#the last time a rocket was sent out from the US was in 2011

[milesonthenet]

Fusionfall: Cartoon Network's BIZARRE thought experiment!

Welcome back to the House of Milesverse, focused on some things comics, some things Transformers, and some things uh - other things.

Today we'll be talk about a special part of my childhood. I've always considered myself a CN kid more than any othr network. Nickelodeon just did not interest me, and i wasn't into Avatar or anything. But i did like Invader Zim. And my 'love' for Disney only came from the movies, and Kingdom Hearts.

But Cartoon Network? That was a different story. I loved Cartoon Network, and it was the network i watched the most. It just had a lot of fun stuff that kid-me was into.

Kid-Me loved Ben 10, and he really did enjoy Dexter's Laboratory. He'd sit down and watch Powerpuff Girls, or Cow & Chicken. He used to watch Scooby-Doo with his grandma. He even enjoyed early Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Steven Universe.

Total Drama, Johnny Test, The Secret Saturdays, Generator Rex, Teen Titans, Johnny Bravo. There was no limit to the amount of stuff that I'd watch. My entertainment wasn't just playing games or on the computer. It was sitting in front of the TV and seeing what I enjoyed.

But you know what Kid me loved that had - probably most of these things in them?

Well if you weren't clued in by the opening title, I'll show you;

This game got me into playing later MMO games like Elsword and DC Universe Online. It was familiar, it had all sorts of cartoon network characters in it. It remains a big point of my childhood because of it.

So today? Put on your nostalgia lenses. As House of MilesVerse presents it's own miniature REVIEW of;

CARTOON NETWORK UNIVERSE: FUSIONFALL

Making of Fusionfall

Fusionfall's story begins with Cartoon Network and one of their first 'big' forays into gaming. The game was published by Cartoon Network, with a business model planned out by Turner Entertainment. Its developers were Grigon Entertainment, a south korean studio chosen for their art style.

Speaking of? Fusionfall's art style is definitely interesting. It portrays the setting with more anime-esque styling. Characters still retained some of their cartoony looks, however, so while it was different, it still worked.

In the game however, it uh, was an interesting experiment.

Admittedly? Eddy isn't the weirdest looking one here. THAT award goes to;

That's Jake, as in Jake the Dog. He looks like that and is one of the only NPCs with no animations. He's just static, his eyes boring deep into your soul...

Jake knows what you did.

Anyways, Fusionfall is an MMORPG where you play as an avatar. You have some limited but still versatile customization options. Your character uses many weapons, including rifles, pistols, rockets, and melee weapons.

Original? Academy?

The game had two different versions, with one ultimately replacing the other. The original was available from 2009-2011 and gave you a simple story. Your character was a hero testing out a time machine, who wound up trapped in the future. You begin a quest to come back to the past, and eventually you return with the knowledge needed to create nanos.

Don't worry about that, we will get into that bit later.

After the birthday bash, the game's tutorial and introduction was overhauled. Newer characters were added - or at least new for when the game was out. For example? Finn, Jake, Generator Rex, and the Sym-Bionic Titan were all new additions, alongside Chowder, flapjack, and the Saturdays. In addition? Mordecai, Rigby, Gumball, and Darwin were all represented through Nanos.

This version of the game is Academy, which lasts from 2011-2013 when the game inevitably shut down its servers. Academy gives you two bonuses for your character: gliding and dodging. Your multidirectional dodge lets you move from front, back, or side to side.

The overhaul changed your origin story too. You train in the null void (it's a Ben 10 thing), and then Providence. Eventually after completing enough missions, you're sent off to get your guide, completing the tutorial.

Your Guides:

The game had four guides available to you at the start. The good thing about them is that you could change missions. You could swap from one guide to another, but you would start at the first level. If you chose to swap back, then you would be able to resume from your initial position.

These four guides are:

Ben Tennyson

Edd, aka 'Double D'

Dexter

And Mojo Jojo

The guides all have different missions too. Dexter wants to find out where the missing heroes from the world are. Ben Tennyson wants to make sure Lord Fuse (We'll get to that) doesn't get his hands on alien technology. These two are pretty simple.

