm sorry," she said. "What gets me is, after all this time, look what's happening right now." Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina explained this in visceral terms when he announced his support for Joe Biden late last month, an endorsement that began with Mr. Clyburn, 79, talking about the first time he was arrested protesting for civil rights decades ago. "When I sat in jail that day, I wondered whether we were doing the right thing, but I was never fearful for the future," he said. "As I stand before you today I am fearful of the future of this country. I'm fearful for my daughters and their futures, and their children, and their children's futures." Mr. Clyburn said he was sure Mr. Biden was the right choice. "I know Joe. We know Joe. But most importantly, Joe knows us," he said. Three days later, Mr. Biden won a convincing victory in the South Carolina primary, launching him into his Super Tuesday triumph and the front runner status he enjoys today. Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." My friends in New York, many of them Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders supporters who see Mr. Biden as deeply uninspiring, were mystified. But after traveling through the South this past week, I began to understand. Through Southern eyes, this election is not about policy or personality. It's about something much darker. Not long ago, these Americans lived under violent, anti democratic governments. Now, many there say they see in President Trump and his supporters the same hostility and zeal for authoritarianism that marked life under Jim Crow. For those who lived through the trauma of racial terrorism and segregation, or grew up in its long shadow, this history haunts the campaign trail. And Mr. Trump has summoned old ghosts. "People are prideful of being racist again," said Bobby Caradine, 47, who is black and has lived in Memphis all his life. "It's right back out in the open." In Tennessee and Alabama, in Arkansas and Oklahoma and Mississippi, Democrats, black and white, told me they were united by a single, urgent goal: defeating Mr. Trump this November, with any candidate, and at any cost. "There's three things I want to happen," Angela Watson, a 60 year old black Democrat from Oklahoma City, told me at a campaign event there this week. "One, beat Trump. Two, beat Trump. And three, beat Trump." They were deeply skeptical that a democratic socialist like Mr. Sanders could unseat Mr. Trump. They liked Ms. Warren, but, burned by Hillary Clinton's loss, were worried that too many of their fellow Americans wouldn't vote for a woman. Joe Biden is no Barack Obama. But he was somebody they knew. "He was with Obama for all those years," Mr. Caradine said. "People are comfortable with him." Faced with the prospect of their children losing the basic rights they won over many generations, these voters, as the old Chicago political saw goes, don't want nobody that nobody sent. Mr. Biden understands this. "If the Democrats want a nominee who's a Democrat a lifelong Democrat! a proud Democrat! an Obama Biden Democrat! then join us!" he told voters in South Carolina in his victory speech. Despite enormous progress, poverty in this still largely rural region, for Southerners of every race, remains crushing. Confederate flags proudly paid for by the Sons of Confederate Veterans dot the highways. Michael Bloomberg's campaign office in Montgomery, Alabama faced a town square where human beings sold other human beings into slavery. In Memphis last week, steps from the campaign trail, hundreds gathered across town for the 68th annual Mid South Farm Gin Show. Inside a massive convention hall, white Southerners mingled amid the giant steel claws of farm equipment and cardboard cutouts of Donald Trump and Mike Pence. At one booth, vendors sold a shirt that read, "Make Cotton Great Again." "The past is never dead," as the Mississippi novelist William Faulkner wrote in "Requiem for a Nun." "It's not even past." Faulkner was on my mind when I picked up the keys to a rental car in Memphis, for the long drive to Selma, Ala. Along the way, I stopped for breakfast in Olive Branch, Miss., where I met a man named Dave Wright. His grandfather, Leonard Wright, was William Faulkner's physician. "Faulkner wrote about Granddaddy. Granddaddy didn't like what he said, but it was all true," Mr. Wright told me. He stopped there. 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 |
