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music This little bit of rubber that looks almost like a new toy is a robot. It's so small, just a little bit over a tenth of an inch, that it could easily move around inside your body. And it's soft, no sharp edges. What's really impressive, though, is not how small it is, but all the different ways it can move. It crawls. It walks. It rolls. It jumps. It swims. It even climbs out of the pool. The scientists in Germany who worked on the robot were inspired by the movements of living creatures, like caterpillars and jellyfish. The robots are filled with magnetic particles that allow the scientists to bend or manipulate them at will. "When we apply a magnetic field, the elastic sheath changes its shape to anything that we want." Human tests are yet to come. But the robots are intended for medical use. And to do that, they need to do more than just move. The robot can grab an object. Or a drug could be added to a built in pocket, then a shape change would trigger release. The only thing it doesn't have yet is a name. "When I was presenting this first finding, a few of the audience came to me and said, 'This looks like, real like a Gumby.'" What would you call a little wormy, Gumby like thing that's squirming around your body, in a good way? Gumbo? Gambino? Or my favorite, My Little Worm Aide. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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Plenty of historic office buildings have been converted to residential use in recent years especially in Lower Manhattan, where some of the oldest commercial structures in New York stand. The latest building to undergo such a transformation is the Clock Tower Building, which is now being called 108 Leonard. Completed in 1898 as the headquarters of the New York Life Insurance Company, the 16 story building occupies an entire city block with its grandest portion, fronting on Broadway, designed by McKim, Mead White the starchitects of their day. The white marble facade is lavished with lion heads, balustrades and other flourishes drawn from Italian Renaissance palazzos, and the whole thing is topped by a three story pavilion with a mechanical timepiece that gave the structure its nickname. "The building is a significant, massive work of art," said John H. Beyer, a founding partner of the architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle, which has worked on restoring several McKim, Mead White structures. His practice has been involved in the restoration and renovation of 108 Leonard, which will yield more than 160 condos and a raft of amenities, from an underground motor court to a rooftop Zen garden. Not that the process has been easy. After New York Life moved to Madison Square in the late 1920s, the City of New York acquired the building, also known as 346 Broadway, to house courts and government agencies. By the time a partnership involving developers Elad Group and the Peebles Corporation bought the building in 2013 for 145 million, it had been declared a national and city landmark. New York City's Landmark Preservation Commission extended landmark status to 10 distinct portions of the interior, including the president's suite on the fourth floor, with its nearly 500 square foot anteroom paneled in gray veined marble. In its reimagining of most of the interior for residential use, Beyer Blinder Belle decided to relocate the anteroom. With the blessing of the landmarks commission, the developers had the room dismantled and the pieces sent off site for refurbishment. They will be returned to the building and fitted back together but on the ground level, where the space will be "a library/working area /entertaining area," said Samantha Sax, chief marketing and design officer for Elad. How does Broadway rebound? Join us virtually as we visit the now bustling theaters to find out. Go inside rehearsal of the Tony Award winning "Hadestown," enjoy "Girl From the North Country" songs and more. Under city law, an interior landmark is supposed to be open or accessible to the general public regularly. But the ante room and some other interior landmark spaces will only be open to residents. The Clock Tower in particular has been a sticking point for the developers, because they have sought to turn it, with its landmark mechanical works, into a condo unit. Their plan would involve electrifying the iconic four sided timepiece which was rewound weekly by a small, dedicated group of clock aficionados after the clock was restored in 1980 so no one need intrude on what would be a private home. While the Landmarks Preservation Commission supports the plan, opponents to the clock tower conversion sued and won a 2016 court ruling that said the mechanical works must be kept in their original condition. The city's law department has appealed on behalf of the landmarks commission, which has also agreed to let the developers turn the rest of the elaborately paneled president's suite into a private apartment. Meanwhile, work continues. The exterior restoration firm HLZA used nylon brushes to scrub the facade of the building, which extends east to Lafayette Street, south to Catherine Lane, and north to Leonard Street, where the building's main entrance will be. They replaced damaged portions of the roof parapet, repaired scars left after old metal fire escapes were removed (in favor of new code compliant staircase cores) and restored the fierce looking 7,000 pound eagles that perch on the roof. On the floors above, space is being divided into apartments with ceiling heights that far exceed the norm. On most floors they range from over nine and a half feet to over 14 feet, and Jeffrey Beers International, which is in charge of interior design, is adding tray ceilings with cove lighting in nearly all units, which is sure to make them look even higher. In the most luxurious apartments, on the top three floors, the ceilings can be up to 15 feet, and most units have terraces. Sales began in February, and buyers should be able to begin moving in the spring of 2019, according to Ms. Sax. Units range from 1.435 million for a one bedroom to over 20 million for a 5 bedroom, 6 bath triplex penthouse and a chance to own a piece of New York history.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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WHAT IS IT? A teenage daydream disguised as a sober Mercedes sedan. HOW MUCH? Base price 88,325; 101,195 as tested, including 1,750 Night View Assist, 1,070 Panorama sunroof, 4,900 premium package, 2,900 driver assistance package (adaptive cruise control, automatic pre collision braking, lane and blind spot monitors). WHAT MAKES IT RUN? A hand assembled 518 horsepower V 8 that probably costs more than some new cars; 7 speed paddle shifted automatic transmission. IS IT THIRSTY? The E63 returned 9.5 m.p.g. when driven hard, but saying that the Benz burns 1 in gas every three or four miles seems much scarier. IF the E63 AMG sounds expensive and it is, with as delivered prices topping 100,000 think about what it costs Mercedes Benz. This 518 horsepower supersedan is exactly the kind of charming reprobate that has saddled Mercedes with nearly 300 million in federal fines since 1985 for not achieving federal fuel economy (CAFE) standards. E63 buyers also get smacked with a 1,700 gas guzzler tax. Yet with the feds raising the fuel economy bar to roughly 35 miles per gallon by 2016, the practice of buying federal indulgences for the sins of excessive consumption a sort of cap and trade for cars may be ending. Mercedes, the chief offender, is among the luxury automakers that have vowed to mend their ways; its 2008 fine of 6.8 million was down sharply from a record 30.3 million for 2006. As with buyers of other speed centric brands, fans of the brand's AMG performance division will need to wrap their brains around scaled down en gines and new technologies, from hybrids to a coming electric version of the fanciful SLS AMG gullwing sports car. But that's for tomorrow. The party starts with a hand built, 6.2 liter V 8 and 7 speed MCT transmission. This terrific transmission replaces a conventional torque converter with a wet clutch pack. The transmission features four shift modes from "comfort" to a computerized "race start" program that catapults the Mercedes from a stop to 60 m.p.h. in 4.3 seconds. Pay an extra 8,950 for the sport package (which includes a firmer suspension, larger wheels and a limited slip differential) and Mercedes generously raises the electronically limited top speed to 186 m.p.h., from 155. So the Mercedes is fast. But what's different about the latest E63 is how electrifying it is to drive. Tired of fiddling behind the BMW M5 and recently, the 556 horsepower Cadillac CTS V sedan Mercedes took its recently redesigned E Class sedan and turned it into an M5 fighter with the heart (and lungs) of a hooligan. Almost nothing seems left from the donor car: the front axle is 2 inches wider, permitting wider tires and a surer grip up front. The steering rack is hydraulic, and 20 percent quicker than on the standard E with its electrically assisted steering. The suspension is literally twice as stiff. The brakes are the usual AMG fare, meaning they are strong enough to stop a convoy of runaway Toyotas. The result is the most well rounded AMG model yet, including rarities like the insanely priced ( 300,000) SL65 Black Series. Even Mercedes's notoriously constricting stability control has been set free; a competition mode allows extreme levels of tire burning and drifting before it intervenes, and the system can be shut off entirely. You can feel every nuance between the tires and the road, whether you're cranking the nearly perfect steering or feeling the transmission fire off 100 millisecond downshifts as you brake into turns, accompanied by hair raising backfires from the exhaust system. And at every moment, there's that sound. Gloriously, obnoxiously loud, it is the kind of V 8 rumble better suited to high school parking lots than to country clubs. A woman friend offered an unsolicited critique after five minutes in the car: "Can you shut that off?" It's a fair question to ask about this and other AMGs with the big block V 8, whose Marshall amp wail is the antithesis of the Strauss waltz soothing you expect from a Benz. And the answer is no. Buttons along the shift lever adjust the transmission, road sensing suspension and stability programs, and those settings can be stored on a macro "AMG" button. Inside the cabin, AMG gauges, trim and hip hugging sport seats convince you that Mercedes didn't blow all the extra money on the engine and other mechanicals. But while the Comand system's audio unit sounds as terrific as the engine, and its rotary knob controller is reasonably efficient, the Mercedes navigation system still ranks among the industry's worst. Zoom in or out to your hearts content and you'll be frustrated by how many roads and streets appear only as useless, unlabeled lines, like an empty tic tac toe board. Fortunately, most of my time in the Mercedes was spent with no particular destination in mind, other than g force nirvana. The spell was broken only by frequent stops for refueling. Mercedes says the remade E63 is 12 percent more efficient, as measured on the European driving cycle. My experience was the opposite. After an hourlong workout on the curves of Dutchess County in upstate New York that left me and the Mercedes happily sweating, I viewed the cumulative evidence of a five hour drive: 9.5 m.p.g. The federal rating is an optimistic 13 city, 20 highway. I managed to touch 14 m.p.g. when I drove politely. While E63 buyers may not lose sleep over consumption, cars like this already feel as if their time is running out. In fact, fans of this modern big block would be advised to get 'em while they're hot: starting with the S63 AMG sedan this fall, Mercedes will begin replacing its 6.2 liter monster in favor of a more fuel efficient 5.5 liter twin turbo V 8 that shuts down when the car is stopped.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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In a city that can treat its courtyards like walled off terrariums things to behold but not to touch 443 Greenwich Street is taking a different approach and creating a space to be enjoyed like a park. The 4,000 square foot doughnut hole in the middle of the new 53 unit condominium, a conversion of a nearly full block former factory in TriBeCa, will be lined with hundreds of windows and shutters with a 19th century aesthetic and will have seats shaded by sassafras trees. "It really is a Gramercy Park kind of thing, but downtown, without having to have keys," said Nathan Berman, the principal of Metro Loft Management, which is the developer of the project. Metro Loft has a long history of converting office buildings to rentals in the financial district, but this conversion will be its first condo. The hundreds of windows, many of them arched, were created to deliver light and fresh air to workers relegated to the back reaches of the red brick 1880s building, which was variously used by bookbinding, drug, glass, silver, toy and steel wool companies. Mr. Berman said the windows were in pretty bad shape by the time he bought the property in 2012. To get a go ahead from the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission for the project, which sits in the TriBeCa North Historic District, Mr. Berman had to agree to replace missing shutters, or repair what was there, he said, though only about 20 of the more than 600 shutters were salvageable. The shutter restoration is now done. Next, Metro Loft will replace the courtyard's windows with mahogany versions, as part of the 300 million project. Residents visiting the courtyard won't be the only ones who benefit. Most units in the condo, which will be made up largely of three bedrooms of 2,600 to 4,600 square feet, have been laid out so as to have exposures both on a street and on the leafy courtyard. Designed by the architectural firm CetraRuddy, the condos will have kitchens with two dishwashers, a 70 bottle wine fridge and drawers in which to warm cappuccino cups before coffee is poured in them. The baths will offer stand alone tubs against dark marble panels. Bidets will also be installed. Prices, which were recently approved, average 3,000 a square foot for the non penthouse units, or starting around 8 million for three bedrooms. The eight penthouses are 4,500 a square foot, with the priciest, a triplex, at 53 million. Sales, which are being handled by Cantor Pecorella, are to begin this month; the building will open in 2016. In terms of new developments, the prices at 443 Greenwich can seem slightly low for TriBeCa; the average price per square foot for new condos was 3,500 in early September, according to Streeteasy.com. But these figures were skewed somewhat, brokers say, by 30 Park Place, a high end hotel condominium designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects that accounted for about half the listings. Indeed, a three bedroom there, the priciest, was 13.5 million, or about 4,300 a square foot. At the same time, Reade Chambers, an 18 unit condo at 71 Reade Street, has averaged 1,800 a square foot for non penthouse units, and the Sterling Mason, a 32 unit hybrid of a new and an existing building at 71 Laight Street, has averaged 2,800 a square foot, said Bruce Ehrmann, a broker at Douglas Elliman Real Estate who is marketing both of them. These two projects also have courtyards, but unlike at 443 Greenwich, residents cannot access them, which is also the case at the Schumacher, a printing plant turned condo at 36 Bleecker Street. In a sense, then, 443 Greenwich is more in the spirit of uptown prewar co ops with grand pass through courtyards like 1185 Park Avenue. But residents of 443 Greenwich shouldn't think anything goes; the courtyard will likely close at 7 p.m., Mr. Berman said, so nobody is kept awake by noise. The project's marketers also note that windows will be extra insulated, and that only two units will be on the ground floor. The building is just south of Canal Street, in a part of TriBeCa once dismissed as "the Northwest Territories, because it was so remote and no one wanted to live there," said Mr. Ehrmann, a neighborhood resident. "But now it's just sizzling."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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The second season of "Atlanta," which ends Thursday on FX, has been thick with tension. From its opening minutes, when two teens sprayed a fast food joint with bullets, heralding the start of "Robbin' Season," an unyielding anxiety has persisted, fueled by unnerving imagery, mortal peril, tragic deaths and the arrival (and bloody departure) of one of the eeriest characters to grace the small screen. "I didn't really think about it while we were making it, but in retrospect, a lot of elements lent themselves to horror tropes," said Hiro Murai, the director who, along with the "Atlanta" creator Donald Glover, is the show's chief visual architect. "There's a lot of overlap between comedy and horror because they're both about milking tension, and then delivering a punch line." From the start, "Atlanta" established a penchant for absurdity. As the narrative loosely tracks a reluctant rapper and his makeshift squad, more impressionistic, magical moments an invisible car runs over clubgoers, a stranger proffers a Nutella sandwich and vanishes into the night are designed to add emotional intensity while defying rational explanation, Mr. Murai said. "We always want the surreal aspects of the show to feel like a fever dream," he said. In episodes like "Alligator Man," which culminates in an actual alligator strutting out of a house, and "Woods," which ran Brian Tyree Henry's Alfred through a gantlet of physical and emotional terror, Mr. Murai took cues from David Lynch, Takeshi Kitano and Joel and Ethan Coen. He admires Mr. Lynch's ability to create a "soup of ambiguity" and declared that the Coen Brothers "play with comedy and drama and sudden bursts of violence better than anybody." And he has been obsessed with the "dry, deadpan delivery" of Mr. Kitano (better known by his stage name, Beat Takeshi) since his film school days at the University of Southern California. A recent rewatch of Disney's animated "Alice in Wonderland" also made an impression. "It has this playfulness, but also this underlying ominous tension," he said. "Donald and I often talk about how the kids' movies from our childhood are memorable because they're so tonally complex. That has influenced both of us." "A lot of what we do on the show is an extension of ideas that we were playing with in our music videos," he added, referring to his collaborations with Mr. Glover's musical alter ego, Childish Gambino. "Whether it's blending comedy with a dramatic performance or with a heightened sense of surrealism, all the things that we were playing with sort of found their way into 'Atlanta.'" (Their video for the new Childish Gambino single, "This Is America," released after this interview was conducted, similarly hinges on unexpected bursts of chaos.) Below, in edited excerpts from a phone interview, Mr. Murai discusses some of the show's most memorable moments. In "Alligator Man," the Season 2 premiere, Earn's uncle Willy (Katt Williams in a cameo) releases his pet alligator during a standoff in order to distract the police from his own escape. We had two hours, maybe an hour and a half, allocated to shooting this alligator. These animal wranglers came in from Florida and we just let them do their thing. We couldn't even be on set because you're not supposed to be in direct line of sight from an alligator because they could charge you. We were mostly just hiding inside of a tent, watching through a monitor and talking over a walkie talkie. At the end of the day, it's an alligator alligators don't care that you're making a TV show. It's just such a majestic looking animal. It was late in the day and the sun was hitting it in a beautiful way. To me, that moment was less scary and more euphoric. Christian Sprenger the show's cinematographer and I watched "The Shining" together there's a lot of Kubrick y things in there. Looking into Teddy's face was like looking into a doll's face. There's something so uncanny and unsettling about it. There was a general sense of unease on set because the cast and crew didn't know how to behave around him. Just being in the same room with him was really unsettling, and it definitely made me lose some sleep. Honestly, Teddy Perkins, in a different world, could be a sketch character. For me, the big challenge was to construct this episode in a way that in the end you're sort of conned into empathizing and caring about what happens to him. That moment where Darius Lakeith Stanfield gives his monologue and everything comes to an end, if you didn't stick the landing, the episode wouldn't have worked. In "North of the Border," Al and Earn find themselves in a white fraternity house, surrounded by naked pledges, mounted guns and a giant Confederate flag. We always talk about the gray area on this show. No pun intended, but there's no black and white way to talk about race. That scene wasn't about the fact that these frat kids had this Confederate flag on the wall or were overtly racist. It was about how they grew up in a culture that supported having a Confederate flag on the wall as well as being massive fans of Paper Boi and snap music. It's never clean cut, racism. I was expecting the nude scene to be really tense and strange, but it was one of the last things we shot in the season and everybody was so relaxed around each other. The extras who were naked, they just happened to be really cool people. Surprisingly, it was very relaxed to shoot and not as weird you'd think it would be. I don't really believe it as I'm saying it, but it's true! In "The Club," in Season 1, Al has just triumphed over a duplicitous nightclub owner and he and Earn are enjoying a well deserved win in the parking lot. When shots ring out, an ostentatious NBA star flees in an invisible car, running over bystanders. What was important to us about that scene was that the invisible car wasn't the point of the shot it just happened incidentally in the frame. When you look at that scene, the action is happening in the back of a scene about Paper Boi and it's not even in focus. It's part of the language of the show to play things in a deadpan, unflowery way.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Of all the special effects in Wagner's "Ring" cycle an epic four opera saga with fire breathing dragons, a magic sword, a magic helmet, magic fire, and of course that cursed ring of power that everyone lusts after the most dazzling one is musical. Wagner's ingenious use of short musical themes creates a whole world of gods, heroes, dwarves and giants, and gives them their psychological and mythical depth. Think "Star Wars," was the advice of Christine Goerke, the soprano currently starring as Brunnhilde in the "Ring" at the Metropolitan Opera. "So Darth Vader's coming in: what music do you hear?" she said. "There you know everything you need to know about Wagner." They can be as simple as that. The themes which came to be known as leitmotifs can act as simple musical labels, reminding listeners what is what and who is who. But they can also work on a far subtler level. Ready to explore a few? Put on your headphones. Here is how it works on the most basic level as music signifying something specific. Whenever the sword, one of the most crucial elements in the "Ring," is seen or discussed or even thought about, a brief martial, heroic melody peals out in the brass: the sword motive. It's like a musical name tag. The sword's theme rings out in all four "Ring" operas "Das Rheingold," "Die Walkure," "Siegfried" and "Gotterdammerung" across generations of gods and heroes. Here is an extensive, but not comprehensive, look at how that handful of notes conjures up the sword: The theme begins as an unspoken idea of Wotan, the king of the gods. His plan to arm his mortal son with the sword so he can win the ring of power is thwarted, though and Wotan is forced to shatter the sword and let his son die. But the sword returns: it is reforged by Wotan's grandson, Siegfried, who finds it handy for dragon slaying, ring winning and, oddest of all, loosening the armor of his bride to be. The sword theme accompanies those moments, and many more. 2. When the Orchestra Knows More than the Characters Under Wagner's command, music becomes its own language, allowing the orchestra to wordlessly tell the audience things that the characters on stage do not know themselves a sophisticated kind of dramatic irony. When Siegmund, a mortal, laments that he does not know what became of his father, the Valhalla music plays, telling the audience what he does not know himself: that he is Wotan's son. 3. One Theme Leads to Another What makes Wagner's themes particularly ingenious is the way they relate to one another creating a whole musical world, with its own internal logic. Consider one famous example: how the simple nature music that opens the cycle evolves into the twilight of the gods music that brings it all to a cataclysmic end at the finale of the last opera. Those musical connections lend shape to a four opera saga that does not rely on the kind of song like arias previous composers had used. Instead, the recurring and evolving themes frequently comment more subtly on the action. The fact that the stately Valhalla music grows out of the sinister ring theme is a sign that Wotan's hunger for power has more than a little in common with that of Alberich the dwarf who renounces love, steals the gold from the Rhine, and creates the ring of power. The musical language is so strong that when the hero Siegfried dies, Wagner retells his life story without a single word by having the orchestra reprise many of the themes associated with him during his funeral march, one of the most famous moments in the "Ring."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. John Bolton, the former White House national security adviser, has a forthcoming book that corroborates impeachment allegations made against President Trump. On Monday, the late night hosts took odds on the likelihood of hearing his testimony during the impeachment trial, or just reading about it in his "perfectly timed" book if Republicans block him as a witness. "This is the heart of the entire impeachment thing, so I don't know how Senate Republicans can justify not hearing from Bolton now. Like, like there's no reason. Imagine an eyewitness to a murder wanted to testify and the judge just refused. You know, just like, 'Your Honor I saw this man and I saw the crime firsthand.' He would be like, 'No spoilers! No spoilers! I want to see how it ends.'" TREVOR NOAH "And this just goes to show you that sometimes political figures will have the moral courage to go against their party as long as it's perfectly timed with the release of a book." JAMES CORDEN "These allegations are the most disturbing thing to come from John Bolton's lips since his mustache." JAMES CORDEN "And you can tell Trump was caught off guard by Bolton. Today he was like, 'All I did was fire you, give you a mean nickname and insult the job you did, and this is the thanks I get?'" JIMMY FALLON "Bolton used to work for Trump, and now his book could bring him down. Today, Trump was faced with the two things he hates the most: disloyalty and reading." JIMMY FALLON "It would be the ultimate irony if Trump gets taken down by the KFC colonel." JIMMY FALLON "And even though it isn't out yet, it already has some pretty interesting blurbs on the back. For example, Donald Trump's blurb says, 'I don't know John Bolton. Never met him. New phone, who dis?'" JIMMY FALLON The Punchiest Punchlines (Don't Know Her Edition) "Believe it or not, the Bolton revelations aren't the only big new piece of evidence. Because remember Lev Parnas, yes? Rudy Giuliani's right hand man and the Count from 'Sesame Street'? Well, after Parnas said he worked with Trump to get dirt on Joe Biden, Trump repeatedly claimed he has no idea who this man is, and that's even though they have appeared in more photos together than Mariah Carey and Christmas trees." TREVOR NOAH "Come on, guys, I'm sorry you just can't keep pretending that Trump doesn't know this guy, all right? Because, first, they said Trump wouldn't remember all the people he takes photos with. O.K., I understand that. Now they're saying Trump can't remember all the people he has private dinners with? What's next? They're gonna be like, 'Look, the president gets matching quid pro quo back tattoos with a lot of people he can't be expected to remember all of them!'" TREVOR NOAH "When you have to say you've never met someone that many times, you've definitely met that person. Like if your wife asks, 'Do you know Julia next door?' and you said, 'I don't know her, never talked to her, don't know who she is, or where she came from, or what she does. I've never spoken with her, I've never met, I've never had a conversation. Who is she? Why? I don't know her.' your wife would have her bags packed before you finished talking." SETH MEYERS Some late night hosts dedicated part of their monologues to Kobe Bryant, who, along with his 13 year old daughter, Gianna, and seven other people died in a helicopter crash. Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel both grew teary eyed when recalling their personal friendships with the basketball star.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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LONDON European Union officials are preparing to bring antitrust charges against Amazon for abusing its dominance in internet commerce to box out smaller rivals, according to people with knowledge of the case. Nearly two years in the making, the case is one of the most aggressive attempts by a government to crimp the power of the e commerce giant, which has largely sidestepped regulation throughout its 26 year history. The European Union regulators, who already have a reputation as the world's most aggressive watchdogs of the technology industry, have determined that Amazon is stifling competition by unfairly using data collected from third party merchants to boost its own product offerings, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations were private. The case against Amazon is part of a broader attempt in the United States and Europe to probe the business practices of the world's largest technology companies, as authorities on both sides of the Atlantic see what they believe is a worrying concentration of power in the digital economy. Margarethe Vestager, the European Commissioner who leads antitrust enforcement and digital policy, is also examining practices by Apple and Facebook. In Washington, the Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission and Congress are targeting Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University, said the tech industry was facing a "striking critical mass" of attention from governments around the world, including Australia, Brazil and India. He said that regulators in Brussels and Washington may deploy so called interim measures against the companies, a rarely used tool that could force Amazon and other large tech platforms to halt certain practices while a case is litigated. An announcement by European regulators about Amazon could come this summer, although the timing is still in flux, one of the people said. The Wall Street Journal first reported the expected charges. The European Commission's antitrust office, which started investigating Amazon in 2018, is planning to release what is known as a statement of objections against the company outlining its conclusions about how it has violated antitrust laws. It is just one step in what could be a yearslong process before final decisions are made about whether to impose a fine or other penalties on the company. A settlement could also be reached. Amazon declined to comment, as did the European Commission. The case stems from Amazon's treatment of third party merchants who rely on its website to reach customers. Investigators have focused on Amazon's dual role as both the owner of its online store and a seller of goods that compete with other sellers, creating a conflict of interest. Authorities in Europe have concluded that Amazon abuses its position to give its own products preferential treatment. European officials have spent the past year interviewing merchants and others who depend on Amazon to better understand how it collects data to use to its advantage, including agreements that require them to share certain data with Amazon as a condition of selling goods on the platform. Many merchants have complained that if they have a product that is selling well on Amazon, the company will then introduce its own product at a lower price, or give it more prominent placement on the website. Bill Baer, the former head of antitrust enforcement in the U.S. Justice Department, said a challenge for regulators will be proving harm to consumers and rivals. "It is not their success that justifies government intervention," said Mr. Baer, now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. "It is when that success is used in a way that unfairly limits competition." This month, Ms. Vestager signaled more action against American tech giants, including giving her office added antitrust powers to address structural competition problems within an industry rather than just individual cases against a single company. The European Commission, the executive body for the European Union, is also debating a new digital services law that would include new regulations for large tech platforms like Amazon, Facebook and Apple that play a "gatekeeper role." Other proposals under consideration include allowing regulators to step in even before a large tech platform has established dominance in a new market. It is not the first time the European Commission has targeted Amazon. In 2017, officials ordered Luxembourg to recover roughly 250 million euros from Amazon in unpaid taxes. That same year, the company settled an antitrust case concerning its contracts with book publishers for e books. But otherwise, Amazon, whose chief executive, Jeff Bezos, is the world's wealthiest person, has largely avoided tough regulation from authorities in the United States and elsewhere. This is despite criticism that it has crushed traditional industries like book selling and treated workers in its warehouses poorly. Yet as Amazon's dominance has grown, and as it has become a gatekeeper for thousands of merchants selling goods online, critics have warned that it is abusing its power and that regulators must act before it is too late. In Washington, Amazon is being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission as part of broader inquiries by the agency and Justice Department into the tech sector. A case against Google could be brought as early as this summer, people familiar with the matter have said. Amazon and other tech companies are also the subject of a congressional inquiry into their market power. So far, Amazon has resisted lawmakers' attempts to bring Mr. Bezos to Capitol Hill to testify publicly. While European authorities have acted the most aggressively against the tech giants, many have questioned whether their approach is working. In three separate cases in recent years, the European Commission fined Google a total of 8.24 billion euros, the equivalent of about 9.3 billion today. But critics argue that did little to dislodge the internet giant's dominant market position. "The challenge is: Are you going to do something that makes a difference and that genuinely alters behavior?" said Mr. Kovacic of George Washington.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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"Them That Follow" opens, rather pointedly, on a nest of snakes before introducing the tiny Pentecostal sect in the Appalachians where the serpents star in religious ceremonies. For the group's women, though, venomous rattlers aren't the only caution: Forbidden the freedom to choose their own husbands, these cowed looking souls seem compelled to obey men and God with equal subservience. Admirably acted yet emotionally blank, this first feature from Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage focuses unrelentingly on drab people leading miserably isolated lives. Their pastor (Walton Goggins) dutifully speaks in tongues and casts out demons , his fire breathing sermons their only entertainment. There's no apparent joy, however, in all this zealotry, just a daily grind of drudgery and extreme devotion.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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Seafood lovers, are you getting "catfished" at the dinner table? It's very possible. One in five seafood samples tested worldwide turns out to be completely different from what the menu or packaging says, according to a report on seafood fraud released Wednesday by the ocean conservation group Oceana. Of the more than 25,000 seafood samples the group analyzed, 20 percent were incorrectly labeled. "It is likely that the average consumer has eaten mislabeled fish for sure," said Beth Lowell, the senior campaign director for Oceana and an author of the paper. "You're getting ripped off, while you enjoyed your meal you're paying a high price for a low fish." The biggest impostor, fittingly, was farmed Asian catfish, a fish with white flesh that is easily disguised when it's filleted and drenched in sauce. It was sold in place of 18 types of more expensive fish, including perch, cod and grouper. The report is a sort of meta analysis of more than 200 studies from 55 countries. One of those studies found that in Italy, 82 percent of the 200 perch, groupers and swordfish sampled were mislabeled. King mackerel, which is high in mercury, was sold as "barracuda" and "wahoo" in South Africa. In Hong Kong, only one out of 29 samples of "abalone" was correctly labeled. Two sushi chefs in Santa Monica in Southern California were charged with selling endangered whale meat as fatty tuna. Using the various studies, the researchers created an interactive map that shows where they found cases of phony fish. The studies include DNA analyses from peer reviewed papers, newspaper investigations and about 10 of Oceana's own studies. The report found examples of mislabeling at every level of the seafood supply chain, including the wholesaler, the importer and the retailer. "We kept thinking we'd find a success story, a place where seafood wouldn't be mislabeled," Ms. Lowell said. "Every single study that we reviewed except for one found seafood fraud." Even that case had a caveat Ms. Lowell said, because it took place in Tasmania where some mislabeling, like calling hake "smoked cod," is allowed under Australian regulation. About 80 percent of the studies were conducted at grocery stores and restaurants. Because these locations are at the end of the supply chain, retailers tend to have higher instances of mislabeling. The report doesn't name names. Ms. Lowell said the researchers were not sure whether the restaurants and food stores knowingly deceived their customers, or if they themselves were victims of a bait and switch when they purchased the fish. They found that 58 percent of the mislabeled samples were actually fish that could potentially pose health risks to certain consumers, especially pregnant women and children. In a New York grocery store they found blueline tilefish, which is on the Food and Drug Administration's "Do Not Eat" list because of its high mercury, sold as "Alaskan halibut" and "red snapper." In some cases the substituted fish turned out to be an endangered species, such as in Brazil where "sharks" were actually meat from the largetooth sawfish, which is critically endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Ms. Lowell said that one way to combat seafood fraud in the United States is by implementing stricter regulations for fish tracking that extend throughout the supply chain. Gavin Gibbons, the spokesman for the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group that represents the seafood industry, criticized the report and stressed that its findings reflected only what the selected studies found and were not representative of all seafood sold globally. He added that the best fix for seafood fraud is more enforcement of the law rather than more bureaucratic regulations. "Oceana's focus on the most often mislabeled species distorts their findings by design," he said in an email. Ms. Lowell disagreed. With more than 25,000 samples tested from around the world, she said it is the most comprehensive review of seafood fraud to date. "This report reveals that it's a global problem," she said, "and it's not going to go away on its own."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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WASHINGTON Standing before a roomful of economists, policy makers and health care experts earlier this month, Amitabh Chandra, director of Health Policy Research at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, closed a presentation about the slowdown in health care spending over the last decade by citing an article in The New York Times. "Changes in the way doctors and hospitals are paid how much and by whom have begun to curb the steady rise of health care costs in the New York region," the article declared. "Costs are still going up faster than overall inflation, but the annual rate of increase is the lowest in 21 years." Then came the punch line. The article, written by my now retired colleague Milt Freudenheim, was published in December 1993, when the so called managed care revolution promised for a few hopeful years to change the way doctors practiced medicine and curb the breakneck rise in health care costs for good. It is a sobering reminder that the recent improvements could wither away just as they did two decades ago. And that experience undergirds, in part, a fairly ominous forecast by Mr. Chandra, Jonathan Skinner of Dartmouth College and Jonathan Holmes of Harvard that spending on health care, which already consumes nearly 18 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, will continue to grow 1.2 percentage points faster than the economy over the next 20 years. At the very least, it suggests that health care reform is by no means over. The Affordable Care Act may well be on track to meeting its primary goal of providing coverage for most uninsured Americans and protecting everyone against the risk of losing their insurance. But for all its innovative proposals to flush waste out of the system, reining in health care spending still appears well beyond the grasp of Obamacare. "We have been consistently bending the cost curve over the last 20 years, but the kinds of things that we do don't tend to be permanent," said Charles Roehrig, who runs the Center for Sustainable Health Spending at the Altarum Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington. "It will take a lot of work just to stay on the same curve we have been on for a while." The evolution of the American medical industrial complex has been driven by two critical dynamics. The first is the development of new technologies. The second is our willingness to pay for them. Consider what happened in the 1990s, when pretty much anyone with a heart ailment had a stent implanted. It turns out, though, that stents aren't universally useful. A study a few years ago discovered stents "did not reduce the risk of death, myocardial infarction, or other major cardiovascular events" for patients with stable coronary artery disease. Still, until recently, doctors prescribed them and we got them. Often, an insurer or the government picked up the bill, whether the treatment helped our health or not. Research by Louise Sheiner of the Federal Reserve found that Americans' out of pocket spending actually declined over the last half century as a share of the nation's gross domestic product, even as health care spending soared. That's because Medicare and Medicaid shouldered much of the increased burden. With no incentive to say no, the medical industry has little cause to be cautious. And though stents seem to be on their way out for most people, the Next Big Thing is coming into focus. At the conference, which was sponsored by the Brookings Institution, there was much talk of proton beam accelerators for cancer treatment, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to install yet offer no established advantages to patients. In 2010, nine facilities were operating, planned or under construction across the country. This year there are 20. Most health care economists agree that the Affordable Care Act, along with other forces, will help reduce waste, pushing the industry to drop the "fee for service" model that encourages doctors and hospitals to spend more whether it is useful or not. Last November, President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers issued a hopeful analysis, which posited that structural changes flowing from the act were helping push the growth in health care spending to its slowest on record. David Cutler of Harvard points to studies that suggest that straightforward changes, such as improving the dismal management of American hospitals, could cut health care costs by 25 to 50 percent. "Getting better is not rocket science," he said. But that optimism might be premature. Mr. Roehrig argues that the decade long slowdown in spending growth reflects a response to the two recessions that provided the economic bookends to the first decade of the new century; not a fundamental shift in the way the system operates. During that period, employers pushed workers to take insurance with higher out of pocket payments, which discouraged use. Medicaid in financially troubled states has cut provider fees and limited access to high cost services. And, of course, many unemployed workers who lost their company health insurance cut back on visits to the doctor. These effects, Mr. Roehrig noted, have by now mostly petered out. As the economy recovers, spending growth will resume its climb, reinforced even more by the understandable demands from the eight million newly insured Americans under the health law for services they couldn't afford previously. He forecasts that health spending will grow substantially faster than G.D.P. in the near future, but expects the gap to shrink gradually to below one percentage point over time. In the long run, he projects that health care spending could consume 30 percent of G.D.P. Mark McClellan, a former administrator for the Centers on Medicare and Medicaid Services under George W. Bush, and Alice Rivlin, a former vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, point out that innovations that improve health or reduce the cost of medical services may also increase demand.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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Christopher Green, the creator and co director of "Prurience," an immersive theater piece in which audience members "join" a self help group for pornography addicts. Christopher Green has been a fixture on the fringier edges of British theater for more than two decades. His solo characters have included a rapping pensioner, a blowzy country singer and a theory spouting academic. He has also created big participatory spectacles like "The Frozen Scream," a "haunted" murder mystery that takes the audience backstage, and "Office Party," a decidedly not safe for work bacchanal that veers from bad managerial speeches to embarrassing dancing and beyond. The Guardian has called him "part politician, part shaman, part sociologist, part healer." (He's also, for the record, an accredited hypnotherapist.) Now, he's coming to New York with a show that takes the healing part literally. "Prurience," which runs March 20 to 31 as part of the Guggenheim Museum's Works Process series, unfolds at a fictional self help group for pornography addiction. At each performance some four dozen audience members, along with an unidentified number of actors, will file into the museum's small Frank Lloyd Wright inspired restaurant, take chairs from a stack and arrange themselves into a circle. The nearly two hour show may not be everyone's cup of tea (which is provided, along with cookies, "for those of us still struggling with sugar," as the unctuously sensitive group leader, played by Mr. Green, announces at the break). During a run at the Southbank Center in London last summer, one man went to the box office during the tea break to angrily announce that the room had been taken over by a cult. Then again, he came back for the second half. As British reviews have noted, and a video confirms, the show is both dead serious and very funny and far more full of fireworks than it first seems. "So much immersive theater is afraid of entertainment, which is a shame," Mr. Green said on a recent afternoon in the museum's restaurant. "This show has jokes. But it wants to be uncomfortable as well." Billed as "an experiential entertainment," "Prurience" may be more discomfiting than Mr. Green initially bargained for. It arrives in the midst of a boom in immersive theater, when creators seem to be continually upping the ante on extreme premises, but also six months into the MeToo moment, when questions of sex and power are dominating the conversation (and reports that Harvey Weinstein responded to sexual assault allegations by checking into a spalike rehab facility in the Arizona desert have drawn snorts of derision). "The show is about this prurient attitude we have, this fear of sexuality," Mr. Green said. "But it's also about male power, and what it means to stand up to it." Mr. Green, a rangy 49 year old with flowing pale red hair and an intimacy inspiring manner (used to creepy effect in the show), said he quit drinking a decade ago with help from Alcoholics Anonymous, and more recently attended another self help group he declined to identify. But "Prurience" grew less out of personal questions than artistic ones. He wanted to stage "the least theatrical thing ever," he said, with no set, no lighting, no formal seating. He thought about tackling modern dating and the possibilities opened up by apps like Tinder and Grindr, but after attending sex addiction groups for research, the idea of focusing on the meetings themselves clicked into place. Mr. Green started researching porn and sex addiction on the internet, where he encountered a lot of what he described as alarmist commentary. Then he did extensive interviews with experts, with financial support from the Wellcome Trust, a charitable foundation that supports medical research as well as health related work in the arts and humanities. He also had plenty of arguments with his co director, Holly Race Roughan, whom he met on a kind of professional blind date arranged by their shared agent. Ms. Roughan was coming off work on "People, Places Things," Duncan Macmillan's play about addiction and recovery that transferred from the West End to St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. While both directors had their heads deep in research about addiction, sparks flew over their differences relating to both theater (more traditional and text based for her; looser and more experiential for him) and porn. Mr. Green, who is gay, is "much more open minded and sex positive," she said. "He thinks you can watch pornography and not have it bleed into real life, or at least takes a more ambiguous, questioning point of view." Satirizing recovery programs, even shamelessly commercialized ones (Mr. Green's character keeps directing attention to a branded merchandise table), can be dicey territory. David Hare's 2000 play "My Zinc Bed," which suggested that self help culture might be substituting one kind of addiction for another, was criticized by one critic (and A.A. veteran) as "misguided and malign." While "Prurience" raises the same question, Mr. Green insists it's not about mocking self help groups but about collectively exploring the transformative potential they and theater share. "I'm very interested in theater as therapy," he said. "Like a group, it should be a space where things shift and change." The show also floats along on the fascination of guessing just who is, or isn't, in on the game. The night Caroline Cronson, the producer of Works Process, saw it in London, an older woman stood up to give a riveting account of her first experiences with porn in rural Ireland in the 1950s, via a traveling library. "I couldn't believe she wasn't an actor," Ms. Cronson said. Occasionally, things have gotten out of control. Mr. Green had to shut down one woman, a repeat visitor, who started telling an extreme (and, he thinks, fictional) story about sexual abuse by her father. "It was getting really unsafe," he said. For all the questions the show raises about consumption and addiction, Ms. Roughan and Mr. Green agree that it's just as much about the compulsion to tell stories, and the uncontrolled places they can lead. "Some nights you just feel like we've made this extraordinary comedy," Ms. Roughan said. "Other nights, it feels like we've made this very intricate drama."