Mojo Jojo wants to build an army of super-monkeys powered by Chemical X and fusion matter to defeat Lord Fuse. Naturally, the player foils his schemes each time - thanks to Mandy, and Dexter, - because he's evil.

Edd is... not what I would have expected, but he wants to stop Fuse from gaining buried candy and treasure maps. I'm surprised at his inclusion, especially compared to the others. But I think he also helps appeal to the comedic leanings of Cartoon Network.

What's the story?

Now we get to the FUN bit!

Fusionfall's story centers on a connected setting between the TV Series. The events of Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory, Ben 10, and Ed, Edd n Eddy are all connected. All the characters know each other, and everything is united.

The main 'threat' of the series is Planet Fusion, a large gooey planet that's assimilated other worlds. This time it wants to assimilate Earth, breaking it down like it's done to many worlds. The various heroes of the Cartoon Network universe unite to stop Planet Fusion from taking their planet.

This isn't just an easy fight for the heroes, though. Planet Fusion creates dangerous monsters made out of fusion matter to terrorize the people. Worse, they've created evil doppelgangers of our favorite CN characters, named Fusions!

It's a big war between two sides, and your character's caught in the middle. As mentioned above, your character is accidentally sent to the future. He returns to the past with the nano blueprints, so that the resistance may have a fighting chance against Fuse.

Now? It's you, the legendary hero, helping take down Fuse's forces across the world. You lose, Fuse.

The Fusions, and the Nanos

This has been stated above, but it would be easier to hop through it again. The Fusions are evil doppelgangers of your favorite Cartoon Network characters. They may look similar, but they are not nice, and exist to help Planet Fusion move his goals along.

Fusions are always found in fusion lairs, which are in infected zones. Infected Zones are the areas most communicated with fusion matter. There are many infected zones, and they all require you talk to a Dexbot to get in.

In these infected zones, you will usually find more than one fusion lair. This is where the Fusions lurk - are you tired of hearing the word 'fusion'? Don't be, we've got a long way to go. Entering the fusion lair usually requires you fight your way through a horde of monsters, and then the fusion itself.

When the fusion finally dies, you get a nano, made from a personal item of the character, fusion matter, and your own imagination energy. This is just the story reason though, the video game reason is just "kill this fusion, and get a nano". It's adorable, by the way.

Nanos have special abilities, which come in a set of three. With a nano you can get bonus fusion matter from missions, have extra money, make monsters fall asleep, sneak past monsters, and more. You only get to pick one ability, but don't fret, you can change it later.

I always look back and think the Nanos are a refreshing gimmick. Imagine being able to carry a chibi-fied version of Mojo Jojo around. They come with their own voice lines too, with higher-pitched voices.

The base game had around 36 nanos which you gained for each level. Academy added a few notable bonuses, with nanos themed off of more-recent CN characters. In addition, you could use a code to gain access to a nano.

The inevitable shutdown (and potential successors):

August 29, 2013, saw Fusionfall close its servers and shut down. I didn't understand it at the time, but I moved on. It was a sad moment for many fans who had gotten attached to the game series.

Other successors have tried to follow the game series. Fusionfall Retro was released as a revival of the original game before the Academy relaunch. Fusionfall Legacy was going to be released as an upscaled version of the original game with additiona l content.

Both games were struck down by a DMCA issued by Cartoon Network. Retro was removed entirely, and Legacy was canceled before release. Retro is playable through 'Retrobution', a modified spin on Retro.

In addition, both the original and academy games are playable after years of being 'gone'. This is through OpenFusion, an unofficial server that preserves both original iterations of the game. Retrobution is also made using this server.

Conclusion:

Fusionfall was a big part of my childhood, especially as a CN Kid. I'm glad i got to make those memories while playing it. However, I never got to beat the original game because i stopped playing.

Things are different now, and after playing on Openfusion, I managed to beat all 36 levels. I was happy to finally see that through. If I could time travel, I'd go back, and fist-bump my younger self. We finally did it, and we saw it through to the end.