THE APOCALYPSE FACTORY Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age By Steve Olson From nuclear medicine to "nuke ing" your leftovers in the microwave, aspects of the atomic age still radiate out from every corner of our culture. Over the years, the phrase "Manhattan Project" itself has become synonymous with an all out, failure is not an option approach to what appears to be an insurmountable problem that needs to be solved immediately. We need a Manhattan Project for renewable energy. Breast cancer. Childhood obesity. And, most recently, a Covid 19 vaccine. Yet despite the ubiquity of this language, and the still present possibility of nuclear warfare, the story of the Manhattan Project is one that is rarely, if ever, widely shared. How to tell that story an unwieldy tale that continues to unfold to this very day is a question of perspective and vision. In "The Apocalypse Factory," Steve Olson offers readers another angle on this evolving global saga. In south central Washington State, outside a small rural town called Hanford, a top secret outpost was created that reshaped not only that sparsely populated region, but ultimately the world. Olson writes that it was growing up in nearby Othello, Wash., in the 1950s and '60s, that led him to contend with Hanford's history and write this book. It's a lucky bit of happenstance, since he doubts he would have otherwise turned his attention to this little known chapter of the Manhattan Project. While the majority of words dedicated to the nation's nuclear ambitions have thus far focused on the two other principal Manhattan Project sites Los Alamos, N.M., and Oak Ridge, Tenn. the Hanford nuclear reservation is, Olson argues, "the single most important site of the nuclear age." The first full scale nuclear reactor was at Hanford. The first ever nuclear test, detonated near Alamogordo, N.M. (the 75th anniversary of which was this past July 16), used plutonium fuel from Hanford, as did the last atomic bomb used in warfare, which devastated Nagasaki. In 1966, when Hanford's nuclear plant produced electricity, it was the largest power reactor in the world. Olson buttresses his argument for Hanford's significance with historic facts such as these, but also with personal anecdotes and present day insights. Those familiar with the history of the United States' nuclear program will recognize many names, locations and story twists: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Gen. Leslie Groves, Enrico Fermi, Leona Woods, Niels Bohr, Ernest Lawrence and others. Glenn Seaborg, the oft credited "discoverer" of plutonium (though Olson rightly points out that there are almost always several cooks in any scientist's kitchen lab), is given a fair amount of well deserved ink here. Of his actual discovery, Seaborg later told an Associated Press reporter, "I didn't think, 'My God, we've changed the history of the world.'" But of course he and his colleagues had. However, Olson's story does not halt at the patrolled gates of World War II Hanford. He illuminates Hanford's role in the world shaking history that has played out over decades, extending from that shrub steppe land of his corner of Washington to the desert of New Mexico, the skies above Japan and farther still. For readers coming fresh to the history, or diving more deeply into it for the first time, Olson provides enough back story of the key players to give a flavor of the disparate and sometimes clashing personalities that made the project tick. And though the book is perhaps not for the scientifically faint of heart, Olson is a crisp writer who brings clarity to complex subject matter. There is a lot of ground to cover: Cold War, arms race, the promises and perils of nuclear energy, and the legacy that accompanies all of it. Part of that legacy is cleanup for radioactive and run of the mill industrial sites alike. Years ago, 177 auditorium size underground tanks were built to house high level radioactive waste. With a life span of roughly 20 years, it was assumed a better solution for the waste problem would be devised before their time ran out. "More than three quarters of a century later," Olson writes, "the wastes continue to sit in their tanks beneath the desert sands." The Department of Energy estimates cleanup will cost between 300 billion and 600 billion. The scale, speed and secrecy surrounding the nuclear program remain remarkable today. From Hanford's selection through the building of the construction camp the largest ever assembled in the nation's history and into debates over how the bomb should or should not be used, we watch the World War II and Manhattan Project drama unfold, its characters hurtling toward the war's finale. Olson writes that after the war General Groves said President Truman "was like a boy on a toboggan." Momentum: Defined within a physics context, it is measured as a product of mass and velocity, used to quantify a body's motion. The mass of resources money, people, brainpower, materials and the velocity with which those resources came together represents a momentum virtually unparalleled since. Though the author could have provided the story greater intimacy by describing more of his own experience growing up in the area, the book still offers the personal insights of individuals whose lives were impacted, for good or ill, by the Hanford site. Olson includes not just those on the receiving end of accolades and Nobel Prizes, but individuals from more anonymous walks of life, to provide a relatable and often heartbreaking layer to the narrative. Scientists and ironworkers, machinists and millwrights, poets and farmers. We are in