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Each week, the Open Thread newsletter will offer a look from across The New York Times at the forces that shape the dress codes we share, with Vanessa Friedman as your personal shopper. The inaugural newsletter appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here. Happy Monday and welcome to the first issue of Open Thread, The New York Times's weekly guide to the forces, from business to politics, that shape the dress codes we all obey and the ways we use clothes to communicate ideas, culture and identity. In my almost two decades of covering fashion, from ateliers to executive suites and inaugurations, it's become very clear to me that whether we like to admit it or not, we all use our wardrobes to manipulate other people and get manipulated ourselves. And it's about time we talk about it. Yes, there's a whole semiology behind that cute skirt or power tie you are wearing. It's time to own the message, not just the item. En garde! Still, for anyone who doubts the ability of fashion to affect perception, I give you the Met Gala perhaps the best people watching event of the year, get the popcorn now as Exhibit A. Officially the opening benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's big Costume Institute show, the event, which takes place tonight, is the ultimate fashion meets Wall Street meets Hollywood moment, where power brokers from near and far convene and attempt to outdo one another in the stakes of wearable art. This year should be particularly jaw dropping, since the exhibit the gala celebrates is a one woman show dedicated to Rei Kawakubo, the founder of the Japanese brand Comme des Garcons, and only the second living designer ever to be granted a retrospective at the museum. (The first was Yves Saint Laurent, in 1983.) Ms. Kawakubo's work challenges all conventional notions of beauty, femininity and the way garments are constructed; she dares to go where most designers and, frankly, people do not. Once, I talked to her backstage after a show and her explanation of her collection was: "I was trying not to make clothes." Seriously. Instead, she makes concepts. The red carpet will never be the same. Check in with us throughout the night for live updates on the evening and for morning after reviews plus an exclusive walk through of the exhibit with Ms. Kawakubo. If you don't want to wait, however, this photo essay in The New York Times Magazine offers a preview: The most recent Comme des Garcons collection transforms the model Saskia de Brauw into Fausto Melotti like sculptures. Also bags of Jiffy Pop. But if you have had enough fashion as high art thank you very much, check out our take on 100 days of Trump style (a.k.a. the transition from self branding to state branding) or a guide to the essentials every man needs for summer. For this and more, read on. And then send me an email or a tweet with what you'd like to see more or less of in this newsletter and ask me your fashion questions. I'll answer one each week. Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader's fashion related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or Twitter. Q: "Stockings or no for 60 yr young woman. Been getting by with opaque tights and boots in NYC but spring is here!" MEIGHAN CORBETT, MeighanCorbett A: As far as I am concerned, this is an ageless issue, and one with which I also wrestle (at full disclosure 49). Once upon a time I would have said this was a question of "what is appropriate dress," but these days such rules no longer really apply. While the Duchess of Cambridge still wears sheer hose pretty much every time she appears in public in a skirt, no matter the season, Michelle Obama, for example, rejected that rule when she was first lady and left the door open for us all to follow her lead. Recently, at the W20 Summit in Berlin, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the I.M.F., wore sheer hose during her panel discussion with Ivanka Trump and Chrystia Freeland, Canada's foreign minister, who did... not. In the end, it comes down to what makes you comfortable. I am an opaque tights acolyte during the winter, favoring matte black Spanx pretty much every day, but come April, I can't bring myself to put them on, despite the fact it isn't always warm enough to go bare legged. I generally avoid the whole issue by wearing pants (I know: cop out), but for those who want a little smoothness with their skirts, Anita Leclerc, our fashion editor, offers up the following tip: "On those days when fastidiously applying faux tan just isn't worth the flaking and fretting, I wear Naked 8 tights from Wolford. They're ultrafine, airy and a dead on match for my pale skin. (They come in a variety of shades.) Take that, fashion police. But also take note: While colorful tights look cool with sandals the look has been all over the runways do not wear sheer hose with open toe sandals. Doing so practically screams DOWDY."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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"The Splash," by David Hockney, which sold at Sotheby's in London on Tuesday for about 29.8 million. LONDON David Hockney's 1966 Pop Art masterwork "The Splash" sold on Tuesday night, much as expected, for 23.1 million pounds, or about 29.8 million, with fees, at a Sotheby's auction of contemporary art overshadowed by the coronavirus outbreak in China. The work, the star lot at the auction, is one of three painted versions of Mr. Hockney's celebrated image of the spray thrown up by an unseen diver who has just plunged into the blue of a California swimming pool. The best known of those images is the monumental 1967 canvas, "A Bigger Splash," in the Tate collection in London. This medium size version, measuring 6 feet along each side, was being sold by the Chinese real estate billionaire Joseph Lau, according to Bloomberg News. (Sotheby's declined to comment on the seller's identity.) The painting was acquired in 2006 for PS2.9 million, or about 5.4 million at the time, at the same London salesroom. The Hockney sold to a single telephone bid. It was the third highest auction price yet achieved for one of the painter's works, but it was still well behind the 90.3 million bid for "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" in 2018. "The Hockney was a bit disappointing as a spectacle, but it has to be put in the context of what's happening at the moment in Asia," said Brett Gorvy, co founder of Levy Gorvy, an art dealership with galleries in London and New York. Last week, the Swiss based MCH Group announced that this year's edition of the Art Basel Hong Kong fair, scheduled to begin previews on March 17, would be canceled. Christie's has also postponed its March sale of 20th century and contemporary art in Hong Kong. And on Wednesday, the Chinese state owned company Poly Auction said that it would be postponing its spring series of sales in Hong Kong, scheduled to begin April 3. Sotheby's auctions programmed for that same week in Hong Kong were still going ahead, Mitzi Mina, head of the company's London press office, said on Wednesday. But international art buyers also have their eyes on the United States, where the Frieze Los Angeles fair opens later this week. "Everyone is talking about the collections coming up for sale in May," Mr. Gorvy said, referring to the trophy packed consignments of contemporary works from the estate of Donald Marron, valued at 450 million, and from the divorce of Harry and Linda Macklowe, estimated at more than 600 million, that are likely to appear in New York salesrooms in the spring. "People are keeping their powder dry," Mr. Gorvy added. With many of the world's wealthiest collectors having other things on their minds, competition for the other "blue chip" works at the Sotheby's sale on Tuesday was relatively subdued. An Yves Klein painting from 1960, for instance, whose use of a female model as the "brush" has become problematic in the age of MeToo, sold to a single bid of PS6.2 million. But, as Mr. Gorvy pointed out, there was lively bidding lower down the price scale, particularly for art rooted in the street. Banksy's repurposed "Vote to Leave" placard from the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign, which had been a spoof exhibit at the Royal Academy's 2018 Summer Exhibition, sold for PS1.2 million, double its upper estimate. "Empirical Mind State," a 2009 spray painted canvas by the New York based artist Eddie Martinez was contested by at least five bidders before selling for PS615,000. It had been valued at PS100,000 PS150,000. The first major auction of contemporary art in London since Britain left the European Union (other sales follow at Christie's on Wednesday evening and at Phillips on Thursday) raised PS92.5 million, only a fraction below the PS93.2 million of the equivalent event at Sotheby's last March. At the post sale news conference, Alex Branczik, Sotheby's head of contemporary art in Europe, said that the auction had been "very much business as usual," with the number of Asian clients registered to bid in line with other recent sales. Eight out the night's 43 sold works went to buyers from Asia, he added. But dealers noted that at the auction itself, bidding was dominated by specialists based in Europe and the United States.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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"The Bay of Silence" takes its name from a spot on the Ligurian coast of Italy. The waters may teem with tasty seafood, but this thriller, about a man trying to make sense of his wife's tangled past, is a net full of red herrings. It's during a swim in the bay that Will (Claes Bang) proposes to Rosalind (Olga Kurylenko), a widow and artist with twin daughters. Rosalind has an issue with photographs. In Italy, she stops Will from snapping pictures of her; at home in London, months later, Rosalind, heavily pregnant, falls from a balcony while photographing him and her girls. She survives and gives birth to a baby boy, but she's convinced she has had twins again and that the other one has been taken. Will thinks Rosalind is depressed, but her behavior grows stranger.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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At Jack, a cozy space in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, where the walls are covered in crinkly aluminum foil it's like being in a silver cocoon Ms. Cyr, a Bessie Award winning dancer with a sumptuous approach to movement, strikes out on her own with "Assemblage." Set for March 19 21, this evening length work recasts Ms. Cyr's dance investigations created over the past five years; in each, her task was to try something new. Now she collects those experiments into a single dance. And finally, Gillian Walsh unveils the latest in her stellar series of no frill works that rely on a strict movement score meant to steer the dancers away from artificiality in their performance and toward form. Her new production, at the Kitchen, April 9 11, features Maggie Cloud, Nicole Daunic, Mickey Mahar and Ms. Walsh herself, with a score taken from Hasbro's Twister Dance Rave. Through Ms. Walsh's meticulous coding and scoring of movement, she continues to show, as she puts it, "dance as a nonfiction form." While stark and contained, her pieces, with their repetition and detail, transform space over time. She exposes the inner workings of the group and always leaves room for air: In a perverse way, it's a new avenue for expression.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Five years ago, Laurie Metcalf and Nathan Lane spent a few days emailing each other, trans Atlantically comparing notes about Eugene O'Neill. She was in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in London, he in "The Iceman Cometh" in Chicago. This month, at the request of The New York Times, they renewed the correspondence, their nations reversed: Mr. Lane is in "Angels in America" in London, Ms. Metcalf on Broadway in "A Doll's House, Part 2." What they have in common, besides a friendship and earlier collaborations, are Tony Award nominations this season (Ms. Metcalf for "Doll's House," Mr. Lane for "The Front Page). Here, in edited exchanges, they trade advice on taking chances, fast talking roles and surviving the run up to the Tonys on June 11. First, I want to congratulate you on the great success of the play and in particular your performance. As you know, I'm the president of the Laurie Metcalf Fan Club, so I'll admit I'm prejudiced. But I knew back in the '80s when we first met and acted in "The School for Scandal" at the Williamstown Theater Festival you were special. You played Lady Sneerwell, and the play opened with you at a makeup table, getting dressed. You gave the character a definite S and M streak and held a riding crop throughout the scene, which one knew wasn't just for horseback riding. We can only avoid this for so long so ... had you ever played Nora in "A Doll's House, Part 1"? If not, was it a part you ever contemplated, or was it just this contemporary version that sparked your interest? It's so great that a new play has opened on Broadway, but it's also brave to just open cold without the usual out of town tryout. Oh, yes, and can you find me a small speaking role in the "Roseanne" revival? I have so many questions and so little time. I'm doing a seven and a half hour gay epic here, and I'm always tired. I'm getting old, baby. Talk soon, and tell Torvald to grow up. I'm not speaking to Torvald right now. I hole up in my room and eat as many macaroons as I can sneak. Congratulations to you, too, on "Angels in America"!! Seven and a half hours no wonder you're tired. DH2 is 90 minutes, no intermission. We actually did a midnight show Thursday great crowd, crazy energy. I highly recommend it oh, no, you'd be getting out at morning rush hour. Bad idea. DH2 reminds me of the wild ride of "November" when you played President Charles Smith. I jumped at the chance to play your speechwriter because I wanted to be in the rehearsal room with you. And to be onstage with you is to play with a tireless professional who never misses a beat and is completely present. I can't wait to do it again. End of gush. I wasn't nervous about the play going straight to Broadway because Scott Rudin, the producer, believed it could! He recognized how clever, fresh and funny the script was. We did two workshops, and Lucas Hnath, the playwright, was very open to collaboration. And, no, I've never played Nora before, and it's funny because it feels like I still haven't. In the 15 year gap between the two plays, Nora has gone off and reinvented herself, so I allowed my own jumping off point. This is a Nora that we would never have seen had she not left. It's a free pass that way. I got to completely invent her. Question: What was it like to jump into the racecar that was "The Front Page," grab the wheel, and shift into fifth gear? And how does it compare with the "Angels in America" marathon? Roseanne says "Hi!" Actually she doesn't know that you and I are emailing, but it looks good in print. Nora Jorgensen (not going by Helmer anymore) "The Front Page" was a tremendous experience, a delight from start to finish. I had always wanted to play Walter Burns, but I didn't realize how much until I got into the rehearsal room. And the Tony nomination was the icing on a delicious cake. To be honest, I just always wanted to do what is arguably the greatest curtain line in theatrical history "The son of a bitch stole my watch!" The joy of doing that every night and hearing the surprise from audience members who had either forgotten what was coming or were discovering it for the first time made me very emotional. I closed in "Front Page" on a Sunday and three days later arrived in London for 11 weeks of rehearsal for "Angels in America." I had done a lot of preparation. I had learned my lines, I read the two main books on Roy, "Citizen Cohn" by Nicholas von Hoffman and the autobiography he wrote with Sidney Zion. I interviewed some people who knew him and were friends with him. It's easy to find people who hated him, they are legion, but it was interesting to talk to the people who loved him and were loyal to him in spite of all his bad behavior. Ultimately, though, whatever you need is all in the play. How are you coping with awards season and eight shows a week? It seems crazier every year, in an attempt to live up to the Oscars or the Emmys. Being in London, I feel VERY left out. No one has called to get my reaction to being nominated or to do a Hollywood Reporter round table or to go to the Drama League luncheon or to check on my whereabouts or anything. For the record, I was thrilled about this nomination and grateful to be remembered. It's a part and play that I love, and I feel like I'm representing everyone involved. Hope you're enjoying all the acclaim. You deserve it. O.K., so we're worlds apart, but our paths playing Walter and Nora cross. Like "The Front Page," DH2 is whip smart, glib and ferociously fast. The pace is the engine of the piece. I feel such a responsibility for driving it forward that I get to the theater early enough so that I can go down on the set and run my monologues before the house opens. Then I run the rest of the play out loud in my dressing room as I get ready. I have to make sure my mouth is up to speed with the thoughts. Man, I would love to see a showdown between Walter and Nora, two people who would stop at nothing to get what they want. Somebody would self combust. "A Doll's House Part 3": Walter Burns and Nora Jorgensen get married after a drunken night at the Parker House, while she's in Chicago promoting her new book, "The Cost of Freedom." A whirlwind romance that lasts only a weekend but provides for a lifetime of analysis. Maybe it's age, but now I also always go over my lines before every show. And I usually do a vocal warm up at home in the shower. I like the acoustics. That's very important, especially because both Walter and Roy Cohn have a tendency to shout in heated arguments, and you don't want to hurt yourself. And certainly having done all that phone work in "The Front Page" has helped in my first scene as Roy while I'm juggling several calls at once. The scheduling at the National is very different than in the States. You rehearse for over three months, and then they give you 20 minutes to tech it and a handful of performances before the press night, or in our case, press day, where all the critics come to the same performance. It was rather nerve racking, but fortunately the response has been very positive. Then you do four or five shows and have a few days off, seven shows, three days off, five on, four off. At first I thought it would be weird, but it does actually allow you to catch up and rest. I remember that schedule at the National. Being a creature of habit, I really love the Broadway schedule, eight shows a week. I thrive on that sort of regularity. I do the same thing in between shows on a two show day; I eat the same ramen, read another chapter of "The Age of Innocence" and make some progress on my jigsaw puzzle.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. Stephen M. Ross swears he is not embroiled in a third set tiebreaker with Larry Ellison, the billionaire co founder of Oracle who bought the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., a decade ago and transformed it into a tony desert party for tennis players and fans. Still, when the moved and improved Miami Open begins this week at Hard Rock Stadium, home of Ross's Miami Dolphins, it will not be hard to imagine Ross, a billionaire real estate developer, keeping a tiny scorecard in his back pocket. "Larry's done a great job," Ross said. "He set the bar high, and it's all great for tennis. But for us, it's more natural not to compete, or at least to do so in our own way." Ross, who bought the Dolphins in 2008 and spent 550 million renovating the stadium, stepped in when IMG, which owns the Miami Open, found itself at an impasse with a Key Biscayne resident who controlled the land where the tournament had been played since 1987. That man, Bruce Matheson, refused to allow 50 million worth of renovations to the Crandon Park site, and his prolonged lawsuits convinced the tournament that it was time to go. Rather than see the tournament and its hundreds of millions in local revenue uprooted from South Florida to Orlando or China, Ross decided to partner with IMG and move the tournament about 20 miles northwest to his football stadium. He spent an additional 72 million to transform it into a state of the art tennis venue. The move wasn't well received by everyone. "Key Biscayne had a very intimate setting, and you can't beat the drive over the Rickenbacker Causeway, with blue water on both sides of you," said John Isner, the defending Miami Open champion. "We had a lot of history in that place, and that stadium court will always be very special to me." At the new site, a temporary main court was erected on the football field, with half of the seats were blocked off by screens. A 5,191 seat grandstand court, two other show courts and eight additional match courts all permanent were built on top of parking lots. On a recent tour, those lots were indiscernible behind purple flowers, artificial grass, 35 foot mature palm trees costing 35,000 a pop, and a giant fountain that guards one of the many entrances to the stadium. There is also a 40 by 90 foot video screen, the largest in tennis, just outside the stadium in a spot modeled after Wimbledon's Henman Hill, minus the grass. The change recalls the United States Open's move from the charming but outgrown West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills in 1978 to the more functional, if less romantic, U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in nearby Flushing Meadows. It took a while to get used to the new digs, but no one would ever want to go back to the old ones. "This place has a much larger footprint, so we can do more things," said Tom Garfinkel, the Dolphins' chief executive. "We are giving people an unprecedented luxury experience in tennis, just like the N.F.L." Tournament organizers did not take the word "luxury" lightly. The stadium court painted in colors called Oasis Blue and Biscayne Blue seats 13,800, the same as the main court in Key Biscayne. But this court features 4,738 premium seats, many that resemble Barcaloungers, with individual television screens. These seats range in price from 50,000 to 70,000 for the two week tournament. Some are right on the court. Premium seat packages, most of which were sold out two months before the start of the tournament, include private dining rooms. Some suites have seats made out of Ferrari leather. For a privileged 1,000 visitors, there is a dedicated entrance from a private parking lot, in which spectators pass through a tent lined with art, including works by Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol that can be purchased for upward of 1 million. Ticket prices at every level have increased by up to 40 percent over last year, though several thousand grounds passes are available for as little as 15 each day. Sales by the end of last month were up 25 percent, thanks, in part, to Dolphins season ticket holders who have been cajoled into watching tennis. "There's a bit of a challenge in giving people the confidence that this really is for the best," said James Blake, the tournament director. Ross helped choose everything on the site: the flowers, the gigantic paintings that line the stadium corridors, the tiles on the bathroom walls. "I had a picture in my head of what I wanted this to look like, the same way I do my real estate deals," said Ross, who is also behind Manhattan's Hudson Yards project. "It's all in the details. Little things matter. People notice, and they're watching for those details." The number of practice courts, many with spectator seating, have doubled from those at Key Biscayne, to 18. But unlike in Key Biscayne, those courts will not be turned over for the public to play on after the tournament ends. The players, at least, should be happy. Their amenities have been enhanced, with dining areas and gym spaces tripling in size. The top eight seeds in the men's and women's singles draws, as well as all former champions, will be given private suites to be used by their entourages. But organizers see the event as more than a tennis tournament. The grounds will open at least two hours before play begins each day to encourage people to come early to eat, shop and listen to concerts by local musicians. "What we wanted was a venue that would allow us the freedom and flexibility to grow and innovate the event," said Mark Shapiro, president of Endeavor, IMG's parent company. "Key Biscayne was lovely, but we simply outgrew it. What we've got now is going to be supernatural, like walking through a Lollapalooza, and a tennis tournament grew out of it. Forget becoming the fifth major, we're the new U.S. Open."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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MONTCLAIR, N.J. The spectacle begins promisingly, provokingly, in Romeo Castellucci's "Democracy in America": with a crowd of female dancers in gold trimmed white bobbing around the stage, each carrying a furled white flag. They look like the most glamorous drill team you've ever seen, their long skirted coats like a runway reinterpretation of a World War I officer's dress uniform. The first time they arrange themselves to unfurl the flags, the block letters on them spell out the title of the show, borrowed from Alexis de Tocqueville's 19th century anatomization of our young nation. Interspersed with further dancing come more, anagrammatic messages: COCAIN ARMY MEDICARE (the drug misspelled, but you get the idea); DECAY CRIME MACARONI. It appears, then, that Mr. Castellucci, the Italian auteur, has something pointed to say. But while the show, very loosely inspired by Tocqueville, does pay off with hallucinatory visuals and aural overload a combustible hallmark of Mr. Castellucci's work it doesn't contribute much to our American moment of self scrutiny. Presented by Peak Performances through Sunday at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University here, "Democracy in America" is filled with striking tableaus. Mr. Castellucci who directed and designed the show, and wrote its text with Claudia Castellucci, his sister layers scrims to blur the action behind them. Softly lit, his scenes often have the smeary quality of a painting, or a nightmare.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Americans don't seem to like station wagons much, but their slightly trucklike counterparts sport utility vehicles and crossovers have swelled in popularity over the last few years. A report released this week by IHS Automotive, an automotive industry analysis company, found that S.U.V.s and crossovers have unseated the sedan as America's vehicle of choice. According to the IHS report, which draws from retail new vehicle registration data from Polk, 36.5 percent of the new vehicle registrations in 2014 were S.U.V.s or crossovers, compared with 35.4 percent for sedans. IHS says this is the first time any body style has surpassed the sedan. Polk data showed that from 2010 13 sedans still topped new car registrations, at about 36 percent, compared with about 33 to 34 percent for S.U.V.s and crossovers. Pickup trucks accounted for 13.1 percent of registrations in 2014, compared with 13.6 in 2013.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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As South America's popularity as a tourist destination continues to rise, a number of existing luxury hotels are investing in renovations while new ones are opening across the continent. Explora Valle Sagrado made its debut this month in Peru's Sacred Valley of the Incas. Set on a remote hacienda of terraced cornfields, the sustainable hotel's 50 guest rooms overlook farmland and Andean highlands. The stand alone spa is housed in a 17th century colonial home that is ideal for relaxing after one of the property's 27 explorations led by in house guides. In Chile's Atacama Desert, Explora Atacama is being refurbished and will reopen with updated guest rooms and public spaces, an expanded terrace overlooking the Licancabur volcano and new excursions. It is scheduled to reopen in January 2017; rates from 2,298 for all inclusive three night stays. The architect Cazu Zegers transformed a 1929 mansion in the El Centro neighborhood of Santiago, Chile, into a chic 42 room boutique hotel. The landmark building retains its neo Gothic facade, grand marble staircase and stained glass windows, with original floorboards repurposed as wall paneling in common areas. The designer Carolina Delpiano added a modern feel to the rooms with eucalyptus finishes, geometric rugs and minimalist furniture, while local artists hand painted headboards and crafted bathroom sinks. The lobby level features a brass and marble bar and restaurant serving Chilean cuisine, and the rooftop bar overlooks the Cerro Santa Lucia hilltop park and downtown. Rates from 220, includes breakfast. Atemporal is a reimagined 1940s luxury townhouse in Lima's residential Miraflores District. Conceived as the home of a well traveled freelance photographer, the hotel's design aesthetic is a fusion of antique and contemporary furnishings, Peruvian artifacts and classic and modern art. Nine individually designed rooms are spread across two floors, and guests have access to around the clock butler style service, a chauffeured house car, 24 hour room service and a concierge. The hotel's private salon, veranda, garden and reading room offer a quiet space to enjoy a book from the library or a cocktail from the honor bar. Opens Aug. 15; rates from 200, includes breakfast. Atix Hotel is giving Bolivia a dose of high style. Designed by the architect Stuart Narofsky, the eight story parallelogram shaped structure fashioned from glass, timber and native Comanche stone is located in Calacoto, an upscale neighborhood in La Paz. The property's 53 guest rooms, seventh floor spa, and rooftop infinity pool and cocktail bar all overlook a cityscape bound by mountains. Atix features local artwork, artisan made alpaca textiles and handcrafted furniture. The restaurant, Ona, celebrates Bolivian gastronomy using ingredients like llama meat, native potatoes and pejerrey a freshwater fish from Lake Titicaca, and its in house market sells produce from nearby farms. Opens Sept. 15; rates from 167. Designed by the architects Arthur de Mattos Casas and Chad Oppenheim, Emiliano Rio's 12 story oceanfront facade and 90 guest rooms typify Brazilian modernism, with furniture in rooms inspired by 1950s glamour. The owners commissioned a 5,500 square foot Santapele spa on the 11th floor and offer spalike guest rooms featuring in room whirlpools, saunas and treatment areas. The rooftop restaurant serves healthy fare alongside an infinity pool overlooking Copacabana Beach, while a sun deck, wet deck and water bench are attended by poolside butlers. Opens September; rates from 820. The Colombian fashion designer Silvia Tcherassi is opening her second hotel within the historic walled district of Cartagena. Her existing seven room retreat will become the Tcherassi Mansion, and a nearby 42 room property will take on the Tcherassi Hotel Spa name. Collaborating with the designer Richard Mishaan, Ms. Tcherassi will convert a 16th century structure into a colonial contemporary resort fitted with a rooftop pool, two restaurants, a bar, cafe and a clothing boutique. Original stone walls, blue hand stained frescoes and carved wood ceilings combine with hanging gardens, courtyard fountains and modern furniture to reflect Ms. Tcherassi's signature "Caribbean chic" style. Opens October; rates from 275. The historic Alvear Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is transforming its upper floors and rooftop ballroom space into 15 new classic contemporary suites, a solarium swimming pool and two bars with outdoor terraces overlooking the city. Across town in Puerto Madero, the modern Alvear Icon Hotel Residences is under construction. The property will feature 159 rooms and suites and a variety of dining options from a rooftop restaurant and courtyard eatery to a trendy milk bar and an upscale glatt kosher restaurant. Alvear Palace Hotel renovation to be completed in November, new suites from 750; Alvear Icon Hotel Residences opens July 2017, rates from 450. Originally a charitable nursing home with a chapel, Hotel del Parque is a carefully preserved architectural structure dating to 1891. Set on the grounds of Parque Historico in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the hotel is surrounded by more than seven acres of native gardens and several landmark buildings. The property features 44 guest rooms including two suites, a river view restaurant, and two courtyard patios. The church continues to host mass once a week, while its bell tower has been repurposed as a massage treatment room with sweeping views of the scenic landscape. Opens December; rates from 320. Created by the architect Carolina Proto, the new units are housed in a contemporary building that features an outdoor lounge with a fireplace. Angra dos Reis, Brazil's coastal region boasting 365 offshore islands and an affluent yachting community, will be home to Fasano Angra dos Reis. The 54 room hotel is located within a new mixed use development that has residences, restaurants, a spa, beach club, golf course and luxury boutiques. Hotel Fasano Punta del Este reopens in December, rates from 420; Fasano Angra dos Reis opens March 2017; rates from 450. South America is getting its first luxury sleeper train. The Belmond Andean Explorer traverses 15,000 foot heights on overnight journeys through the Peruvian Andes. Stopping in Cusco, Lake Titicaca and Arequipa, travelers can explore ancient Inca sites, villages on floating islands and canyons with soaring condors. Thirty four cabins with private bathrooms are decorated with hand woven Peruvian fabrics and alpaca wool bedding. The train features two dining cars, an observation car with an open air deck and a lounge car with a cocktail bar. Launches May 2017; rates from 462 per person for one night programs inclusive of all meals, open bar and scheduled excursions.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Annette Bening as Kate, the emotional center of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons," which is directed by Jack O'Brien. Plays with a large moral vision are so last century. Our taste now is for the miniature and metaphoric works too exquisite to live outside the living room. Or maybe our capacity for shame has shrunk. But in Arthur Miller's "All My Sons," originally produced in 1947, domesticity is just a backdrop. The drama takes place outdoors, amid trees and sky in an Ohio backyard soon after World War II. Its anger and ambition are likewise elemental. Too bad, then, that the Roundabout Theater Company revival that opened on Monday at the American Airlines Theater reaches the play's level only intermittently, like a poorly tuned radio. Jack O'Brien's literal minded production, starring Tracy Letts and Annette Bening, does not make a resonant case for the drama today. That's odd because although the play has its share of problems, irrelevance will never be one of them. You don't have to dig deep into current headlines to find eerie parallels to Miller's story. Based on a real wartime event, it tells of a manufacturer of airplane parts whose defective product wound up killing 21 pilots on missions over Australia. Boeing, anyone? The crux of the drama is that the parts were known to be defective. The question is: Who authorized their delivery anyway? Both Joe Keller, the boss, and Steve Deever, his underling, served time, after a trial, for doing so. But Keller, claiming he was sick on the day of the deliveries and that Deever made the decision alone, was exonerated on appeal. Deever is still in prison as the action begins some years later. In Miller's cosmology, Keller (Mr. Letts) might as well be called Winner and Deever, Loser. The play sees in the contrast between the former neighbors a larger fault in the American psyche, one that turns businessmen into boogeymen and fathers into monsters. It is Keller's principled son, Chris (Benjamin Walker), who bears the brunt of the revelations that emerge one day in August, after a portentous thunderstorm. "This is the land of the great big dogs," he cries. "You don't love a man here, you eat him!" The revelations come a little too neatly, thanks to a surprise visit and a long withheld letter. The entwining of the two families, whose children grew up together in this very backyard, is also overdetermined. Steve's daughter, Ann (Francesca Carpanini), was all but engaged to Chris's brother, Larry, before Larry was killed in the war. Now she has returned from exile in New York, hoping to marry the besotted Chris instead. What's new onstage and off: Sign up for our Theater Update newsletter That Chris is the respected scion of a rehabilitated local businessman and Ann the daughter of a disgraced convict is but one of the complications. The more pressing problem is that Chris's mother, Kate (Ms. Bening), refuses to accept that Larry is dead. The idea that Ann might marry Chris thus fills her with a horror bordering on disgust. It creates a kind of Oedipal triangle by proxy and a great character in Kate. Though Keller is the bigger role, Kate is the show's emotional center and endless mystery. What does she know? Does she really know she knows it? Her neurotic adaptations to ongoing grief including strange headaches and a mania for horoscopes at some point morph into something else. But what? Ms. Bening goes deepest of the four leads in exploring the muck at the bottom of her character's personality. She also has terrific technique, both vocal and otherwise. But the opacity of the production overall means we still can't read her with any clarity, and the play acquires a weird wobble at its core. Mr. Letts has the opposite problem. Perhaps because he wears glasses that lend him a striking resemblance to Dick Cheney, his Keller is all too patently slimy and, despite a few outbursts, unchanging. The events of the play seem to have little effect on him, until suddenly, in the last few beats, they do. This may make sense of the plot but does nothing for its emotional underpinnings. The production is almost never moving, except when Ann's brother, George, shows up intending to expose everyone's lies. Watching Kate tame him with strategic applications of love and grape juice and watching George (Hampton Fluker) melt beautifully from avenger to puppy you glimpse what the play can be. Mr. Fluker, incidentally, is black. When the Roundabout announced this revival of "All My Sons," it was to be directed by Gregory Mosher, whose concept for it included color conscious casting. (The Deevers were to be black and the Kellers white.) After the Miller estate nixed that plan, Mr. Mosher quit the production and was replaced by Mr. O'Brien. Mr. O'Brien's production is colorblind instead: The actors have been cast regardless of race, which works perfectly well in itself. But if Mr. Mosher's approach would have raised issues Miller did not contemplate issues the text leaves little room to tackle it at least would have opened a fresh avenue of exploration. Mr. O'Brien's old fashioned production does not. In many ways its most pressing impulse seems to be to rebut the previous Broadway revival. (Starring John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest, that highly stylized 2008 production was directed by Simon McBurney, a founder of the experimental company Complicite.) An aesthetic you might call Obvious Naturalism is the result. And so we have a set by Douglas W. Schmidt that looks like you could move right in. Period costumes, by Jane Greenwood, announce their authenticity, right down to the seamed stockings. They aren't the only seams left showing in this production. No hint is too unsubtle here, whether videos (by Jeff Sugg) that depict heavy weather intercut with warfare or, at moments of tension, the drone of airplanes overhead. (The sound is by John Gromada.) Even the streaks of makeup seen covering Chris's bare back as he works in the garden meant to be war wounds are cartoonishly overbroad; it looks as if fate has come down from the sky to claw him raw. You could argue that the play intends just that. Yet I think it's a mistake to keep reading Miller as melodramatic; that's what he was growing away from. (Two years later came "Death of a Salesman.") If only this production had followed his example in acknowledging and dealing with defects instead of following Joe Keller's.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Now it does not resemble a box, nor is white the dominant color. The floors are Brazilian cherry; flamed black granite, a matte surface with intriguing variations, makes repeat appearances on portions of the floor, walls and countertops. Except for the glass doors that separate the dining area from the eat in kitchen, the doors throughout are rift cut oak; a hulking built in that Mr. Gordon refers to as "the sushi bar," an oak bar with a blackened steel countertop and a hidden refrigerator, is the showpiece of the living room. The unit is in the 20 story limestone frontispiece of 15 Central Park West known as "the House," with intimate treetop views of the park and its ever evolving vegetation, as opposed to the soaring 43 story rear section known as "the Tower," where the upper floors have Central Park and Hudson River vistas. The bedroom wing faces west onto the courtyard, and all three bedrooms have en suite baths and ample closets; the opulent master bath combines limestone and crema marfil marble, and has a Boffi tub and a two person glass shower. The monthly carrying costs are 7,221.80. Just inside the 3,454 square foot residence, the floor in the foyer is inlaid with bronze, and off the cloakroom is a powder room with a limestone vanity. A custom built floor to ceiling room divider with movable fins made of American walnut with brass inserts separates the foyer from the living and entertainment area. The ceiling in the media section is covered in the same hand stretched ecru leather that appears on the closet doors and walls in the 743 square foot master suite. The kitchen has Italian ceramic floors, a Wolf double oven, a Sub Zero refrigerator, a wine cooler, and an off white backsplash of neo Paris stone, a substance impermeable to stains. The counters and center unit are of matte black granite. The park can be seen through the glass doors to the dining area. According to Nora Ariffin of Halstead Property, Mr. Gordon had been renting a pied a terre on the Upper West Side before buying at 15 Central Park West but wanted to be closer to the park. Ms. Ariffin and Christopher Kromer, her partner at Halstead, are the listing brokers and also represented Mr. Gordon when he bought the apartment.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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CINCINNATI Michelle Curley's husband does not like the baby hippo tattoo. He tolerates it, but he does not like it. "He is not a fan," Ms. Curley said, shoving a lock of her paprika red hair aside to show me what's inked onto the concave scoop of her upper back. Ms. Curley was standing in line for lunch on a recent afternoon at the Base Camp Cafe, the russet colored cafeteria at the entrance to the Cincinnati Zoo's Africa exhibit. Every Formica table in the place was packed: with schoolchildren in matching T shirts, middle aged tourists with giant S.L.R. cameras slung around their necks, and a melange of zoo employees wearing branded fleeces and muddy boots. The air smelled of canola oil and charred coffee. The cafe is the closest eatery to the hippo tank, and therefore the closest to Fiona, the 10 month old hippo who bounces around inside it. Over the last year, Fiona has become something of an international cause celebre, largely because of the efforts of Ms. Curley, the zoo's communications director, and her four person team, who started posting Fiona's every move to social media from the day she was born on Jan. 24 (prematurely, and perilously, but more on that later). Fiona starred in her own 7 episode reality show sponsored by Facebook. The zoo's director, Thane Maynard, sold a children's book called "Saving Fiona: The Story of the World's Most Famous Baby Hippo" to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, scheduled for the spring of 2018, with proceeds benefiting the animal's care. The Cincinnati Reds are planning to have an official "Fiona Day" at the ballpark next summer, complete with commemorative hippopotamus bobbleheads. Twitter fans have become obsessed with Fiona's flatulence. She has become America's Large Adult Daughter, its triumphant baby queen, its reigning diva with the skin texture of a wet avocado. Being at the center of a 24/7 hype machine for a 500 pound (and growing) starlet can be exhausting, and Ms. Curley got her tattoo as a way to commemorate the intensity of the past year. "I didn't think any experience would ever top this experience," she said. "I'm never going to regret getting it." "We think this is just Michelle's way of one upping her groupie status," said Chad Yelton, the zoo's vice president of marketing. "She has all the merch, the tumblers, the calendar. If there's something with Fiona's face on it, she has to have it first." When Fiona was born, no one expected her to survive. Bibi, her lumbering, obstinate mother ("Fiona gets all of her diva tendencies from her mom," said Christina Gorsuch, the curator for African mammals) gave birth six weeks early, and the baby weighed only 29 pounds. Most viable hippos weigh between 55 and 120 pounds at birth; premature infants rarely pull through. "In the first six weeks, there was at least once a week when we were sure she was going to die," said Ms. Gorsuch, who was wearing a pair of hippo shaped stud earrings in her office next to the antelope pen. "I kept telling the keepers to call me in the middle of the night when the inevitable happens." She was kept in the bestial equivalent of a newborn I.C.U., with round the clock care that included visits from local nurses from Cincinnati Children's Hospital who located her tiny veins for an IV during a nasty bout of dehydration. Scientists at the zoo milked a hippo for the first time "we had no idea what was in hippo milk before now," Ms. Gorsuch said so that they could recreate the formula for Fiona's bottles. Every day, between January and May 15, when Fiona finally was able to promenade around the hippo tank for the public, seemed to bring a new health crisis. All of this was documented on social media for the world to see. Overnight, Fiona became a symbol of resilience and positivity. Buzzfeed ran listicles of her bravest moments, calling her a "sassy, unbothered, unproblematic queen." NPR ran a national report on her swelling celebrity status. One website called her "The Only Good Thing Left in This World." "Fiona is one of a kind, there's no doubt about it," said Thane Maynard, the director of the zoo, who talked to me in the zoo's giant boardroom, featuring a lacquered mahogany table and several figurines of rare African mammals. The room would not have felt out of place in Disney's Adventureland. Mr. Maynard was wearing a safari shirt and khaki pants, held up by a belt featuring a giant silver buckle of an elephant's head. "Around here I'm known as the King of Khaki," he said. He knew Fiona was an international phenomenon after going on his yearly exotic birding expedition to the Black Rock Lodge in rural northern Belize. Fiona was only 6 weeks old at the time. Mr. Maynard overheard two strangers from California talking at the lodge about how grateful they were to have Wi Fi in the jungle so they could get their "Fiona fix" on Facebook. "That's when I knew, boy, she really is a rock star," he said. "It's Fiona's world and we are just living in it." It was shortly after he returned from Belize that the call came from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Mr. Maynard said yes right away. "Look, this idea of telling a hopeful story is important to what zoos do," he said. "We don't need to be in the bad news business. People love a story where everything looks dark and then heroes save the day. Fiona came here in the year 2017, a year when we need a lot more good news. And there she is, our good news emissary." (It should be noted that the Cincinnati Zoo was in particular need of good news in 2017, given that its last year was dominated by controversy about killing an adult gorilla after a child fell into his habitat.) Mr. Maynard says that other zoo directors have begun to approach him about how he turned Fiona into the sensation she has become. The publicity team's decision to share updates on the hippo from the beginning was unconventional; most zoos wait to share information on troubled animals. "Now we are getting asked at conferences about how we did it," Mr. Yelton said. "We tell people, you have to find your Fiona, whatever that may be, and just tell the story." Ms. Curley said, "We have tried to say we are going to stop posting about her every day, but we get 100,000 commenters telling us they must have updates. Everyone is so invested now." "People tell us all the time that Fiona is something everyone can agree on," said Amy LaBarbara, the zoo's coordinator for marketing and events. "We have heard from countless people online that Fiona has been uniting the United States. We hear from people going through chemo that tell us she is the only bright spot in their day." The fervor around Fiona makes sense, given the polarized, tense, mass anxiety swirling around the country this year. When times get rough, we tend to project our hopes and fears onto animals. It happened during the global economic meltdown, when the baby polar bear Knut became the undeniable star of the Berlin Zoo, raised by hand by his trainer after his mother, Tosca, rejected him in 2006. (Knut's entire short life was blanketed by controversy are polar bears meant to be raised by humans? and ended in tragedy, as he slipped into the water and drowned in front of horrified zoogoers in 2011.) As the animal philosopher Steven Cave wrote in an essay about Knut's death, the bear's story serves as a poignant cautionary tale about celebrity animals: "We might search for nature in zoos, but what we find are our conflicting ideas of nature reflected back at us. Those who believe we can live in harmony with the beasts and so redeem ourselves will try to catch the eye of the next animal superstar." Of the bronze statue of Knut that now stands in the Berlin Zoo, he writes, "It is not Knut the Dreamer, but Knut as we dream him who is realized in bronze for future generations to chirp and coo over." In other words, it can be dangerous to overhype and anthropomorphize wild animals, as we project our fantasies and desires onto them and turn the narrative into a heartwarming tale that serves to reaffirm our own sense of goodness. The animal becomes a meme, a product, a unit of sale. As the late critic John Berger wrote of celebrity creatures living in zoos: "This reduction of the animal, which has a theoretical as well as economic history, is part of the same process as that by which men have been reduced to isolated productive and consuming units." And yet, many of Fiona's keepers insist that she courts and adores the attention. "She absolutely knows she is a star," Ms. Gorsuch said. "I've been in this industry over 20 years and I've never seen or experienced or heard anything like this. She loves the camera. She has the biggest personality. And yet she is clearly a hippo. When we reintroduced her to her parents, she knew how to be a hippo immediately. She has an incredible ability to balance her little worlds; being an animal, and being in public." The day I visited Fiona, Cincinnati was chilly and overcast and only a few fans were lingering around Hippo Cove, the 7.5 million enclosure that opened in 2016 and offers visitors the rare opportunity to view hippos as they frolic underwater. Fiona was out and spinning, like "Fantasia" brought to life. But where the vintage Disney version of hippos in tutus now feels more like a cruel, shaming joke, the experience of watching Fiona pirouetting felt joyful and buoyant. A roly poly imp, she swam underneath the 3,300 pound body of Bibi, her mother. Fiona's father, Henry, was inside, having suffered for months with infection and weight loss, an old man in hippo years at 36. "When people hear we've held her, they want to touch our hands," Ms. Curley said. Ms. Gorsuch also said that she herself has become notorious in local circles as the "coach of TeamFiona" thanks to the Facebook videos. "People get crazy," she said. "I've been hugged by many strangers." Almost everyone I spoke with in Cincinnati seemed to have an opinion on the blessed child. Keith Gavigan, the proprietor of the Symphony Hotel, an inn in town, runs overnight zoo tours on the side and treasures his glimpses of Fiona at dawn. "She's a ham for sure," he said. "My tip is to go in the rain, because she will still be out, and you can beat the crowds." As the zoo prepares for the long winter Fiona cannot go outside when it is under 50 degrees Ms. Curley said that they are planning to continue live streaming the hippo's life as long as the public has an appetite. Elena Passarello, the author of this year's "Animals Strike Curious Poses," an essay collection about the history of famous beasts, said that celebrity animals will always reflect the times they are in. "Like Humphrey the Humpback and Springer the Orca and Mike the Headless Chicken, every critter I've come up with who 'made the news' was written about in some way that allows their story to coincide with a particular, of the moment human concern," she said. "Even Pizza Rat!" "It's an easy leap to a more overt connection between a particular story a wayward whale, a preemie hippo, a lost baby, a miracle rooster and whatever struggle, triumph or challenge that the group of humans who see the animal are collectively experiencing," Ms. Passarello said. "In terms of Fiona, I think something similar is happening in regards to her life and the 'over love' she's garnering. It's as difficult to love and understand a human as it is to process their loss. A human baby comes with it so many opportunities for peril, for evil, for disappointment and failure. A human birth points to a future we elder humans know we probably will not understand and might be pushed out of. But a baby animal especially one that we've put in a cage of human experience, as we've done for Fiona, holds more limited possibility. Fiona's youth is in this precious box, and we can love it unconditionally because there are so few possibilities to it."