Fusionfall was a cute idea, and the strength of its concept alone could prove useful. However, I don't think it could find an audience in today's market. Outside of old fans, I'm not sure if 'new' kids are as attached to cartoon network as the past few generations were.

Regardless? It could be cool to imagine what it would be like now. Better game engines combined with better controls. Newer cartoon network series like Steven Universe, We Bare Bears, or Craig of The Creek. You could even throw in some oddballs, like Scooby-Doo.

I sure hope you all had fun reading this one. I'll be back later on with another dig. Maybe I can show you guys why I love the Cybertron Transformers games so much. After all, they are also a part of my childhood!

The time is now. The hero is you.

[bellagoths-lobotomy]

𝓜eet, Violette. Violette was born Irina Romanovna T. to Queen Cordelia in 1911 in the Simviet Union, Sulssia. Her only daughter, she was sent to Champs Les Sims at age 17 to have her name changed to Violette and be married to the heir to the throne to forward the royal lineage and strengthen relations between the nations. ...Except, this storyline was depressing. Violette was the first heiress to the Royal Legacy I attempted ages ago, but watching this little girl grow up and autonomously -- albeit demurely -- rebel against the chains that bound her sortttt offffff broke my heart. She was a genius; she enjoyed unconventional music; she maxed out her manners and empathy boxes; mastered piano, violin, ballet, athletics, logic, rocket science, knitting, crochet, horseback riding, and painting; she received the best marks in her classes...all to be...married off? I couldn't bring myself to let her become the broodmare of another sim and abandon her and all of her dreams. I decided that if anyone could figure out how to build and use an interdimensional-travel device, it would be her. So...that's exactly what she did. To the ignorance of her maids, advisors, and endless list of doter-on-ers, Violette built her teensy-tiny piece of technological freedom.

...Only, the fall of technology -- particularly the pedestrian cobbled-togethers of a teenager in the early 1900s -- is that it is persnickety at best. In her only scrap of privacy, in a secret chamber beneath the library where she snuck off to during her lessons, she turned her device on for the first time, and was transported to three separate universes where she had her wish at long last: to be like other girls. The circumstances she began with in all universes were largely the same: she was transported to an abandoned trailer, in a reality where her parents and her were low-income and died in a tragic car accident the night before, slipping into ''her'' place seamlessly. But the way she's navigated each life has varied across the stars. In Pleasantview, year 2000, she fell in love with the equally-broody and proper Alexander Goth, where she now raises their vampiric daughter Briar-Rose on their large Veronaville estate after a long and decorated career as a ballerina. In Bridgeport, year 2011, she accidentally rose to stardom in her pursuits as an actress (''best girl'') where her old-Hollywood charm and eyes reminiscent of Liz Taylor captured to gaze of Matthew Hamming. Of course, as he does, Hamming left her heartbroken and thrust into the limelight after a failure to commit (or further her career). This kicked off a series of toxic entanglements with athletes like Richie Striker and and a career as a model. With a lifelong love for fashion, she made do with this new career path and eventually found true love with Yousef Nagi, a fellow explorer she met on an adventure to Al-Simhara. The two are settled in Northern Bridgeport and are expecting their first daughter. But now, in Willow Creek....? While her story continues in all realities, I'm taking it the slowest in TS4 and will post the most of her from this timeline. Originally, she fell in love once more with Alexander Goth, who's intellect and etiquette ensnared her once again. But it seems their names were not written side-by-side in the stars after all, as this Alexander is... different. Maybe it is the presence of his mother and a life that never lacked love, maybe it is the era, whatever the case may be, he'd gone wrong. Their relationship quickly became physical, with him losing friendship for her at every friendly or quirky interaction she used with him as opposed to romantic. When she graduated and went to Uni early -- answering an add to live with the polar-opposite Pleasant twins -- he went to prom without her. These resentments boiled over when she came home from finals to see Alexander in the dining room foyer, flirting with Lilith. She, of course, broke up with him and naturally, adopted a kitten thirty sim-minutes later. And that's where she is presently! ˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗ She is pursuing a degree in Fine Arts at Britechester Uni (which may be a bit too close to home...) in the hopes of becoming a famous runway model afterwards, like the idols of the 90s and 2000s she looked to for maternal guidance in this strange new world. But she may change her mind and decide to be an astronaut later. She has the time and the freedom to be everything she wants to be, she feels. She adores Barbie, the message that a woman can be everything she wants -- to see princesses and lawyers and models and doctors exist within the same woman -- resonated deeply with her. She loves fashion and dressed in her mum's gowns as a young girl, and has taken full advantage of all of the fun she can have with her style when there is no one around to fuss with her hemlines and colour co-ords. She developed a like for metal music and hates the colour yellow. Her kitten Duchess is her only family and truest confidant. With her 20th Birthday and new year at Uni approaching, I can't wait to see where life takes this bright girlie!... ♡₊˚