the cockpit with the pilots delivering a deadly payload, and in the hospital with a Japanese surgeon grappling with its aftermath. By training his lens on Hanford, Olson offers the biography of a town. It has experienced booms and hardship, changing tack amid the shifting winds of the nuclear age, a region that has seen the ebb and flow of farming and fishing, nuclear reactors and wineries. In December 2014, when President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, it included provisions establishing the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, a joint endeavor between the Department of Energy and the National Park Service to share, and ideally contextualize, the story of the nation's nuclear program. Watching the often fraught relationships at the intersection of science, government and industry in a time of crisis proves that it is eerily germane to our pandemic reality. Before moving forward and shaping our nuclear future, we must first seek to understand its past, to shine light into all of its dark corners. Olson scapegoats no one, but proffers uncomfortable truths and poses challenging if open ended questions: What if, at their 1986 meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had decided to dispose of their respective nuclear arsenals? What if some of the astronomical sums spent on the creation, maintenance and cleanup related to nuclear weapons had gone to health care or education? Olson employs "apocalypse" in the biblical sense, meaning a "revelation literally an uncovering about the future that is meant to provide hope in a time of uncertainty and fear." Though he does not always offer answers to the questions he poses, he does offer hope based on his faith in human brilliance, tenacity and ingenuity to meet our challenges the kind of traits and talents that made the Manhattan Project possible in the first place. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Books |
WASHINGTON Congressional Republicans criticized the Federal Reserve on Thursday for working to reduce unemployment and revive the housing market rather than maintaining a single minded focus on inflation. The Fed's chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, was sharply questioned by members of a House committee about the Fed's announcement last week that it planned to hold short term interest rates near zero until late 2014, a measure that the Fed described as necessary to support a faster pace of economic recovery. "I think this policy runs the great risk of fueling asset bubbles, destabilizing prices and eventually eroding the value of the dollar," said Representative Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the House Budget Committee. "The prospect of all three," Mr. Ryan said, "is adding to uncertainty and holding our economy back." Mr. Bernanke was calm and careful in his responses, but he did not back down. He told the committee that the economy, and the housing market in particular, would need help for years to come from the Fed and Congress. Mr. Bernanke repeated the Fed's assessment, released last week, that the pace of growth would increase modestly this year, but that the economy still faced significant challenges, including the depressed state of the housing market and the risk that problems in Europe would infect the rest of the world. In his testimony, Mr. Bernanke urged Congress in particular to confront "the urgent issue of fiscal sustainability" by enacting a plan to reduce the federal debt. Mr. Bernanke repeated his familiar caution that Congress should not cut spending or raise taxes too quickly, because doing so could undermine the economic recovery, but said that a credible plan to make such changes in the long term could spur growth by improving the confidence of businesses and consumers. The hearing was the latest opportunity for Republicans to vent their frustration with the Fed chairman, also a Republican, who in their view is undermining the nation's long term financial health in his efforts to spur a short term recovery. Congress has charged the Fed with two goals, maintaining price stability and maximizing employment; Republicans are concerned that the Fed's huge efforts to spur job growth will eventually result in unmanageable inflation. These concerns were heightened last week by the Fed's publication for the first time of a formal interpretation of its Congressional mandate. The Fed said that it would seek 2 percent annual inflation and try to limit unemployment as much as possible, and that sometimes one goal would be a priority over the other. "My interpretation is that the Fed is willing to accept higher levels of inflation than your preferred rate in order to chase your unemployment mandate," said Mr. Ryan. "Is that not what we should interpret out of this?" Mr. Bernanke responded that the Fed would "not actively seek" to raise inflation but if inflation and unemployment both rose above its targets, it could choose to reduce inflation more slowly in order to reduce unemployment more quickly. "We are not seeking higher inflation," Mr. Bernanke said. "We do not want higher inflation and we're not tolerating higher inflation." But Mr. Ryan pressed on, noting this was not a denial. "I don't know how else to interpret this that the result of this balanced approach is that higher than preferred inflation may be tolerated," he said. Democrats on the committee rushed to defend Mr. Bernanke, arguing that the Fed should be focused on unemployment because 24 million Americans cannot find full time work. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Economy |