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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No offense to Milan or London (though some will surely be taken), but the fashion world waits and waits for Paris Fashion Week. And now, after days of costolette and aperitivi in Milan, it has arrived. The traveling class began arriving yesterday (some, to judge by Instagram, after sneaking in a day off in Como or Cap d'Antibes) and continues today. But the shows won't wait. What used to be a barely there day of shows has grown into a showcase for the new guard. Here's what to look for today. Olivier Theyskens. Mr. Theyskens, a willowy Belgian with a goth streak, made his name in the houses of Paris, plural: first his own, then Rochas (which landed him in The New York Times Magazine), then Nina Ricci. Now, after a few years in New York, designing a more affordable collection for Theory, he is returning to Paris to show (again) a collection under his own name. Details so far are scant, but Mr. Theyskens has always had his share of acolytes and devotees. Odds are good that his collection will be the first big buzz of a newsy, new designers in high places Paris Fashion Week.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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TAYLOR JOHNSON works as a graphic designer, Mary Kay Demetriou as a marketing consultant and Debra Kling as a color consultant. And they all work as negotiators. The three are among the one third of the American work force about 42 million people, according to the Freelancers Union who work independently. And as freelancing has increasingly evolved from a hobby or part time work to a full time job, those who learn how to price and sell themselves are the ones who succeed. "Many people didn't wind up freelancing by choice, and how to bill and what to charge are not skills most people started with," said Laura Vanderkam, who writes and speaks about time management. A first step is to determine the right rate for your profession and level of expertise. Talk to others, do market research and join professional organizations where pricing is often a hot topic of conversation. Lindsay Van Thoen, in a blog for the Freelancers Union, a labor organization, suggested one method for setting an hourly rate, and developing longer term economic goals although she warned it's "a guide, not a rule." Figure out what you want to make yearly and put that aside as a salary you pay to yourself. Then add expenses, such as purchases and overhead, plus the profit you hope to make above expenses. Ms. Van Thoen suggested 10 to 20 percent of your salary. Divide all that by the number of billable hours you plan to work for a basic hourly rate. If possible, get a budget from the client before crunching the numbers, she said. "There's nothing worse than doing all of your calculations, giving a client your price and then getting complete silence on the other end because your price is very different from what they expected," she said. One of the perennial freelancer questions is whether an hourly rate or a flat fee is more advantageous. Both have pros and cons, but as people gain experience and confidence, they tend to change to a per project system. "I've moved away from hourly billing for many clients," Mr. Johnson, of Palo Alto, Calif., wrote by email. "My creative process often involves time strategizing over coffee, walking, driving and thinking. At times, I'll take a break from working on a project only to have a sudden flash of inspiration. It's these times away from my Mac that are often worth every billable penny. Billing in hourly (or even 30 minute) increments tends to discourage the creative process and limits my time to actual production time." In addition, some part of each day maybe an hour should be spent on business development, Ms. Vanderkam said, such as networking and researching new projects, and that needs to be covered by your income. "It's just like grocery shopping isn't just the time in the store, but making the list, driving there and putting away the groceries," she said. Whether by the hour or by the project, you need to keep track of your time, and many apps are available to help. Ms. Kling, who lives in Larchmont, N.Y., swears by Toggl, which allows her to easily see the exact minutes spent on each project she's juggling 30 now on her computer and mobile devices by using color coding for each job. While "I'm not a stickler about hours," she said, "Toggl lets me see if the 10 minutes here and there I'm doing for a client add up." Sometimes she even gives a client the time sheet so they can understand that her pricing "is not voodoo." she said. "I don't just come up with a number." She said Toggl, which is free but can be upgraded for 5 a month, also permitted her to see if she accurately estimated the amount of time she spent on a project and readjust in the future if need be. Ms. Vanderkam, who has written about such apps, said Toggl was one of the most popular, but there were also tools that keep track of the unproductive hours as well as the productive ones. RescueTime, for example, runs in the background, timing the minutes spent on various sites or applications. Those "five minutes" spent on Twitter or Facebook might, in reality, be an hour. It's free, but a 9 a month upgrade also includes services like blocking distracting websites and more detailed reports and filters. Other freelancers mentioned using Budgetic.com and Itrackmytime.com. Mr. Johnson said he used Roninapp.com, which starts at 15 a month, for invoices. Fanuriotimetracking.com, which also does invoices, costs 59 for purchase and a year of technical support. Most of the apps have free trial periods, so try a few to see which works best for you. While an app keeps tracks of the minutes, work is more than that. Freelancers need to know and communicate the value they add to a business beyond the nuts and bolts, said Mike McDerment, co founder of FreshBooks, which sells accounting software for small businesses. "People start by undervaluing their own work," said Mr. McDerment, who also wrote the free Portable Document Format book "Breaking the Time Barrier," which addresses pricing strategies for freelancers. "A lot of people start by saying 'I just hope I get the job,' " he said. But they need to transition to selling the idea that they are a valuable part of a team and "bring expertise and knowledge and talent," to a customer. Or as Mr. Johnson said, "I'm getting my clients to understand they are paying for a design solution and not just actual production time. By understanding the creative process more, it allows them to better value the service I provide." Of course, even with the best effort in the world, things go wrong. Ms. Demetriou, the Santa Monica, Calif., marketing consultant, thought she had everything covered when she started a project for a market research company. She provided a timetable, set her hourly rate, had an agreed upon scope of work and a signed agreement, and kept in touch with her clients with status reports, as well as updating her work online. But when she sent her first bill, she received a big surprise. She was told the deal was for only 10 hours of work and no money was available to pay the invoice in full. "I had probably done 50, and they could have seen all along that I was doing way more than 10," she said. Ms. Demetriou said she believed the budget of the department that hired her was cut between the time she was assigned the work and the time she billed. "Even though companies are using a lot more freelance talent, they're not always sure how to manage it internally and externally," she said. "And budgets are constantly changing." She learned a few valuable lessons from the experience: Even with a detailed scope of work, you need to ensure that your contract or agreement specifies the maximum amount a client will pay, something her contract did not include. Bill early and often. She now bills every two weeks. Also, if you do end up in a similar situation, negotiate. Ms. Demetriou suggested a payment plan, and agreed to prorate some hours at an administrative rate and some at the higher strategic rate. She did get more money than the company initially offered, although not as much as she felt she deserved. All of the roles a freelancer must now play can seem overwhelming, but the trick is to build slowly. And if your business takes off, who knows? Perhaps one day you can put in for vacation time.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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I was motoring along Route 101 in northwest Washington State in my little rental car, getting a kick out of the fact that I frequently drive the same highway in Southern California, where I live. There were few other similarities, though: The air in Washington had a refreshing bite to it, cold and clean. The sweet smell of wet earth seemed to follow me wherever I went, indoors or out. And soon after I left Port Angeles a small town on the 101 that's a quick 90 minute ferry ride to Victoria, British Columbia, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and entered Olympic National Park, it began to rain and didn't stop until I left the park seven hours later. Which, in a way, was exactly what I'd hoped for. I was planning to spend a day in the Hoh Rain Forest, one of the only rain forests in the United States. (It was also my way of saying "happy birthday" to our national park system, which turned 100 in August.) Using the small, quirky coastal town of Port Townsend (roughly a two hour drive from Seattle in my 25 per day Budget rental) as my base, I set out to enjoy what Washington does best: some good hiking in a beautiful setting paired with an idiosyncratic hospitality. Even better, I was able to do all this without putting too much of a strain on my wallet. "It's raining!" I called out as I pulled up to the entrance of the rain forest, and immediately winced at how foolish I must have sounded. The friendly National Park Service employee took it in stride. "It does tend to do that here," he called back. The Hoh gets a whopping 12 to 14 feet of precipitation each year. On the lengthy drive to the forest's entrance I felt as if I were being consumed by wetness and foliage. The ferns on the ground became more lush and dense, and the mosses and lichens covering the Oregon maples, Sitka spruces and Douglas firs more varied and more intensely green. I paid the 25 admission, which initially seemed somewhat steep, but less so when I learned the pass is good for one vehicle, and all its occupants, for seven days. (An annual pass is only 25 more.) "By the way," the park ranger added, "this is a primarily coniferous forest. Some people come here expecting the Amazon; I'm not sure why." Potential visitors to the Hoh should remember to bring proper attire: a reliable waterproof jacket and hiking boots with good, thick socks at bare minimum. Do not underestimate the importance of the socks your boots won't be much use without them. A pair of gaiters, which keep your lower legs dry and keep debris out of your footwear, might be worth it, too (you can get a decent pair for less than 20). I learned these lessons the hard way while my boots were solid (I got a great deal on Chaco boots for under 60 on Amazon), my light jacket was worthless. Within an hour in the forest, I was soaked. Fortunately, the hikes themselves were so good, I was willing to work through any physical discomfort. I hiked the Hall of Mosses and Spruce Nature trails, each roughly a mile long as well as a portion of the Hoh River Trail, an 18 mile trek to the base of Mount Olympus. The Hall of Mosses was particularly nice. Enormous conifers stretched to the sky, 200 feet or higher. On the forest floor, new trees sprouted out of the moldering logs of their dead ancestors. Nearly every surface, living or dead, was shaggy with moss. That moss, it turned out, is a great sound absorber the entire forest had an eerie calm to it. I headed to Port Townsend to check in at the Old Consulate Inn on Walker Street (a reasonable 125 per night). Cindy Madsen, who owns the inn with her partner, Nathan Barnett, explained the rules of the house with a cool efficiency (They also dress in full Victorian garb). I was soon able to relax and look around it seemed as if I'd more or less have run of the house, and that Cindy and Nathan would be hands off hosts. My room, on the top floor of the inn, was cozy with decor befitting its Victorian theme, and a very comfortable bed. There were interesting souvenirs and relics throughout the house: a suit of armor, old books, period musical instruments and a lovely restored pool table in the basement. I needed to do some exploring, so I went for a walk. Port Townsend is, despite occasional lack of sidewalks on its streets, a great walking town. Water Street, the main thoroughfare, has plenty of cute and earnest shops and galleries. Also worth checking out: the Rose Theater, which opened as a vaudeville house in 1907 and today serves cocktails and shows first run movies as well as art house films (usually a 9 or 10 admission, depending on the show). The Clothes Horse and Fancy Feathers, secondhand stores on different floors of the same Water Street building, have a high quality selection of used clothing. Down the street, there's a steampunk store called World's End, which serves a surprisingly substantial niche within the community there's actually an annual steampunk festival in Port Townsend. I walked past a skate park on Monroe Street and hung a right, passing moored boats as I headed to Doc's Marina Grill, overlooking the water. I took advantage of Doc's very generous happy hour by sitting next to a large fire pit on the outdoor patio and ordering a draft beer ( 3.75) and a selection of small plates: ahi poke, popcorn shrimp and steamed mussels ( 5 each). I got to talking and sharing my food (I had ordered way too much) with Alanna Dailey, a young musician who grew up in town. Port Townsend "is great in a lot of ways, but it can really suck you in," she said. Indeed, she had felt the need to escape, and had spent the previous year working in France. She added, kiddingly: "Be careful; before you know it you'll be married and have four kids." She and I went to nearby Chetzemoka Park after finishing our drinks and chatted. We talked about the history of the town, and how it is, despite vacationing retirees, and a relatively recent influx of new money, a fairly blue collar place. We stumbled through the darkened park, using my cellphone for light, down to a big tire swing. We swayed back and forth on it. "We were originally supposed to be Seattle," she said. "Like, the main city in the state." Port Townsend was once a booming 19th century town, but growth slowed. We climbed down a path to a small and rocky, but beautiful, beach. She told me a couple of funny and slightly embarrassing stories about things that had happened in the park when she was growing up. We stood and listened to the waves lapping the shore. It was almost completely dark. She wasn't sure she wanted to stick around Port Townsend forever, she said, but there was a lot to like. It was hard to disagree.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Netflix might offer flashier, more stunt studded interview shows than "Song Exploder," one, say, in which Lizzo oversees the loss of David Letterman's virginity as a rapping flutist. But would any of those devote even a minute to the glories of the flexatone? That's the surgical looking percussion instrument that, once shaken and bent, can sound like a triangle on a cartoon acid trip. The musician Ty Dolla Sign uses one on his song "LA," and he praises it in the maiden season of "Song Exploder," except, dang it, he can't remember what the thing is called. The show's creator and host, Hrishikesh Hirway, fills the blank in. Ty Dolla's attempt to jog his memory has the adorable comprehensiveness of certain game show contestants. I love this show, more maybe than Hirway's podcast, which inspired it. The format's the same: musicians talking about how they conceived and recorded one song. On Netflix, a season is apparently a thimbleful of episodes and none exceeds half an hour. So they're rewatchable. And the four in this first batch which also includes interviews with Alicia Keys, Lin Manuel Miranda and R.E.M. are wonderful, in part, for their "aha," "eureka" and "well, I'll be" moments, like, in Episode 3, when the R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry realizes that there really are handclaps in the final mix of "Losing My Religion." Epiphanies like that are akin to the part of "Finding Your Roots" when Henry Louis Gates Jr. shocks some famous person (Questlove, Ben Affleck, Ming Tsai, Amy Schumer) with the facts of the family tree. Good TV. But the new show's other strength is its interrogative diversity. Each episode begins with Hirway concisely setting the table (this is the artist, this is the song) and ends with the song being played in its entirety. After the introductions, the episodes are guided by the personalities of the artists and the particular provenance of the song. In Keys's episode, for instance, she's looking for the song ("3 Hour Drive") as opposed to exploring how it was found, the way the other artists here do. She arrived in London to write and record without knowing precisely what. Hirway has video of her in a room with the producer Jimmy Napes and the songwriter and singer Sampha, confabbing and noodling. A podcast doesn't need all of these assets (procured video, montages of old footage) the way 20 something minutes of television do. A podcast episode could have survived just on Keys, Napes and Sampha narrating for us. But the television incarnation is satisfying. There's excitement in watching Alex Lacamoire, the music director of "Hamilton," palm Miranda's shoulder as they're having a moment of exclamatory recall on how "Wait for It" came to be one of the musical's emotional summits. There's the stressed visage of Michael Stipe, R.E.M.'s singer, wincing as he's forced to a listen to a 30 year old vocal track. The show does need to find a better way to present the finished recordings. Right now, the music videos it makes for each song (often animated and complete with visualized lyrics) tend to align the songs with what they're not: kitsch. Still, there's an idiosyncratic ambition at work here. You can imagine a show entirely interested in back catalog nostalgia, one in which somebody "explodes" erstwhile chart smashes and bygone jams in order to get us feeling good again. Hirway isn't that somebody. Only one of the four songs here was a hit single, and it's from 1991. Who knows how the songs are chosen for the Netflix show? Keys's is from a brand new album. Ty Dolla's is the opening track of his debut, "Free TC," from 2015. Hirway's approach isn't cultural. We have other sweet spot sources of illumination for that, like the podcast "Hit Parade," Chris Molanphy's spelunk through the Billboard charts and The Times's own video series "Diary of a Song," in which current hits are dismantled and essentially reassembled by the people who made them. As a title, "Song Exploder" has tended toward the opposite of mayhem. My understanding of the individual songs isn't blown apart. If anything, I feel closer to the music by the end. Even when I'm not crazy about the song, I'm repeatedly reminded of the alchemical fusion of skill, ingenuity and happenstance that culminates in art. I learn things; one connection among the songs in the Netflix version is how crucial the concept of space appears to be, whether it's the rest between notes, atmospheric calm or the sui generis rhythm in Berry's drumming. The show invites you to crawl through a window of the creative process and feel both exhilarated and humbled by it. "Song Exploder" is more like "Dissect," a podcast series that takes an encyclopedic approach to album appreciation, except Hirway's sessions are crisper and his interest in craft borders on the psychological. A good interview show can overlap with therapy. Hirway is one of few hosts who could be an actual therapist. He makes Dr. Phil look like he works for Vince McMahon. Hirway is present, gentle and almost palpably attentive yet stoic. In the opening minutes of the Keys episode, she asks him what his sign is. "Aquarius." Hers, too, but that's about as far as that conversation goes because he wants to get down to business. Time's a wastin'. He's not so much immune to her charisma (or Miranda's) as he is curious about the ends to which it's put. When Hirway hits Ty Dolla with a vocal track for "LA," the singer bristles. You're not supposed to have that. But "that's the secret sauce of the show," Hirway informs him. He's especially good with R.E.M. Each member is interviewed separately, but he gets them responding to one another nonetheless. During his exchange with Stipe, Hirway asks him to inhabit the mind set of the protagonist of "Losing My Religion," something I don't know that any interviewer had successfully achieved with respect to Stipe and any R. E. M. song. But inhabit Stipe does. Once inside, he admits to finding a bit of himself in the song's sense of paranoid infatuation. He lets Hirway push and probe. It's tender and risky affirming, too. Hirway wants to understand the song more than the people who composed it. Or maybe to understand the song is to understand its composers. Either way, I left the Miranda episode astounded by the complexity of "Wait for It," a song about Aaron Burr's smoldering long game; and was reminded anew that "Losing My Religion" is one of the greatest cloaked disclosures to lodge itself in both the Top 5 and the planet's psyche. Hirway is himself a musician, but I know that only because I read it somewhere. He doesn't impose himself. He doesn't do any palling around. But I'm guessing that he speaks the artists' language enough to switch tacks and lure them toward an introspection deeper than what's already evident in the songs themselves. I hope his demeanor can continue at this remove, because anybody can go behind the music. Few, though, are rigorous enough to go beneath it.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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From Loch Striven in Scotland to the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia, more than a tenth of the vessels that transport the world's manufactured goods in containers are idle. For most, orders to sail will not come for some time. Although world trade, which collapsed last year, is beginning to recover, driven by demand from developing countries, the recovery is being offset by added capacity in the large number of new container ships coming out of shipyards. Among those suffering the most are lines like the German carrier Hapag Lloyd and the Danish group A. P. Moller Maersk. Much like the giant banks crippled by the subprime mortgage crisis, the companies are now paying for having expanded too aggressively during the boom, according to analysts. Drewry Shipping Consultants in London estimates that the 20 or so major carriers, all Asian or European, lost 20 billion in 2009. According to Alphaliner, an industry information provider, seven smaller carriers shut down last year, including Contenemar of Spain. "We've never seen anything like this," said Chris Bourne, executive director of the European Liner Affairs Association. "It's the worst situation since the start of containerization in the '60s." Carriers have long had to adapt to economic cycles, shifting trade patterns and geopolitics. During the 1970s, they were hit by the oil shocks and the reopening of the Suez Canal, which cut demand for the supertankers that rounded southern Africa. Recovery took a decade, hampered by recession during the 1980s. The current slowdown is weighing not only on the shipping companies, but also on ports and shipyards, especially in Europe. According to IHS Global Insight, a research and consulting firm, the global liner industry the companies that mainly transport cargo containers is responsible for 13.5 million jobs directly or indirectly. The 400 liner services carry 60 percent of international seaborne trade, according to the World Shipping Council, which represents the industry; the remainder is carried mainly by tankers (oil and natural gas) and bulk ships (coal, grain and heavy equipment). One key route is between Europe and the developing countries in Asia. China, which recently surpassed Germany as the world's largest exporter, announced last Sunday that exports had risen 17.7 percent in December from a year earlier, the first increase in 14 months; imports rose 55.9 percent. Other developing countries are also seeing strong demand for freight, particularly products like cement or steel for building projects. But that mostly means business for tankers and bulk carriers, not container ships. Most analysts say that container traffic will probably not recover to prerecession levels until 2012 or later. Drewry Shipping expects a 2.4 percent increase in global trade volume this year, after an estimated 10.3 percent decline last year. "On the demand side, we do see some strength; we see continued strength in China," said Vikrant S. Bhatia, chief executive of KC Maritime, a bulk carrier shipping line based in Hong Kong. "The problem we see is really on the supply side." Until 2008, the liners were cresting; shipyards were humming, building ever larger ships as ports expanded and new services opened, underpinned by low cost finance. "Everyone thought they could walk on water," said Jesper Kjaedegaard, a partner with the consulting firm Mercator International in London. "The container liners were like kids in a toy store." An A. P. Moeller Maersk vessel in the port of Algeciras, Spain. A tenth of the world's container ships are estimated to be idle. Then, the recession led to a slowdown in trade, and underscored the overcapacity in the industry. Container carriers have responded by slowing their shipbuilding plans; analysts said that financing had yet to be arranged on most ships on order for this year and next. Some new ships have been deferred, almost certainly involving lost down payments, which are typically 15 to 20 percent not an insignificant amount if the bill is 160 million. The privately held CMA CGM of France, one large carrier, recently said that it was discussing cancellations and postponements with shipbuilders in South Korea. Even so, shipbuilders are expected to deliver 371 container ships this year and 127 in 2012, according to Alphaliner. The container fleet will grow 14 percent in 2010 and almost 10 percent next, meaning that even more ships will be competing for cargo. Hercules E. Haralambides, director of the Center for Maritime Economics and Logistics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, said many Asian carriers were in a better position than their European rivals because government subsidies had allowed shipyards to shift canceled orders to domestic liners or owners at low rates. The European industry has been in decline for years. Italian and German shipyards have recently sought state guarantees, and the European Commission approved aid to the historic Gdansk yard in Poland last year. But government support runs beyond shipbuilding. Tens of billions of dollars were extended to the sector in Europe last year, excluding aid to banks most exposed to the industry, like Royal Bank of Scotland and Commerzbank. Berlin and Hamburg have already stepped in to support HSH Nordbank, the largest shipping finance bank, and the German government has offered Hapag Lloyd 1.2 billion euros ( 1.7 billion) in guarantees. CMA CGM has also opened talks with the French government, and French ship owners have requested guarantees to meet lenders' demands. French and German executives have requested "bad banks" in which to unload problem debts. Fabio Pirotta, a spokesman for the European Commission, which polices competition policy in Europe, said approval of such aid for shipping companies was "still under assessment."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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The offices of The New York Post. Staff members had concerns about the reliability of a front page article's sources and its late campaign timing. The New York Post's front page article about Hunter Biden on Wednesday was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it, two Post employees said. Bruce Golding, a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch owned tabloid since 2007, did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article's credibility, the two Post employees said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. Coming late in a heated presidential campaign, the article suggested that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had used his position to enrich his son Hunter when he was vice president. The Post based the story on photos and documents the paper said it had taken from the hard drive of a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden. The article named two sources: Stephen K. Bannon, the former adviser to President Trump now facing federal fraud charges, who was said to have made the paper aware of the hard drive last month; and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, who was said to have given the paper "a copy" of the hard drive on Oct. 11. Mr. Giuliani said he chose The Post because "either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out." Top editors met on Oct. 11 to discuss how to use the material provided by Mr. Giuliani. The group included the tabloid veteran Colin Allan, known as Col; Stephen Lynch, The Post's editor in chief; and Michelle Gotthelf, the digital editor in chief, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting. Mr. Allan, who was The Post's editor in chief from 2001 to 2016 and returned last year as an adviser, urged his colleagues to move quickly, the person said. As deadline approached, editors pressed staff members to add their bylines to the story and at least one aside from Mr. Golding refused, two Post journalists said. A Post spokeswoman had no comment on how the article was written or edited. Headlined "BIDEN SECRET E MAILS," the article appeared Wednesday with two bylines: Emma Jo Morris, a deputy politics editor who joined the paper after four years at the Murdoch owned Fox News, and Gabrielle Fonrouge, a Post reporter since 2014. 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. Ms. Morris did not have a bylined article in The Post before Wednesday, a search of its website showed. She arrived at the tabloid in April after working as an associate producer on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, according to her LinkedIn profile. Her Instagram account, which was set to private on Wednesday, included photos of her posing with the former Trump administration members Mr. Bannon and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as well as Roger J. Stone Jr., a friend and former campaign adviser to Mr. Trump. (In July, the president commuted the sentence of Mr. Stone on seven felonies.) Ms. Fonrouge had little to do with the reporting or writing of the article, said three people with knowledge of how it was prepared. She learned that her byline was on the story only after it was published, the people said. The article relied on documents purportedly taken from the hard drive to suggest that the elder Mr. Biden, as vice president, had directed American foreign policy in Ukraine to benefit his son, a former board member of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company. The article also suggested that the elder Mr. Biden had met with a Burisma adviser, Vadym Pozharskyi. On Wednesday, a Biden campaign spokesman said that Mr. Biden's official schedules showed no meeting between the former vice president and the adviser. Last month, two Republican led Senate committees investigating the matter said they had found no evidence of wrongdoing by the former vice president. "The senior editors at The Post made the decision to publish the Biden files after several days' hard work established its merit," Mr. Allan said in an email. The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have reported that they could not independently verify the data in the Post article, which included hedging language, referring at one point to an email "allegedly sent" to Hunter Biden.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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In 2018, the writer and poet Jacqueline Woodson was appointed National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. The author Tracy K. Smith is in the second of her two years as the poet laureate of the United States. In the midst of National Poetry Month, the two joined up to talk about reading, poetry, black history and how their missions overlap. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. You both have official national roles, and it's such a big country. How do you make an impact? JACQUELINE WOODSON I'm going to Alabama, I'm going to Mississippi, I'm going to Texas and having conversations, and then figuring out how they can continue the conversation once I'm gone. I've been going to prisons and detention centers in underserved communities where people haven't met authors, so I can talk to them about the power of reading, show them that when we have these conversations about books, we're changed by them. I have this idea that many people think books are "not for them." Access to them has been denied in a sense to certain classes, certain races. Sadly. TRACY K. SMITH I'm going to community centers, libraries, rehab centers. I was in New Mexico and South Carolina, and there are about six more trips. I'm trying to figure out how to have the conversation we have about poetry at book festivals or readings, but in the rural and central parts of this country. It's been beautiful. I have this belief that we are so vulnerable when we open ourselves up to literature. We're reminded of these real parts of ourselves. WOODSON: When I go to a boy's detention center I'm talking about books by Jason Reynolds and Kwame Alexander and Rita Williams Garcia; when I go somewhere else I'm talking about graphic novels. I'm gauging the audience and helping them figure out which books make a natural entry point. It's work though. She laughs. SMITH It's a wonderful kind of work and it asks a lot of you, too. It's exciting but exhausting. WOODSON And kind of heartbreaking, because the more you do, the more hunger you see. We could be on the road 365 days a year and we still wouldn't fill the need of the people who are being denied. There's so many underserved people, underserved institutions, there's mass incarceration. I feel good when I'm in those spaces, and when I get out I'm like, oh, I should be going to three more places today. SMITH What are some of the possibilities you found for sustaining the engagement once you're gone? WOODSON I'm showing them how to start workshops. My first way in is to praise, so people feel safer. You meet so many people writing poetry or fiction, and they have no idea what the next step is. I'm trying to get them to not feel scared about gathering and talking about their work. I do Skype sessions after my visit, so they can take off from there. We're also creating reading guides and suggested reading lists. A lot of times I hear, "I have young black boys, what are the books for them?" People don't know if they're not in this world of children's literature. They could go to their public library and their librarian may not know. You go to rural Alabama, and the library is not even there. Jacqueline Woodson receiving her ambassadorship earlier this year from Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, while Gene Luen Yang, the former National Ambassador of Children's Literature, looks on. SMITH I'm hoping to find something beyond just going and leaving, too. There are a lot of state poet laureates I'm meeting, and they talk about doing what Jackie is doing. I think there must be a way I can work together with them to foster something that won't go away. Has there been a children's ambassador and a poet laureate who have worked together? Is there any possibility for that? WOODSON Not that I know of, and Tracy and I like each other so much ... She laughs. 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. I have a question about poetry. In children's literature it's front and center. There are books by Kwame Alexander and Elizabeth Acevedo on the best seller list right now. Kids love them. Why isn't it the same for adults? SMITH I have this feeling it gets spooked out of us around the time we start feeling beholden to tests and performances. I think the way poems are taught to high school students is completely counterintuitive; it sets up this sense of being the poem's adversary. The poem is sort of sneakily trying to outsmart you. Whereas children live in this sense of perpetual metaphor. We even use song and verse to teach kids. And then there comes a time when we somehow estrange them from that, without wanting to, perhaps. WOODSON I completely agree. I mean it's our first language we put words together with all this white space and it gets figured out. And then that gets forgotten. I remember by fifth grade I was terrified of poetry. It was consumed not for joy, but to be tested on. But I don't understand why readers aren't buying poetry. They must still have that fear in them. Because if you can read a novel you can read a collection of poetry and have such a rich experience, if not a richer one. SMITH Listening to music and lyrics and watching movies, I think, uses a lot of the same muscles we use in reading and experiencing poetry and yet we somehow forget that we have those when it comes to sitting down with a book of poems. SMITH I feel that when I'm reading your work, Jackie, with my kids. Like you're doing what August Wilson did, recording decades of black life and cycles. I remember growing up and learning the history of slavery and feeling SMITH Yes. And guilt. Feeling bad that this piece of my history was making everybody uncomfortable. Your books tell these beautiful stories of survival and triumph. WOODSON Growing up I felt so ashamed and guilty, but no one was talking about it as triumph, right? And as our country's negative history, not our negative history. Even the way we said "slave" instead of "enslaved." "Enslaved" takes the onus off us. Then the older I got the more I understood our history and the grace of our survival. Thank goodness for Mildred Taylor and Virginia Hamilton and Nikki Giovanni, the writers who came along and started putting black girlhood on the page in a way that felt relevant to me. And the fact that they'd once been black girls made it even more important. SMITH The black history we got was just this little drop in February. WOODSON I hated every time we got to pre Civil War history. I was like, oh no, here we go. Harriet Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, the poet who learned to write from her nice white master. Nat Turner of course, because he died. Those were the biographies we got. My daughter had an assignment where everyone in the class had to write a journal of someone from the 18th century. Her school has lots of kids of color, but everyone wanted to write from the white point of view. So I came in and said, I'll write that! I wrote a journal of an enslaved girl. There was joy, there was playing, there was hard work, and there was resentment that she had to be enslaved to a white girl her same age. I wrote four journals that they still use. In my final one the girl finds out that the master's daughter who she's been enslaved to is her half sister. And then I was like, O.K. teachers, you can take it from there. She laughs. Tracy, your new book, "Wade in the Water," also takes the slavery narrative and makes it into something that feels new. SMITH All I really did was listen to the letters that were out there, this Civil War correspondence between black soldiers and their families, or letters by black veterans or descendants of deceased veterans. Those voices felt so current, as though they were almost whispering from yesterday. I couldn't imagine wanting to do anything other than saying, let's just get these voices together, and maybe somebody else will want to hear them in the same way. There's one moment where the father of a soldier says, "I'm willing to sacrifice my son in the cause of Freedom and Humanity" he capitalizes those nouns. I'm reading it and thinking, do we really understand: If you were enslaved, freedom and humanity are not these abstractions.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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But the city will be abuzz on Friday, if only slightly, as the new owner of building 84, once occupied by Studebaker, opens its doors for tours. The man who recently bought the building, Kevin M. Smith, told WNDU TV that he hoped to attract high tech jobs to the site. The festivities, put on in part by Mr. Smith's Union Station Technology Center, will culminate in a display of searchlights and fireworks at dusk.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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Calvin Royal III, the American Ballet Theater soloist who has had star turns in classics like Balanchine's "Apollo," will be the artist in residence at this year's Vail Dance Festival, which was announced on Tuesday. "It's a leadership role of a sort," Damian Woetzel, the festival's artistic director, said in an interview. "Being an artist in residence is more than simply what you see on the stage. It's got elements that I'm excited about for Calvin as an artist and as a leader." This summer, Mr. Royal will dance in a new piece by Tiler Peck, the New York City Ballet principal, set to music by the festival's composer in residence, Caroline Shaw. (The Pulitzer Prize winning composer will contribute to scores for several works, and for featured musicians including the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and the bass baritone Davone Tines.) Mr. Royal will also conduct master classes and participate in community events. After Mr. Royal's debut in "Apollo" during Ballet Theater's season last fall, the critic Gia Kourlas wrote in The New York Times that he was "suddenly the most elegant male dancer in the company."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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LONDON It took 15 years, but Alexander McQueen, the brand, finally came home. On Sunday, more than a decade after Mr. McQueen the designer traded London for Paris as a show setting; his status as a wildly talented, personally complicated boy from the East End for membership in a luxury conglomerate (Kering); and six years after he killed himself, his successor, Sarah Burton, returned to the Royal Horticultural Halls in Westminster. It was the site of Mr. McQueen's spring 1997 show La Poupee, which also happened to be the first show Ms. Burton worked on for the brand, when she was still at Central Saint Martins and years before she emerged as a designer in her own right, one who would go on to design the wedding dress for the Duchess of Cambridge. The symbolism was hard to ignore. It took a pregnancy (Ms. Burton's third child is due in two weeks) and an imminent new fragrance to bring the collection back to the British capital, if only for one season. The result was a moment of grace. If there was less associated fanfare and drama than some may have desired, that was itself a reflection of how far the brand has come since it left (and, indeed, of how far the fashion industry, not traditionally sensitive to issues such as childbirth, has come) and of how much Ms. Burton has made it her own.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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On a recent evening, Craig Robinson, the actor and stand up comedian known from the TV show "The Office" and the movies "Hot Tub Time Machine" and "Knocked Up," sat in Zum Schneider, a Bavarian beer garden in the East Village, practicing his German. "Ich war verheiratet," Mr. Robinson, 44, said to a young waitress who had grown up in Germany. "Meine frau ist gestorben." The waitress's eyes widened and her face softened in sympathy. The translation of Mr. Robinson's how's your day small talk? "I was married. My wife passed away." Mr. Robinson's German, it turns out, is limited to the dialogue he learned for his new movie, "Morris From America." In the drama, which comes out Aug. 19 in select theaters (it's now available on DirecTV), he plays a single father who moves to Germany with his hip hop loving teenage son for a job. Stranded in the land of EDM and bratwurst, they learn to lean on each other in what becomes an affecting father son story. The actor delivered his lines without cracking a smile. "I love the deadpan," Mr. Robinson said of his trademark style. "It's such a strong go to. It lets the audience make their own decisions about what you're thinking." After gaining fame as a comedic straight man, including as one of Judd Apatow's ensemble players, Mr. Robinson was drawn to the dramatic role in "Morris," he said, because he loved the way the father relates to his son, in a here's the straight dope vernacular. But he almost didn't get the part because in a meeting with the director, his low key manner was mistaken for uninterest. "He said he didn't get the vibe that I wanted to be part of it," Mr. Robinson said. "But he couldn't have been more wrong." Working with funny, improvisational actors like Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, he said, teaches you to be a patient comedy opportunist. "You have to hop in like a sniper," Mr. Robinson said. He is a skilled comedic slayer at this point. He began his career as a stand up in the mid '90s, in his native Chicago. He worked as a schoolteacher and as a bouncer until his career got going. "And when I say I was a bouncer, I'd go get the bigger guys and say, 'Hey, they're fighting,'" Mr. Robinson said. He won some comedy competitions, moved to Los Angeles and began auditioning for movies, losing out on a role in "The 40 Year Old Virgin" but landing "Knocked Up" and then "The Office." At the beer garden, Mr. Robinson, dressed in a black Reebok T shirt, jeans and sneakers, was low energy, though not strategically. He was simply tired after winding up a New York press tour for the new film, which included appearances on the "Today" show and "Late Night With Seth Meyers." And he had just experienced the actor's version of a marathon: all day back to back interviews with entertainment journalists. "Not one of them was a woman," Mr. Robinson said with lament. Unlike his "Morris" character and Darryl Philbin, the divorced, unamused warehouse foreman he played in "The Office," Mr. Robinson has no children and has never been married. He does go home to two pet turtles, however. "They're just awaiting my presence," he said, adding that when he's away for long periods, the turtles, Haag (there used to be a Dazs) and Priscilla, let their displeasure be known. "They have a little attitude when I come home. They won't eat the food I sit out right away." Mr. Robinson was flying home to Los Angeles the next morning. After relaxing at the beer garden, he planned to attend the premiere of "War Dogs," whose stars include his friend Mr. Hill. At the bar, he enjoyed his pilsner and the waves and smiles from strangers who recognized him, including a city bus driver who stopped, opened the bus door to yell, "Hey, man!" and then closed the door and continued down Avenue C. After talking about doner kebab, a kind of street food he grew to like in Germany, he became nostalgic. "Berlin is where it's at, bro," Mr. Robinson said. "I don't even party here, really. Something happens when I get out of the country. Berlin was all night long."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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The federal government has turned its full investigative powers toward examining the world's biggest technology companies, building on a backlash against the industry that has been growing for over a year. The Justice Department said on Tuesday that it would start an antitrust review into how internet giants had accumulated market power and whether they had acted to reduce competition. Similar inquiries are underway in Congress and at the Federal Trade Commission, which shares antitrust oversight responsibilities with the Justice Department. The action is the clearest sign yet that the longtime arguments that helped shield the tech giants from antitrust scrutiny are eroding. Since the 1970s, a consensus in antitrust circles has been that if companies were focused on consumer welfare for example, by offering low prices they were not likely to attract federal intervention. Since companies like Google and Facebook largely provide free services, the thinking went, they were not subject to federal antitrust examination. But that approach has evolved, pushed by scholars and others, as concerns about the clout and reach of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple have grown. The Justice Department has recently been meeting with tech industry experts to learn what kinds of harm the companies may have caused, said two people with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on the condition they not be identified because the meetings were confidential. "Without the discipline of meaningful market based competition, digital platforms may act in ways that are not responsive to consumer demands," Makan Delrahim, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, said in a statement. "The department's antitrust review will explore these important issues." Attorney General William P. Barr himself has plunged into the conversation about tech power. On Tuesday, he said in a speech in Manhattan that tech companies should stop using advanced encryption and other security measures that effectively turn devices into "law free zones," essentially criticizing Apple and its iPhones without naming them. In announcing its review, the Justice Department did not name specific companies, but said it would look into concerns about search, social media and some retail services presumably putting Google, Facebook and Amazon on notice. The Justice Department declined to comment beyond its announcement; Google and Facebook also declined to comment. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Apple referred to comments made by Timothy D. Cook, its chief executive, in a recent television interview with CBS News. "I think we should be scrutinized," Mr. Cook said at the time. "But if you look at any kind of measure about 'is Apple a monopoly or not,' I don't think anybody reasonable is going to come to the conclusion that Apple's a monopoly." The Justice Department's review may not lead to full blown investigations of the companies. But the timing of the announcement ratchets up pressure on the tech giants. Across Washington in recent weeks, lawmakers and regulators have united to raise questions about Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. This month, the F.T.C. voted to fine Facebook about 5 billion for mishandling users' personal information, by far the agency's largest fine against a tech company. An official announcement of a settlement is expected as soon as Wednesday. Last week, Facebook faced lawmakers over two days of grilling for a new cryptocurrency initiative called Libra. Google was at the center of a Senate subcommittee hearing about censorship in search. And at a separate House hearing, with witnesses from Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple, Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat of Rhode Island who leads a subcommittee on antitrust law, said that the government stance for too long was to celebrate the new tech economy rather than scrutinize its corporate leaders. "Congress and antitrust enforcers allowed these firms to regulate themselves with little oversight," Mr. Cicilline said. "As a result, the internet has become increasingly concentrated, less open and growingly hostile to innovation and entrepreneurship." On Tuesday, Mr. Cicilline sent letters to three of the companies at last week's hearing Google, Facebook and Amazon. He said he was seeking answers to questions that the witnesses were asked but did not directly answer. Mr. Cicilline characterized those earlier replies as "evasive, incomplete or misleading." The Justice Department has stepped up its consideration of tech companies since May, said one person with knowledge of the discussions. Around then, the Justice Department and the F.T.C. split up potential antitrust investigations into Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple, this person said. The review announced on Tuesday is a separate and next step beyond those moves with the F.T.C., this person added. In recent weeks, antitrust and tech policy experts have more frequently visited the Justice Department as it sought to understand harms the tech companies may have created. It has not yet settled on a theory of harm, this person said. In announcing its review, the Justice Department said it would look into whether the internet companies were "harming consumers." Sam Weinstein, a former antitrust official at the Justice Department, said the announcement was unusual because the agency tends to keep its work, usually investigations, under wraps. Mr. Weinstein, a professor at Cardozo Law School, said the Justice Department could be signaling it wants to respond to concerns about the growing power of tech giants and to let their competitors know that the door is open for complaints. "There is a lot of criticism of the agencies that they are not doing enough about big tech and this is a way to respond to that criticism," he said. While the major American tech companies have largely avoided antitrust scrutiny at home, they have been investigated more aggressively around the world, especially in Europe. In March, European authorities fined Google 1.5 billion euros about 1.7 billion for antitrust violations in the online advertising market. The regulators said Google had violated antitrust rules by imposing unfair terms on companies that used its search bar on their websites in Europe. The fine was the third against Google by the European Union since 2017. The United States, by contrast, had been seen as a lesser force in antitrust enforcement recently, with the Justice Department and F.T.C. moving more cautiously. "If the United States does not step up, competition policy will be set elsewhere," said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University and a former chairman of the F.T.C.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Range anxiety and limited charging infrastructure are among the reasons some consumers don't consider buying an electric vehicle. Those two concerns are related, because if there's no place to charge an E.V., that affects the distance a driver can travel. AeroVironment, which builds electric vehicle charging equipment, announced last week the release of a new type of charging cord that will allow E.V. users to recharge anywhere. With a dual voltage setting, 120 volts and 240 volts AC, the cord could broaden E.V. charging options from the current charging stations equipped with those funny looking plugs that connect to E.V. charging ports. AeroVironment says that TurboCord, its dual voltage charger, will be available for about 650 and that a 240 volt only version will be available for about 600. Where 240 volt outlets typically used for clothes driers and other large appliances are available, AeroVironment says full battery electric vehicles can be charged in about six hours and plug in hybrids in about three. Electric Vehicle Service Equipment modules the box, commonly known as an E.V.S.E. that many E.V. owners have hanging in the garage or the side of the house usually cost 600 or more, not including the cost of installation. But they can't be moved around once they're installed.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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The United States is on recession watch as market signals flash red. Manufacturing is straining under President Trump's trade war, business investment is slowing and consumer confidence is showing cracks. But many economists expect that growth will weaken slightly over the next couple of years without actually contracting and that distinction is crucial. The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, said last week that "the most likely outlook for our economy remains a favorable one with moderate growth," and "our main expectation is not at all that there will be a recession." Economic growth that dips substantially lower can hurt, especially for workers in hard hit industries. But the aftermath of weak growth has historically differed pretty sharply from the fallout caused by an all out recession. Here is a rundown of the differences, and why they could matter to your job and bank account. What is a recession, and who decides? While economic growth has moderated only slightly so far, forecasters think America is headed for a deeper pullback. The economy expanded by 2.9 percent in 2018, and economist s expect that pace to slow to 2.3 percent in 2019 before falling to 1.8 percent next year, based on the median in a survey by Bloomberg. Several particularly glum forecasters even expect the economy to shrink for one or two quarters in 2020. If that happens, it would not necessarily mark the start of an official downturn. The United States does not define a recession as two consecutive quarters of shrinking output, although economists and the news media sometimes use that rule of thumb. Instead, a committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit founded in 1920, dates United States recessions. It is made up of eight leading economists, many of whom have been on it for decades. The committee looks at a range of data including early indicators, like industrial production and a monthly growth series produced by the firm Macroeconomic Advisers and uses that information to call a downturn. When will we find out if we're in a recession? Not for a while. "It really is highly unlikely" that the committee will declare a recession before the 2020 election, said Robert Gordon, a Northwestern University economist who has been on the recession dating committee since 1978. Data takes a long time to reflect a slowdown, and growth numbers, including the monthly G.D.P. index, still look firm. Historically, it has taken six to 21 months from the actual start of a recession to the formal declaration. The committee announced the start of the recession that started after December 2007 about 11 months later. That's partly because a recession becomes far more likely once businesses start cutting jobs. Employers are reluctant to lay off workers until business gets pretty bad, because hiring and training is expensive. Once they are forced to cut their head count and workers start to lose their paychecks, those consumers pull back sharply on spending making it a surer bet that the economy will shrink in earnest. But Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives, said there were reasons to believe that this expansion could be different: Slow growth could actually cause higher unemployment without turning into a recession. While there's no precedent for that in the United States, she points out that Australia has had several instances of rising unemployment in its 28 year old economic expansion. Why the change? It is partly that the Fed is more reactive now than in the past, poised to support the economy at the first sign of trouble. America could see "everything wobbling but not falling into recession," she said. Are there other costs? Slowdowns often come alongside gyrations in financial markets, and that is certainly happening this time around: The stock market has wavered since the start of Mr. Trump's trade dispute with China. The up and down has yet to significantly damage equity portfolios stocks have recovered their recent losses but may be feeding into consumer sentiment. The University of Michigan confidence index showed cracks in August, with one in three consumers spontaneously mentioning tariffs. And a sustained growth pullback would leave the economy more vulnerable to unhappy surprises, increasing the risk that a global event or domestic political drama will ignite an all out recession.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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BOB FISHER had an idea that seemed as if it would either work out brilliantly or fail miserably: He was going to sell his 50 acre estate on a mountaintop in North Carolina by himself, and he was going to do it in a few months. That was two years ago, just as the real estate market was coming out of its postfinancial crash slump. The asking price was 18 million to 25 million, depending on how much land someone wanted in addition to the 10,000 square foot main house and 2,500 square foot guest cottage. Mr. Fisher, an Atlanta lawyer who made his fortune in telecommunications, was overly optimistic on how quickly he could sell the estate he named Sagee Manor. But last month he sold it the way he intended, albeit for less than he originally wanted. "I feel pretty confident that I achieved an outcome I wouldn't have otherwise," Mr. Fisher said after the sale closed. "I also learned a lot about marketing and the process of listening, even to news that you don't want to hear." The story of how he finally sold an estate for more than 25 times the average price of houses in the town of Highlands, N.C., is full of lessons for anyone trying to sell a property that is a bit unusual. But first some background on Mr. Fisher. He paid 4 million for the raw land in 1999. He didn't say how much Sagee Manor cost to build but said the annual upkeep was then about 350,000. His goal, though, was to build an estate that would endure for hundreds of years, so he did not skimp on materials. Mr. Fisher and his wife had been investing personally in the town, too. Like many people in the South, they had been attracted to the cool summers and relaxed atmosphere. He helped lead the capital campaign to build the town's art center. But by 2012, he said, he wasn't spending as much time at Sagee Manor, having been drawn out of retirement to run a family machinery company. He also owned a home in Atlanta and a 10 million beachfront house in Sea Island, Ga. Mr. Fisher got the idea of selling Sagee Manor on his own after he grew frustrated with how long it took a broker to sell two cabins he also owned in Highlands. They were listed at the time for 2.2 million and had lingered on the market for years without an offer. So he embarked on a barnstorming campaign in May 2012 to affluent enclaves around the country in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and New York. The idea was to create a network of people who could send wealthy prospects his way. The group ran the gamut from real estate agents to hairdressers and private jet brokers. If they referred the person who ultimately bought the property, they would receive a finder's fee of up to 250,000. He also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising and hired several people to work directly for him at Sagee Manor. But Mr. Fisher's self imposed deadline passed without any offers, and he began to rethink his plan. He cut the price to 18 million for the whole property, from 25 million. "I figured if I could get the price down right I could get multiple buyers," he said. "With something like Sagee Manor, where someone doesn't know what it's worth, it's hard for someone to get comfortable with it." At that point, a buyer from Texas who couldn't get comfortable with the original price came back and began negotiating in the spring of 2013. By the fall, a buyer from South Africa emerged. By the beginning of this year, the South African buyer put down a nonrefundable deposit, and the deal closed in July. Mr. Fisher is coy about the selling price. He said it sold for within 8 to 10 percent of the 18 million asking price. But that number includes options to buy the surrounding land in the future. Craig Allen Berry, a local broker not involved in the deal, said the closing price was 12.545 million. He said it was a residential sales record for the area where the average house costs 400,000 to 500,000, and the top end is around 3 million to 4 million. "We're just a little mountain community," he said. Regardless of the price, Mr. Fisher said he learned a lot of lessons. One, he realized his original timing was far too optimistic. "When I was on the road marketing in Aspen, one of the top brokers told me it took 683 days to sell 10 million and up houses there, and that's a much more liquid market," he said. Gary Rogers, a real estate broker outside Boston, said there were special challenges in selling a home that was so much more expensive than anything else in an area. For one thing, the buyer is not likely to come from that community, hence the need for broader marketing. "If it's a one of a kind property, there aren't 10 buyers for it," he said. "It's like a custom built pair of shoes." Owners selling their own properties can make strategic mistakes because they are so personally attached to a home. Mr. Rogers remembered when a seller went into minute detail about the grandeur of his home's pool and outdoor space when the buyer planned to fill in the pool and liked the home's kitchen more. "People don't want to be pitched," he said. "They just want to see the house. They don't want to hear, 'in these walls is the best lumber ever.' " Whether Mr. Fisher helped or hurt the sale of his estate by doing it himself is difficult to discern. There is no way to know whether a broker could have sold it more quickly or for more money. Mr. Fisher said he spent 600,000, not counting the 3 percent commission for the buyer's agent. It cost more, he said, than if he had let a broker handle the sale at a typical 6 percent commission, but he believed he sold the property more quickly and for a better price. Mr. Fisher realized he had to change his approach. Cutting the price was essential. He also kept the property immaculately maintained and allowed the Texas buyer to bring his own interior designer and architect to help him envision what could and could not be changed. When the referral program seem to stall, Mr. Fisher began sending other superwealthy people custom printed books about Sagee Manor. He estimated he mailed several thousand at 50 a book. (He later got the price down to 4 a book). But in the end it was a traditional Realtor who found the buyer. William McKee, a broker in Cashiers, N.C., referred both interested buyers. He said he came upon them the old fashioned way, as referrals from friends.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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LONDON The names in the title "Whelan/Watson: Other Stories" are those of Wendy Whelan, an American, and Edward Watson, a Brit. She retired from New York City Ballet in October after 23 years as principal; he has been a principal of the Royal Ballet for 10 years. They hold the attention throughout "Other Stories," a 70 minute show in which they're the only dancers. I saw it on Friday at Covent Garden's Linbury Studio Theater; it closed Sunday. Next spring, it is scheduled to play at New York City Center. In the program of five parts by five choreographers duet ("First and Wait" by Javier de Frutos), Watson solo ("Dance Me to the End of Love" by Arlene Phillips), Whelan solo ("Short Ride Out" by Annie B Parson), duet ("The Song We Share," by Daniele Desnoyers), duet ("The Ballad of Mack and Ginny" by Arthur Pita) the two performers are always grown up, suspenseful, making sure you want to know what will happen next. Apart from the interesting but short Parson solo for Ms. Whelan, however, all the choreography is flimsy; most of it is, at best, minor camp. Most of the music is played live by five performers. Ms. Whelan and Mr. Watson described in program notes by Mr. Pita as "incredibly experienced and unique," and by Ms. Desnoyers as "emotional virtuosos" are both known for expressive intensity and as leading performers of new choreography. Neither has been a conventional stylist within the company with whom they won renown; they've each worked with the choreographers Wayne McGregor, Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon, among many others. Ms. Whelan's coordination of upper and lower body was sometimes awkward in rigorously exposed classicism; Mr. Watson, never an exponent of bravura, has frequently lacked both alignment and strength. Having not seen her since her City Ballet farewell, I had not realized how much I had missed Ms. Whelan as a dancer until this show. The de Frutos duet that opens "Other Stories" is one of those bland doodles in which dancers take turns to sit on chairs and block each other's way by stretching a leg; occasionally Mr. Watson, as if he has nothing better to do, shows off his gift for hyperextension ("Oh look, a chair I'll rest my cheek on it while I happen to part my legs in one of my 180 degree split leg arabesques that'll do nicely"). Even amid such twaddle, Ms. Whelan's stage persona is purposeful, strong, often inscrutable, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes dangerous; she's sometimes like Felicity Huffman, sometimes Sarah Jessica Parker.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Less than three months ago, I started having this uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. It started in early March when Harvard announced that it would finish the rest of its semester online. A few other schools quickly followed suit. At my school, Vassar College, the administration emailed us to say that we would be going online for a few weeks and returning to in person classes in April. I remember sitting at my kitchen table with my housemates and laughing at the prospect of a virtual semester. "What's the school going to do, give us a Zoom graduation?" my friend Megan joked. "Have us click and drag our avatar across the stage to get our diploma?" My mother insisted I come home until in person classes started again, so I packed a backpack and made the trek to Virginia. Soon after, I received the string of emails that would seal my fate: The first informed students that Vassar would finish classes online, the second told us that we could not return to campus to retrieve our belongings, and then there was a third note, including a link to our virtual commencement. At first, the idea of missing out on this milestone felt very unfair. The thought of not being able to have a proper farewell with the friends who had become my lifeline over four years was painful to even entertain. But as weeks passed and more tragedy occurred, it felt foolish to be preoccupied with the logistics of my graduation while a virus that has killed over 300,000 people silently rages. As commencement day approached, I found myself thinking of a Zoom graduation as a creepy, post apocalyptic exercise on bad days and as a corny, semi pointless ritual on good ones. I was never really looking forward to it but recognized that it was better than nothing. It happened this past weekend. And from a technical standpoint it was well executed, but it was also sadder than I thought it would be, sitting without my friends, attending the ceremony not in a cap and gown but in my pajamas, sitting on my mom's couch. My friend Heather, the senior class president, had a different attitude. As soon as Vassar announced there would be a virtual graduation ceremony, she emailed the school offering to help plan it. For two months, she was in Zoom meetings arranging the event. And this summer, well after our coursework is done, she'll be attending meetings to plan Vassar's in person graduation, meant to take place sometime in 2021. "When I first heard the news about a virtual graduation, I cried my eyes out," Heather told me in a text the other day. But the pain from missing out on a traditional commencement only pushed her to make the best of what we were left with. "Especially as a Vietnamese, first generation, and low income student, I had been looking forward to my college graduation for a very long time and was excited about the prospect of celebrating this moment with my family who had already booked their flights to New York," she said. There are tens of thousands of students like Heather. And yet other students have been relieved by the lack of physical pomp this season. Many differently abled people, for example, prefer the accessibility that a virtual graduation provides. "As a woman in a wheelchair, a virtual graduation took away a lot of the logistical questions and planning I would normally have to coordinate," Heather Tomko, who just graduated remotely from the University of Pittsburgh, told me. "Often, stages aren't easily wheelchair accessible, or if they are, it's through a side or back door that wouldn't allow me to process in with everyone else." Virtual ceremonies do have upsides: With no travel required, even the most far flung, busy or financially disadvantaged family members can attend. The enormous downside, however, is the totally isolating nature of these events. For most of us, even the best executed online graduation can't measure up to the thrill of in person hugs or the iconic moment of everyone tossing their caps and tassels into the air. Because of this, some graduates are ditching the virtual ceremonies and finding other ways to celebrate. Aiden Strawhun, a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, told me their friends played hooky on their virtual graduation day and hosted a separate online party instead. "I hosted a livestream of some of my friends and I 'graduating' in Animal Crossing," they said in an email, referencing the video game that has become a hit in this quarantine era, where you build a society on an animated isle of paradise. "I spent a whole month making a stage and party area in game and getting us all little outfits too! That was much more healing for me." Efforts like Aiden's aren't just fun; they're truly heartwarming. But it's impossible not to recognize the bittersweetness of all these contingency plans. Since Vassar moved online, I've gone on weekly FaceTime dates with friends and, like many, attended a Zoom birthday party. I still did Dollar Beer Night, a Thursday night Vassar tradition that went virtual this spring, as we tried to hold on to a sense of community and normalcy. Still, while it's always nice to see my friends' faces, I can't help fixating on the awkwardness of screens or the anxieties these almost normal interactions can induce. And as the public health effort to "flatten the curve" has transitioned to mostly staying at home until a vaccine arrives, I've begun to wonder: Is this what hanging out with friends will be like forever now? I couldn't bring myself to be excited about graduation, which usually marks the start of a promising future. Instead, we're beginning adult life in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression by some measures. As an aspiring journalist, for me it has been particularly frightening graduating as about 36,000 journalists have been fired or furloughed, or had their pay reduced because of the coronavirus crisis, many of them seasoned veterans. It seems every time I log onto Twitter another writer I admire has been laid off. My plans to move out after graduation have been put on hold indefinitely. I've moved back in with my mother instead. And many of my friends have lost jobs or fellowships in the past few months and are struggling to find remote work. Commencement felt like the last moment of calm before being pushed out into an unpredictable and uncontrollable storm. Sometimes I wonder whether the class of 2020 was star crossed from the start, starting college with President Trump's election and graduating into the twin crises of a public health emergency and profound economic despair.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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When the country everybro Luke Combs released his album "What You See Is What You Get" a year ago, it became a streaming blockbuster a rare trophy in Nashville, which has lagged behind most other genres in the shift to streaming. With "What You See Ain't Always What You Get," a reissued version of that album, Combs has proved just how much he has learned from pop and hip hop stars in driving clicks online. The new version opened at No. 1 on Billboard's latest chart, with the equivalent of 109,000 sales in the United States, according to Nielsen Music; about 70 percent of that total was derived from the album's 102 million streams. Lesson 1: Give your album another shot on the charts with a "deluxe" version. Reissues with added songs have become hip hop's most effective new gimmick, used by Lil Baby, Lil Uzi Vert, Nav, A Boogie Wit da Hoodie and others to extend the sales streaks for recent LPs. The new version of "What You See" has six tracks that were not on the original album.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Bill Gates, the co founder of Microsoft, has emerged as a force in the publishing industry, thanks to the book reviews he posts on his blog, Gates Notes. Mr. Gates, who says he reads about 50 books a year, discussed his love of reading, how he makes his selections and what book Warren Buffett recommended. Below are excerpts from a recent email interview. What role does reading play in your life? It is one of the chief ways that I learn, and has been since I was a kid. These days, I also get to visit interesting places, meet with scientists and watch a lot of lectures online. But reading is still the main way that I both learn new things and test my understanding. For example, this year I enjoyed Richard Dawkins's "The Magic of Reality," which explains various scientific ideas and is aimed at teenagers. Although I already understood all the concepts, Dawkins helped me think about the topics in new ways. If you can't explain something simply, you don't really understand it. What made you decide to start the books blog and write reviews? I have always loved reading and learning, so it is great if people see a book review and feel encouraged to read and share what they think online or with their friends.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Read all of our classical music coverage here. Hi, listeners! Lovers of the Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis I count myself as one, while recognizing that some strongly disagree got a treat this morning: A surprise drop of new Mahler (to go with new Robyn). The unexpected album release is now a common phenomenon in pop, but somewhat rarer in classical, so I'll be listening to this sure to be divisive account of the Sixth Symphony along with you. Tippi Hedren, star of Hitchcock's "Marnie," took in a new operatic version of the story. With Hungary drifting toward autocracy, its opera and ballet prepare to tour to New York. And is there an opera more tender and mature than Puccini's "La Fanciulla del West"? Watching at the Met on Tuesday, the gentle dignity of the characters, the brilliant colors of the score, the unsettled conclusion all made for a powerful evening. (I don't know that I had ever seen a Met audience stay dead silent through a curtain fall diminuendo, as it did at the end of Act I.) Enjoy your weekend! ZACHARY WOOLFE On Sunday the Richard Tucker Foundation, which has provided support to emerging singers for over 40 years, presented its annual gala concert at Carnegie Hall. As always, the program was a cavalcade of stars, among them Christine Goerke, Stephanie Blythe, Angela Meade and the bass baritone Christian Van Horn, this year's winner of the Tucker Award. Anna Netrebko did not sing Verdi's aria "Pace, pace mio dio," which was listed in the program. (No explanation was given.) But she joined her husband, the tenor Yusif Eyvazov, for a thrilling account of the final duet from Giordano's "Andrea Chenier." (The whole program is available for viewing on medici.tv.) The concert opened with a recording of Tucker in his prime singing the aria "Cielo e mar." And here he is in 1949 singing Verdi's "Celeste Aida" live, with Toscanini conducting. In his day, this superb American tenor was so dependable he was almost taken for granted. That wouldn't happen today. ANTHONY TOMMASINI Among the great performances at the Tucker gala, the one I've kept thinking about is the soprano Angela Meade's account of a double aria, with chorus, from Verdi's "I Lombardi." When she emerged about a decade ago, Ms. Meade seemed vocally ideal for bel canto repertory. Lately, she has been branching out. For example, here she sounds impressive in an aria from Handel's "Alcina," which she sang with the Washington National Opera last year. Still, she was long thought to lack dramatic fervor and intensity. You can't say that any longer, as her fearless performance of the Verdi made clear. In climactic phrases her gleaming voice soared easily over the orchestra and chorus. The ovation was tremendous. More Verdi, please, Ms. Meade. ANTHONY TOMMASINI The tenor Javier Camarena, who sang splendidly at the Tucker gala (especially in a duet from Rossini's "Armida" with Ms. Meade), won the hearts of the audience by sharing a distressing personal story when he first appeared on stage at Carnegie. Two days before the concert, he said, while in Barcelona staying in a rented apartment, he had been robbed. Among the items taken were his wife's wedding and engagement rings, a valuable watch, and some elegant cuff links and studs. He added, wryly, that he was "deeply offended" that they hadn't taken any of his CDs. But Barry Tucker Richard Tucker's son, who leads the foundation generously lent Mr. Camarena his father's cuff links, which Mr. Camarena showed off proudly. ANTHONY TOMMASINI During the performance of Nico Muhly's "Marnie" at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday, I was most impressed with Isabel Leonard's work in the title role. In multiple scenes, this mezzo soprano pulled off high wire feats of acting while singing. The character has a lot to handle: stealing, making escapes, pulling off new identities, even enduring sexual assault. And her interior monologue has to make some kind of sense of each moment. But she's also not in possession of all the facts regarding her early history, which makes getting a handle on her emotions difficult (for audience and artist alike). Ms. Leonard's performance managed to be gripping because of her talent for suggesting how Marnie was capable of misleading herself even when successfully manipulating others. This was nowhere more impressive than at the end of the opera, which the composer and librettist see as offering an equivocal kind of hope for the future. Ms. Leonard's steely way of announcing that potential uplift, however, added an additional bit of edge. It was as though this latest version of Marnie was starting to realize the inherent unreliability of too convenient visions. That subtle turn toward cynicism was worthy of hard boiled noir. SETH COLTER WALLS On Sunday, the Museum of Modern Art celebrated the opening of its Bruce Nauman retrospective at the museum's main building in Manhattan, as well as MoMA PS1 in Queens by presenting an interpretation of Steve Reich's "Pendulum Music," a "sculptural performance composition" that originally played at the Whitney Museum in 1968 (with Mr. Nauman among the performers). As arranged and led by Jeremy Toussaint Baptiste at PS1, the performance started with crisscrossing arcs of microphone feedback, familiar from other performances of the piece. Yet the extended duration of this particular take over 20 minutes, more than twice as long as some recorded versions allowed the swinging microphones' gradual move toward stillness to produce sustained, smearing roars, reminiscent of drone metal. Mr. Nauman's long engagement with experimental sound art continues throughout the exhibition. The PS1 installation devotes a small room to the artist's 1968 sound piece "Get Out of My Mind, Get Out of This Room." (Ignore the soundtrack's advice to hurry through. Stay a while!) PS1 is also displaying Mr. Nauman's astonishing recent installation work "Contrapposto Studies, i through vii." As you walk through the various rooms of the installation, Mr. Nauman's progressively fractured approach to his multiple video projections is the most easily perceived quality. But he's also doing interesting things with the sound: moving from a polyphony of recorded footfalls to what seems like a single track. The thoughtful patterning in Mr. Nauman's arrangement reminded me of a quote from him, included in a video that documented a past exhibition at the Tate Modern: "Music plays a role in a lot of my work. Even when there is no music." SETH COLTER WALLS
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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For the past several years, the technology public offering scene has been lackluster. Sure, there have been a few tech companies with difficult to pronounce names (like Nutanix and Apptio) that managed to make it to the stock market. But those were relatively few and far between, especially considering that there has been a surge of privately held tech companies valued at 1 billion or more, many of which seemed poised to take the I.P.O. market by storm. Now, one of the most highly valued of that crop of private tech companies, Snap, has finally debuted on the public stock market, potentially heralding an opening of the floodgates for other tech start ups.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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"It was a total downer," Marc Bertrand, a Boston radio show host, said. "But in a strange way, it took people's minds off of everything else that is going on. A lot of people forgot that yesterday was even St. Patrick's Day, and obviously it's a huge holiday here." Rick Field, the founder of Rick's Picks pickles and a lifelong New England Patriots fan, vividly remembers the moment that changed his favorite team's destiny. On Sept. 23, 2001, he gathered with friends in front of a TV to watch a Patriots home game against the Jets. Drew Bledsoe, the Patriots' beloved quarterback at the time, was knocked out of the game by an injury and when a relatively unknown backup jogged out to replace Bledsoe, Field joked to his worried friends, "Let the Tom Brady era begin." The remark was brushed off as another example of Field's eccentric humor. After all, few New England fans even knew who Tom Brady was at the time. But never were more prophetic words uttered in the world of sports. The Tom Brady era was far more successful, and lasted far longer, than Field could ever have imagined: six Super Bowl titles for a franchise that had never won one before, nine A.F.C. championships, 17 A.F.C. East crowns and three Most Valuable Player Awards. "The Brady era was nothing more than the universe realigning after 40 years of some of the worst football ever played by the New England Patriots," Field said on Wednesday. "So we're back to even now, as far as I'm concerned." The era ended unceremoniously with a combination of sorrow and anger on Tuesday morning when Brady, 42, announced through social media that he was leaving the Patriots after 20 incomparable years. Another angry caller to The Sports Hub said she hoped the Patriots go winless next year, and before long someone had placed flowers at the front door of Brady's TB12 Performance Recovery Center on Boylston Street in Boston. The man told the city's Channel 25 that he lives in the area and was "pretty torn up," about Brady leaving and "wanted to pay my respects." Normally March 17 is a special day of celebration for Boston, its Irish history highlighted by the annual St. Patrick's Day parade and surrounding festivities. But the parade was canceled and bars and restaurants were closed because of the coronavirus outbreak, leaving the Brady talk to dominate the airwaves and social media. "It was a total downer," Bertrand said. "But in a strange way, it took people's minds off of everything else that is going on. A lot of people forgot that yesterday was even St. Patrick's Day, and obviously it's a huge holiday here." Like cities across the globe, all of Boston's promising sports teams have been shuttered because of the outbreak. The Bruins had the most wins in the National Hockey League, and fans had been optimistic about a second consecutive trip to the Stanley Cup finals. The Boston Celtics had the third best record in the N.B.A.'s Eastern Conference when that league halted operations last week in response to the outbreak. In an eerie coincidence, Brady's Patriots career began in the throes of one national crisis (he took over on the first N.F.L. Sunday after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11) and ended in the grips of another. His first Super Bowl win, on Feb. 3, 2002, ended a 16 year championship drought in the region and ushered in an era during which Boston teams have won 12 titles and became known as the city of champions. Now, everyone is left to wonder what the next era will look like, while fans like Field, who now lives in Brooklyn, savor the two decades of memories since that California kid jogged on to the field.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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In 2006, I went to Jackson, Miss., to report on the weeklong siege of the state's last abortion clinic by the anti abortion group Operation Save America. Flip Benham, then the group's leader, had T shirts made up, black with white lettering, saying, "Homosexuality Is Sin! Islam Is a Lie! Abortion Is Murder! Some Issues Are Just Black and White!" He wanted to burn a Quran at a demonstration, but couldn't get a fire permit, so his group settled on ceremoniously ritually ripping one to shreds along with a rainbow flag and printouts of hated Supreme Court decisions and tossing them on an unlit grill. By his side was Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade. In 1995 Benham opened the headquarters of Operation Rescue, an earlier iteration of Operation Save America, next to the Texas abortion clinic where McCorvey worked, and converted her during her smoke breaks. In Mississippi, she tore up the decision bearing her alias, telling the abortion protesters: "You're so beautiful. I'm so sorry for what I did." That night, the group burned all the scraps in a church parking lot. McCorvey lit the match. It was a cultural coup for the right when McCorvey publicly turned against legal abortion. Jane Roe rejecting Roe v. Wade was something abortion opponents could throw in the faces of pro choice activists. So it is a bombshell that McCorvey has revealed, in the posthumous new documentary "AKA Jane Roe," that it was, at least in some sense, an act. "I am a good actress," she said. The movie, which debuts on Friday on FX, also makes clear that anti abortion leaders understood this. They've been perpetrating a scam on us all for 25 years. In the documentary's final 20 minutes, McCorvey, who died of heart failure in 2017, gives what she calls her "deathbed confession." She and the pro life movement, she said, were using each other: "I took their money, and they put me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say, and that's what I'd say." In her career as a pro life icon, she collected nearly half a million dollars. But at the end of her life, she once again affirmed a belief in the right to abortion, and evinced pride in Roe v. Wade. "Roe isn't going anywhere," she said early on election night in 2016, when she thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. "They can try, but it's not happening, baby." McCorvey is not the only convert in "AKA Jane Roe." The film also features the Rev. Rob Schenck, once a militant anti abortion leader who made headlines in 1992 for bringing fetal remains to an abortion clinic protest in Buffalo, N.Y. Though still an evangelical, Schenck has since moved away from the Christian right, first over guns and then over the movement's support for Donald Trump, and he now says that overturning Roe v. Wade would cause "chaos and pain." Given the political damage done by her cynical about face, it's surprising how sympathetic McCorvey campy, foul mouthed and irreverent comes off. She was a lost soul from a traumatic background. Her father was absent and her mother beat her, and she ended up in reform school after running away from home at 10. She entered an abusive marriage at 16, became addicted to drugs and alcohol, and lost custody of her first child. As she's told the story, she signed up as the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade not because she wanted to make history but because she was desperate for an abortion. She never got one: By the time the case was decided, she'd given birth and put the baby up for adoption. Later, McCorvey resented not being given a more prominent role as a pro choice activist. The movement found her embarrassing, especially when, in 1987, she admitted that she'd lied when she'd said the pregnancy at the heart of Roe was a result of rape. "The national movement, as far as I know, she was never really mentioned," my friend Frances Kissling, the former president of Catholics for Choice, told me. "But if she did get mentioned it was with eyes rolling." "She was not the poster girl that would have been helpful to the pro choice movement," Charlotte Taft, a former director of the Abortion Care Network, says in the film. "However, an articulate, educated person could not have been the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade." It was women like McCorvey those without the resources to travel to pro choice states who endured forced childbirth in the years before Roe was decided. "People who are plaintiffs in cases are usually messy people," said Kissling. Many of the headlines about "AKA Jane Roe" have emphasized that McCorvey was paid to renounce abortion rights, but after watching it I don't think it was all about money. McCorvey wanted respect and attention, to be honored and cherished. At times, people in the pro choice movement tried to help her; for a while she was represented by the feminist superlawyer Gloria Allred. She made money giving speeches and selling the rights to her story, including for an Emmy winning made for TV movie. But McCorvey was not a prize to the pro choice camp as she was to the anti abortion one. Benham cultivated her. He treated her like a star. "She was less defended, more needy," said Schenck. "That was easy to detect, especially for those of us who were clergy. We were used to those kinds of personalities." At the time of her Christian conversion, McCorvey was in a long term relationship with a woman named Connie Gonzalez. Becoming a professional pro lifer required her to disavow homosexuality, but she continued to live with Gonzalez platonically, they said. (Knowing this, it's heartbreaking to think back to McCorvey burning a rainbow flag.) For a while, according to a 2013 Vanity Fair article, Benham made sure both women were getting by, giving them about 200 a week. But eventually, even he tired of McCorvey. "She just fishes for money," he was quoted as saying. Contemplating McCorvey's deeply sad trajectory, I find it hard to hold her betrayals against her. The author of the Vanity Fair article, Joshua Prager, nailed it when he wrote, "McCorvey has long been less pro choice or pro life than pro Norma." But given all her disadvantages, someone had to be. She may have been a con artist for much of her life, but at one crucial moment she was a heroine. Some issues aren't just black and white.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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Michael Beattie and Marissa Tarallo, traffic engineers who met at work, rented a one bedroom on the garden level of a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The rent was 2,100 a month. The place was dark and noisy. "It served its purpose, but we were ready to move on," Mr. Beattie said. Mr. Beattie, who is now 36, and Ms. Tarallo, 28, began the hunt nearly a year ago, with a budget of up to 700,000 for a sunny, dog friendly one bedroom co op. Lacking much cash for a down payment, they intended to put 10 percent down. They occasionally went to open houses for apartments in their neighborhood, even though they knew they could not afford the area. At one, they met Robert Schlederer, an associate broker at Douglas Elliman Real Estate, and enlisted his help. The couple, who plan to marry next fall, were willing to expand to other areas of Brooklyn, preferably within a 45 minute commute to their office in Midtown East, with at least two train options. At the Clinton Hill Co ops, they were astounded by how far their money would go. They loved the first place they saw there, a large, sunny one bedroom in move in condition. At 549,000, it was well within their budget, with a monthly maintenance charge in the mid 700s. The co op allowed 10 percent down. They bid 525,000 and then, when the sellers requested a best and highest offer, raised it to the low 600,000s. It sold to someone else for 680,000. In Kensington on Albemarle Road, a one bedroom converted to two was on a high floor of a prewar elevator co op. The price was just 398,000, with monthly maintenance of almost 600. Before the couple could make an offer, it sold for 448,000. The couple began to find the hunt so tedious that they were "unwilling to go through it again" should they have a baby, Ms. Tarallo said. So they decided to hunt for a bigger apartment a two bedroom and to lower their budget to 600,000. At open houses, they encountered the same couples. "You kind of develop this relationship with them," Mr. Beattie said. "They all have the same horror stories. Everyone was in their late 20s or early 30s, they weren't millionaires but everyone had a good job, they had a kid or were going to start a family." Still, those couples were the ones who "might prevent you from getting the apartment you want," he said. And in the end, "You wonder if they got the place." Frustrated, Mr. Beattie and Ms. Tarallo considered hunting in Westchester County. There, "friends have a legitimate house they have windows on all four sides," Mr. Beattie said. But many suburbs lacked the neighborhood conveniences they wanted. "We work out all the time and we're always hungry, and we look at these gorgeous towns and there's four restaurants," he said. An option arose in Sunset Park, where a 950 square foot two bedroom, with a large dining room, occupied a sunny corner of a fourth floor walk up. "You can always renovate an old place, but you cannot create light," Mr. Beattie said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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SANTA MONICA, Calif. In July, Lionsgate was stuck under a storm cloud. Several of the company's movies had been critical and commercial debacles, including "The Divergent Series: Allegiant" and "Gods of Egypt," which also embroiled Lionsgate in a humiliating whitewashing casting controversy. Even worse, Lionsgate's takeover of the Starz cable operation in June had been a bust on Wall Street: Not only did the 4.4 billion deal fail to raise Lionsgate's stock price, but shares went lower. And the end of Lionsgate's year looked like more misery, with three problematic movies another chapter in an aging comedy franchise, starring Tyler Perry as a sassy grandmother ("Boo! A Madea Halloween"); a violent war film from Mel Gibson ("Hacksaw Ridge"); and an original musical ("La La Land") that most competing studios saw as a fool's errand. Lionsgate's marketing department turned each of those potential misfires into a major hit. "A Madea Halloween," made for 20 million, took in 75 million, the second highest gross for a "Madea" film. The 40 million "Hacksaw Ridge" collected 164 million and received six Oscar nominations, including one for Mr. Gibson's directing. "La La Land," which cost 30 million, is cruising toward 300 million in ticket sales and could take home the best picture award. (A "La La Land" Broadway musical is already planned.) All told, Lionsgate films received 26 Oscar nominations, by far the most of any movie company this year. That total goes up to 32 if you count those achieved by Roadside Attractions, which released "Manchester by the Sea" and is 43 percent owned by Lionsgate. Lionsgate's stock has climbed nearly 40 percent since mid July. "We're pleased with the strong momentum," Jon Feltheimer, Lionsgate's chief executive, said on a call with analysts on Tuesday to discuss the company's third fiscal quarter results. For the period that ended on Dec. 31, which included almost no income from "La La Land" because of its late quarter theatrical rollout and only 23 days of Starz results, revenue grew 12 percent, to 752 million, compared with the year earlier period. After adjusting for one time charges, profit stood at 34 million, a 36 percent drop. The third quarter of 2015 benefited from the blockbuster finale of the "Hunger Games" series. The question now: As Hollywood tumult increases consumers are watching more content on smartphones; major entertainment companies are searching for chief executives; the power imbalance with technology giants has media conglomerates looking to get bigger does Lionsgate become predator or prey? With its TV division increasing in size, which lessens exposure to the volatile film business, and its reinvigorated movie division, Lionsgate has achieved the near impossible in terms of positioning itself for the road ahead: It could be either, which is one reason it has become one of the more interesting companies in Hollywood. Alan Gould, an analyst with Brean Capital, wrote in a recent report that he had one major conclusion: "how well positioned Lionsgate is as either an acquirer or an entity to be acquired." Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. Does Lionsgate combine with other entities controlled by the cable titan John Malone? It was Mr. Malone who sold Starz to Lionsgate; his other holdings include the Discovery Channel and Charter Communications. Some analysts have speculated about a Lionsgate merger with CBS, which would join Starz and Showtime, among other things. A revitalized Metro Goldwyn Mayer could be an attractive purchase for Lionsgate, analysts have said, unless MGM values itself too aggressively. Michael Burns, Lionsgate's vice chairman, declined to comment on the guessing game surrounding his company, although he did say, "We believe that our greater scale brings great opportunity." Lionsgate, of course, could also seek to grow organically. Mr. Feltheimer and Mr. Burns wanted Starz in part because of its fledgling direct to consumers streaming service. "We're trying to be right next to the consumer," Mr. Burns said. Lionsgate has introduced several of its own niche streaming services over the last year and was the primary backer of Atom Tickets, a fast growing movie ticket app and website. Lionsgate still faces enormous challenges. Starz recently lost its access to new Disney movies; Disney made a deal with Netflix instead. While Lionsgate's own movie pipeline has expected hits among them "The Shack," a faith based film other bets are uncertain. Lionsgate's next major release is "Power Rangers," which cost about 120 million to make and will arrive on March 24. "Still not for the faint of heart," Mr. Juenger wrote of Lionsgate's stock. Tim Palen, Lionsgate's marketing chief, said that a staff reorganization since last summer Mr. Palen now reports to Mr. Feltheimer instead of an intermediary had improved his ability to respond to the marketplace, contributing to recent successes. "Having the marketing group plugged directly into Jon Feltheimer has made an enormous difference," Mr. Palen said, adding that morale had also improved. "One of the things that makes our jobs challenging and fun is that we have wildly different movies with wildly different release strategies."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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Michael Preysman, a founder and the chief executive of Everlane, a fashion brand that targets the ethically minded with minimalist basics, stood onstage in May 2019 at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit and preached the gospel of his company. "Everlane launched eight years ago with the basic principle that the fashion industry and retail in general really needed transparency and honesty to come to the forefront," he said. The audience was rapt, as had been celebrities (like Meghan Markle and Angelina Jolie) and venture capitalists before them, entranced by the vision of a San Francisco start up that wouldn't be predatory, a direct to consumer fashion company that wouldn't be gluttonous. Everlane promised to reveal its pricing markups, its clothing suppliers, its ecological footprint. This vision of "radical transparency" was so compelling that after only five years Everlane reportedly brought in 50 million in revenue and sought a valuation of more than 250 million. But last month, Mr. Preysman found himself on a stage of a different sort: at an all staff meeting, after waves of public allegations of hypocrisy, with former employees having accused the company of anti Black behavior and union busting, of selling an image to the world that did not reflect their damaging experiences inside the company. Three current employees described a culture of favoritism, particularly toward those known as "Foreverlaners" loyal employees defensive of Mr. Preysman and the brand that they loved. An internal investigation was promised. "It's been the hardest three months of my life," Mr. Preysman told his staff at that meeting, a recording of which was obtained by The New York Times. He'd cried for an hour at the start of the pandemic, after the company sent employees home, he said. Just two years ago, the company had been profitable. Now his company's internal culture was being laid bare online. On July 23, during another all staff meeting, Everlane leadership said its completed internal investigation confirmed many of these complaints. Investigators found that insensitive terms were used while discussing Black models; that leaders violated employees' personal space by touching them, and used inappropriate terms when referring to people of color; that new hires felt isolated and unwelcome; that there was lack of consistent policies around promotions; that there were no formal processes to effectively escalate harassment or discrimination. Everlane also announced that Alexandra Spunt, the company's chief creative officer who has received significant criticism from staff, will be "no longer leading the creative team" and will be "transitioning" while "advising the senior leadership team as needed." In a statement to The Times, Mr. Preysman said that the company had "urgent work to do to rewrite Everlane's code of ethics." It would be opening a seat for a Black board member in the next year, adding a Black person to the senior leadership team in the next year, rolling out anti racism training for the entire company by August, and teaming with two racism accountability organizations. Ms. Kwadzogah was one of a group of remote customer experience workers who announced in December they were unionizing. Broadly speaking, they'd come to feel like "second class citizens," said Jon Foor, who joined Everlane's customer experience team in 2018, with no opportunities for career growth and none of the start up perks annual retreats, kombucha on tap enjoyed by full time colleagues at headquarters. Everlane said that multiple members of this team have gone on to become full time employees in other departments but did not specify how many. Three months later, 290 employees were laid off, including 42 of the remote customer experience team's 57 employees. Everlane said the company didn't know which employees were part of the unionizing effort and attributed the layoffs to the economic pressures of the pandemic. The workers described it as union busting and were publicly supported by Senator Bernie Sanders. Then, in June, brands everywhere rushed to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement amid protests over George Floyd's killing. Everlane was one of them. But the support rang hollow to many, including those who said they had experienced racism while working at Everlane. A collective of 14 anonymous former employees called the Ex Wives Club published a lengthy document on their experiences with what they called "anti Black behavior" at Everlane. The employees wrote about being overworked, underpaid, deprived of career opportunities and punished for speaking up. Everlane said this was not accurate. They also shared stories about Ms. Spunt, the creative lead who had been a content director at American Apparel in the mid 2000s. Ms. Spunt's team had so much turnover that people in other departments would place bets as to who would leave next, said three current employees. But also, the Ex Wives wrote, she often rejected casting suggestions for Black models, calling them "too severe" or "too edgy" or, in a 2015 email shared with The Times, not enough of a "traditional beauty" to carry a cashmere campaign. Black models did not begin appearing regularly in Everlane marketing until 2016. Everlane said Black employees currently make up 6 percent of the overall team (264 employees) and 8 percent at the leadership level. However, Mia Ward, a technical designer from 2016 to 2018, believed she was the only full time Black employee at the company during that time. (Everlane denied this was true.) Ms. Ward characterized the culture as one of dismissal and insecurity, but said she felt uncomfortable and exposed if she spoke out. "It was the only job I've had where it made me want to go into therapy to deal with it." Ms. Ward said. She wasn't the only one. Annabel Ly, a social media manager at Everlane in early 2012, said her six months at Everlane were more "traumatic and demoralizing" than three and a half years at Uber, a company long scrutinized for its workplace culture. One member of the Ex Wives Club, a 26 year old Black videographer who worked on contract at Everlane between 2018 and 2019, wrote in the document that Ms. Spunt had shoved "her hands in my hair, pulling at my roots," and had referred to the two of them as "soul sisters." A witness who confirmed the incident to The Times said the moment "didn't feel malicious it just felt really misplaced." That videographer, who told human resources about the incident, described feeling "off brand" and professionally sidelined and socially isolated at Everlane: "I felt really alone." In a team meeting last month, Ms. Spunt said she felt "absolutely sick that anybody felt like my behavior toward them was in some ways discriminatory or made them uncomfortable." Everlane maintained that no formal complaints were ever made about Ms. Spunt related to hair pulling or casting. "I stand for diversity and equity and inclusion with every fiber of my being," Ms. Spunt said, according to a recording of the meeting. "If nobody says something, you don't know that you've necessarily done anything wrong." Ms. Spunt declined to respond to inquiries from The Times. Two employees in Ms. Spunt's now former department said they were disappointed that Everlane had announced she was stepping back without explicitly acknowledging why they felt the decision was "performative" and a "Band Aid solution," obscuring shortcomings in the company's leadership. The Ex Wives Club has grown to about 50 members since it went public, which includes current, former and freelance employees, and plans to continue releasing testimonies. In the aftermath of the first Ex Wives Club revelations, the three current Everlane employees who spoke with The Times have described many of their colleagues' moods as tense, betrayed and defeated. This summer's events had reinforced their belief that radical transparency was "just a nice tagline," one employee said. In last month's all hands meeting with Mr. Preysman, a Black employee spoke about feeling a "constant pressure to show up as if nothing's happening." An employee of color was worried about being taken seriously, despite being urged to speak up: "The line seems blurred on what we are considering as right or wrong." "I wish we had done things differently in the past," Mr. Preysman said, and had "made it clear that we were working toward diversity in our models, that we're working toward our diversity in our hiring." Mostly, he apologized to his workers: for anyone who'd had a bad experience, felt discriminated against or felt Everlane hadn't provided them a safe space. "We have no idea how to control it. We have no idea how to have a conversation with each other about it," he said. "I am trying to figure out that right line of how to be as human as possible, while also running a business." In 2017, Everlane went public with its commitment to sustainability, trademarking the phrase "radical transparency. " By then, its meaning had evolved from being about pricing and production to ethical labor and sustainability, too. Everlane's major period of growth came as many brands realized consumers were saying they cared about the conditions in which their clothing was made. By 2023, the company is committing to ensure all of its cotton comes from certified organic sources, and to eliminate virgin plastic in its supply chain by 2021. Both have required heavy investment and are targets that Everlane says it is on track to meet. Yet despite regularly auditing suppliers and using some eco friendly materials, last year Everlane received a "not good enough" overall rating from the brand ratings platform Good on You. Everlane was marked down for failing to track greenhouse gases across its entire line, and for an absence of initiatives to guarantee living wages or reduce water use. Since then, the company has publicly said that it's working toward third party certifications, which could improve its future ratings. The company has never publicly produced a corporate and social responsibility report, and it wasn't until February that it created a chief supply chain officer role. "It's a tech company that took the concept of fast fashion and made it an iota better just one notch better to try to appeal to a kind of San Francisco liberal consciousness," Mr. Foor said. "Everlane puts a great deal of focus on 'radical transparency' and has made it a key selling point," said Luke Smitham, a sustainability expert at Kumi Consulting in London. "But fundamentally, what they do is not any different from most mass market fashion brands who do exactly the same, or more." "They do some good work, but I wouldn't describe it as radical. The most radical thing about Everlane is the marketing."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Masafumi Asada bought shares of the Tokyo Electric Power Company almost a decade ago with a single purpose: To vote against the use of nuclear power. Mr. Asada, a 70 year old resident of Fukushima prefecture, the epicenter of Japan's nuclear crisis, will speak on behalf of 402 shareholders on Tuesday at the annual general meeting of the utility known as Tepco, to ask it to stop atomic generation. "Even if our proposal doesn't go through, I will still hold the stock," said Mr. Asada, whose 1.6 million yen ( 20,000) investment in 800 shares 10 years ago has shrunk to about 12 percent of the original value. "I bought the stock to protect our lives, not to make money." A group of shareholders has been proposing the motion to stop Tepco from using atomic energy for the last two decades, each time failing at the annual meeting. This year, they may have some support: local news media reported that more than 60,000 people marched in demonstrations in Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukushima on June 11. Tepco has opposed the proposal of withdrawing from nuclear power generation, saying that it was a matter for the board to weigh. At the meeting, shareholders will vote on the appointment of 17 board members, including its newly named president, Toshio Nishizawa, 60, and its chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, 71. Sixteen of the 17 directors are Tepco executives, company documents show. The lone outside director, Yasushi Aoyama, has been paid by a Tepco unit for two years in the past, according to the documents. Mr. Aoyama is a former vice governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and has experience in urban planning and crisis management, the company said. "The company has experienced significant problems with its safety practices and risk management, wreaking havoc on surrounding communities, destroying shareholder value as well as tarnishing its reputation," Ms. Stroud wrote. "The appointment of new, independent directors untainted by prior safety lapses and poor communication would provide better oversight of the company on behalf of shareholders as well as stakeholders." This month, the Japanese cabinet approved a disaster compensation bill to help Tepco pay reparations with the support of a third party. A group of banks led by Sumitomo Mitsui Financial advanced 2 trillion yen (about 25 billion) of emergency loans to Tepco. Tepco may face as much as 11 trillion yen in compensation claims, according to Bank of America's Merrill Lynch unit.The cost of dismantling the Fukushima plant may reach 20 trillion yen, and compensation for households in a 20 kilometer evacuation zone may total 630 billion yen over 10 years, according to the Japan Center for Economic Research. "Perhaps the best solution would be to spin off all of the noncore assets, real estate and subsidiaries into a separate company for liquidation to pay for the damages," said Curtis Freeze, founder of Prospect Asset Management in Honolulu. "Otherwise, the shareholders will expect Tepco to do as little as possible." Some institutional investors are selling shares of utility companies because of the risks associated with nuclear power. The STB Asset Management Company said in April that it was removing Tepco stock from its socially responsible investing fund, citing environmental and health concerns after the accident.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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Blood samples to be processed at the U.K. Biobank. The U.S. is embarking on a similar project called All of Us, but its scope and costs are raising challenges. This spring, the National Institutes of Health will start recruiting participants for one of the most ambitious medical projects ever envisioned. The goal is to find one million people in the United States, from all walks of life and all racial and ethnic groups, who are willing to have their genomes sequenced, and to provide their medical records and regular blood samples. They may choose to wear devices that continuously monitor physical activity, perhaps even devices not yet developed that will track heart rate and blood pressure. They will fill out surveys about what they eat and how much. If all goes well, experts say, the result will be a trove of health information like nothing the world has seen. The project, called the All of Us Research Program, should provide new insights into who gets sick and why, and how to prevent and treat chronic diseases. The All of Us program joins a wave of similar efforts to construct gigantic "biobanks" by, among others, the Department of Veterans Affairs, a British collaboration and private companies like Geisinger Health Systems and Kaiser Permanente. But All of Us is the only one that attempts to capture a huge sample that is representative of the United States population. "It will be transformative," said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. It will also be expensive. In 2017 alone, the budget for All of Us was 230 million, of which 40 million came from the 21st Century Cures Act. Congress has authorized an astounding 1.455 billion over 10 years for the project. While supporters say the results will be well worth the money and effort, others have begun to question whether All of Us is just too ambitious, too loaded with cumbersome bureaucracy and too duplicative of smaller programs that are moving much more quickly. In the three years since the All of Us program was announced, not a single person's DNA has been sequenced. Instead, project leaders have signed up more than 17,000 volunteers as "beta testers" in a pilot phase of the program. They supplied blood and urine samples, had measurements taken, and filled out surveys. Dr. George D. Yancopoulos, the president and chief scientific officer of the biotech company Regeneron, said the N.I.H. did not have much to show for three years of planning. Regeneron has been deeply involved in similar public and private efforts, sequencing the DNA of more than 300,000 participants. The beta testers constitute just 1.7 percent of the program's target, Dr. Yancopoulos noted, and the investigators have collected only the simplest data, not genetic sequences. "At this rate, when will they complete their one million person target?" he wondered. "And at what taxpayer cost?" "I think someone needs to ask tough questions about whether this is the best use of precious N.I.H. resources," he added. "Should the funding instead go to individual researchers who are doing truly basic and innovative science?" Two large health providers Geisinger and Kaiser Permanente both backed away from grants to participate in All of Us. David Ledbetter, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Geisinger, said that the program's complexity made it too time consuming: conference calls upon conference calls, meetings upon meetings, without much progress. Geisinger has enrolled more than 180,000 participants in a biobank of its own, and the health system already has years of their medical records. Regeneron is sequencing the participants' DNA and has completed more than 100,000. Dr. Ledbetter said the N.I.H. program would be "very valuable someday." But Geisinger, he said, did not want to wait. "Someday is today," he said. Kaiser Permanente, too, is now far ahead in developing its own biobank. Originally, the company expected that the federal project would profit from Kaiser's experience with recruiting and data analysis, said Elizabeth McGlynn, vice president of Kaiser Permanente Research. "We were not able to engage as a scientific partner," Dr. McGlynn said. "We felt increasingly that we were just being asked to give access to our members." DeCode Genetics, a subsidiary of Amgen, a biotech company, is working with a biobank of 160,000 people from Iceland. Dr. Sean E. Harper, Amgen's executive vice president for research and development, says it is hard to imagine the complexity of analyzing the data. "It took about 20 years and over a billion dollars of investment to get to the point where we are able to routinely extract from the data the necessary information to validate or invalidate drug targets," he said. Sequencing the DNA is the easy part, he said. "The hard part is to get all these medical records and lab tests curated in a computer system where they are query able and to perfect the analytics." Despite these concerns, All of Us has contracted with scientists at just about every leading university, as well as with companies like Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet, parent company of Google. "We will have an unprecedented amount of data at a scale never done before," said Eric Dishman, director of the program. Investigators have grand plans for all that data once it becomes available. Dr. Atul Butte, director of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, hopes to find the earliest signs of disease, especially of Type 2 diabetes. "Do you go back and forth from diabetes for a while?" he asks. "Is it preventable?" The Veterans Affairs Department began building a similar biobank, called the Million Veteran Program, in 2011 with a very lean budget: just 250 million over the past seven years. The agency has recruited 650,000 vets so far and has years of their medical records, including prescription data. Investigators expect to sequence the DNA of 100,000 participants in the next two years, at a cost of 1,000 for each person's entire genome. The data will be available to approved researchers. The British program, called the U.K. Biobank, has half a million participants with complete medical records and additional data for some, including body and brain scans. Regeneron has committed to sequencing the DNA of all of the participants by the end of 2019. After a six to 12 month period of exclusivity, the company will make that data public. But what All of Us is attempting to do is much more complex, said Dr. Dishman. The U.K. project and the program at Geisinger lack a representative range of racial and ethnic groups; the V.A.'s biobank has relatively few women. All of Us will be built to reflect the United States population. The San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, for instance, was given a grant to recruit lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender participants. "I think what the U.S. project adds is that it reflects the diversity of the U.S.," said Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, a geneticist at the Broad Institute and an investigator with the N.I.H. program. That's partly why planning for the project has dragged on. And the diversity of participants makes the daunting task of retrieving medical records even more difficult. Yet in the end, only one in eight with abnormal scans actually had a medical problem, and even then there was nothing they could do about it most of the time, said Dr. Rory Collins, chief executive of the U.K. project. "What we are trying to do is not provide care to individuals, but to generate a resource that can provide health information," Dr. Collins said. "Feedback can cause more harm than good." Other experts disagree with the British approach. At Geisinger, participants are told if they have a genetic variant that might affect their disease risk. They are offered genetic counseling if they want it and so far, about two thirds do. The medical system has sufficient counselors to handle the demand, said Adam H. Buchanan, co director of the counseling program. Given the substantial obstacles, will the N.I.H. project, which has not even really begun, be worth the immense expense and effort? Dr. Collins, an adviser to All of Us, thinks it will. Huge amounts of data will be needed to really understand interactions between genetics, environment and lifestyle. "Half a million people isn't enough. Even a million isn't enough," he said. Dr. Ledbetter was more circumspect. "I think the idea is great," he said. "It is ambitious. It is expensive. It will take a while."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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A cloud of doubt lingering over Tesla Motors parted on March 26, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration closed an investigation of the Model S begun in response to two cars that were destroyed by fires after striking objects on the highway. In those incidents, the aluminum shielding designed to protect the cars' lithium ion battery packs was pierced by debris, causing what the safety regulators called a "thermal runaway." In the documents explaining its reasons for ending the investigation, regulators cited Tesla's planned service campaign to reduce the risk of fires by outfitting the cars with "increased underbody protection." Two days later, Elon Musk, Tesla's chief executive, outlined the new protective measures a titanium underbody shield and two aluminum deflector plates in a message on Tesla's website. In the company's testing, he said, these provisions "prevented any damage that could cause a fire or penetrate the existing quarter inch of ballistic grade armor plate" already in place. Tesla did not post photos of the new protective components, and it declined to provide further details regarding their size or the extent of underbody coverage. The reaction from Tesla owners to Mr. Musk's announcement was both spirited and positive. On web forums, owners soon referred to the parts package, a running production change also offered free to existing owners, as the Tank Mode. Titanium, which is tough and light, though far more expensive than steel, is a first class solution for such a role "more commonly seen in aerospace or military applications," Mr. Musk wrote. Tesla's website carried under car videos of an upgraded Model S hitting and shrugging off heavy objects, including a concrete block and an alternator. Tesla owners and others who read the news reports may have imagined the triple underbody shield, as Mr. Musk called it, to include a full length titanium plate protecting the entire battery pack, which covers nearly all of the underside of the passenger compartment. A look at the pieces Tesla has added while taking photographs for this article confirmed what owners who have had the retrofit done to their cars say: The titanium plate, positioned at the forward edge of the battery pack, is relatively small and light. Kartik Rao, director of business development at Metalysis, a British company working on a lower cost titanium production process, said in a telephone interview that the grade of the metal appropriate for this use would cost 50 per kilogram, or about 23 per pound. Any stamping or other fabrication would be extra. Tesla plays down any weight increase attributed to the new parts. A spokeswoman, Shanna Hendriks, wrote in an email: "We don't disclose the exact weight of the parts of Model S. However, the weight of the underbody pieces is very minimal and has minor impact on the overall weight of the car." An executive who formerly worked with the auto industry at the titanium supplier Timet, Kurt Faller, estimates from photographs that the titanium plate weighs 0.8 to 1.6 pounds. Ms. Hendriks cited a blog post by Mr. Musk that states, "In total, the shields only have a 0.1 percent impact on range and don't affect ride or handling." The Environmental Protection Agency said in an email that while it had not retested a car with the new shields, it was unlikely that such a small change would affect the range certification. One owner, David Noland, a semiretired aviation and science journalist in Mountainville, N.Y., had the retrofit done to his Model S this month. His car was picked up, had the new parts installed and returned the next day. "It was about as quick and painless as it could possibly be," he said. Mr. Noland, who has written extensively about his experiences with the car, said he had no expectation of how big the added shields would be.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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GANTA, Liberia Evelyn Dolo saved a teenage girl's life, but not out of good will alone, she admits. A traditional birth attendant for more than 15 years in the small Liberian village of Zahmboyee, Ms. Dolo was summoned one night to help the teenage girl deliver her baby. Ms. Dolo rushed the girl to the nearest hospital, about 25 miles away, where she was immediately taken into surgery. A cesarean section saved both her and her baby's life, said Zlangbah Dahn, head of obstetrics and gynecology at Ganta United Methodist Hospital. Ms. Dolo's objectives in the case were twofold: She was racing to save the girl's life, but she was also compelled to rush to the hospital under the rules of her village. Rather than deliver women's babies at home, birth attendants in many villages are required to bring pregnant women to health centers or face penalties. In Ms. Dolo's village, failure to comply would have meant a payment to the town elders of 5,000 Liberian dollars (about 50), a gallon of palm oil and a tub of cooked rice. The local policy essentially forces women to give birth in health centers by threatening financial penalties a practice aimed at curbing maternal deaths. In Liberia, 725 women die for every 100,000 live births among the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world. The practice is not a national policy regulated by the Ministry of Health, although the Liberian government does encourage women to give birth in health facilities as part of its push to lower maternal deaths in childbirth. Instead, it varies from one community to the next. In some villages, the fine is much lower or offenders must pay in cattle. In others, the nearest health clinic levies the fine rather than the town leaders. Local clinicians say they are seeing more women deliver in hospitals as a result. "It's working," Ms. Dahn said. "Home births still happen in the village, but more birth attendants are bringing women here." But American experts fear the practice might deter those who deliver at home from visiting a hospital or a clinic for other health care. It is also unclear if the practice actually saves more mothers' lives. "This is a very complex issue and something like a penalty is a blunt instrument," said Lynn Freedman, the director of Columbia University's Averting Maternal Death and Disability program. "I don't think it gets countries or their populations where they want to be." Coercive measures can set up negative associations with the health care system, she explained. It could make mothers who deliver at home reluctant to bring their children to clinics for vaccines or other care, fearful that they might be treated as delinquents who broke the rules. The idea of using fines to enforce certain maternal health behaviors is not a new concept, but it is fairly rare. Punitive measures to get women to deliver in hospitals have also cropped up in villages in Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi and the Philippines, Ms. Freedman said. Other countries, including Nepal, Cambodia and India, have incentive programs rather than coercive measures. In India, where the government gives women cash to deliver in a hospital or a clinic, institutional deliveries increased to 49 percent in 2010 from 20 percent in 2005. The goal of these programs is twofold: to ensure a woman has easier and quicker access to a C section if she needs it, but also for her to be assisted by a trained midwife rather than a traditional birth attendant. While traditional birth attendants have historically played an important role in supporting pregnant women in rural areas, they may be untrained and may sometimes follow dangerous practices. In Liberia, some birth attendants will roll a pestle on the mother's stomach to try to push the baby out, said Eunice Josiah, a registered midwife at a health clinic in Boegeezay. The practice can rupture the woman's uterus, endangering the lives of both the mother and child. Another problem is that birth attendants do not have the surgical tools that a health center can provide. For example, if a woman is in obstructed labor, where the baby cannot exit the uterus, a birth attendant cannot perform a C section. By the time the woman reaches a hospital, it is often too late. That was the case for a woman from a rural village called Yarnee. She had gone into labor on a Friday and continued laboring at home for three days before someone suggested she needed to go to a hospital, said Dr. Mamady Conde, the only full time practicing physician in that county. That was when she and her brother began the nearly two hour walk through narrow footpaths in the forest, followed by an hour and half canoe ride to Cestos, the city where the nearest hospital was. By the time the canoe reached the shore, the woman had died, Dr. Conde said. Dr. Jeffrey Smith, an obstetric gynecologist who is the vice president for technical leadership at Jhpiego, a nonprofit health organization at Johns Hopkins University, said women and their babies who arrive at a clinic can get better access to ambulances that can take them to the nearest surgical center. "You have a minute, maybe three minutes, to resuscitate that baby if it's not breathing at birth," he said. "Being in a facility reduces the critical response time if there is an emergency." But these theoretical benefits do not always translate to the field. In India, facility deliveries spiked after the cash incentive program, but there was no meaningful difference in maternal mortality rates. Facilities cannot just exist as buildings, Dr. Smith said. If more women are coming into clinics, then those places need to have increased staffing and supplies to care for them. "If you double the workload but don't change the number of staff or the capacity of the health system, you have the potential to anger people and increase instances of disrespect and abuse toward the patient," he said. A clinic in Boegeezay is working to address that concern. While it fines birth attendants 750 Liberian dollars ( 8) for a home delivery, it is also trying to provide better care to make women want to deliver there.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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There are apartment buildings near, along and even touching the High Line. And now there will be one, underneath, at least partly. As the elevated park undergoes a stampede of residential development, a new condominium from the HFZ Capital Group, at 505 West 19th Street, will have its front door directly below the metal beams of the former railroad bed. Not too long ago, some residents might have avoided shadowy areas like this from 10th to 11th Avenue. But HFZ and its architect, Thomas Juul Hansen, have embraced the site. They are not only making residents come and go from beneath the High Line, but also installing a 150 square foot skylight in the lobby, with amber lights aimed upward, for an intimate view of the High Line's rivets. "We wanted to celebrate the rebirth of a deserted railway that was going to be torn down," said Ziel Feldman, the managing partner of HFZ Capital. "It's a shout out." The 35 units in the condo most likely won't be gloomy, because they will be stacked in a pair of 10 story limestone towers flanking the High Line, giving the building, if viewed from the sidewalk, an unusual U shape. Ranging from 1,100 square foot one bedrooms to a 5,900 square foot four bedroom, the spaces will also have Italian marble in their baths and brass trimmed cabinet doors in their kitchens, Mr. Juul Hansen said. Prices are likely to range from 2,500 to 3,500 a square foot, according to Mr. Feldman. That makes the building comparable to other new high rises in the neighborhood. The offering plan for the 60 million project awaits approval by the state attorney general's office; the developer expects that to happen this fall, and construction to be complete in 2015. The Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group will be handling sales for the building. As condos and rentals have nudged ever closer to the High Line, developers have wrestled with how to keep prying eyes away from people's living rooms while also making sure residents enjoy at least some views of passers by. No. 505's walls in some cases sit a privacy challenging 15 feet from the park's edges, so Mr. Juul Hansen has angled the window panes, instead of having them flush with the walls, thereby creating a smaller opening for people to peek into, he said. "People usually have privacy concerns at the street level," he said, "but we had to deal with it at 30 feet up in the air." At 500 West 21st Street, a new 32 unit condo from Sherwood Equities that is expected to compete with No. 505 when it begins sales around the end of the year, the solution was to plant soaring 40 foot tall oaks and birches on its second story, with other plantings on higher floors, to create dense screens. "It's something we looked at in great detail," said Ryan Nelson, a senior vice president of Sherwood. Pricing has not yet been set at the condo, he added, while also playing down any rivalry. "West Chelsea is deceptive in a way," he said. "The zoning is punitive, so while there are a lot of choices of buildings, there are not really a lot of units." Still, the number of new residential buildings under way or imminent from 10th to 11th Avenue is striking. Numbering nearly a dozen, they include projects like AVA High Line, a rental from AvalonBay Communities set to open this fall on West 28th Street. Abutting it will be Avalon West Chelsea, a taller structure that will start leasing in 2014, a company spokesman said. The two buildings together will add 715 rental units to the area. Meanwhile, rising at 508 West 24th Street, closer to the High Line, is a 10 story condo from Cary Tamarkin, its designer and developer. Since July, 6 of its 15 units have sold, for prices averaging 2,500 a square foot, Mr. Tamarkin said. Less far along but still anticipated is Soori High Line, an 11 story condo at 522 West 29th Street, from the development team of Blackhouse Development and Oriel, a Singapore company. It promises a swimming pool inside each of its 27 residences. Though the 125 million project awaits approval of its offering plan, the goal is to have it come to market in 2014, according to a Blackhouse spokeswoman. Next door, at No. 534, and built by Blackhouse alone, will be the 22 million Casa Moderne, a 10 story, 6 unit building that is expected to break ground in December, the spokeswoman said. Also seemingly close enough to touch from the High Line will be 520 West 28th Street, an 11 story apartment house from the Related Companies, a major developer in the area. Designed by the prize winning architect Zaha Hadid, in her first New York commission, the sinuous 37 unit condominium is supposed to break ground in January and be completed in 2015, a Related spokeswoman said. When they do open, those apartment buildings and others will join pioneers like the Caledonia, a 26 story rental condo hybrid at 450 West 17th Street from Related and Taconic Investment Partners. Given all the growth since 2008, when the Caledonia was completed, the claim to High Line proximity by itself may have lost some novelty as a sales pitch. That is in part why Mr. Feldman of HFZ has fashioned his U shaped complex. "In this market, which is getting more competitive," he said, "anything unique is a positive."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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We tend to forget, in our obsession with designer moves , that upheaval in the executive suite is equally disruptive, and potentially meaningful, when it comes to reshaping the fashion we see and wear. Success for a brand often depends on the unpredictable alchemy of the designer/chief executive relationship. And though recently there has been a lot of movement on the creative side (on Tuesday, it was announced that Danielle Sherman had resigned as creative director of Edun, making her the seventh designer to leave a brand after a single three year term since last summer), it's important to note that it has been matched by shake ups in the C suite. Change at the top is normal in a downturn like the one high end fashion is experiencing, with growth projected at a mere 2 to 3 percent this year ("When things are tough ... you change management. It's the same as in football," said Luca Solca, head of luxury goods at Exane BNP Paribas). Nonetheless, the corporate reshuffle currently underway is pretty dramatic. To wit: On Monday, Mr. Ferraris was widely credited with getting Versace into shape for a much discussed, maybe possible I.P.O., and during his tenure Blackstone became the company's first outside minority investor.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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It took researchers about 20 months to develop a vaccine against SARS in 2003 and six months when the Zika epidemic struck in 2015. Scientists want to halve that time with the coronavirus. New technology and better coordination have sped up development. But a coronavirus vaccine is still months and most likely years away. They had clues that a coronavirus, similar to ones that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003 and MERS in 2012, was the culprit. Dr. Barney Graham, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the N.I.H, urged government scientists in China to share the genetic makeup of the virus so his team could begin its race to develop a vaccine. On Friday, Jan. 10, the Chinese scientists posted the information on a public database. The next morning, Dr. Graham's team was in the lab. And within hours, they had pinpointed the letters of the genetic code that could be used to make a vaccine. Scientists in Australia and at least three companies Johnson Johnson, Moderna Therapeutics and Inovio Pharmaceuticals are also working on vaccine candidates to stop the spread of the disease, which has infected about 6,000 people and killed more than 130. "Everybody is trying to move as quickly as possible," said Jacqueline Shea, the chief operating officer at Inovio. Inovio received a grant of up to 9 million to develop a coronavirus vaccine from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a group whose aim is to speed vaccines to market. Moderna, which is working with Dr. Graham's team at the N.I.H., received a similar grant, as did researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia. Historically, vaccines have been one of the greatest public health tools to prevent disease. But even as new technology, advancements in genomics and improved global coordination have allowed researchers to move at unprecedented speed, vaccine development remains an expensive and risky process. It takes months and even years because the vaccines must undergo extensive testing in animals and humans. In the best case, it takes at least a year and most likely longer for any vaccine to become available to the public. "They may not help in the very early stages of an outbreak, but if we're able to develop vaccines in time, they will be an asset later," said Richard Hatchett, the chief executive of the epidemic preparedness coalition. With each new outbreak, scientists typically have to start from scratch. After the SARS outbreak in 2003, it took researchers about 20 months from the release of the viral genome to get a vaccine ready for human trials. By the time an epidemic caused by the Zika virus occurred in 2015, researchers had brought the timeline down to six months. Now, they hope the joint efforts will cut that time in half. The morning after the Chinese scientists published their data earlier this month, Dr. Graham's team got to work checking the sequence and comparing it with what they already had for SARS and MERS. They wanted to focus on the spike protein, which forms the crown of the coronavirus and recognizes receptors, or entry points, on a host cell. "If you can block the spike protein from binding to a cell, then you've effectively prevented an infection," said Kizzmekia Corbett, the scientific lead for Dr. Graham's coronavirus team. Dr. Corbett and others had studied the spike proteins on SARS and MERS viruses in detail, using them to develop experimental vaccines. The vaccines never made it to market because SARS was successfully contained with public health measures before the vaccine was ready and preliminary human trials for the MERS vaccine showed success last year. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. But the scientists had a method for developing vaccines that could help them fast track production for the new coronavirus. They used the template for the SARS vaccine and swapped in just enough genetic code that would make it work for the new virus. "I call it plug and play," Dr. Corbett said. Within a few hours, Dr. Corbett was able to prepare the modified sequence that the researchers needed. On Tuesday, Jan. 14, the team held a conference call to discuss the next steps with collaborators in labs across the country, and sent off the sequence to Moderna. Scientists at the company plan to use the genetic information to create synthetic messenger RNA, which carries instructions for cells' protein making machinery. The technology will help induce high levels of antibodies that can identify the spike protein and fight off an infection. Once Moderna manufactures the messenger RNA in a few weeks, the N.I.H. will run more tests, Dr. Corbett said. Collaborators in academic labs will then test the vaccine in mice infected with the virus and check blood samples from the animals to see how well the experimental vaccine worked. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the N.I.H., who oversees Dr. Graham's team, said he expected the vaccine research to move quickly. "If we don't run into any unforeseen obstacles, we'll be able to get a Phase 1 trial going within the next three months, which will be record speed," he said, referring to early human trials that test for safety. Other researchers are using different methods to develop their vaccines. Inovio, which is also developing a vaccine for MERS, uses a DNA based technology. Johnson Johnson delivers vaccines through adenoviruses which can cause coldlike symptoms but have been made harmless. And researchers at the University of Queensland are testing particles that mimic the structure of a virus. "We don't know which vaccine approach will be successful at this stage, so we have to try everything in our arsenal," said Dr. Gregory Poland, a vaccine expert at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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After a bit of brawling and a spate of North Pole deaths, after the Candy Cane of the Apocalypse is unsheathed to ward off evil, the lamb with seven horns and seven eyes is borne aloft by a malevolent ghost. End times? Christmastime? Both, actually, in Greg Kotis's "The Truth About Santa," a cheerily warped holiday sendup whose sardonic sense of humor can't hide its gooey heart though it would amp up the festivities if this revival, directed by Ilana Becker at the Tank, were less susceptible to sentiment. Mr. Kotis, a Tony Award winner for the book and lyrics of the satirical "Urinetown," here unspools an anti myth of Old Saint Nick as rampaging home wrecker and enslaver of elves. What with his weed habit and ingrained misogyny, and the part where he fathered children with someone other than Mrs. Claus, he is decidedly not the jolly old soul of lore. So this play with music, though it opens with a charming pair of singing elves, is an ill advised choice for Santa believers. And in this too earthbound production, Mr. Kotis's clever, messy comedy is not as much fun as it might be for the rest of us. It often feels like it could use an enlivening dash of the magic stuff that the Ghost of Christmas Present sprinkles around. Not that he makes an appearance; this show has plenty of spirits as it is.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Spotting a man outside one of his restaurants, Mr. Samuelsson clapped his hand and invited him to a party that night in honor of his latest project. "That guy I said hi to, it's just as important to be connected to him as it is to be connected to Thelma Golden," Mr. Samuelsson said (Ms. Golden is the director of the Studio Museum). "They're all messengers of information and connectivity. Without that, there's no restaurant." The restaurant he was referring to is Red Rooster Harlem, on Lenox Avenue (also known as Malcolm X Boulevard) near 126th Street in Harlem and the culmination of years of thought and effort on Mr. Samuelsson's part. The party that night, held at Ginny's Supper Club in the basement of the restaurant, would celebrate "The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem," released on Oct. 18. "I came to this country with 300 and a vision, but that was to be a great chef and to hopefully get some stars," said Mr. Samuelsson, who arrived in New York in 1994 for an apprenticeship with Aquavit, a high end Scandinavian restaurant in Manhattan. Just one year later, when Aquavit earned three stars from The New York Times's restaurant critic, he was its executive chef. He was 23 at the time. At 27, Mr. Samuelsson won the James Beard Award for rising star chef. With so many accomplishments under his belt before he even turned 30, Mr. Samuelsson wondered what would come next. He considered his personal concerns with the world of fine dining. "There were no women and everyone who taught me cooking was women," he said. "And there were no people of color. I wanted to make sure those narratives were in the movie."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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When to watch: Wednesday at 10 p.m., on IFC. My beloved filthy baseball comedy ends this week, somehow capping a truly strange fourth season with a sentimental, satisfying finale. The show is about a hard living baseball announcer (Hank Azaria) and in its fourth season leapt ahead in time to a dystopian America ravaged by ... well, just about everything. "The American myth needs to be restored soon," coos the spokesperson for an invasive technology company. Perhaps baseball is up to the task? "Brockmire" is a dialogue show more than it's anything else the stories, the settings, the characters all matter less than the patter, which is fine because the patter is so good. (It's also blisteringly lewd.) Even with subplots I didn't necessarily love, I stayed invested in "Brockmire" for the jokes, and I'm glad I did.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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How Much Watching Time Do You Have This Weekend? None Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, our TV critic Margaret Lyons offers hyper specific viewing recommendations in our Watching newsletter. Read her latest picks below, and sign up for the Watching newsletter here. This weekend I have ... a few minutes, and I need good role models When to watch: Friday at 8 a.m., on Disney Season 2 of the least annoying kids show of our time is finally making its way from Australia to the United States, to the delight of toddlers, their families and anyone else who might need a jolt of loving positivity. The show emphasizes imaginative play, expressing oneself and learning to identify emotions, but thanks to its naturalistic, genuine dialogue, the show it most often reminds me of is the British comedy "Outnumbered." "Bluey" is legit better than many modern sitcoms, and the family dynamics it depicts are both aspirational oh, to be that easygoing and creative! and relatable, like when Dad, scrambling, offers Bluey's little sister 20 in an attempt to back out of an ill conceived promise. ... a few hours, and I like dramedy When to watch: Now, on Acorn Kim Cattrall stars in this Canadian series about a woman who is suddenly, or maybe not that suddenly, unhappy with her tony life. The show can be quite dark not in a murder way but in a "actually, you're not worth loving any more" way, and because the characters are all smart and polished, they can be quite vicious. This is not technically part of the "Slings and Arrows" universe, but there is a lot cast and creative overlap, as well as a similarly perceptive take on what it's like to be accustomed to being beheld. "Sensitive Skin," which has just two six episode seasons, has come and gone from streaming platforms a few times, and Season 2 arrives on Acorn later this year. ... a few hours, and I already watched everything on FX Matt Okine in a scene from "The Other Guy." When to watch: Now, on Hulu This two season Australian comedy follows AJ (played by Matt Okine), a hip, miserable radio host, through a protracted breakup and a lot of drunken mistakes. He'd probably say the former caused the latter, but in reality it's more the other way around. Okine also created the show, and it feels like a lot of other auteur comedies in a good way; think "Ramy" or "Better Things," but with a more vulgar and often less artful vibe. Season 2 takes things into a meta territory that I found less compelling, but if you like wounded people behaving shabbily well, get therapy. But also watch this.