Serena's Rivals Are Emboldened. But She Still Has the Fire and the Game. If age, as Serena Williams keeps saying, is just a number, then so is 24. That has been her clearly stated target since she returned to the game in 2018, after giving birth to her daughter, Olympia. She was one tournament victory short of it then, and she remains one short of it after her latest setback: a 1 6, 6 3, 6 3 loss to Victoria Azarenka in a jewel of a United States Open semifinal late Thursday night. But whether she ever matches or surpasses Margaret Court's record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles seems increasingly unimportant. She has achieved plenty, and inspired many, in the nearly four years since she won her 23rd at the 2017 Australian Open, when she was two months pregnant. Even Williams will eventually run out of runway. She turns 39 on Sept. 26 and intends to celebrate in Paris by playing the French Open, which has shifted from its usual May and June dates because of the coronavirus pandemic. But her new rivals, like Naomi Osaka, are improving, and her old rivals, like Azarenka, are emboldened. It is not a coincidence that nine of the 11 matches that Williams has played since the tour resumed last month have stretched to three sets, not an accident that she has won just one tournament since 2018 and is 0 4 in Grand Slam finals during that span, or that she failed to reach the final at this U.S. Open even with six of the top 10 players missing from the draw. "I think the chances get dimmer with each Slam that goes by, because of time and because, to me, she can't play the defense she needs to play anymore," said Pam Shriver, an ESPN analyst and former leading player. "That puts too much pressure on her offense." Her edge has diminished, even if her competitive fire has not. Her fight was unmistakably visible and audible in her last three matches at this strange, symbolic U.S. Open as she scrapped and screamed and alternated stretches of full power, full stretch brilliance with rough patches of off target, late to the ball frustration. It was so very hard to know what was coming even for her, it seemed. The old cues no longer apply, but it was still quite a sight to see her try and try. "I think it's amazing," Azarenka said. "There's no other thoughts: someone who is an amazing champion going for what she wants to do. All admiration from my side." Williams was full of the same for Azarenka, her friend and fellow working mother, who had never beaten her in 10 previous Grand Slam singles matches but who found a new calm and resolve this time. She was once No. 1, and a two time Australian Open champion, before off court problems intervened, including an extended custody dispute over her 3 year old son, Leo. When she lost to Serena's sister Venus Williams in the opening round of the WTA event in Lexington, Ky., it appeared that the game might have passed her by. She arrived in New York for the two tournament double having not won a singles match in 2020. But she has tapped into something transcendent in a hurry: winning the Western Southern Open, with Osaka withdrawing before the final, and now winning six straight matches in the U.S. Open, often in grand style. "She's had a lot of, I would say, downs in her career," Williams said. "She started on a lot of highs. I don't know how she stayed positive, to be honest, so that's a good lesson for all of us. No matter what, you just got to keep going. Hopefully she keeps living her dream." In her earlier years, Azarenka was so overwrought in competition that she would sometimes break into tears midmatch. But though she swore like a sailor at one point on Thursday as she failed to hold serve amid the one way traffic of the opening set, she found positive energy when she needed it and, also, peace when she needed it. Early in the second set, she was urging herself on and bouncing in place like she was ready to run to Manhattan if necessary. On changeovers, she closed her eyes, and she did the same when Williams took an injury timeout for an ailing left Achilles' tendon early in the third set. "Absolutely nothing," she said when asked what she was thinking. "That's my goal." Williams's level did drop after her brilliant first set, but above all, Azarenka's level rose. She made more serves and returns and many fewer errors as she began to have the last word in fast twitch rally after fast twitch rally. When it came time to serve for the match at 5 3 in the third, she double faulted to make it 30 all. Demons galore could have surfaced after all her close losses to Williams. Instead, she smiled, exhaled and came up with a service winner and an ace to finish off the greatest player of the era. "I was young, my ego was way too big, and now it's a little smaller, and the results are coming," Azarenka said. But they filled the void together on Thursday, their grunts of effort, frustration and triumph reverberating under the closed roof, their shots pushing each other into the corners and deeper into their reserves. It was that kind of night: all about intensity and resilience. And in the end, there were three winners: Azarenka and Osaka, who will meet in the final on Saturday, and tennis itself. Osaka's three set victory over Jennifer Brady in the first semifinal was just as engrossing: full of clutch serves, controlled power and suspense. "I always said I was going to remember this year's U.S. Open until the day I died," said Shriver, who was a U.S. Open singles finalist as a 16 year old in 1978. "It was within inches of not happening so many times, and with what New York has been through, that they've been able to bring all these international athletes together has been a miraculous effort. We all want this so much to finish in a positive way and not another 2020 nightmare, and today and tonight was crazy great." Williams helped make it happen by committing to the tournament early, when it was still uncertain that it would take place. Her star power gave it credibility and its central narrative. But Osaka and Azarenka will carry the load the rest of the way. They deserve it, just as Williams deserves to chase whatever she wants to chase on the courts of the world, for as long as her body and spirit are willing. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Sports |
Latest Project: Last October, Ms. Kirchhoff moved to Los Angeles from New York, and now has a garage that she turned into a Disco Cubes lab. Her creations are served exclusively at Botanica, a restaurant, market and magazine office in Silver Lake. She has also created ice cubes for the Coveteur and Dirty Lemon, which markets itself as a detox beverage. Next Thing: To grow her niche market, Ms. Kirchhoff plans to use her photography and D.J. skills to create short online films about Disco Cubes. "My dream is to make a never ending spy film where all the pieces are connected," she said. She is also teaching herself about cocktails, with plans to recommend drinks for each cube. "I was recently in Asia, and they love corn. So I'm working on a corn infused ice cube that goes with a corn coconut cocktail," she said. Food Artist: Disco Cubes grew out of an earlier experiment called Drunk Crustaceans, in which Ms. Kirchhoff and a friend staged and photographed pieces of shellfish on mini Adirondack chairs, drinking mini bottles of Veuve Clicquot. The props were purchased at Tiny Doll House, a shop that sells dollhouse size furniture and accessories on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Style |
Started by freeskier Alison Gannett, Rippin Chix has a laid back, somewhat irreverent approach and offers camps in a number of western locations: Whitewater Ski Resort in British Columbia; Crystal Mountain Ski Resort, in Washington; Alta Ski Area, in Utah; and Silverton Mountain in Colorado. Most clinics require a solid technical baseline and the January trip to demanding Silverton ( 729 for two days, including lift pass) is best for advanced/expert skiers in top physical shape. Rippin Chix is also among the few outfits to offer a catskiing experience, north of Whistler ( 1,750, including lodging and rentals). Now in its 37th season, Telluride's annual women's week is clearly doing something right. It's also one of the few camps to offer a longer stay with a five day package ( 1,525/ 1,775 with lift tickets) in addition to three day options ( 625/ 775 with lift tickets). A big perk when it comes to the socializing element of a camp: Telluride is one of the prettiest American ski towns. An Olympic gold medalist and world champion in moguls, Donna Weinbrecht has long been leading women's clinics at Killington an established racing hot spot on the East Coast. This season she's running a pair of two days camps that start at 435, including lift tickets. (Ms. Weinbrecht also offers a coed moguls camp so make sure you book the right one.) | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Travel |