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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In a digital era, when ballet dancers have thousands of followers on Instagram (Sara Mearns, 44,600; Isabella Boylston, 149,000), Patsy Tarr, a publisher and philanthropist, has done something unusual: She has decided to publish a print magazine. It started with a fall. Ms. Tarr was at the New York City Ballet and looking forward to that evening's performance of "La Valse." She dashed to the ladies room, slipped on the floor and shattered her kneecap. "I ended up getting carted out of the theater through the lobby on a stretcher," she said. For a time, she couldn't walk, but she could read. Ms. Tarr, 68, who heads the 2wice Arts Foundation, immersed herself in back issues of her own much admired publications Dance Ink (published from 1989 to 1996) and 2wice (1997 to 2012). Ms. Tarr, who over the past years had embraced digital media she produced a series of dance apps with her collaborator Abbott Miller said she came to a realization: She missed paper. "I didn't really enjoy the process of making the apps, because so much of it was out of my hands," she said. "I don't know how to write computer code."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Aaron Paul has joined the cast for the third season of HBO's "Westworld," which moves the story beyond the park to the larger world. I'm on the set of "Westworld," the HBO sci fi drama whose third season debuts on Sunday. But the parched prairies and old timey saloons of the first two seasons feel like a distant memory. Instead, the returning star Evan Rachel Wood and the series newcomer Aaron Paul are walking onto a soundstage that's been made up like the interior of a futuristic barracks, where they cautiously survey a couple dozen small, empty rooms stocked with beds and desks. (To say much more would be a spoiler.) But the walls of the rooms are made of glass, which means unwanted reflections of the crew and onlookers are everywhere. Fortunately, the show knows how to deal with this issue: Rolling frames like giant coat racks are brought in bearing drapes for us to hide behind, and voila: No more reflections. We are literally the men and women, notably episode director Helen Shaver behind the curtain. It was a neat conjurer's trick on a show that has been defined by its abundance of them: unannounced flashes forward and back, characters with hidden motives or identities, confounding twists both large and small. This relentless complexity can be intoxicating, but it can also be overwhelming. HBO had initially hoped "Westworld" would serve as its post "Game of Thrones" tent pole drama. But while the show's first season was mostly a success, the second slipped a bit, seeing its audience decline by about 14 percent on average and provoking widespread backlash from viewers and critics alike. "All the things that worked about Season 1 are breaking Season 2," Megan McArdle wrote in The Washington Post. "What we have now," Miles Surrey wrote for The Ringer, "is a purposefully confusing series." In comments to members of the Television Critics Association after Season 2, even Casey Bloys, HBO's president of programming, allowed that the show is not for "casual viewers." "The people who love it, really love it," he said. "Even the people who dislike it feel the need to discuss it." Created by the married duo Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, "Westworld" is based on Michael Crichton's campy 1973 film about a Wild West theme park in which customers amuse themselves by shooting robotic desperados and bedding robotic prostitutes, until the robots tire of such impositions and revolt. (Think "Gunsmoke" meets "Frankenstein.") In Joy and Nolan's telling, the android "hosts" were reimagined as sympathetic protagonists, and their revolt became a parable about the wages of human cruelty, hubris and greed. By the end of Season 2, the hosts had demolished the park and escaped into the larger world to pursue various ambitions including, in the case of Wood's character, Dolores, global dominion. So what is "Westworld" the show, now that it has broken free from Westworld the park? The question is whether it has transformed itself enough to reassure old viewers and bring in new ones. Bloys has said that there are already deals in place for "potential" fourth and fifth seasons, and the cast and creators hope to keep it going past this season, at least. But for a show as expensive to make as "Westworld" estimates for the first season topped 100 million; HBO declined to discuss costs this new beginning may also represent a final opportunity for the series to prove itself worthy of HBO's continued investment. The most obvious shift is aesthetic. The first two seasons of "Westworld" were characterized by the incongruous relationship between the show's sci fi premise and its Old West setting: six shooters programmed to kill only the right (artificial) people, horses powered by hydraulics. Season 3 feels more of a piece, a show about the future that doesn't spend so much time mimicking the past. The first trailer which featured Paul's character, Caleb, wandering through a technologically optimized Los Angeles toyed with this shift: It wasn't even identifiable as "Westworld" until Wood (and the series logo) materialized at the end. "We wanted to keep people guessing and then bring them back in," Joy said. This near future is eminently recognizable and, on the surface, appears clean and well organized more like the gilded cage of "Brave New World" than the police state of "1984." Visually, the show's Los Angeles, where much of the action takes place, is closer to the placid metropolis of Spike Jonze's "Her" than to the rain bitten version of Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner." (Both films served as stylistic inspirations for the new season.) To achieve the desired look, "Westworld," like "Game of Thrones" before it, has been made into a globe spanning enterprise. The show spent about a week shooting locations in Singapore to take advantage of the city's modernist architecture. In Valencia, Spain, the planetarium of the City of Arts and Sciences provided the exterior for the San Francisco headquarters of Delos, the corporation that runs Westworld. The boardroom interior, built on a soundstage here, was designed to precisely match the contours of the Spanish building pans of water were even placed beneath the "windows" to refract light upward like the pools that surround the original. Apart from the occasional futuristic helicopter the province then, as now, of the ultrarich the technology on physical display is limited. Caleb, a construction worker, is occasionally accompanied by a clunky robot partner. But rather than serve up flying cars, the show offers merely remote controlled motorcycles and driverless ride shares. Nolan said the intention was to extrapolate about three decades into the future. "If I look around, there's shockingly little that has changed in the last 30 years," he said. "The big change, of course, is that everybody's carrying a cellphone around." Likewise, the technology in the show's imagined future has evolved inward more than outward. At the smaller end of the spectrum, this entails advances such as RICO, a kind of crowdsourcing crime app that enables users to earn cash by serving as anonymous links in the chains of planned heists and kidnappings. At the larger end is Rehoboam, an enormous server named after a biblical king that uses its vast store of personal data to determine the life paths of every human being. (Applying for a new job? Rehoboam will tell the prospective employer whether or not you are a proper fit.) This triumph of artificial intelligence represents another of the new season's cunning inversions: In the park, machines had their futures mapped by human beings; in the wider world, human beings have their futures mapped by a machine. Rehoboam is representative of a broader shift that "Westworld" makes in Season 3, from the allegorical to the more nearly literal. The hosts of the first two seasons, fitfully struggling toward consciousness between occupational assaults and killings, were always stand ins in a parable about free will and enslavement. This time around, it's the human beings such as Caleb, an ex soldier assigned to a dead end job who are trapped in loops not of their choosing. Little wonder that he finds himself drawn to Dolores's plan to overthrow the system. Dolores, of course, is not the only host to have escaped the park. As we saw at the end of Season 2, she has brought with her a handful of "pearls," each of which contains the consciousness of a host. But which hosts? Whereas the principal sleight of hand in Season 2 essentially repeated that of Season 1 the story lines of first Dolores and then Bernard, a host played by Jeffrey Wright, shifted perplexingly between past and present in Season 3, we have a new puzzle to solve: identity. Whose mind, for instance, is inside the body of Charlotte (Tessa Thompson), another host working on behalf of Dolores? "It is definitely still a guessing game," Wood said. The difference is that the operative question is no longer "when?" but "who?" While "Westworld" is still an ensemble show, Dolores is now driving its narrative, with other characters increasingly responding to her actions and plans. Wood even gets a few opportunities to show off her taekwondo skills. (The actress is a black belt.) The shift to modern clothing hasn't hurt either: Wood happily explained that it's easier to play a ninja like femme fatale now that she's no longer performing in a corset. Among the other major returning characters, Newton's Maeve was last seen dead (or the android equivalent) and in the park. But as the trailers make clear, neither condition persists for long, and she ultimately will find herself in mortal conflict with Dolores. Bernard, too, is trying as Dolores knew he would to thwart her plan for vengeance. And the Man in Black (Ed Harris) is still kicking around unhappily, having murdered his daughter last season because he believed her to be a host. Joining Paul as newcomers to the series are Vincent Cassel and, in smaller roles, Lena Waithe and the Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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The conductor Teodor Currentzis anarchist, goth, guru has burst out of the Russian provinces and scaled the classical heights. PERM, Russia It was after midnight when the maestro wearing a black motorcycle jacket, skinny jeans and boots strode into a cavernous old factory in this industrial city 700 miles east of Moscow. He made his way through the crowd as something between an avant garde happening and a classical music rave unfolded. "Come," the conductor, Teodor Currentzis, who will make his American debut in November leading Verdi's Requiem at the Shed in New York, told a reporter . "I want to show you something amazing." Soon the room exploded with propulsive percussion works by Iannis Xenakis. When the drums grew quiet, Mr. Currentzis who had conducted Mahler's sprawling Ninth Symphony the night before and had spent all day rehearsing Mozart's opera "Idomeneo" followed the crowd out into the moonlight to an even older part of the plant with creaky wooden floors, where a puzzling blend of modern dance; a stage buried in laundry; long Russian monologues; and a Dr. Seuss like wind instrument stretched into the wee hours. He began that journey out in Siberia, as music director of the Novosibirsk State Opera. Disenchanted with the music establishment, he formed his own orchestra and chorus there, which he called MusicAeterna and which became known for electrically charged performances. He forged such tight bonds with its players that many followed him here when he was appointed the artistic director of the Perm State Opera in 2011. He has an almost messianic side: A brash claim in a 2005 interview that "I will save classical music" ruffled some feathers. His emo earnestness "You can cry alone in front of your turntable to this music. You can close your eyes and scream at the top of your lungs to this music," he wrote in liner notes for a Rameau recording rubs some people the wrong way. H is general flamboyance still arouses suspicions in some quarters that he might be a charlatan. But now, in spite of or because of his iconoclastic approach to music, he is in high demand everywhere, with a series of important debuts and a steady stream of painstakingly detailed studio recordings for Sony. Mr. Currentzis was born in Athens in 1972; his father was a police officer, and his mother taught piano. In his house, he recalled, the piano was "kind of part of the family." But he fell in love with the sound of orchestras, and decided to start playing the violin not yet realizing that the sound he craved was the whole string section. "This thick, beautiful sound," he said. "I wanted to be a part of this sound." By the time he was a teenager studying music, he knew he would conduct, but he and his brother still enjoyed listening to obscure, psychedelic 1960s music, too. Mr. Currentzis eventually went to St. Petersburg to study with Ilya Musin, a renowned pedagogue who taught Valery Gergiev and Semyon Bychkov. After what he described as his "punk attitude" caused difficulties there, he left for Moscow, where he conducted for a small opera company. That led to guest appearances in Novosibirsk , one of the major Russian houses, where he became music director in 2004. As he started in Siberia, he founded MusicAeterna, which began as a period instrument orchestra something still rare in Russia. "He was so disenchanted early on with the whole official music scene, and the orchestral scene in particular he just didn't want to play that game at all," recalled the arts administrator Marc de Mauny, who met him at the conservatory in St. Petersburg and has worked with him for years. "He said, 'I'm in this for the music, to make music with like minded people and musicians who are not going to look at their watches during rehearsal, who really want to explore repertoire.'" Artemy Savchenko, a violinist, first performed Tchaikovsky with Mr. Currentzis in Moscow 12 years ago and decided to join MusicAeterna. "It made the biggest impression of my whole musical life,'' he said. "I decided: If you do music, it should be this way. Otherwise, there is no point. Teodor always tried to find in the music something very, very deep that is connected with ritual and mystery." As MusicAeterna began to flourish, Mr. Currentzis began attracting attention. In 2009, he began a cinematic odyssey: H e landed the lead in "DAU," Ilya Khrzhanovsky's insanely ambitious (or perhaps just insane), still not quite finished epic film that has been described as the "Stalinist Truman Show." Mr. Currentzis and a cast of hundreds were filmed on and off for three years living in character in a replica of Soviet Russia. "I thought I was hard core before that," he said of the experience. And he attracted the attention of Sony. Bogdan Roscic, the president of the label's classical division , remembered him as a well kept secret in those days, but said that buzz was already building. Mr. Roscic was so impressed by some of Mr. Currentzis's early recordings, and the support of people like the adventurous impresario Gerard Mortier, who had hired Mr. Currentzis in Paris and Madrid, that he decided to sign him in 2011. "Others who today pretend they invented him either told me I should stop bothering them with this guy or completely ignored us," Mr. Roscic said in an email. "It's funny how that goes." "Music is not created for the concert hall," Mr. Currentzis said. "It's a very intimate thing that you have to feel. If you listen to a symphony of Mahler in the concert hall, and then lie down in an open field and listen with your headphones, you have completely different feelings." Mr. Roscic said that this approach was similar to that of the pianist Glenn Gould: "He doesn't consider recordings souvenirs of live performances, but, rather, a separate art form altogether." Mr. Currentzis spent hundreds of hours recording the three Mozart Da Ponte operas for Sony. Sessions lasted from noon until after midnight here in Perm for up to two weeks straight a grueling schedule, and one that would be ruinously expensive with a traditional orchestra. But his players were willing. And when he was unsatisfied with the "Don Giovanni," he persuaded the label to rerecord it. "It's a 'whatever it takes' ethos," said Mr. Roscic. "The latest post session dinner I had with him was in his dacha at 4 a.m." Mr. Currentzis was brought here in 2011 during a brief attempt to make the city a destination for cutting edge art. He said he would only take the post if Perm officials agreed to let him bring MusicAeterna with him, and help him expand the ensemble. To his surprise, they agreed. But it was not easy: Perm already had an opera orchestra, and no one warned them that a second group would be arriving. Its opera house had an illustrious history; during World War II the Kirov Opera and Ballet were evacuated there, and they left behind a robust ballet school with a tradition that continues to this day. But the company had to adapt to Mr. Currentzis's new visions. Memorable performances followed, but also difficulties. Local conservatives began to voice objections about both the art and the expense; Perm's cultural expansion plan soon ran afoul of the Kremlin , and was dismantled. Mr. Currentzis, whose work in the opera house was so good that he drew critics here from Moscow and St. Petersburg, was the last man standing . But as this spring's festival unspooled, there were signs that his days, too, were numbered here. And a few weeks after the Diaghilev Festival ended, the rumored news became official: Mr. Currentzis would step down from the Perm Opera in September, though he would continue to lead the Diaghilev Festival, with an eye toward bringing some of its programming to Paris in the coming years. MusicAeterna would move on with him. Now the test will be whether Mr. Currentzis can retain his outsider approach as he leaves Perm for a more cosmopolitan base in St. Petersburg. "He found this place in Siberia, and then in Perm, where he had the freedom to develop," said Michael Haefliger, the intendant of the Lucerne Festival, where Mr. Currentzis is leading MusicAeterna in several Mozart operas this month. He has already been trying new things. He recently became chief conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra, a German radio orchestra based in Stuttgart. He writes poetry and wants to spend more time composing. And he said that while he had demurred when approached about conducting Wagner's "Ring" cycle at the Bayreuth Festival he was booked he hoped to tackle the work at some point, if he could get a year to prepare. ("A Wagner sabbatical," he said.) Change was already in the air the night he conducted "Idomeneo" at the opera house in Perm in May. After the crowds left the theater, the house lights were turned off, candles were lit, and tables were set out with bottles of wine and vodka for a party with the orchestra. Musicians who had just performed played chamber music. Some recited poetry. After midnight, the sci fi sounds of the ondes martenot wafted down from a balcony. Near the end of the party, Mr. Currentzis rose to make what sounded like a farewell toast. "The musical world doesn't develop as it could," he said. "We ask, for example, where are the soloists that were around in the '20s and '30s? The fantastic composers of the 19th century, where are they now? What's happened to mankind? The truth is they're all here. But the system is such that they cannot appear." And he spoke passionately of the need to do things differently. "This is what we do here in Perm: We open up a new space," he said. "We open these gates, and that's a reason, maybe, people come here now not to visit the monuments or museums, but because they know there's a space where they can maybe discover themselves and what they're capable of. And we will do this every day, until the very last day that we are here." Then more late night music filled the darkened opera house.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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With the rise of the "nasty woman" meme comes a decline in the fortunes of the Nasty Gal brand. Nasty Gal is an e commerce darling founded in 2006 by Sophia Amoruso and a model of social media driven millennial entrepreneurship. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Nov. 9 to secure financial relief while it restructures. The company, which sells its own collection, vintage pieces and items from other brands, will continue to run its business and has asserted that customers and employees will see no change in day to day operations. There are also reports that Ms. Amoruso, who ceded her role as chief executive to Sheree Waterson in 2015, will resign from her current post as executive chairwoman, and that Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, which invested nearly 50 million in Nasty Gal in 2012, will step down from the board. Nasty Gal hasn't confirmed these moves and did not offer any additional comments. The news may come as a surprise for those who have followed Nasty Gal's seemingly endless upward trajectory. By the end of 2015, Forbes estimated that the company surpassed 300 million in revenues (up from a reported 10 million in 2010), and this year internet Retailer estimated that Nasty Gal's five year compound growth rate was 92.4 percent, compared with a median 15.3 percent among online apparel sites. The company has been courted by Urban Outfitters, has attracted venture capitalists for years, and opened its first brick and mortar store in Los Angeles in 2014, followed the next year by one in Santa Monica, Calif. Just last summer, the Council of Fashion Designers of America inducted Ms. Amoruso into its hallowed halls, and Forbes added her to its list of America's richest self made women, estimating her fortune at 280 million and ranking her above Beyonce and Taylor Swift. But as Allison Enright, an editor at internet Retailer, pointed out, growth and solvency are two different things. "They were able to grow their sales very quickly," she said. "But you can always grow really fast and not make any money." Julie Zerbo, founder of The Fashion Law website, pointed to a host of legal troubles as well, including lawsuits from designers alleging copyright infringement and from employees charging discrimination. In 2011 the company was a co defendant in a lawsuit filed by the Hells Angels for trademark infringement, and in 2014, Jamies Spinello sued Nasty Gal, maintaining that it copied one of her necklace designs; this year, Pamela Love did the same over three jewelry designs. "Suing and getting sued requires a ton of resources," Ms. Zerbo said. With the limited information that's available about Nasty Gal's balance sheet (the company isn't publicly traded), the picture that's emerging is one of rapid growth, built largely around the personality of Nasty Gal's founder and undercut by mismanagement and legal stumbles. Ms. Amoruso, 32, was 22 years old when she created the first iteration of Nasty Gal, an eBay store selling vintage clothes that grew its customer base through Myspace. Over the next several years, she built a following and expanded the company through an engaged presence on social media; Nasty Gal now has almost 1.3 million followers on Facebook and 2.2 million on Instagram. With so many brand ambassadors at its disposal, Nasty Gal quickly became synonymous with affordable, chic, yet slightly gritty cool girl style similar to Ms. Amoruso's own look. The Sophia Amoruso brand was integral to Nasty Gal's success, a fact that Ms. Amoruso herself is fully aware of. "Everyone knows Nasty Gal requires me," she told Forbes this summer. Her image is founded on her style (elegant, with a sexy edge), her social circles (she counts Leandra Medine of Man Repeller and Lena Dunham among her friends) and her "Cinderella story" (Ms. Amoruso, a community college dropout, wrote about how she used to commit petty theft and Dumpster dive as a teenager).
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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The latest entry in the "Men in Black" series arrived at the top of the box office this weekend, but its black suits aren't as sharp as they once were . Sony's "Men in Black: International" sold 28.5 million in domestic tickets Friday through Sunday. While that was enough to make it the best selling movie in North American theaters this weekend, it was a moderately disappointing result given that analysts expected sales above 30 million and that the movie's production budget was reportedly over 100 million. True to its name, "Men in Black: International" took in more overseas; according to the studio, it sold an additional 73.7 million in tickets internationally this weekend. The sequel replaces Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, the stars of the first three "Men in Black" blockbusters, with Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, pitting the new pair against alien invaders abroad. Many critics found that formula stale, and the movie holds a 24 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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How a Mastodon's Teeth Found in Michigan May Tell Us How It Died Seth Colling, who teaches children with developmental disabilities at an outdoor learning center in Michigan, was walking along a creek looking for fish with his students in 2014 when they saw something odd sticking out from the water. "It looked really strange," Mr. Colling said. "I said to my student, 'Hey what is that?'" As Mr. Colling and his students would find out, what they had discovered was a leg bone belonging to the most complete mastodon skeleton found in Michigan in more than 70 years. After a full excavation last month, paleontologists uncovered 75 bones, including ribs, a pelvis, shoulder bones and a skull with five gleaming molars that looked as if they were made of quartz. The teeth may hold the keys to figuring out how the beast died some 13,000 years ago: Was it butchered by hungry prehistoric hunters, did it succumb to starvation in the harsh environment, or was it the loser in a mating season death match? Although the teachers and students at the Fowler Center for Outdoor Learning first found the bones at the site in 2014, it was not until this October that a large scale excavation took place. A small army of schoolteachers, volunteers and researchers uncovered the beast's skull as well as 70 percent of its skeleton. It is the most complete find in the state since the discovery of the Owosso mastodon in 1944. "Not only was it complete, it was mostly undisturbed," said Daniel Fisher, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan who helped excavate the Fowler Center mastodon. "This is the way it was left for around 12,000 to 13,000 years." They found the bones buried in distinct piles, which Dr. Fisher has seen in other mammoth finds in Michigan. One clump contained the skull, and about nine feet away there was a pile that had a shoulder blade, some vertebrae, a rib and parts of the forelimbs and hindlimbs. They also found a third pile, which contained a lower back vertebra, part of the pelvis, some more bones from the forelimbs and a lot of ribs. "The pattern we see is not what you would expect under any natural or nonhuman scenario," Dr. Fisher said. "If it's a crime scene and you found a forelimb nestled to a pelvis, you would say 'Hmm, something happened here.'" Dr. Fisher is not yet arguing that humans were involved in the mastodon's death, but he said the findings pointed in that direction. The evidence that could potentially answer how the mastodon died lies within its mouth, he said. Paleontologists can tell a lot from mastodon teeth. In this case, the team members uncovered the top portion of the skull, which included five molars. Based on the conditions of the molars, they concluded that the mastodon had been around 30 years old. But to solve the cold case, they need to look beneath the surface. Mastodon teeth grew layers incrementally in a way that roughly corresponded with the changing seasons. Using a microCT scan, researchers can examine the insides of a tooth to determine what time of year the mastodon died, according to Dr. Fisher. If the analysis shows that the mastodon died in the winter, then its death was most likely because it starved or was sick. If it died in the spring or summer and was a male, then it most likely lost a battle with another male during mating season. It is the deaths in autumn that humans most likely had a hand in, Dr. Fisher said. The mastodons that he has found in Michigan that died in the fall all showed signs that they had been butchered, he said. "We don't have an exception to that yet," Dr. Fisher said. "It suggests that humans were on the scene and probably part of the cause of death." What most likely happened, he said, is that human hunters or scavengers butchered the carcass and submerged it in a pond for refrigeration. Last year, he and his team identified a mammoth that they believe was processed this way; it is now on display at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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"King in the Wilderness" looks at a lesser known side of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life. And "The Good Karma Hospital" returns on Acorn TV. KING IN THE WILDERNESS (2018) 8 p.m. on HBO; also on HBO streaming platforms. As the country honors the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years after his assassination, this new documentary sheds light on the final chapters of his life. Two of Dr. King's most notable accomplishments came with the passing of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965. Yet the period that followed found him castigated by longtime friends and allies as he focused on economic justice and vehemently opposed the Vietnam War. In an interview with The New York Times, the director Peter Kunhardt said that while researching Dr. King's life, he realized that most accounts summarized his legacy with the "I Have a Dream" speech. He added: "It never went beyond that. So we were pleased to not deal with that aspect and look at the nightmare the dream turned into."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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On a recent Sunday morning, Kate Silvester ran a 5K. She didn't have to worry about where to park to get to the starting line in time: She just headed out to a biking and running path behind her house and onto a back road. Her race was a virtual 5K associated with the NYC Half, which was run in New York the same day. Virtual challenges and runs are part of a growing trend in recreational running: doing a race whenever you can, wherever you can, and still feeling as if you're part of the crowd, even if you're running alone. Bob Bickel, founder of the race registration platform Run Sign Up, said the organization saw virtual races pop up "in earnest" about five years ago. One of the first popular virtual runs, he said, was that of Jeff Galloway, a running coach who trains runners using a run walk run method. In 2018, 1,050 people finished Mr. Galloway's virtual events, which included a 5K and half marathon. "People are used to running with their apps, and I think more and more people are comfortable with connecting virtually," Mr. Bickel said, "whether it's on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat, people can actually have friendships even though they don't see each other." Ms. Silvester, 44, of Plainsboro, N.J., said her first virtual run came through the tracking app Run Keeper. In 2017, she was new to the sport, and she'd been using the app to track her progress. She saw that she could participate in a "challenge" event, where runners who donated 35 to Beat Nb, a nonprofit that funds research for the childhood cancer neuroblastoma, got a T shirt for completing the run. She'd done traditional races before, but as a single mother of two who works full time, she liked the flexibility of something virtual. Virtual runs are structured in various ways. Disney's Virtual Run 5K series started in 2016 and uses the honor system. Runners can download bibs to wear to do the virtual runs. When they finish one or all of the three 5Ks in the series, they can download a finisher's bib and are mailed a medal. "It was an interesting opportunity for us to really keep people involved with runDisney year round," said Faron Kelley, vice president of Disney Sports. Most on site runDisney events are held in cooler months, so the Virtual Run 5K series is held in the summer. Last year's series, which was themed to "The Incredibles," had about 18,000 participants. This year's series, with registration opening on May 7, is Marvel themed, with each 5K costing 40; doing all three, which includes a fourth medal for completing them all, costs 145. RunDisney also puts on a virtual Star Wars Half Marathon in the winter and early spring for 2019, it costs 59 (and is open through March 31). The Great Pumpkin Run virtual race series also uses the honor system. For 35, runners are mailed a race hoodie and a bib. Previously, the race sent race medals after runners submitted their times, but this year, Courtney Young, co founder of the race, said medals will be mailed along with the hoodie and bib. "People want that instant gratification," she said. Ms. Young said the race has also worked with Strava, an exercise tracking app, but it's not a requirement; they trust that runners aren't lying. The Great Pumpkin Run started as a traditional race series in 2012, but the virtual option has taken off since it was introduced in 2016. The first year, 300 runners did the virtual option; last year there were close to 14,000. "I think it's helping people get into the sport," Ms. Young said. It appeals to runners who may not be able to show up to a race on a certain time and day, or who are intimidated by running with other people in their first race. The New York Road Runners added virtual runs to its race roster in 2018, and this year it has 12, most themed to a holiday or event, like the Resolution Run 5K or the Valentine's Duo 5K. It also had a virtual half marathon and 5K connected to last weekend's NYC Half, the one Ms. Silvester ran. The New York Road Runners' virtual races are free, unless runners are using them as a way to get into a sellout race. In 2018, the organization opened 500 spots for runners to run a virtual marathon, which, if they completed it, would get them a race medal and guaranteed entry into the New York City Marathon this year (it cost 150, compared to 295 to run in the actual marathon; they also got a finisher medal but no finisher shirt). For guaranteed entry into the 2020 Brooklyn Half Marathon, runners can sign up for and complete each of six virtual races, at 20 per race. They also get access to a virtual trainer as part of their fee. While runners can use whatever GPS watch or app they want to track their run, they must upload it into the Strava app in order for it to count. The virtual runs started with the question of "how can we continue to engage and extend our impact across the global running community and provide ways in which people can run with us without being here in New York City?" said New York Road Runners president and chief executive Michael Capiraso. For Ms. Silvester, Sunday's virtual run was part of her recovery from an injury. "It was only my third run since getting back from injuring my hip flexor, so I took it pretty slow and included walk breaks, but I did it," she said. She's hoping to do the Brooklyn Half next year, which would be her first half marathon. "It's hard to picture myself getting to a half marathon in the next year or so, but it was good to get back into running after a long break," she said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Well
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HBO's "A Black Lady Sketch Show" invites viewers into uncharted territory. The series, created by Robin Thede and co executive produced by Issa Rae, boasts a rarity for TV: a cast, writers room and director (Dime Davis) comprised entirely of black women. Thede, who also stars in the new series, is no stranger to blazing trails. "For the record, I was the FIRST African American woman to be head writer for a late night show," she recently tweeted, referring to her stint on Comedy Central's short lived "The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore." For the "Black Lady Sketch Show" writers room, Thede tapped such talk show veterans as her former "Nightly Show" colleague Holly Walker, Amber Ruffin ("Late Night With Seth Meyers") and Lauren Ashley Smith (a writer on Thede's own brief late night show, "The Rundown"). While the guest list is stacked and star studded with appearances by Angela Bassett, Patti LaBelle, Laverne Cox, David Alan Grier and more viewers may be less familiar with the series regulars, who deliver spy spoofs, beauty mishaps, dating disasters and scenes from an all black lady courtroom in the first season. Here's a quick primer to acquaint you with your comedy queens to be before the show premieres Friday.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Pity the poor cubicle: modern day workers seem to prefer any other place to these narrow, partitioned off desks. Like overstuffed chairs in coffee shops. Or long tables in hotel lobbies. Even narrow cafe counters suffice, in elbow to elbow conditions, as long as they are close to sockets. And as offices get de Dilbert ized, developers are taking notice. In addition to offering the usual amenity spaces, they have begun enlarging their lobbies to create welcoming work zones for the share of the nation's 42 million self employed people who live in New York. Found mostly in rental buildings that cater to a younger crowd, and in trendsetting enclaves outside Manhattan, these lounges bear more than a passing resemblance to the Ace Hotel, that pioneering round the clock hipster hangout in NoMad, and other boutique lodgings. The lounges often feature a hotel's worth of freebies: Wi Fi, coffee and even hardcover thrillers to thumb through during breaks. Renters do pay more for the privilege of an elevator ride commute. But developers are betting that once they take to the upstairs downstairs live work dynamic, they will not only rent in the building, but stay for years. "If you invest a little bit more in these community areas, they will pay major dividends," said Omri Sachs, a principal of Adam America Real Estate, which worked with the Horizon Group in developing 53 Broadway, a new rental in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a 1,000 square foot lounge of this type. Mr. Sachs didn't have to go far to learn that his neighborhood was chockablock with people who don't shuttle off to Manhattan for 9 to 5 jobs. The restaurant next door, Marlow and Sons, for instance, seems to have a crowd lolling about all day. Research trips to Toby's Estate, a coffee shop, and the Wythe Hotel taught Mr. Sachs similar lessons, he said. As far as the price of the decor, in this entirely new building, Mr. Sachs paid 300,000; in carving out the space he had to sacrifice some potential sidewalk level retail space, too. But a few months after 53 Broadway's opening, brokers say, the decision already seems to have been worth it. On most weekday mornings in the 74 unit building, two or three people are sitting in the lounge pecking at computers, making use of the free Wi Fi, said Brian Lentini, a senior project manager with aptsandlofts.com, the brokerage handling leasing. Most don't stay a full day, he said, but these visits stave off cabin fever. "A change of scenery is important," Mr. Lentini said. The building, whose one bedrooms start at 3,100 a month with one month free as a deal sweetener, opened in August and is 92 percent leased, he added. At 34 Berry, a 142 unit rental on the other side of Williamsburg that opened in 2010, the landlord is trying even harder to create a cafe by the concierge effect. Coffee, courtesy of a Starbucks machine that dispenses 8 and 12 ounce cups, is free from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. "People say, 'I can save 5 a day by being here,' " said Jason Allison, the building's manager, on a recent tour. "It's one of those feel good experiences that adds value." The narrow, carpeted space is not as roomy as an actual Starbucks. But in this building with mostly studios, where rents start at 2,200 and where a fifth of residents are estimated to be freelancers working from home, even a little extra legroom can help, Mr. Allison added. On a recent workday, Emily Malan, a photographer, was sitting on a stool at a glass topped table in the lounge, taking advantage of free Wi Fi on her laptop. Though Ms. Malan moved into her studio several months ago, she still hadn't set up Internet access, and as it has been so convenient to email from the lounge, she may never get around to it, she said. "The rent is pretty high here," she added, "so these amenities are a nice added bonus." In a sense, LCOR, 34 Berry's owner, got lucky. When the company took control of the site after a condo project there failed, the space that now contains the lounge had been intended for a superintendent's apartment, according to David Sigman, an executive vice president of LCOR. From a zoning perspective, the switch to common space was a no brainer. Under a 1980s housing incentive program, indoor recreation space doesn't count toward the volume permitted under floor to area ratio calculations, according to both Planning Department sources and Mr. Sigman. The rule is meant to encourage developers to put lounges above ground, where there is a better likelihood of natural light, rather than in dark basements, they said. The lounge has been so successful, Mr. Sigman said, that LCOR is replicating it nearby at 250 North 10th Street, its glassy new 100 million rental, whose 234 units are to open in January. Lounge renderings reveal a rectangular space with seating areas and a flat screen TV, similar to the one at 34 Berry, though with fancier pendant light fixtures, and doors that open to a terrace atop a parking garage. "In many ways these are sort of throwbacks to the big building lobbies you saw in the 1950s," Mr. Sigman said. "We thought they had gone too far in the other direction." Some who use these shared open air lounges say they can be a tough place to focus when certain TV shows come on. Others find them to be no more privacy challenged than the local java joint. But distractions of a different sort may affect the lobby lounge at Colony 1209, a 127 unit building at 1209 DeKalb Avenue, near Evergreen Avenue, in Bushwick, Brooklyn, that is scheduled to open early next year. Decorated like a space age bachelor pad that might seem more suitable for clubbing than commerce, the lounge has Sputnik style lamps and rainbow colored murals, complemented by a bubble shaped chair swing and a mirror paneled ceiling. "How many buildings look the same?" asked David J. Maundrell III, the president of aptsandlofts.com, which is marketing the property, where studios will start around 1,800 a month. "The same thing, over and over." Lounges, when bundled with other amenity spaces, don't come cheap. They can result in a 20 percent premium for units, said Andrew Barrocas, the president of MNS, a brokerage in Williamsburg that is advising some developers to add videoconferencing to lounges. In earlier iterations, lounges tended to be dominated by a large screen television, so they could play host to events like Super Bowl parties. But the lounge planned for the second floor of a 12 story, 86 unit rental at 41 22 24th Street in Long Island City, at Queens Plaza, will seem like an office loft. Besides having an Apple Store aesthetic, it will have at least one large touch screen computer table that can wirelessly link to smartphones, and, it is hoped, help with client meetings, said Eric Benaim, the chief executive of Modern Spaces, the Long Island City brokerage that will market the project. Groundbreaking is expected in a few months. "Our own offices are kind of like that, too like a dot com," Mr. Benaim said. The latest in lounge styles is much more common in rentals than condos, according to brokers, developers and designers. Ownership units are often roomier than rentals, packing in ample leisure space of their own, they note. Szandra Toth, a designer with Cl oth Interiors, knows this distinction, having worked on both kinds of buildings. At the red brick 50 North Fifth Street in Williamsburg, a new 229 unit seven story rental from the Mack Real Estate Group and Urban Development Partners, Ms. Toth crafted a lounge that spares few frills. Free coffee, tea and bagels will be served at a breakfast station each day until 9 a.m. when the building opens this month; Wi Fi will be free, and there will also be board games, like Operation, though renters may also go elsewhere for fun. The building has 15,000 square feet of amenity space across multiple floors, including an indoor basketball court. And given the demographic expected at the building, whose studios start at 2,600, there are no children's play areas. About 50 of its units have rented so far, brokers say. The lounge sprawls just past the front desk across 1,500 square feet. It has an oak parquet floor and a cigar bar like centerpiece of black couches under a chandelier, as well as more intimate side seating areas. It has been designed as a place to spend an afternoon rather than just a space to pass through on the way to the elevator. "We wanted the feel of restaurants and bars in the neighborhood," said Ms. Toth, who has lived in Williamsburg for seven years.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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On Thursday, Moynat, the French luxury travel goods house, will open a New York shop. Inside a cathedral like space in one of the 19th century brownstones just south of the old Whitney Museum, you will find the 160 year old heritage label's full range of women's and men's leather goods and accessories, luggage and textiles, including a store exclusive Danse bag in supple nubuck leather inspired by the rectangular volume of a classic trunk ( 3,593). At 937 Madison Avenue. From Thursday to Saturday, Nike will host Air Max Con, a sneaker convention that celebrates the iconic running shoe introduced in 1987. The designer Tinker Hatfield will be on hand to help customize the Air Max 1 T iD ( 160) with materials taken from his original inspiration for visible air cushioning: the colors of the exposed pipes of the Pompidou Center in Paris. At Skylight Clarkson Square, 550 Washington Street; register at nike.com/airmax.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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STRATFORD, Ontario The Roman general Coriolanus hates the hordes he fights for. In the play Shakespeare named for him, he calls the masses curs, hares, measles, geese, rogues, scabs and "the beast with many heads." But at least he says what he thinks, right? Not all public figures do. When a fellow officer observes that many great men "have flattered the people, who ne'er loved them," much of the audience at the Stratford Festival's Avon Theater here evidently thought of a certain elitist parading as a populist. There arose a weird laugh of grim recognition. "Coriolanus," the last play Shakespeare is known to have written solo, is eternally timely in its depiction of the dangers democracy faces at its extremes. One danger is the damage an uninformed populace can do if given voice. Too easily swayed, it helps create the opposite danger, the sneering autocrat, proud and intransigent. So when Coriolanus, the hero of a recent war against the neighboring Volsci, seeks to become Rome's consul without any love for the people he would rule, disaster ensues for both. The riveting Stratford production, staged by the internationally renowned (and, lately, internationally criticized) director Robert Lepage, finishes the job of genre reassignment. His "Coriolanus" is essentially a live film. As if to trumpet the transformation, it even starts, after a jaw dropping teaser of a prologue, with a projected credit sequence. That prologue in which a huge bust of Coriolanus mysteriously starts speaking is a pretty good example of the thrilling stagecraft Mr. Lepage delivers throughout. (He is also credited as the set designer.) Using projected imagery, live video, sliding diorama like boxes and panels that converge and dilate in front of the action, he creates stage equivalents of pans and tracking shots, irises, close ups and letterbox effects. Though none of the individual techniques would seem new to audiences that frequent the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Park Avenue Armory or other redoubts of the avant garde in New York let alone those that saw Mr. Lepage's "Ring" cycle at the Metropolitan Opera they are used so incessantly here, with such technical skill and in such striking combinations, as to render them newly expressive. The intended effect varies. In one gorgeous tableau, Coriolanus's mother, Volumnia, and his wife, Virgilia, sit behind a translucent screen the width of the stage, appearing to sew the tapestry projected on it. You instantly apprehend the shadowy domesticity of women in that society one that constrains even the domineering Volumnia. Basically the Mama Rose of Rome, she eggs her son to do what she could probably do better. Other technological interpolations do not so much augment as leaven or caption the story. In what is typically a banal passage of exposition among supernumeraries, two sentinels use iPhones to peck out their dialogue as text messages and deliver a huge laugh. When Coriolanus leaves Rome to offer his military services to his former enemies, Mr. Lepage has him hop into a silver car and drive through sunlight and rain like a double agent in a thriller. Though the outline of Shakespeare's play remains visible at the intersection of all these aesthetic perspectives, something has definitely shifted. That's not because of the modern setting, or even the fairly radical reorganization and cutting of the text. (A nearly four hour play in its entirety, "Coriolanus" clocks in at less than three hours here.) Those alterations do no harm and, in some cases, enhance the immediacy of the themes. By resetting dialogue heavy scenes as talk radio gabfests, and representing the uninformed mob as anonymous voices on social media, Mr. Lepage helps clarify Shakespeare's portrait of a world, like ours, overwhelmed with insincerity. We get the other side of that, too, from the sight of Coriolanus gritting his teeth as he goes door to door on the Roman streets to curry favor among people he despises. All these clever correlations have a disturbing side effect, though: They enhance the sense that, despite his failings, Coriolanus really is a hero. To some degree, that's baked into the play, which has been read as anti mob as often as anti autocrat. It's also baked into the performance of Andre Sills, a magnetic and imposing actor in his fifth Stratford season. That's exactly the problem with Mr. Lepage's brilliant expressiveness: In the context of an antiheroic tale, it tends to ennoble the wrong thing. The near starvation of the Roman poor and the threatened destruction of Rome itself? Nothing much to moan about there. But the self induced downfall of an arrogant autocrat? That's a tragedy. Or a slick one, anyway and this "Coriolanus," produced in collaboration with Mr. Lepage's Quebec City based company, Ex Machina, is nothing if not slick. That's an anomaly at Stratford, whose focus is usually less on machinery than on performance and whose ethos is usually more earnest. And so even though I found the production exhilarating, it also left me uneasy about its precious self regard. Mr. Lepage, after all, is the visionary who just directed a play called "Slav," in which a largely white cast played enslaved black people picking cotton in the American South. (Citing security reasons, the producers of "Slav" shuttered it after two performances, but four other companies have announced their intention to mount it.) A coming Ex Machina production called "Kanata," about First Nations Canadians, likewise neglects to include any input from the people it depicts. Auteurs like Mr. Lepage can obviously produce what they like, and others can protest it. But allusions to creative freedom as a defense strike me as the same sort of pride and intransigence Shakespeare cautions against in "Coriolanus." Maybe Mr. Lepage sees in the tragic Roman not so much a brilliant warrior as a brilliant artist. If so, he might also bear Shakespeare's ambivalence in mind. Being some kind of genius does not automatically make you some kind of hero.