Lisa Valentino, the head of ad sales for Conde Nast, at Digital Content NewFronts last week. She urged the audience to "take a look at the results when Conde Nast tells your story." Peter Naylor, head of advertising sales at Hulu, stood on a stage before a roomful of advertising executives who were there to see what the popular streaming service had in store for the year. After trumpeting Hulu's new interactive ads, Mr. Naylor made another pitch. "We offer you the opportunity to become part of the creative process with us," he said. "Goose Island IPA has signed on to sponsor our hit series 'Casual' and integrate into the show," Mr. Naylor said. And in the current season of "The Mindy Project," he added, "not only does Mindy fall in love with her new Microsoft Surface Book, but she also gets to escape the city in her newly designed Lexus RX." This kind of advertising through product placement is certainly not new. But Mr. Naylor's announcement made during last week's Digital Content NewFronts, an annual sales event where companies like Hulu compete for digital advertising dollars underscored a broader question running through the advertising industry: What exactly constitutes an ad these days? For decades, 30 second television commercials were the gold standard, and as online video proliferated, many digital ads were essentially repurposed from TV. But in the last several years, advertisers have become more sophisticated, creating digital ads that were divorced from traditional campaigns and were better suited to the many platforms that have become available, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat. Now, online ads interrupt nearly everything. This explosion of online ads, however, has led to the rising use of ad blockers and turned "advertising" into something of a dirty word. So advertisers and publishers are now looking for ways to make online ads less like ads. Many in the industry are even changing the way they talk about ads. During the NewFronts, Hulu and many other companies, often using a rhetorical sleight of hand, put forth the idea that ads are the products of symbiotic relationships, rather than frustrating invaders. Jennifer L. Wong, president of digital for Time Inc., told advertisers the company was "helping brands develop original content" and added, "Working with us is easy." Lisa Valentino, head of ad sales for Conde Nast, urged the audience to "take a look at the results when Conde Nast tells your story." Ze Frank, president of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, said the company worked "with brands and agencies to develop original content." Many companies ran flashy videos that showcased examples of these partnerships, much like ad agencies pitching clients. BuzzFeed, for instance, promoted its Tasty channel as a successful example of how it could work with brands like Oster, which makes grills and other appliances. Publishers are "no longer content to be the place where ads go," said Ben Winkler, chief investment officer for the agency OMD United States. "What we're hearing at this NewFronts more than ever is this can be a two way exchange." The rhetorical gymnastics, however, also signal a deeper trend in the ad business. As companies seek to remove clutter from their sites while also bolstering their ad revenue, many are turning to so called branded content, a widely used but vague industry term that generally means ads that look more like things people actually want to read or watch. Many publishers, including Vice and The New York Times, have formed what are essentially internal agencies that create ads for brands. And many already boast of success, or at least the promise of it. "We believe branded content and native solutions is a large scale opportunity for Time Inc.," Joseph A. Ripp, chief executive of Time Inc., said on an earnings call last week. "We are increasingly hearing from C.M.O.s that they want to speak to their customers in the same way that Time Inc. talks to its audiences," he added in a reference to chief marketing officers. Branded content is not the only technique advertisers are trying. They are also creating emojis, posting on Twitter, creating Instagram videos and dabbling in virtual reality platforms. On the traditional advertising side, some networks are showing fewer commercials and offering advertisers the opportunity to sponsor programming. NBC, for example, announced last month that it was planning to cut about 30 percent of the ads from episodes of "Saturday Night Live" next season and allow advertisers to create original segments. Turner, which is part of Time Warner, and Viacom, which owns MTV and Comedy Central, have also said they plan to reduce the amount of commercials on their cable networks. Underpinning all of this rethinking are big changes in how people are consuming media and in how advertisers are allocating their money. Consumption habits have become increasingly fragmented, with more people watching programming, including television shows and live sports, on different online platforms. As a result, traditional television, with its 30 second commercials, is losing its commanding share of advertising dollars. Digital media is expected to pass TV as the biggest advertising category in the United States this year, with roughly 68 billion in ad sales compared with 66 billion for TV, according to the Interpublic Group's Magna Global. With online ad spending growing, finding ways to stand out among the onslaught of other online ads has become more important for advertisers. And therein lies a possible conundrum: Advertisers want their ads to look less like ads even as they are fighting harder for attention. As Caty Burgess, senior vice president for media strategies at the CW television network, said, "Is the question, 'What is an ad?' or 'What isn't an ad?'" | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Media |