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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You would think that if there were something newsworthy about "Waco," a six episode dramatization of the 1993 Branch Davidian shootout and siege, it would be how it depicts a key event in the radicalization of America's far right. Or, secondarily, how it resonates as the first major offering of the Paramount Network, a new cable channel. (It's on your grid where Spike used to be.) But in a sign of how quickly one cultural forest fire follows another these days, "Waco" has been in the news because of the channel's decision to remove from the credits the name of one of the show's backers the Weinstein Company, corporation non grata after the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse revelations. Of course, one of the things that David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidian religious sect, was known for was his habit of sexually appropriating other members' wives. In "Waco," a tepid, movie of the week treatment of a fateful calamity in which more than 80 people died, Koresh's appetites are a tolerated vexation among the Branch Davidians and an opportunity for the filmmakers to inject some humor. Turning on his irresistible twinkle, Taylor Kitsch, as Koresh, tells a new recruit that he'll be expected to remain celibate because "I've assumed the burden of sex for us all." Paramount's publicity materials claim that "Waco," based on a pair of memoirs one by a Branch Davidian survivor, David Thibodeau, and one by an F.B.I. hostage negotiator, Gary Noesner "will forever change the way the dramatic siege will be viewed." There's nothing to back up that claim in the three episodes available for review, which follow a familiar trajectory from the earlier Ruby Ridge standoff through the botched raid, by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, on the Branch Davidians' complex outside Waco.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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New York City apartments are notorious for their quirks and annoyances, from awkward layouts to windows that face a brick wall. When it's time to sell, these can be major turnoffs for potential buyers. But, with a little creativity, many of these issues can be minimized, and you don't have to spend a lot of money to do it. Using a lighter shade of paint on the ceilings than the walls tends to draw the eye upward and make the ceiling look higher. "Use flat, not semigloss, on the crown molding, in the same shade as the ceiling," recommends Pat Christodoulou, who stages for sale homes in Connecticut and New York. "This gives you an uninterrupted perspective, which results in visually raising the ceiling." If you don't have moldings, she said, adding a cove molding, which begins on the wall and extends to the ceiling, will create an elongating effect. Minimalist furnishings that sit low to the floor will help increase the impression of height. Floor to ceiling sheers will also "give the illusion of larger windows and higher ceilings," said Elizabeth Kee, a broker at CORE in Manhattan, who recently hung extra long curtains in a 20,000 a month rental in Chelsea to "create an optical illusion that the ceilings are soaring." THE PROBLEM Windows that face a brick wall or let in scant light THE SOLUTION Pops of bright color, strategically placed high wattage bulbs or decorative window film In a small one bedroom on the Upper West Side, where all the windows faced out on an air shaft, Joseph G. Sheehan, a salesman with Bond New York, used "cheery yellow drapes" and sheer white curtains to dress up the windows, and bright throws, pillows and rugs to offer "a nod to sunlight and brightness" in the dark space. The apartment, which had originally been listed by another broker for 399,000, went into contract for 435,000 just two weeks after Mr. Sheehan brightened it up. Deanna Kory, an associate broker at the Corcoran Group, recommends white shutters or white wooden Venetian blinds with one to two inch slats. "Any light that hits the windows will be reflected favorably and create a lighter feeling within the apartment," she said. Another option: decorative window film, which lets in light while obscuring an unattractive view; it can be found at Home Depot from about 25 for elderberry or etched lace designs. Hanging a framed stained glass panel in front of the window offers a similar effect. If you're willing to splurge, a custom etched glass window may be the solution. That's what a client of Madeline A. McKenna, a broker at Stribling Associates, did more than a decade ago in a Midtown apartment with "a very depressing view" from the living room. It wasn't a cheap fix, she said, noting that the multipane frosted window with silver and blue inlay cost about 10,000. But the investment eventually paid off: In 2005, the client was able to sell the apartment quickly, for about 975,000. "We didn't have to apologize or make excuses for the ugly window view onto the ugly, dark, dank air shaft. It became a beautiful centerpiece for the living room instead," Ms. McKenna said, adding that the unit sold again, in 2012, for 1.25 million and was re listed in 2014, at 1.35 million, with the same frosted window. "Seems everyone likes the aesthetic." The Yorkville, Manhattan, duplex apartment that Jai Lee, a saleswoman at Mdrn. Residential, listed for 599,000 in July had plenty of assets: "The bathroom was amazing, with heated floor, enormous deep, deep tub and shower heads on both sides," she said. But to get to it, "you had to walk past the open kitchen into the barely queen size bedroom." Down a spiral staircase from the living room was a finished basement area with a half bath and small adjoining den. "It certainly was not ideal," said Ms. Lee, who came up with the idea of recasting the downstairs space as an unconventional master bedroom, with the master bathroom upstairs, along with a spacious closet (in what was the old master bedroom). "I started selling the idea of using the 'master' as your own dream walk in closet, with spa bathroom," she said. To help potential buyers picture her vision, she drafted a new floor plan showing the lower level as a potential bedroom with a half bath, and adjacent office or hobby room. "I made sure to only show the listing by appointment," she added. "This way I could control the narrative and envisioning process." The unit sold within a month for the full asking price. THE PROBLEM A ground floor unit with windows facing the street For ground floor homes, especially those with bars on the windows, Anna Kahn, an associate broker at Halstead Property, recommends installing window boxes. "Live flowers add color and take away from the starkness of the grates," she said. Another option: "Bottom up" curtains, which are opaque near the floor and sheer at the top, to "allow sunlight to enter the apartment while still providing a sense of privacy," suggested Mr. Schleider of Citi Habitats. Or consider using opaque film: "We sold an apartment with razor wire outside the bedroom windows," said Vivian Ducat, a saleswoman at Halstead, who had covered part of the window, obscuring the wire. "Even though everyone opened the windows to see what was out there, they seemed satisfied that the apartment had integrity and could look good, from the look we gave it."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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Stephen Colbert joked Tuesday: "The only way Vindman could be more all American is if he appeared in a Ken Burns documentary about the Statue of Liberty which he did as a child." Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified as part of President Trump's impeachment hearings, where Republicans attempted to discredit the colonel, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council. During his testimony, Representative Devin Nunes of California referred to the colonel as "Mr. Vindman." The officer then corrected the congressman, citing his full military title. ("Or Ms. Jackson, if you're nasty," joked Stephen Colbert.) "Vindman came to the United States as a child when his father fled the Soviet Union, and went on to enlist in the Army, where he received a Purple Heart for his service in Iraq. Given his history, the only way Vindman could be more all American is if he appeared in a Ken Burns documentary about the Statue of Liberty which he did as a child." STEPHEN COLBERT "The way they treated this Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was embarrassing even for them. They tried to smear the recipient of a Purple Heart to protect a president who doesn't even have a red one. Jim Jordan of Ohio this guy he implied that Vindman was a leaker with questionable judgment. You know, questionable judgment, like, say, if you were a wrestling coach and the team doctor was abusing your wrestlers and you knew about it but you didn't say anything. That's questionable judgment, right, Jim Jordan?" JIMMY KIMMEL "I mean, we need an Army medic because Nunes got severely burned." JAMES CORDEN "Then Adam Schiff was like 'Let the record show we just had a mic drop, y'all.'" JIMMY FALLON "You think he's trying to sabotage Trump? The only person who's trying to sabotage Donald Trump is Donald Trump. I mean, the guy commits crimes then goes on TV and confesses to them. Honestly, there's a chance he's trying to get impeached so he can collect unemployment." SETH MEYERS "Not only doesn't Donald Trump care about corruption in Ukraine, he wanted it. He tried to buy it. Honestly, at this point, the only defense that might work for them is 'Donald Trump is too stupid to know he committed a crime. He's just dumb.'" SETH MEYERS The Punchiest Punchlines (Denied It vs. Supplied It Edition) As Representative Eric Swalwell appeared on Monday night's episode of MSNBC's "Hardball," viewers heard a noise that sounded a lot like someone passing gas. Loudly. Swalwell later tweeted he had "total exoneration." "That thing was so loud, I bet someone made a noise complaint." TREVOR NOAH "Now, I don't know exactly what happened there, but if it's what you think it is, it came through loud and clear." STEPHEN COLBERT "Oh, that's hilarious, 'total exoneration.' It's a good joke by Swalwell, but it's actually not fair to bring Trump into this because he's the one person who wouldn't try and hide it. He would try and own a giant fart. He would be, like, 'That's right, I farted and it was the biggest, most beloved fart of all time. You know Obama could never fart like this. He tried but he couldn't get it done, folks, couldn't do it!" TREVOR NOAH "Now, cards on the table, I didn't want to talk about this. I saw the clip on Twitter before I went to bed last night. I didn't click on it because I thought, 'Surely this will pass.' But it didn't. This one lingered. Because this is true when I woke up this morning, fartgate was still trending. Not only that, a reporter from BuzzFeed actually texted Representative Swalwell and said, 'I'm really sorry about this, but I have to ask if this was you or someone in the studio,' to which Swalwell replied, 'It was not me! Ha. I didn't hear it when I was speaking.' 'You look like you heard it, and are stifling a laugh.' 'I def did not hear it.' Congressman, you claim you didn't even hear it? Now we know it was you. That was established as admissible evidence in the landmark decision of 'denied it v. supplied it.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "But MSNBC had Swalwell's back, because late last night 'Hardball' actually tweeted, 'Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists it was the 'Hardball' mug scraping across the desk. Get yours today!' Not a great sales pitch: 'Our mug will make millions of people think you just ripped one. Great stocking stuffer!'" STEPHEN COLBERT "Jimmy Kimmel Live" asked a few fans of the president for their thoughts about Trump's fictional involvement in Watergate.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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The composer and performer Dave Malloy isn't the kind of New Yorker who can look at a room and instantly tell you its square footage. How big is his rehearsal studio, on a block of old industrial buildings in Gowanus, Brooklyn? "I'm six foot tall," Mr. Malloy, 41, said this week, eyeing the dimensions. "So if I lay down twice it's probably 13 by 11 or something like that?" With an upright piano against one wall and a wooden thumb piano hanging from another, this unassuming space strung with festive mini lights is where he writes though the flurry of awards season has put that on pause for the past month. "Natasha, Pierre the Great Comet of 1812," his immersive stage adaptation of a section of "War and Peace," is up for 12 Tony Awards, including best musical. His book, score and orchestrations are all nominated. "The coolest thing about having a show on Broadway is that fans sometimes just make art for you," said Mr. Malloy, a friendly bear of a man who this spring made his Broadway acting debut, filling in for Josh Groban in the role of Pierre, which Mr. Malloy originated Off Broadway. Some of that art is displayed in his studio as casually unframed drawings, but much of the studio's most crowded wall is devoted to the planning of Mr. Malloy's writing. A corkboard in the corner contains his 50 year master plan of shows he wants to write. Above a hefty Casio keyboard, a large whiteboard outlines his current project, a musical take on "Moby Dick," each song neatly crossed off when he completes it. At the center is a single blue acrylic, which he made and talks about in these edited excerpts from the conversation. What does it do for you to have a whiteboard of a show staring you in the face? I have a kind of methodical, structure based mind, so this helps me to see the whole shape of it. It's always in my field of vision, in my peripheral, mocking me.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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It's Mother's Day. You've sent the flowers, the card and even the box of chocolates. You've also just paid another therapist's bill. But c'mon she wasn't that bad a mother. If you want to see bad, take a look at these eight books, rife with screamers, abusers and not so benign neglecters. Of course, they are all creatures of fiction, but you get the point. "Her mother is a horror: a religious fanatic eager to beat the goodness of Christ into sinners with a powerful right hand." The five Lisbon daughters live "under the thumb of their domineering mother," a woman "who never allows them to date, and who insists they wear baggy, ridiculous clothes. Though their ineffectual father seems vaguely sympathetic to their plight, he never stands up to their tyrannical mother." When one of them breaks curfew, "the girls are permanently grounded. They are pulled out of school and locked in the house." Ruth and Lucille, raised by a succession of indifferent relatives, "were quite small when their mother left them, with a box of graham crackers, on the porch in Fingerbone. 'At last,' Ruth says, 'we slid from her lap like one of those magazines full of responsible opinion about discipline and balanced meals.'" "At the age of 16, Claireece, or 'Precious' as she calls herself, has already had two children by the man she knows as her father. Her mother has not only allowed these rapes to occur, but also beats Precious for stealing her man. She, too, sexually abuses Precious, and treats her as a maidservant around the house." Astrid's mother is in prison she's murdered her boyfriend but Astrid "will continually measure herself against the standards of her mother's beauty and fearlessness (and find herself lacking) while at the same time learning to hate her mother for her selfishness, her cruelty and her ability to manipulate and charm." "'We fought' are the first words of Simpson's challenging first novel about a mother daughter road trip. "'Fought' is an understated reference for the war of words, wills and fists that rages between them from the first to last page." "Rabbit" Angstrom's wife, Jan ice often found "highball in hand, glued to the television set" drunkenly allows their infant daughter to drown in the tub. "His mother, Sophie, cleans up after the maid, worries endlessly about what goes into Alex and what comes out of him, and exists to protect him from gentiles and manhood."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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The New York City Ballet principal Lauren Lovette will be this year's artist in residence at the Vail Dance Festival, heading a female centric lineup of choreographers and a boldface list of star dancers, the festival announced on Thursday. Ms. Lovette will dance, choreograph and teach at the festival, which runs July 26 to Aug. 10. Damian Woetzel, who has directed the festival since 2007, said he believed in nurturing talent over multiple seasons. "Having Lauren Lovette as our artist in residence, will build on her years at the festival dancing new roles, breaking new choreographic ground and experiencing new challenges," he said in an email. Referring to "the historic inequality of opportunity for female choreographers," Mr. Woetzel, who is also the president of the Juilliard School, said he had been "working at this issue for many years in Vail, and in my other work as well." Mr. Woetzel also continues to commission work. This year's new pieces include dances by the contemporary choreographer Hope Boykin to a score by Caroline Shaw, the festival's Leonard Bernstein composer in residence and will feature Ms. Lovette; a piece by Alonzo King set to a score by the jazz musician Jason Moran; a work by Pam Tanowitz, also set to music by Ms. Shaw; and works from the jookin' artist Lil Buck, the tap choreographer Michelle Dorrance, the City Ballet principal Tiler Peck and Ms. Lovette.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Roberto Alagna on the set of "La Boheme" at the Metropolitan Opera, where he sings the role of Rodolfo through Jan. 25. A skeletal set had been constructed deep within the Metropolitan Opera earlier this week for a rehearsal of Puccini's "La Boheme," and the antics of the opening act ensued in a rough approximation of a garret apartment in 19th century Paris. Then came the most famous knock on a door in all of opera, as Mimi, the fragile, doomed seamstress, arrived to ask the poet Rodolfo to light her candle. In the company's classic Franco Zeffirelli production, after Rodolfo calls out to ask who's at the door and a woman's voice answers, he rushes over to a mirror to neaten his hair. It's a charmingly corny moment that rarely fails to earn a chuckle from the audience. Over the past two decades, Mr. Alagna, now 56, has barely touched this opera as he moved from his breathlessly hyped early years to a more under the radar mature stardom. Opera careers beat ceaselessly forward, and his repertory has shifted toward heavier roles like Radames in "Aida," Calaf in "Turandot," the leads in the verismo double bill known as "Cav/Pag," and the title role in "Samson et Dalila," with which he opened the Met's 2018 19 season. (Even Wagner's Lohengrin, which he canceled in 2018 and has rescheduled for this fall.) But when Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, offered him a return to Puccini's boyish hero, Mr. Alagna accepted. "O.K., Peter," he recalls saying, "if you want to take the risk, I'll take it, too." "I'm very happy they trust in me to sing it," Mr. Alagna added, sipping a can of Coca Cola before the rehearsal on Monday. "It's not easy, as you can imagine. You have to fight with the ghosts of old singers, as well as your own ghost." These are edited excerpts from a conversation with Mr. Alagna, which took place in a lounge as a video monitor relayed a live feed from a stage run through of "La Traviata," starring Mr. Alagna's wife, the soprano Aleksandra Kurzak. When is the last time you sang this opera? It's very strange to be here for "Boheme." Because I sang my first one 30 years ago; it was in March '90. The last time was in 2012. It was a gala for Covent Garden for the 20th anniversary of meeting Angela Gheorghiu, the soprano who became his second wife . But really, my last "Boheme" was 20 years ago. I sang many, many, many "Bohemes" at the beginning because it's an opera for young singers about young people happy and full of hope, joking about terrible things. They discover life, but also death. And this was also my case. When I was young I was 29 my first wife became ill, and she died in 1994 when I was singing "Boheme." I was in the hospital and she died there, and one week later, I sang "La Boheme" at La Scala and everyone was in tears, I was crying, and it was impossible to sing the last "Mimi." Still today, after 30 years, it's terrible for me, at the end. For example, two days ago, we did the final scene and I was not able to sing the last "Mimi." I told it to the conductor, Marco Armiliato: If you can't hear the "Mimi," it's because in that moment, it's too difficult for me. Your Met debut, in 1996, was another moment your real life intersected with the story, but this time more happily: Before the fifth performance, the general manager, Joseph Volpe, announced that you and Ms. Gheorghiu had been married the night before. That was a matinee, and we followed it that night with the concert for the 25th anniversary at the Met of Jimmy Levine. I was exhausted. But it was good; it wasn't bad performances. I think we had a wonderful success. Expectations were high: A profile in The New York Times before your debut had the headline "Could It Be True? A New Pavarotti?" And the reviews were mixed. Bernard Holland's review in The Times said you were recovering from a cold and dourly predicted "big vocal troubles five years down the road." I was not sick; I had allergies. I was allergic to plane trees, and I was staying at the Essex House on Central Park South. In April, it was the worst, and I arrived the first night with this allergy. But I sang well. I was afraid, though, and I canceled the second performance. And I spent my entire night in my room, singing. I said, O.K., I will never cancel, it's stupid. I was able to sing. It was difficult for me: They presented me here as a star. It was maybe too much. They put my face everywhere, on the buses, everywhere. Placido Domingo went into the EMI office screaming, "He's not the tenor of today! He's the tenor of the future. I am the tenor of today." It was something like this. It was difficult to arrive in a new theater with such responsibility on my shoulders. How difficult has it been to transition back to Rodolfo? When you arrive in this kind of role you've sung some years ago, it's not very easy to put in the voice. We just arrived from Barcelona, singing "Cav" and "Pag," this heavier repertoire. To return in "Boheme" is not easy. You have to work to make the voice smaller and higher. But the most important is the evolution of the character. It's no more Rodolfo, the singer and poet you want to be; for me it's now a human being, it's closer to me. I understand the guy and what he can feel; everything he lives in this opera, I had in my life. Studying, being with friends, economic difficulties, a lot of problems, death. For me now, I am Rodolfo after all those experiences, with maybe a bit of Offenbach's Hoffmann, also. Not disappointed with life, exactly, but I understand what is important: not the glory, not the money, but to be well with yourself, with your family, to be in good health and good harmony with people, and in harmony with yourself. For many years I was very self critical. It was difficult for me to listen to my CDs; I was sad accepting my voice, because it wasn't the sound I had in my mind. But today I am more mature, I have more serenity. I'm more relaxed, even if the challenge is big. Because, you know, I will try to sing it Rodolfo's sweeping first act aria, "Che gelida manina" in key. Everybody, after they're 40 years old, sang a half tone down even Pavarotti, Jussi Bjorling, everybody. But I will try, not because I am better than others but because it's for me. I want to sing clear, young, and not so large. When I was young, I had a very large breath, and I enjoyed singing long phrases; today, I try to be more maybe closer to the score, closer to the words, closer to the sentiment. I will try to be believable.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Wall Street was prepared for Spotify's listing on the New York Stock Exchange this morning. Analysts were ready with their reports. The tech media was closely watching Spotify's unusual direct listing. Gene Simmons of Kiss appeared on CNBC, representing the skeptical artist position on the streaming economy. The exchange itself, however, didn't have things quite right. In a botched attempt at hospitality, the Big Board marked the occasion by flying the red and white flag of Switzerland outside its building at 11 Wall Street but Spotify has its headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden. The error was quickly corrected, with a blue and yellow Swedish flag taking the place of the Swiss banner. But by then it was too late Scandinavian Twitter had captured the mix up.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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A prominent electoral map on the website of Everylegalvote.com, a self described fraud buster, conveyed an alternate reality on Monday. Despite the latest election results showing Joseph R. Biden Jr. winning a decisive 306 votes in the Electoral College compared with 232 for President Trump, the site's map showed Mr. Trump as the winner of the election. Mr. Trump had received 232 votes compared with 214 for Mr. Biden, according to the site's map, which was flecked with orange to connote states where it claimed that voter fraud had been detected. Click on a tab saying "without voter fraud," and Mr. Trump's vote suddenly leapt to 318 against Mr. Biden's 220. As President Trump refuses to concede the election, a lot of internet traffic is being directed to this slickly produced website channeling the president's mix of falsehoods, conspiracy theories and baseless accusations of voter fraud. The website has promoted the false narrative that mail in ballots were used to steal the election from Mr. Trump. It has posited that thousands of dead people voted in Michigan when they did not. It has also posted content from a source with links to QAnon, the elaborate conspiracy movement that falsely claims the existence of a Satan worshipping pedophile cabal run by senior Democrats, who are plotting against Mr. Trump. QAnon believers had predicted that Mr. Trump would easily win the election. "They are attempting to install Joe Biden as president without due process of law and order," the site says, citing the media, "certain elected officials" and people in positions of power, both in the United States and in other countries. A review of Everylegalvote.com shows an attempt to delegitimize the election under a veneer of empiricism by drawing on murky and debunked theories. The site did not respond to a request for comment. Everylegalvote.com lists its sponsors and financial backers as a coalition of right wing groups including Allied Security Operations Group, the Economic War Room, and Liberty Center for God and Country. An office manager at Allied Security Operations Group, who declined to give her name, said by phone that the group was a private Dallas based cybersecurity firm. She said the issue of voter fraud was an area of specialty of the company's chief financial officer, Russell Ramsland, a businessman who ran for Congress in Texas as a Republican in 2016 and was defeated in the primary. According to Mr. Ramsland's LinkedIn profile, he has an M.B.A. from Harvard.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Mr. Berge, the partner of Yves Saint Laurent, suppressed the film for years, but it is finally reaching theaters this month. Here's what to expect. The YSL Documentary Pierre Berge Did Not Want Anyone to See It is, yet again, an Yves Saint Laurent moment. Granted, these days they seem to come around like clockwork, but even by the standards of 2014, when back to back biopics were dueling for filmgoers, this autumn is particularly notable. On Oct. 30 and Oct. 31, the most recent of at least seven auctions eulogizing the impossibly lush lifestyle Mr. Saint Laurent shared with Pierre Berge, his business and erstwhile romantic partner (the men ceased to be a couple in 1976), was held at Sotheby's Paris, bringing in just under 33 million , with buyers' premiums. On the block were the contents of Mr. Berge's houses in Paris and Provence and two he shared with Mr. Saint Laurent in Deauville and Tangier. Now, a newly edited version of "Celebration," a long suppressed documentary on the designer by Olivier Meyrou ("Beyond Hatred"), is opening in Paris, depicting Mr. Saint Laurent as a poignant if tragically addled figure in the years leading up to his retirement in 2002 at 65. Watching the designer as his cigarette ash grows longer and his gaunt neck swims in his shirt collar is so painful that you want to look away. It's the film Mr. Berge never wanted anyone to see, and the story of how it finally came to light reveals just how obsessed fashion is with its own mythology, and what is revealed when the curtain is raised. It all started promisingly enough. Mr. Berge gave Mr. Meyrou broad access to shadow him and Mr. Saint Laurent from 1998 to 2001, before souring on the project and suing Mr. Meyrou to prevent its release, according to Nicolas Brigaud Robert, a principal of Playtime, the film's distribution company. The original "Celebration" was shown once, at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2007, before it was blocked, said Alexis Hamaide, also of Playtime. "Mr. Berge did not like the way the documentary portrayed him," Mr. Brigaud Robert recalled. He did not want to show, Mr. Brigaud Robert said, "that aspect of his relationship with Mr. Saint Laurent," referring to the parent child way the two interacted. "Mr. Berge won the suit because he had not signed a release authorizing use of his image," Mr. Brigaud Robert said, but Mr. Saint Laurent died in 2008, and Mr. Berge last year, and "as image rights expire with you, 'Celebration' is freed," he continued. "There is no pending litigation." Mr. Brigaud Robert stressed that the version being released now is in no way softer than the original. "The editing had to do with credits, minor things, maybe 30 seconds in all." A spokesman for the Pierre Berge Yves Saint Laurent Foundation said in an email that it "has no comment to make on the film 'Celebration.'" In a director's statement, Mr. Meyrou said that he treated Mr. Saint Laurent like a species of rare fauna during filming, opting "for an approach that is very close to a wildlife documentary." He sat discreetly for days on the floor of the designer's studio, waiting for him to make an appearance. "Just like big cats must sooner or later come to a watering hole," Mr. Meyrou said. Mr. Saint Laurent finally showed, morose and twitching. But it isn't Mr. Saint Laurent who takes up the most screen time in this mordant film; it's his star maker. Mr. Berge's position in "Celebration" is that the couturier's anguish is his "backbone," necessary for him to create. "He's like a sleepwalker," he says. "You mustn't wake him." By simply hanging back, Mr. Meyrou, a removed documentarian, allows Mr. Berge to exceed his reputation as a choleric supreme commander whose highest opinion is of himself. Indeed, Mr. Berge's hubris gets plenty of airing, including a meltdown over photographers at a runway show to a sneering set piece in a cherry picker high above the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Rising to the heavens, Mr. Berge explains that he and Mr. Saint Laurent underwrote the gold capstone being placed on the Luxor Obelisk "for the community." He tells Mr. Meyrou, "As you well know, sponsorship doesn't interest me very much ordinarily . I leave that to others who think sponsorship is like selling a brand of detergent, with some royal highness you give a handbag to." That's a barely disguised dig at the Lady Dior, famously carried by Princess Diana, not to mention all the quid pro quo relationships between celebrities and designers that followed, though Mr. Berge and Mr. Saint Laurent were hardly innocent on that score themselves. They engaged Catherine Deneuve to shill for the company for decades. Perhaps as a result, the director reserves his affection for the supporting cast of atelier heads and petites mains who stake their honor on pleasing "Monsieur," ripping out the offending "noisy" lining of a coat dress, taking in a gown so minutely that the adjustment is measured by "the hair of a frog." The American garden designer Madison Cox, Mr. Berge's widower and the source of much pain to Mr. Saint Laurent, is glimpsed only once and out of focus, at a 1999 CFDA awards ceremony in New York, detached from a squad of obsequious courtiers. After more than 30 years of intimate friendship, the muse Betty Catroux comes across as touching and pathetic, justifying to Mr. Saint Laurent why she's not wearing a certain necklace. Katoucha Niane, an adored model, is shown slipping easily into a dress she had first worn 10 years earlier. "That's the strength of Saint Laurent, darling," she tells her fitter, "it's not me." (In 2008, Ms. Niane's body was found floating in the Seine weeks after she had disappeared from her houseboat. Her death at 47 was ruled accidental, a finding challenged by her family, who suspected murder.) Generally, models knew Mr. Berge as the whip cracking stage manager who queued their catwalk entrances season after season, year after year, at the Hotel Intercontinental. Near the end of "Celebration" Mr. Berge finally falls into the trap Mr. Meyrou has been laying for him all along, and the jealousy and frustration of the puppet master is laid bare for all to see. "May I share this award with you?" Mr. Berge asks Mr. Saint Laurent at a C FDA ceremony in 1999, taking the designer's Lifetime Achievement statuette and playing directly to the camera. "Thaaank you," he says unctuously. "Probably I have a part of that."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Ms. Mutu, a Kenyan American artist known for her sculpture, film and performance work, will create a collection of sculptures for the niches in the museum's facade. This will be the first time that art has been displayed on Richard Morris Hunt's 1902 facade. The sculptures will be on view from Sept. 9 to Jan 12, 2020. Mr. Hollein said the plan is for Ms. Mutu's installation to be just the first iteration of an annual facade project by a notable contemporary artist. The second commission, multiple large paintings by Kent Monkman made for the Met's Great Hall, will be unveiled on December 19. Sheena Wagstaff, chairman for modern and contemporary art at the Met, said that Mr. Monkman's works will "deal with that sense of arrival that any visitor has when they step over the threshold and into the Great Hall." Mr. Hollein said the commissions and Mr. Kjartansson's piece could be seen as a "counter argument" to the notion that the closing of the Met Breuer is a sign that the Met is decreasing its engagement with contemporary art. But he said that the exhibitions were part of the museum's longstanding commitment to the field, not something created to address this perception. Ms. Wagstaff echoed Mr. Hollein, saying: "This is just the beginning. There will be more to come, different types of responses and possibly different spaces too."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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Now that nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana, and with many other states with varying latitudes of access, cannabis has gotten a whole lot more sophisticated. And the beauty business is not about to miss out. Cannabis derived ingredients feel trendy, and they may well offer a raft of possible benefits, which beauty brands are quick to tout. CBD oil, specifically, is nonpsychoactive (it won't get you high) and is said to offer relief from pain, anxiety and depression, stimulate appetite and have anti inflammatory and anti acne properties. Cannabis products also nod to enthusiasms that have already gained momentum in the beauty industry, like ingestibles (CBD infused gummies, caramels and drops) and wellness (CBD lotions to relieve soreness from new year workouts). There are already devout fans, some boldfaced, who are drawn to CBD topical products largely for their pain relieving properties. Olivia Wilde recently told this reporter that she used it to relieve physical aches during a Broadway run. The fashion stylist Karla Welch, who works with Ms. Wilde, Ruth Negga, Katy Perry and Sarah Paulson, uses Lord Jones CBD lotion on her clients' feet when they walk the red carpet. "It's perfect for long nights in high heels," Ms. Welch said. "All my girls love it, and bottles live in my styling kit." Lord Jones, which is based in Los Angeles, is not the only brand to market a pain relieving CBD body lotion, but it is one of the chicest. Founded in 2016 by Robert Rosenheck, who has a branding background, and his wife, Cindy Capobianco, who has led public relations for Banana Republic and marketing for Gap, it is a leader in a movement to make marijuana more attractive to a mainstream audience. The packaging, with a baronial crest and gold accents, would look at home in a fashionable department store. That celebrities use the products adds additional cachet. "The closer we get to de stigmatizing cannabis, the better it is for all," Ms. Capobianco said. That sentiment is shared by upstarts including Cannuka, a line of topical products containing CBD and manuka honey; Khus Khus, a skin and body care line by the ayurvedic specialist Kristi Blustein; and Vertly, a line of lip balm by Claudia Mata, a former W magazine accessories editor, which is introducing body care this year. And beauty lines, including Malin Goetz and Boy Smells, make reference to cannabis in their products purely for the scent. For example, Boy Smells has a cannabis scented candle called Kush. "We're aware that having a cannabis candle is a little provocative, but I personally love the flavor and smell of cannabis," said Matthew Herman, a founder, who previously worked for the fashion labels Giles Deacon, Proenza Schouler and Zac Posen. "It has a wet earth smell that is very attractive." Mr. Herman also noted that the cannabis industry is undergoing a makeover. "A lot of my friends have been getting their products from more 'luxury' cannabis suppliers who are focusing on packaging and branding," he said. "It's not like pot is new, but for a long time you had to go to a head shop and buy a cheesy pipe. It was always a little gnarly. Now it's fun to see modern, minimal, elevated designs." But looks are one thing, efficacy is another. As CBD oil seeks to go mainstream, it's tough to tell which products hold up to scrutiny. "I get sent a million different brands saying they have CBD, and the stuff doesn't work," Ms. Richards said. That's because there is confusion in the marketplace, said Verena von Pfetten, a onetime Lucky digital editor and a founder of Gossamer, a publication dedicated to the chic side of cannabis culture. "The cannabis plant is complex with many compounds," Ms. von Pfetten said. "CBD is one of them, and THC is one of them." There are studies, she said, showing that for pain relief, CBD works best within the plant's cannabinoid system, meaning that combinations of compounds are more effective than isolated ones. That's termed the "entourage effect," and Lord Jones, for one, has sought to compensate for it by using CBD rendered from the entire hemp plant. "We've found CBD isolate, or crystals of pure CBD, to not work," Ms. Capobianco said. Speaking of hemp, there's debate there, too. Hemp is a type of cannabis that has had the THC largely bred out of it. It's legal across state lines, so only CBD derived from hemp can be distributed nationally. There is a lot less CBD and other cannabinoids in hemp than in cannabis strains that contain THC. "The reality is that the levels of active ingredient in hemp are so low that, though CBD definitely offers benefits, there might not be a wake up and feel it moment," Ms. von Pfetten said. None of that is stopping companies from expanding beyond wellness into skin care. Lord Jones is introducing a face care line based on CBD early this year. Ildi Pekar, a facialist in Manhattan who has tended to Miranda Kerr and Irina Shayk, said that sales of her CBD facial oil are up and she plans on investing more in the ingredient, which she calls "the argan oil of the future." Both cite reports that say CBD has anti inflammatory qualities when applied topically. But Shereene Idriss, a dermatologist in Manhattan, said that those papers are vague. "There was one study in 2014 that said CBD can help reduce oil production and thereby have anti acne and anti inflammatory attributes," Dr. Idriss said. "It wasn't a perfectly well rounded study, but it does have merit." The other study, from 2017, addressed cannabinoids in dermatology in general, including THC, but didn't deal with risks. "I would need more, a randomized clinical trial, before I could with full fledged belief recommend CBD oil as something more than just offering regular hydration," she said. If you're using CBD lotions for pain relief, Dr. Idriss said, there are better studies demonstrating efficacy but that more needs to be done. "CBD lotion that also has THC in it, it's going to help you much more with pain relief," she said. "But the ones from hemp, are they going to help as much? It's hard to tell because we don't have the data and studies. Also, the problem is you often don't know how much you are getting it's completely unregulated."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Our guide to new art shows and some that will be closing soon. 'AGE OF EMPIRES: CHINESE ART OF THE QIN AND HAN DYNASTIES (221 B.C. A.D. 220)' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through July 16). No one does epic better than the Met, and this hypnotic, glow in the dark exhibition of 160 objects from 32 museums in mainland China is in that line. Of the museum's several recent showcases of Chinese antiquities, this may be visually the most dramatic and emotionally the most accessible. It features a type of art the Met is a bit too comfortable with: imperial bling. But here the material feels purposeful, evidence of a time in China when the very idea of empire, and branding, was an experiment. (Holland Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'A WORLD OF EMOTIONS: ANCIENT GREECE, 700 B.C. 200 A.D.' at the Onassis Cultural Center (through June 24). We tend to think of the art of Classical Greece, with its buff Apollos and poised Aphrodites, as beyond perturbation. But this remarkable, free admission show made up largely of work from Greek museums, gives quite another view, of an art based on narratives driven by hatred, hubris, lust, grief and violence. (Cotter) 212 486 4448, onassisusa.org 'NAN GOLDIN: THE BALLAD OF SEXUAL DEPENDENCY' at the Museum of Modern Art (closes on April 16). Named after a song from "The Threepenny Opera," this astounding, autobiographical slide show consists of about 700 images of friends, lovers and Ms. Goldin herself disporting themselves with shameless abandon in the bohemian squalor of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Set to a rousing, eclectic selection of opera, pop, rock and blues, it was in its time and is still an emotionally wrenching revelation, a defining achievement of art in the 1980s. (Ken Johnson) 212 708 9400, moma.org
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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With no box office to sift through during this pandemic, we're making do, once again, with old numbers. And the top movies for the weekend of April 19, 2002, are loaded with stars. That's worth mentioning because it wouldn't happen now on any weekend, really. We used to rely on these people to shine in anything gold or crap, in January, December or July (although, with January, a real star should never want his bluff called). That weekend was loaded with stars in the good and godawful but mostly the so so. The so so part matters. It's an ideal test of your love of a star and to feel how much a star loves you. Does Morgan Freeman need to play a dusty lawyer in a stinky courtroom thriller? Ask his cable bill. But if he must, he'll give it more sizzle than grizzle for you. That weekend was also among the last in which most of the entries were middle of the road star vehicles hatched from original screenplays (or taken from novels) and never franchised. Well, movies built around popular actors were their own kind of franchise. We liked seeing their same old same old get a new plot and co stars. By the 2000s, that kind of same old was in its twilight. On the horizon was a major reversal, in which the character (plucked from comic books, TV, music, older movies) so superseded the star that actors weren't starring, they were doing karaoke. The movie made more than triple the one right beneath it (Jackson versus Affleck in "Changing Lanes," the previous week's leader) and is 10 times dumber. That, of course, was not the point of "The Scorpion King." Complaining about its dumbness is like being mad at a book for having pages. There really weren't many throwaway action comedies like this back then. They're less rare now and still often starring Johnson, who's among the last bankable names. This one was a prequel spun off from the "Mummy" franchise, and the world wanted both the familiarity of an old hit and Johnson's novelty. His stardom over at what we now called the WWE had been predicated upon a blend of bad assery and charm. He wrestled through the company's so called attitude era, which insisted personality be, at least, tantamount to skill. The Rock controlled crowds with catchphrases and eyebrows that seemed to bench press themselves. He thrilled them with his populist finishing move, the People's Elbow. "The Scorpion King" applies some of that to a video game plot (vanquish evil ruler). The people who made this movie include Johnson's wrestling boss, Vince McMahon, and you can tell none of them wanted to take any chances. To ensure that Johnson remains the Rock, they keep him on a high intensity action schedule. Every 10 minutes, there's a fight or a chase or an assassination attempt. Seems right for a sword and sandal fantasy that brims accordingly with cheesecake and cheese. Kelly Hu plays a fugitive sorceress, and I gasped anew at her witch wear: a cape, a bikini. At some point, Michael Clarke Duncan, as the Nubian king, swings his sword and doesn't make contact with the handful of guards he's aimed for. But in the spirit of Johnson's day job, they go flying over a castle wall, anyway. We showed up for this terrible movie because we knew the Rock's sports entertainment stardom would make sense at the megaplex. He's so bright and cheerful. "Get ready," he says to the spunky child who just ripped him off. "I'll kill half, you kill half." No one this big (6 foot 5, several tons), should be this light. But for long stretches of time, he's not even here, leaving the action to side players. Somebody put him in a long black wig and lots of leather scraps, as if he were the second comings of Victor Mature and Arnold Schwarzenegger. If anybody, he's Bob Hope. Despite Johnson's evident charisma, the movies wanted a he man. Ever since 2002, Johnson has seemed obligated to give them one. He was new that weekend, and so, to some extent, was Affleck, who was scaling his first leading man peak. They were putting him in everything back then (blockbusters, romantic comedies, franchise action), and he never seemed to want to be there. I respect whatever deal he and Matt Damon struck to make things work on their own after "Good Will Hunting," but he's always seemed kind of lonely as a result, leaning into characters who need someone to show them how a moral compass works. In "Changing Lanes," that's Jackson. He's an alcoholic insurance salesman on his way to a child custody hearing in Manhattan when Affleck's Mercedes swipes into his sad mule of a Corolla. Jackson is ready to exchange information, but Affleck tries to write him a check. He's on his way to court to represent his Wall Street firm in a bid to defraud a dead millionaire's estate. But when he abandons Jackson, he also accidentally leaves behind an important legal file. Jackson keeps it to teach Affleck a lesson. So Affleck hires a guy to ruin Jackson's reputation. This was a hit, and pretty good, too, the kind of dramatic thriller you'd never see now: stakes that are low for a movie but enormous for real life. It's also loaded with good actors Richard Jenkins, Toni Collette, Amanda Peet, Sydney Pollack, Dylan Baker, William Hurt, Kim Staunton as Jackson's fed up wife. The movie which Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin wrote and Roger Michell directed understands enough about how race and class work to be satisfying without pushing too hard. Affleck's playing someone who understands the power his whiteness affords; Jackson, in the thick of a prolific streak that he's still on, has a lot to play here, including the character's own well strategized race cards. Watched postcataclysm, apart from its cathartic psychic jolt, "Panic Room" is actually rather ordinary. A divorced woman buys a grand old manse ("It's a very emotional property," warns Ann Magnuson as the real estate agent) and, on night one, has to lock herself and her daughter into the house's state of the art bunker because she's got intruders. There are complications: The daughter (Kristen Stewart) is diabetic; and the thieves Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam are three bickering stooges. Fincher knows that what he has here is essentially "Wait Until Dark" with surveillance cameras and out of reach cellphones. So to engorge things, he installs a handsome opening title sequence and stirs up Conrad W. Hall's photography, Howard Shore's score and the editing (by James Haygood and Angus Wall) until "ordinary" swells into opera. Foster races from floor to floor like a chased cat, often in National Geographically slow motion. That week at the box office was big for future stars. Kristen Stewart sets up shop on the line between daughterly exasperation and ferocious devotion. Her casting was notable, at the time, for her resemblance to Foster. Their androgynous swinging bobs matched each other's and Michael Pitt's. He was up at No. 3, co slaughtering people just to get on Sandra Bullock's nerves in the brand new "Murder by Numbers." His silky, completely buttoned shirts screamed art killer; his sexual tension with Ryan Gosling screamed "Gus Van Sant!" They're playing California high schoolers fooling around with local forensics experts. This movie asks a lot of us. We're expected to believe Bullock as one of those hardened cops who lives on a houseboat, and that having a baboon jump out and bite her means this is still a thriller. Besides, it's redundant. Gosling looks open to biting everybody. His wattage here is obscene. The costume designer knew; he's in a James Dean red jacket most of the movie. It takes Bullock too long to get into this. To be fair, who knows in what order things were filmed? Maybe she'd already done her couple of nutso scenes with Gosling and found investigating cases next to perfectly nice Ben Chaplin as anticlimactic as we do. Her best moments here involve using Chaplin for sex and letting Gosling come on to her. It's like he watched Robert De Niro seduce Juliette Lewis in "Cape Fear" and thought, "This is sick, but something's missing." Right before Bullock throws him over a cliff, Gosling's tongue turns her face into a lollipop. Hollywood, you can still do this! The tongue, the cliff, the gay crosswinds honestly, what's the hold up? Lawyers and cops in these movies always have some old case hanging over them. Judd's happens to involve the rapist she keeps out of prison. Given the sexual harassment that she accused Harvey Weinstein of, Judd's spiky self assurance in these scenes makes her a better actor than we even knew. (Multiple women also accused Freeman of harassing them; he's apologized.) The movie, which the unsung veteran Carl Franklin directed, is mostly morally upright, but why were we watching a film about a white murderer when the real story is the relatives of all those murdered villagers? I'm not alone in wondering. The script ropes one of them in to kill Caviezel at the last minute. But come on! Latino ex machina? If we're thinking about stars here, anytime Freeman's onscreen we're watching one of the best. He's so often a sidekick and a voice that it's easy to overlook his moments as a vital, wild card star. Here, he's just a dude, with an earring and a motorcycle, a dude who wears jeans to military court. Freeman's best when he's not trying to win re election or standing at the Pearly Gates, when he's just a guy slouching in dungarees, looking a little louche. "High Crimes" was Judd and Freeman's reunion movie after "Kiss the Girls," two hours of sideways murder mystery that was a hit for them in 1997. The best scene in the new movie comes right at the end when they're just sitting around his law office, talking about the future, looking like two people content to be in the pilot of a CBS drama. Who needs all that deadly Marine stuff when we could have had two hours of this Emmy consideration? There were three family movies on the list "Clockstoppers" (a teen sci fi fantasy); the first "Ice Age" movie, still a big hit in week six; and "The Rookie," which remains scientifically engineered to leave you blubbering at a moment when there's no baseball being played anywhere else. But wasn't the No. 10 movie that week, "Frailty," also a family movie? It's about a widowed Texan and his two young sons. Sure, he's corralled them into abducting strangers and chopping them up. But they do it as a family! It's Bill Paxton's first outing as a director (he plays the dad). I missed it the first time around, but everything that's appalling about the film also makes it daring. That goes for casting Matthew McConaughey as one of the adult sons then barely doing anything with him. McConaughey is about to charge up from one of his career valleys by just saying yes to everything and hoping we don't say no. Brent Hanley wrote the script, which has the nerve to see its ideas about good and evil all the way through. With all due respect to McConaughey, the writing's the star of this one. The farther back in time I take this box office spelunking (this is the second column of the series), the likelier I am to say that "none of these movies would get made now" just "The Scorpion King," which Johnson still feels like he's doing. But have a look at what's at No. 7: a Cameron Diaz comedy called "The Sweetest Thing." I can't believe this movie got made then the in flight meal equivalent of better movies. Diaz and Christina Applegate just do some Bay Area wedding crashing to snag a man. Eighteen years ago, I left irritated that the movie, which Nancy M. Pimentel wrote, gave up on friendship and storytelling in favor of having a penis poke Diaz in the eye and a dry cleaner taste the not so mysterious stain on Selma Blair's dress. Why did it want to be more conversant with "American Pie" than "Sex and the City"? For one thing, raunch was still king. For another, Diaz, Blair and especially Applegate appear to be enjoying the vulgarity. They're not doing an imitation of horny boys. They've got their own organically juvenile enthusiasm for sex and its terminology. And the men they're paired with Thomas Jane and a grubby, grabby Jason Bateman can actually keep up. Diaz is operating at the ridiculous erogenous apogee that made and kept her a star. This wasn't one of her hits. Watching her, you'd never know it. She's swinging and braying and insinuating the whole time. Surely no one in the history of movies has ever been this impervious to embarrassment, this liberated by a lack of shame. At some point, she's pounding, randomly, on a locked door, crying "Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!" I'm embarrassed it took 18 years to find that funny. I read somewhere that Diaz retired from acting a couple of years ago. This won't do. Before they dried up in March, the movies were already sober and chaste, wary of the lunacy Diaz herself appears to have sworn off. While we're on this break, they should beg her to reconsider. Imagine the possibilities. It's been forever since somebody licked Sandra Bullock's face, since somebody really rolled the Rock.