Logan Flatte, far right among the models on the podium, during the CWST presentation in February. Flatte fainted during the presentation, which can happen often when models must stand for long periods of time. At the New York Fashion Week: Men's shows last February, more than a dozen male models gathered in a building in the West Village for a presentation of the California based line CWST. The label's designers, Joe Sadler and Derek Buse, had been inspired by the Pacific Northwest and grunge rock. The models stood on high podiums, dressed in multilayers of wool and shearling, including beanies, with hot lights shining on them for over an hour. For one young model named Logan Flatte, it was too much. As Mr. Sadler was showing the fall collection to an important buyer from Saks Fifth Avenue, Mr. Flatte tried to get the designer's attention before succumbing and collapsing like felled timber. "He fell into my arms I had to catch him," Mr. Sadler said afterward, surprised and concerned. "Sorry, man. I had tunnel vision," a woozy Mr. Flatte explained once he had been spirited to a chair in the back of the room and given a bottle of water. Though fainting happens with some regularity at fashion shows, and will likely happen again this week during New York Fashion Week: Men's, each time it shocks. These are healthy young men and women, in their cardiac and respiratory prime, hired specifically for their freakish physical gifts. What gives? "You think it's an easy job to just wear the clothes," said Devin Carlson, creative director of the men's wear label Chapter. "It's actually a pretty crazy thing to ask somebody to stand in a certain position for an hour and not move." Mr. Carlson was referring to standing presentations like the CWST show, where fainting occurs more often than at runway shows, perhaps for good reason. At presentations, models are asked to be living mannequins, posing under bright display lights for one to two hours without a break. Summer shows can be physically brutal with the heat and humidity (the weather calls for temperatures in the mid 80s this week), but so can shows that take place in February, when the models, wearing clothes for the next fall season, may be dressed indoors like they're outside on a ski mountain. Then there's the stress of the buyers and editors gawking at them, and the flash of cameras in their eyes. "We had one model pass out within five minutes of us starting," Mr. Carlson said of a presentation a few seasons back. "She got wobbly and passed out, and some dressers caught her before she hit the ground." Though presentations are a cost effective and increasingly common way for designers to show editors their clothes, many models dislike and even dread them, said Drew Linehan, who produces, casts and styles fashion shows. Mr. Linehan remembered one men's wear presentation in New York a few seasons back in which models were on a rotating turntable, wearing heavy wool coats and cashmeres. The concept didn't go over well, he said: "After the show, a very well known model, the nicest guy, said to me, 'I just want you to know I'm a model, not a rotisserie chicken.'" But for all the rigors of the job, many say it's what happens outside of the shows that leads to wooziness: staying out late clubbing the night before, spending the morning rushing from appointment to appointment, forgetting to eat or hydrate. Teenagers and early 20 somethings living on their own in a big city aren't the best at caring for themselves. It's become customary before shows and presentation for models to receive a pep talk on basic human functions. "Right before a show I say, 'Make sure you go to the bathroom, drink some water,'" said Philip Gomez, a freelance stylist and art director. "I make it clear: If you're feeling the slightest illness, please step off. Because the worst that can happen is a model faints in front of the editors or photographers." For his part, Mr. Flatte explained that he had been running around all morning and had done another show earlier that day and was feeling stretched thin. "A lot of us don't get to eat much," he said. Mr. Sadler and Mr. Buse, the CWST designers, were nothing but sympathetic. "Are you O.K.? Are you hydrated?" Mr. Buse asked, during one of the many times he came back to check on the model. | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