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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Three years ago, I tested more than half a dozen photo printing companies online Adorama, Snapfish, drugstore programs like CVS and Walgreens to find the best places to print vacation photos. But I've since had to face the truth: My pretty prints were in a pile collecting dust because I never managed to find somewhere affordable and convenient to get them matted and framed. The rare times I bothered to do it, it was a costly hassle and, in the end, I never got quite what I wanted. And so this year, I explored a few companies (including one that had just been founded when I was testing all those printing services) that allow you to upload a digital photo, have it matted, framed and delivered to your door in a matter of days. After the first framed photo arrived in the mail, I knew I'd never go back to just plain old prints. Below, a look at a few companies that offer printing and framing. And for those who just want a few prints to pin to a cubicle wall or post on a refrigerator, I've included some apps and websites that will print your photos for less than a dime and, in some cases, free (though you pay for shipping). The company that won me over was Framebridge, which is based in Washington, D.C., and has factories in Maryland and Kentucky. It specializes in printing and framing photos, with Instagram photos printed at 5x5, starting at 39. The process is easy. I began by clicking the "start framing" button. Then it was time to upload a photo and crop it. The photo sizes you're offered are based on your photo's resolution. (If you already have a print and want it framed, Framebridge will send you prepaid packaging so you can ship it to them.) Now it's time to choose a frame. If you want some advice, one of the site's designers will suggest some mat and framing combinations (a free service), or you can choose your own frame and mat. Then you'll see a preview of your framed art, along with the price. If you want to make changes to the mat and the photo size, you can do so from this page. Once you're happy, you simply add the project to your shopping cart. Shipping is where a lot of photo websites dent your wallet, but I was delighted to find that shipping through Framebridge was included in the price. It also makes you feel like you're not being nickeled and dimed. My gallery frame arrived at my doorstep nine days after I ordered it, faster than the delivery times of certain companies that only print photos. (If you want expedited shipping, it's 15 to 40, depending on the size of your art.) I opened the package, which was well padded, to find the image just as I had hoped it would be: in a crisp, white mat and a white wood frame, ready to be hung on the wall. My printed photo, a 14x18 frame, mat and shipping was 79, and worth every penny. A screen shot of the Artifact Uprising app which, in addition to frames, offers gifts like Instagram books. Another printing company, Artifact Uprising, based in Denver, offers a number of photo gifts through its app and website, where you begin by selecting your frame type such as a gallery frame (starting at 65), deep set frame or float frame. Next, you pick a backing style (like paper or bend points) and the frame finish and size. Then you upload your desired image and voila you're done. There is shipping and handling, which varies depending on the price of your order and how fast you want it. Shipping a 14x11, deep set, 99 frame to New York ranged from 18.99 for the least expensive option to 41.99 for the most expensive. Many popular photo printing sites also frame photos. Nations Photo Lab, for one, is a favorite of The Wirecutter, the gear and gadget recommendation site that is a New York Times company. In March, The Wirecutter wrote about online photo printing services they tried and loved (and some they didn't) and said that Nations offered "the best combination of quality, price, options, and service, delivering good looking prints in secure packaging." For framing, Nations offers a variety of frames and mats, and asks users to download ROES ordering software. That said this isn't necessarily the right option for you, if, like me, you want as few steps as possible; a clean, uncluttered interface; and don't want to download software. But let's say you don't want a frame. On the other end of the photo printing spectrum are small, cheap prints you don't think twice about putting pushpins through. And there are plenty of places to get them. Shutterfly is among the usual options. A dozen 4x6 prints were 1.80. Economy shipping (five to 10 days) was 2.67 and 40 cents tax for a total of 4.87. That's nearly 2 more than Printage, a website and app that's offering unlimited free 4x4 and 4x6 prints. You pay only shipping and handling, which varies by how many photos you order. For instance, a dozen prints were 2.97; 85 prints were 9.95 for standard shipping (five to 13 days). Expedited shipping (four to eight days) was an additional 99 cents. The app requires access to the photos on your phone, which may be a deal breaker for some. The desktop version allows you to drag an image onto the page so that Printage doesn't have access to all your photos. You'll have to sign up with an email address or through Facebook if you want to continue after that. A dozen 4x6 prints were 2.83 and 14 cents tax for a total of 2.97. Yet even those low prices didn't beat Amazon Prints, the retailer's photo printing service. A dozen 4x6 prints were 9 cents each for a total of 1.08. There was no tax and standard shipping (about two weeks) was free for Prime members, which is one of the best deals around: a dozen vacation prints for about a dollar. Bottom line: Cheap, though not necessarily fast, prints are but a few taps away if you're not a stickler for professional quality images. If you want your vacation photos framed on your wall, give a printing and framing site a try. My framed photos take me right back to those special trips. Now I just need to get around to hammering some nails.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Derek Waters is the creator and star of the Comedy Central show "Drunk History," on which comedians attempt to recount and re enact historical events while throwing back booze. Season 4 premieres in September. Mr. Waters, 37, lives in Los Angeles but loves going home to Baltimore to see his family and high school friends. " I can play with their kids," he said. "And then leave whenever I want." He also goes to Ocean City, Md., which is close to where he grew up. "It's where everyone goes to get out of the city and be by the water and eat crabs," he said. "There are really no words for it, it's just somewhere you have to see. I've been writing a show about it that I'm going to make when 'Drunk History' is finished." He doesn't take much vacation, but when he does he heads north. "In 2015 I had five days off and I went to Big Sur," he said. "I love, love, love Big Sur, it's one of my all time favorite places to go. I've only been able to afford to go there twice, but I like to stay at the Post Ranch Inn. You sleep in a treehouse and it overlooks the ocean and you can see the stars. It's like camping, but not in a tent. When I was a kid, we took vacations in an RV, which is like camping for spoiled kids. At the time, of course, you hate it, but the older you get the more you think it's nice for the whole family to be forced to be together."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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The two basketball buddies from Indiana, Josh Speidel and Everett Duncan, envisioned this happening hundreds of times in their careers at the University of Vermont: Duncan finding Speidel with a bounce pass, and Speidel finishing with a layup. Instead it happened only once, on Tuesday, when the Catamounts celebrated their seniors during the last game of the regular season. That the play happened at all was a testament to Speidel's resilience, and to the work of many others at the campus that sits about 45 miles south of the Canadian border. Shortly after committing to Vermont as a prized recruit, Speidel, now a redshirt senior, suffered a severe brain injury in a February 2015 car accident. Speidel, who had been known for his scoring and rebounding, was still in a coma in an Indianapolis hospital when Vermont Coach John Becker visited him and promised his parents, David and Lisa, that the university would honor his scholarship. Becker and Albany Coach Will Brown agreed on a special accommodation. The Catamounts would let Albany win the opening tip, go down and score. Then Vermont would run a play to get Speidel an uncontested layup. At that point, Speidel would come out of the game, and normal play would commence. Vermont walked through the play three times at the morning shootaround to assure no slip ups. "I don't think I've ever been that nervous for a layup, but it's my first layup in five years," Speidel said in a telephone interview after the game. "My dad joked with me. He said, 'You could always miss it, grab a rebound and add to your stats a little.' I thought about that. But then I figured I might as well end my college career shooting 100 percent." Once Albany scored, the other Catamount starters Ben Shungu, Daniel Giddens and Anthony Lamb passed the ball around before tossing it inside to Duncan, who found Speidel for a right handed layup. Speidel suggested getting all the players involved as a symbol of the teamwork that aided his recovery. And Becker wanted Duncan, one of Speidel's roommates and his closest friend on the team, to deliver the assist. Then there were hugs all around, from players on both teams and Becker. The sellout crowd of 3,266, which included Speidel's parents, sister Jamie and grandmother Mary Speidel, stood and cheered. Finally, Speidel walked over to thank and hug Brown. Vermont went on to win, 85 62, with Duncan scoring a career high 22 points and hitting all six 3 point attempts. "Remembering back to the old days, it meant the world to me," Speidel said. "I'm forever thankful to Will Brown and Albany for letting me do that." Becker said it would have been impossible to envision such a moment when he visited Speidel in the hospital after the accident. "It's been five years of him diligently working every day to get better, with the goal of getting back out on the court," Becker said by telephone. "It just fills my heart with joy that that actually happened." A 6 foot 7 standout forward at Columbus (Ind.) North High, Speidel's future changed when a sport utility vehicle crashed into his Honda Accord as he pulled out of a fast food drive through in a neighboring town. Neither the passenger in his car nor the adult driver and two children in the S.U.V. were seriously hurt. But Speidel's head slammed into the door frame, fracturing his skull and leaving him paralyzed on his left side. After four weeks in a coma, Speidel awoke with no memory of the crash or his entire senior year in high school. He couldn't walk, talk or use his left arm. With time and therapy, Speidel regained his ability to speak "Mom" was his first word and most of his motor function. But he could not play, in part because of periodic tremors in his right arm and short term memory loss. Speidel enrolled one year later than his class. He worked out on his own and remained a popular member of the program, sitting on the bench for home games and some road games. Vermont qualified for two N.C.A.A. tournaments in Speidel's first three seasons, and the 24 7 Catamounts are seeking a third berth later this week as the top seed in the America East tournament. Academically, Speidel carries a 3.40 grade point average in an individually designed major in the College of Education and Social Services, with a double minor in behavior change and coaching. "We could be here all night talking about people who helped me academically professors, tutors," Speidel said. "I'm forever grateful to them and what they've taught me, how they accepted me, worked with me." Tributes poured in before and after the game, from the sports world and beyond. On Monday, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont praised Speidel on the floor of the United States Senate for his resilience and spirit. "Josh Speidel is a remarkable young man," Leahy said. "I wanted to do this because in an era where we hear so much bad news, it's wonderful to hear inspiring news." Duncan was thrilled to finally take the court with his friend, whom he met on a travel team in Indiana. "When we came out the first time, we felt a certain buzz in there, an energy," Duncan told The Burlington Free Press. "It felt like a different energy, a happiness. You could feel it from every single person in there. Every single person in there was watching Josh and engaged." None more than Becker, who saw Speidel come back from his lowest moment. And the scoring play? In all the excitement, Becker never got around to giving it a name. "We might have to call it Speidel now, right?" he said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Just the other day I got an email in which Ron Paul, libertarian icon, former member of Congress from Texas and father of the Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul, eagerly proclaimed that his "final prediction of a dollar collapse is about to become reality." The email was a bit extreme, perhaps, with references to the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe and the Book of Genesis. But Mr. Paul's dire premonition fits within an overarching Republican proposition that the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are relentlessly undermining the American economy. Other, more serene analysts have also predicted a weak dollar. Martin Feldstein, who was a top economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, argued some five years ago that the country's large trade deficit and ultralow interest rates, coupled with sales of United States assets by international investors and changes in the Chinese economy, would push the dollar down over coming years. They were exactly wrong. The dollar's rise, which started virtually the day Professor Feldstein made his prediction in 2011, shows little sign of abating. It amounts to only the third instance of such consistent appreciation since Richard Nixon took the United States off the gold standard in 1971. The American economy might just be bumbling along, but it is doing substantially better than the rest of the advanced industrial world. "It is quite natural," said Barry Eichengreen of the University of California, Berkeley, "that the currency of the country whose economy is least bad should have the least worst currency." But with many developing economies in a tailspin, commodity prices and stock markets tumbling sharply around the world, could a rising dollar damage a fragile economic order? Many economists argue it is mostly a good thing. A strong dollar should help Europe and Japan overcome their deeper economic weaknesses by making their products cheaper on world markets an overall positive for global growth. The strengthening of the dollar, Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, told me, "is a fundamentally healthy process." But there are reasons to be cautious. A strong dollar will squeeze American manufacturers, which have otherwise benefited from falling energy prices and rising wages in China. That will weigh on growth in the United States and further suppress inflation, which is already well below the Fed's target. Stanley Fischer, the Fed vice chairman, said in a speech in November that, according to the central bank's models, a 15 percent rise in the dollar could cumulatively trim almost 2.5 percentage points off gross domestic product after three years, if its rise did not turn around and it was not offset by easier monetary policy or more public spending. And it could reduce 2015 inflation by as much as half a percentage point. This has prompted some calls for corrective action. In November, C. Fred Bergsten, former head of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, argued that the euro and Japanese yen were sharply undervalued against the dollar, and urged policy makers to pursue a rerun of the deal struck by the Reagan administration and America's chief trading partners at the Plaza Hotel in New York in 1985, when they agreed to coordinate their actions to weaken the value of the dollar. And the effects in the United States are not the principal worry. Federal Reserve officials can get cranky when foreigners criticize their policies. The Fed was accused of starting a "currency war" when quantitative easing sent the dollar sharply lower. Now it is criticized when interest rates and the dollar are going up. The dollar's appreciation has rekindled populist attacks against Beijing, from Senator Chuck Schumer's repeated accusations of currency manipulation to Donald Trump's promise to levy a 45 percent tax on imports from China. The attacks are wrong. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund no longer deems China's currency, the renminbi, undervalued. Actually, China's currency has been mostly rising along with the dollar against the currencies of its other trading partners, squeezing an already slowing economy. Beijing is in a pickle. Last summer, the Chinese government tried Washington's prescription: to let market forces play a bigger role in determining the exchange rate. But then the renminbi fell, producing the expected populist complaints from the United States. What's more, Chinese savers dashed to send their money out of the country, frightened that the currency could be on the cusp of a long slide. The rising dollar "complicates policy management," in China, said Eswar S. Prasad, a former head of the I.M.F.'s China division who teaches at Cornell University. "If the renminbi were to drop by a couple of percentage points, the implication would be that the central bank wants a much cheaper currency, which would lead to more capital outflows." Professor Prasad, like most economists, says he believes the dollar's gain is benign. "The United States is the only country whose currency can appreciate like this without its economy suffering badly," he said. "This is something of a blessing for the world." And yet he allows for a kink in the analysis. Remember the financial crisis, visited upon the world by the American housing market and its banks? Despite being at the center of the disaster, the dollar didn't weaken but instead strengthened. Gripped by abject fear, investors could think of nowhere else to run. The dollar has gone haywire before. In the two years before the Plaza Accord, it continued to soar even after the Fed chairman at the time, Paul Volcker, relaxed his grip on interest rates. The misalignment led to devastation in the Rust Belt, helped lay the groundwork for the Japanese bubble and fostered enormous trade imbalances. Today perhaps it is safe to say the dollar is driven mostly by natural forces that should reverse when growth picks up elsewhere in the world. But in this choppy world economy it would be foolhardy to ignore one of the main forces driving financial flows through history: irrationality.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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In rehearsals for "A Chorus Line," it can be difficult to tell where practice ends and the show begins. Take a recent day in Midtown Manhattan, where the Broadway fixture Tony Yazbeck, in character as the director Zach, was giving the cast instructions on how to dance "One." He interrupted people to correct their steps, but then another voice came booming from a table nearby: "Hold on, we're going to give you a couple of fixes." It was the show's real director, Bob Avian. You eventually get used to such meta moments in the rehearsal room for "A Chorus Line," the ultimate backstage musical, which returns this week at New York City Center as its annual gala production, with seven performances Wednesday through Sunday. At the table with Mr. Avian was Baayork Lee, this production's choreographer. But their titles downplay their relationship to "A Chorus Line": They have been with the show since its conception, before it became the "Hamilton" of 1975 and, for a time, the longest running musical on Broadway. Since the show's sensational premiere run Off Broadway at the Public Theater Diana Ross is said to have sat in the aisle because there wasn't space anywhere else Mr. Avian and Ms. Lee have been the keepers of this musical, originally conceived, directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett, who died of complications from AIDS in 1987. (The earworm rich score is by Marvin Hamlisch, who died in 2012.) Mr. Avian, credited as the musical's co choreographer, and Ms. Lee, the original Connie Wong, travel the world to stage virtually every major production of "A Chorus Line," passing on the steps to new casts and identifying dancers who might be able to do the same in the future. This commitment staging the musical exactly as Bennett designed it has its detractors. When the most recent Broadway revival opened in 2006, Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote that "to have it return more or less exactly as it was makes it feel like a vintage car that has been taken out of the garage, polished up and sent on the road once again." In 2016, the Bennett estate took the rare step of allowing a new staging for the Stratford Festival in Canada. But re creating the original has been de rigueur for decades, and Mr. Avian and Ms. Lee are most often called on to do it. They have worked together for 51 years starting with another Bennett musical, "Henry, Sweet Henry," in 1967 and were early authorities on "A Chorus Line." After all, Mr. Avian helped shape the choreography, and, following the show's first run through, Ms. Lee recalled, Bennett told her, "Baayork, it's all yours." In rehearsals for the City Center production, Mr. Avian rarely sugarcoated his criticisms, directly delivered in a gravelly voice. But he was gentle and congratulatory when a scene came together successfully. Ms. Lee, in sneakers and a bandanna, walked among the dancers to give corrections, sometimes even performing the steps herself. For character work, they often tell stories from the musical's early days, when it was being assembled from conversations Bennett recorded with dancers, some of whom would end up playing versions of themselves. Jolina Javier, who was cast as Connie at City Center, is learning about her role from the woman who both inspired the character and originally performed it. "When I auditioned for the show, I was so nervous because I was like: Here's the actual Connie Wong," Ms. Javier said. "Getting to know her has definitely changed my perspective." Storytelling has also helped as Mr. Avian and Ms. Lee groom the next generation of "A Chorus Line" directors and choreographers. One of them, Matthew Couvillon, said their recollections make learning the show "so much more rich because it gives us something to latch on to." "If you don't know the history, then it's very difficult," he said. "The style and the nuance of it will be missing. It will just be steps."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Decades ago, self isolating helped save my life. For one week each month, my husband cared for our children, who were 1, 3, and 5 at the time, while I navigated bottomed out blood counts alone in my bedroom. Hairless and hungry for my children's hugs, I threw them kisses from afar and watched their little fingers snatch the air to bring my love to their lips. My hope of surviving cancer helped me keep my distance. Except once. I vividly remember listening to the giggles and splashes of our daughters in the bathtub and our baby's babbling in the next room. A sudden bonk followed by wailing unhinged me. I escaped my bedroom and headed toward the distress. My husband, who had never raised his voice at me, roared: "Get away!" Shaken, I retreated to my hideaway. Hours later, after my husband had tucked in our children, he softly bared his soul: "I can handle anything except you putting yourself at risk." Those words echo in my head as I self isolate today. With a sense of deja vu, I'm again throwing kisses from afar, only this time through a window to my young grandchildren. My three children, now grown, all settled near me in Dallas and work full time. We have five grandchildren under 5, all of whom live within two miles of me. Before Covid 19, I used to see them daily, taking one or two (sometimes more) of them for breakfast or dinner. Since I went into isolation when the news first hit and before it was mandated I've done FaceTime with the grandbabies every morning and evening. One daughter lives just four blocks away and takes her children on family walks almost daily. With a cue from a text message, I leave brown paper lunch sacks with the kids' names on them by a flowerpot on my porch, each sack with a little treat. Usually slices of clementines and apples. Sometimes stickers or little toys I have around the house. I peer out from my post to watch my grandchildren clamber up the front steps. I revel in their delight at the surprises inside. The giggles grow louder as, with sacks in hand, they search for me through the double pane glass to show me their treasures. Even though they recognize the toys, they love them. My arms ache to hold them close and feel their breath on my face. Meanwhile, in the bathroom by the bedroom, my kids' old faded plastic waterwheel waits motionless in the tub. I won't be giving my grandchildren baths here. Not today. Not tomorrow. Nobody knows when it will be safe for folks like me with immunodeficiency to venture out. What am I supposed to do with the yearning to be close to my grandbabies? That's a luxury I won't indulge. Cancer taught me to focus on hope that helps. In 1990, I was given a diagnosis of follicular non Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer with no known cure. Aggressive chemotherapy put it into remission, but for not quite a year. I then did radiation therapy and got a second remission. When the cancer recurred in 1993, standard options were palliative. What should I hope for? Back then, the hope of research helped me find the courage needed to enroll in an early phase trial. The investigational treatment helped me find hope of my illness having meaning because researchers might learn something valuable, even if I didn't survive to see my oldest child graduate from elementary school. With no confidence in "tomorrow," I hoped to embrace the parenting I could do "today" from a hospital bed a half a country away. I became the 15th person in the Phase I study at Stanford of the first monoclonal antibody therapy used to try to treat cancer. The trial gave me a partial remission. Another trial gave me a brief remission. Another nine months of chemo gave me a longer remission. The good news is that since completing my ninth course of treatment from 2005 to 2007, I've been in complete remission. For me, remission means living with aftereffects of all those treatments, including chronic fatigue, osteoporosis, cognitive issues and hypogammaglobulinemia requiring biweekly infusions of immunoglobulins. All that said, I have no complaints. I've loved my life. And here I am, coping with this 21st century pandemic by kissing grandchildren through glass. In 1993 I could never have imagined I'd be reading "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" to my grandchildren over FaceTime. Their innocent love reminds me that self isolating offers the best way to fulfill my hope of surviving and of helping my husband and children. Meanwhile, I hope to open my eyes to the joys that remain and to savor each one. Just as cancer did years ago, Covid 19 is teaching me about both the fragility and the hopes of life, and with that knowledge to live most fully. Wendy Harpham is a retired internist, cancer survivor and author of "Finding Hope That Heals," a free e book from the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Well
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This article is no longer being updated. See the list of countries currently open to American travelers here. On July 1, after months of lockdown, European nations will begin to open their borders to nonessential travelers coming from a select list of countries in which the Covid 19 pandemic has been deemed sufficiently under control. The United States is not on the list. Moreover, the U.S. State Department continues to advise U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel. The situation is changing rapidly, but here is what we know about travel to Europe right now. Who is allowed to enter Europe? As of July 1, European nations (all members of the European Union, as well as the non E.U. European nations of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein) are expected to begin opening their borders to residents of Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay. Residents of Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and the Vatican will also be allowed entry. China is on the list, "subject to confirmation of reciprocity" that is, if the country will open its borders to European travelers. The official press statement noted that individual European nations may decide to take a progressive approach to lifting restrictions on travel from the listed countries. Residents of the United States, where the spread of Covid 19 has not been controlled, are not allowed to enter the European Union unless they qualify for an exception. How often will the list be reviewed? European officials have said that the list will be reviewed every two weeks. It's possible that the United States will be added to the list if the country's epidemiological situation improves. A country may also be removed from the list if its situation worsens.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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LES BALLETS TROCKADEROS DE MONTE CARLO at the Joyce Theater (Dec. 13 31 at various times). For more than four decades, this all male ballet troupe, affectionately known as the Trocks, has been honoring and satirizing the cult of ballet with a delicious blend of sly humor and true reverence. The pokes come from a place of love and knowledge, backed up by solid technique (the men are impressive on point). Romantic ballet classics are generally their target. This engagement includes scenes from "Swan Lake," "Giselle," "Paquita" and a new addition: the pas de six from Bournonville's cheerful "Napoli." (Program A, 2:00; Program B, 1:15) 212 242 0800, joyce.org RYOHEI KONDO / CONDORS at Japan Society (Dec. 10 at 7:30 p.m., Dec. 11 at 2:30 p.m.). In "Hanasaka Jiisan (The Old Man Who Made Flowers Bloom)," one elderly married couple is rewarded for its kindness while another is punished for its greed. This popular Japanese folk tale arrives on stage via Condors, an all male contemporary dance troupe founded and led by Mr. Kondo. This family friendly work incorporates bright costumes, kamishibai (a form of visual storytelling that was big in the early 20th century) and sprightly characters. The puppet artist Maiko Kikuchi presents the short, whimsical "Pink Bunny" as an amuse bouche. (1:15) 212 715 1258, japansociety.org
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Apparently it's no longer enough to simply book a spa massage when you're on vacation. For a new wave of wellness seeking millennials, only the latest, and often personalized, forms of treatments will do. "Fifteen years ago, we used to do sugar scrubs and chocolate facials it was only about indulgence," said Kristi Dickinson, the director of spa and fitness at Rancho Valencia in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. "Today, people are looking to the spa as a lifestyle resource." That means that, along with a massage, a guest may sign up for the hotel's "neuroplasty program," which creates a specialized regimen (often a combination of meditation, exercise and yoga) to boost brain function. And if you suspect it's only millennials who are interested in the new and New Age, you would be wrong. Ms. Dickinson's clients are often in the 40 to 60 age range. "Now their friend at the golf club is doing the latest meditation, too," she said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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From the opening scene of her new novel, "Brixton Beach," signals that political violence and memory are among her themes. A doctor runs through the streets of central London, navigating the mayhem caused by explosions on Underground trains and a bus, and looking for a woman he knows. No date is given but many readers will recognize the terrorist attacks of July 7, 2005, that killed more than 50 people and injured more than 700. The fictional doctor's name is Simon Swann. There will be no further mention of Swann until much later, but the allusion to Proust pervades this fine nostalgic novel. Uneasiness lingers as the author turns to another set of characters in Sri Lanka in 1973, a year after the island nation shed its colonial name, Ceylon. At the center of the four generation family story is Alice Fonseka. In this tiny country with complex politics and culture, British influence remains strong, and 9 year old Alice has been raised on books like "The Wind in the Willows." Conflict is rising in the north between the Singhalese and Tamil ethnic groups, including disturbing reports of riots and a bomb, but the violence has not yet reached the family in the south. Alice is more concerned about the imminent birth of a sibling, and the tension between her Singhalese mother, Sita, and Tamil father, Stanley, a stenographer at a factory in Colombo, the capital, that imports fruit for rich Singhalese "who could afford to live like the English." 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. Dreamy, stubborn Alice is happiest when staying with her mother's parents, Bee and Kamala, in a village on the southern coast. Their home, the Sea House, seems a paradise where Alice can play on the beach and take inspiration from her grandfather's artworks. Tearne, an accomplished British novelist, artist and filmmaker who was born in Sri Lanka, writes with cleareyed love for the country of her childhood and depicts its lush decay in painterly detail. "The city air smelled of a thousand different things: orange blossom hidden in a secret garden, and drains, and the blistering smell of freshly ground turmeric. There was something else, too, something sweet and metallic, like the smell of fireworks on New Year's night." Tragedy is stark against the beauty. A prejudiced doctor causes Sita's baby to be stillborn. Bombs explode, and Tamils are shot by the army. Bee and Kamala harbor a wounded man, putting the family at risk. Bee, for all his hatred of racism, dislikes both his son in law and the British. Stanley leaves to seek a safer life for his family in London, enjoying a single man's freedom. Every character and every relationship is sensitively articulated as a microcosm of society. When Sita and Alice follow Stanley, civil war has ripped Sri Lanka apart and will do so for nearly 30 years, all but ignored by the West. Distressed at losing his daughter and granddaughter, Bee's "heart was hanging on its hinges," with worse to come. Despite its dramatic events, the first half of the book at times seems slow moving. In retrospect it is clear that Tearne has effectively evoked a child's sense of time and an adult's languorous memories of childhood. The narrative picks up pace, as life does, in the second half, years passing in a page, scenes switching from England to Sri Lanka and back. In safe, gray London, Alice is a lonely schoolgirl and then quickly a woman, wife, mother and artist. Traumatized and unsettled, Alice and her mother, now divorced, retreat into memories of their estranged country and family. While Sita descends from depression into dementia, Alice channels her homesickness into her colorful house, which she names Brixton Beach, and her sculptures, which Tearne imagines with precise ingenuity. As the story comes full circle, hope, love and history collide with an unsparing force that resonates into the contemporary world.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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Gadgets were supposed to be over. Smartphones, tablets and smartwatches cannibalized the weaker devices around them, including cameras, music players, navigation units, fitness trackers and gaming devices. The few tech products that broke through the noise of crowdfunding sites and the crowded field of start ups were quickly commoditized and undercut on Amazon. The stores that dealt in gadgetry Circuit City, RadioShack, Best Buy had gone out of business or become glum warehouses for no fun products. In 2016, my colleague Farhad Manjoo declared a "gadget apocalypse." "For 30 or 40 years, through recessions and war, through stability and revolutions, they were always there," he wrote. Soon, to the horror of enthusiasts and mere consumerists alike, they might converge into a bland rectangularity. For now, at least, it appears the gadget apocalypse has been averted, due in part to threats of actual apocalypse. Seven months of shattered plans, lockdowns and rapidly improvised new normals have converted jaded consumers around the world into frantic gadget freaks, each grasping for items that, in their chaotic disparity, tell the story of a strange, dark year: pulse oximeters, the iPhone 12, HEPA air filters, infrared thermometers, bare minimum tablets and laptops for schooling, the PlayStation 5 (pre order), ring lights, miniature freezers, home networking equipment, and noise canceling headphones. Elements of this gadget boom are more 2002 than 2020. When's the last time you went comparison shopping for a webcam? How are you enjoying that new inkjet printer? And yet it evokes 2200 as well. Did you expect to spend your summer trying to figure out if an air purifier made by a Bluetooth speaker company was going to be sufficient to clear the atmosphere in your isolation pod on an increasingly hostile planet? One striking detail of this gadget boom is that the horsemen of the once inevitable gadget apocalypse have slowed to a trot. Gartner, the research firm and consultancy, estimated that smartphone sales fell by 20 percent in the second quarter of the year, when much of the world was dealing with severe and increasing Covid 19 caseloads and economies in steep decline. There are new game consoles on the horizon, but they're not yet out; the breakout device in the gaming industry was also the most gadgety of its peers the three year old Nintendo Switch. Before 2020, many popular consumer electronics were receding into the background, more vital and useful than ever but purchased, wielded and discarded with a sense of routine, rather than novelty. In this way, smartphones are like cars: first, obnoxiously out of place; then, ubiquitous and yet more demanding; finally, taken for granted and made invisible, despite remaking the world around them in increasingly ambitious ways. The ways in which people buy gadgets, too, have become less distinct and more infrastructural. Product review sites where readers might have compared wireless headphones are recommending, a few links over, home blood oxygen monitoring equipment. A style and language developed by an enthusiast consumer culture is stretching to accommodate new needs. (For a family stretching to get their kids set up for remote learning, "The Best Laptops" is less relevant than "How to Shop for a Used Laptop or Desktop PC.") Nowhere are the disparate experiences of the pandemic gadget boom more obvious than on Amazon, which has mutated from the "everything store" into a global product distribution utility. Wednesday's selection of featured Prime Day sales seemed COVID aware: cheap childproof tablets, noise canceling headphones, an Instant Pot and countless items to furnish a long haul home office. The generic Amazon brand, once an accused enemy of gadgetry, is now its accomplice. Companies with forgettable names making forgettable products brands created to sell low margin batteries, cables and Bluetooth speakers have grown into miniature Amazon conglomerates. Smoked out Californians logging onto Amazon earlier this year might have encountered a well reviewed option from TaoTronics, which just a few years ago was known almost exclusively for its bargain basement wireless earbuds (come winter, the brand sells space heaters and therapy lamps, too). Anker, which made its name selling portable batteries on Amazon, would now like to sell you a projector, so that you might open a small movie theater in your home, as the big screens in your town shut down, maybe for good. The pandemic gadget boom is a story of both new needs fulfilled and old desires restored. Buying noise canceling headphones is, of course, a consumerist treat, setting aside the new circumstances that made them feel necessary the construction downstairs, the baby 20 feet away, the spouse simultaneously trapped in a video meeting. You can feel the faintest muscle memory activate when you comparison shop for a gadget of a type you've never purchased before, even if that gadget is judging by back orders and top listings on Amazon as the winter creeps closer a S.A.D. lamp or an outdoor radiator. The gadgets that were so recently on their way out were of a different variety, and purchased under different circumstances. Gadget consumption has long been portrayed as an interface with some part of the future: options on a shelf from which you can select how, when, or if you want to engage with whatever is coming next. This was always a pleasant illusion, and it's one the pandemic has made impossible to sustain. In this brutally unexpected year, the luckiest were buying their way through hard times, sustained by the hope that another purchase might fix a new problem, momentarily re empowered, if only by tapping another "Confirm" button, and buoyed by the simple, shameful pleasure of acquisition. The rest were coping, meeting sudden demands or simply trying to stay safe, whatever the cost. Pandemic gadgets don't bother to lie about being the next big thing. They do not even claim to be a way to catch up with the next big thing. Their guaranteed future obsolescence perhaps the defining characteristic of a gadget isn't something to hide, because when it come to pass, it won't be a disappointment. It will be a relief.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Our weekday morning digest that includes consumer news, deals, tips and anything else that travelers may want to know. Savoir Beds has provided beds for the Savoy Hotel in London since 1905. The two have teamed up to offer visitors' tours of the bedmaker's workshop followed by afternoon tea in the Savoy's glass domed lounge, known as the Thames Foyer. The tour lasts about 90 minutes, during which visitors will meet the artisans and learn about their techniques. Visitors then proceed to the Savoy to enjoy the hotel's traditional tea with scones, clotted cream, sandwiches and dessert. The tour is PS140 (about 215) per person, including car transportation in central London. Book through tours savoirbeds.co.uk. Business class passengers flying on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines from Kennedy International Airport in New York to Amsterdam now have new cuisine to look forward to from Beck Bolender, the executive chef of One Twenty One, in North Salem, N.Y., and a former sous chef at Jean Georges in New York. For the airline, Mr. Bolender has created menus that reflect the seasonally inspired dishes he serves in his restaurant. First introduced in June, these dishes include Korean barbecue chicken, miso glazed cod with ginger scented carrots and rigatoni with mushroom Bolognese. The meals are prepared daily in KLM's catering kitchens at J.F.K. The airline has two daily flights between Amsterdam and J.F.K. Sheraton Hotels and Resorts is looking to improve the food served in the lobby bars of its more than 430 hotels around the world. Starting tomorrow, the hotel chain is introducing a program called "Paired," where hotel guests can choose from a menu of locally inspired small plates and enjoy them with an extensive menu of wines by the glass and craft beer from local brewers. Many of the Sheraton properties plan to have regular programs in the lobby bars such as tastings from local breweries and sommelier talks on matching food and wine.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Albert Evans, a retired principal dancer with New York City Ballet who was praised by reviewers and sought after by choreographers for his almost singular combination of fluid elegance and sinewy muscularity, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 46. His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital, was announced by the company, which said only that it followed a short illness. Mr. Evans joined City Ballet in 1988 and was named a soloist in 1991 and a principal four years later, becoming only the second black dancer in the company's history to hold that position. The first, Arthur Mitchell, now 81, performed with City Ballet in the 1950s and '60s and in 1969 helped found Dance Theater of Harlem. After retiring from the stage in 2010, Mr. Evans remained with City Ballet as a ballet master, a post he held at his death. He was also a choreographer, a vocation he began pursuing while still an active dancer. Mr. Evans, who often partnered the ballerina Wendy Whelan, was equally at home in the classical and contemporary repertoire. Prodigiously powerful with a running start he had a six foot vertical leap he could cast his body into whatever form, angular or sinuous, a dance required. "Mr. Evans moves like few others of his generation," the critic Claudia La Rocco wrote in The New York Times in 2006. Though he never worked directly with George Balanchine, who died in 1983, Mr. Evans was known in particular as an interpreter of that choreographer's work. His roles in Balanchine ballets included the Cavalier in his "Nutcracker," Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and Phlegmatic in "The Four Temperaments." Mr. Evans also danced featured roles in "The Sleeping Beauty" and "Romeo Juliet," both choreographed by Peter Martins, City Ballet's ballet master in chief; Jerome Robbins's "Afternoon of a Faun"; and Robert La Fosse's "Concerto in Five Movements," among other works. Albert Pierce Evans was born in Atlanta on Dec. 29, 1968. In grade school he saw a televised production of "The Nutcracker" and was smitten. "I told my mother it was something I wanted to do," Mr. Evans told Newsday in 1995. "She looked at me and gave me this eye, like, why on earth would you want to be a dancer, run around in tights, fly around the stage?" But she relented, and young Albert took lessons in ballet and modern dance from Annette Lewis, who had trained under Martha Graham. He later studied in Atlanta with the noted ballet teacher Patsy Bromley. At 13, he won a place in the summer session of the School of American Ballet, City Ballet's training academy. As an older teenager he returned to New York to study at the school full time. In 1988, while Mr. Evans was still a student there, Eliot Feld cast him in "The Unanswered Question," a ballet, set to the music of Charles Ives, that he choreographed for the American Music Festival, a three week extravaganza that City Ballet presented that year at Lincoln Center. For the same festival, the choreographer William Forsythe chose Mr. Evans to replace an injured dancer in his punk infused ballet, "Behind the China Dogs." Mr. Evans joined City Ballet not long afterward. Mr. Evans's work as a choreographer includes "Haiku," to the music of John Cage, and "Broken Promise," to music by the American composer Mathew Fuerst. Both were performed by City Ballet.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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