Credit...Nadine Ijewere for The New York Times; Styled by Nathan Klein LONDON The most shocking thing about Eric Underwood, the American born star of the Royal Ballet in London, is not that he has a potty mouth or a dragon tattoo shooting out of his navel. It is not that he has been photographed frontally nude by David Bailey for a fashion magazine or by Mario Testino mostly unclothed with Kate Moss for Italian Vogue. It is not that, unlike the dance drones of the "Black Swan" cinematic cliche, he enjoys an evening at the Box, a raunchy cabaret here, and has been known to gorge on burgers and fries now and then. All of these are established elements of the 33 year old Mr. Underwood's reputation as an immensely likable if impious outlier in the rigid world of classical ballet. The shocking thing about him is what he does at home. So fixated is he, in fact, that he spent a recent morning shopping for shrubs at the Covent Garden Market to build a privacy screen shielding his living room window from a railway line that runs parallel to his house. "Right now people now can look in at this crazy man yelling at his TV," he said. We were seated in a leather banquette in the bar of the Colony Grill Room at the Beaumont Hotel in the Mayfair district of London. Both the bar and the hotel are theatrical simulacra of a glamorous Art Deco watering hole and hostelry. They were conjured by the celebrated London restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King on a site once occupied by a parking garage. The Beaumont has been one of Mr. Underwood's favorite places ever since he spent a night there, in a suite called "Room" designed by the British sculptor Antony Gormley. "I didn't know anything about ballet, but I could already dance," Mr. Underwood said. The assertion seems needlessly boastful unless you consider how central it is to Mr. Underwood's mission to normalize and demystify his chosen profession. The technical barriers to entry in classical dance are stringent enough to discourage many potential talents from trying. And yet more than mere technique, dance artistry is created from the sum of life experiences, he said. In his case, that experience notably includes Friday nights spent at home in suburban Maryland, where his mother, a secretary, used to push the furniture against the walls so that she and her three children could dance to Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass and Marvin Gaye. It was largely a happy childhood, Mr. Underwood added. While many accounts of his upbringing have emphasized the hackneyed narrative of escape from the rampant violence and gun crime of a poor neighborhood near the nation's capital, that is not altogether how he remembers it. "Sure, there were gangs at school and there was gunfire, but we were loved and appreciated at home," he said. "My mother brought us up with that American attitude of 'You can do anything you want if you work hard enough.' She had this saying: 'It's just an obstacle. Get over it.'" His ascent through the ranks of the classical ballet world, though hardly without obstacles, would be the envy of most in Mr. Underwood's profession: Early in his teenage training with the ballet teacher Barbara Marks at Suitland High School Center for Visual and Performing Arts in Maryland, he was awarded a Philip Morris Foundation scholarship to study at the School of American Ballet in New York. Graduating into the company of the Dance Theater of Harlem, he was promoted at the end of his first season to soloist, and joined American Ballet Theater in 2003. Offered a spot as first artist at the Royal Ballet three years later, he relocated to London, and was quickly elevated to soloist, becoming a favorite of choreographers like Christopher Wheeldon and Wayne McGregor. "I don't want people to think I'm not grateful," Mr. Underwood said, "but I always had the belief that it will happen because I will make it happen." If there is a consistent critical through line in appraisals of Mr. Underwood's work, it is his unbridled joy of movement. "The best times in my dance life are when you are simply witnessing me dancing, rather than me performing for you," Mr. Underwood said. He is an easygoing firebrand who tends to flout convention, a performer magnetic in equal measure to choreographers and the fashion flock, and one whose rise to the rank of soloist has upended a number of stereotypes, not all of them about race. Likening himself at his best to the passionate and un self consciously expressive ballroom children battling for runway supremacy at obscure vogueing contests or the tango or waltz aficionados whose passion for anachronistic dance styles has gone mainstream thanks to shows like "Strictly Come Dancing," he said, "I'm ready for my next phase." That phase, as Mr. Underwood explained, involves his goal of being the host of a dance show much like the ones he watches at home, a forum for young people who may have never considered that the elitist world of ballet might give them a chance. "I never wanted to be the 'black' dancer," Mr. Underwood said. "I wanted to be a great dancer. The challenge was that I was not seeing anyone who looked like me." Even early in his professional career, he said, something became clear to him: "If I was not going to take Nureyev's path or Baryshnikov's path, I was going to have to find a path of my own." | 0 | N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification | Fashion & Style |
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