[blunightskyy]

THEY LAUNCHED A ROCKET!!! HELLLLL YEAHH!!!!!!!

[phroyd]

Trump is trying to take us to War with Iran! - Phroyd

BREAKING: Pentagon launched airstrike that killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, Defense Sec. Mark Esper says.

Esper said Thursday night that Soleimani was "actively developing plans" to attack US troops and diplomats.The killing of a senior figure linked to Tehran’s support for foreign proxy groups is certain to heighten tensions between the United States and Iran. This breaking story will be updated.

An airstrike near the Baghdad airport has killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and another senior Iranian-linked figure in Baghdad, Iraqi state television reported Thursday.

No one immediately asserted responsibility for the strike, which Iraqi television said also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iraqi militia commander. But the death of Iran’s most revered military leader appeared likely to send tensions soaring between the United States and Iran.

Soleimani, who is closely linked to Iran’s foreign proxy groups, has taken on an enhanced role in Iraq as the country’s Shiite militias have gained new clout in recent years.

Pentagon officials declined to comment on the airstrike.

The attack comes amid already increased friction between Washington and Iran over what U.S. officials say is a campaign of sustained aggression against the United States and its allies.

Earlier Thursday, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said Iran and its proxies may be preparing renewed strikes on U.S. personnel in Iraq, even as the Trump administration increases the number of troops in the region.

“There are some indications out there that they may be planning additional attacks,” Esper said at the Pentagon, a day after members of an Iranian-linked militia, Kataib Hezbollah, withdrew from the area around the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad following their assault on the diplomatic facility.

“So do I think they may do something?” he said. “Yes, and they will likely regret it.”

The attempted siege — in which militiamen threw molotov cocktails, stormed into a reception area and then established a camp outside the sprawling American compound — marked the most intense flare-up in U.S.-Iran tensions in Iraq since the end of the Iraq War in 2011.

The incident has strained relations with the Baghdad government, which has sought to maintain stable ties with both its chief Western backer, the United States, and its powerful neighbor, Iran, and the violence posed a new test of the Trump administration’s hawkish policy against Tehran.

After the airstrike that Iraqi state TV said killed Soleimani, there were reports of gunfire erupting near the airport at the time of the strike, and the Iraqi army command said three ­Katyusha rockets, which typically are fired by Iranian-backed militias, exploded nearby.

Kataib Hezbollah’s targeting of the embassy followed U.S. strikes over the weekend on militia facilities in Iraq and Syria. Officials said they came in response to repeated rocket and artillery attacks on U.S. facilities, including one recent incident that killed an American contractor in Iraq. At least 25 militia members were killed in the retaliatory strikes.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have been building. The Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and has since imposed new sanctions that have devastated the Iranian economy. In June, President Trump authorized and then called off airstrikes in Iran following Tehran’s downing of an American surveillance drone.

Trump threatens Iran after embassy attack, but remains reluctant to get more involved in region

“The game has changed,” Esper said. “And we’re prepared to do what is necessary to defend our personnel and our interests and our partners in the region.”

He said that could include military action to preempt militia attacks if U.S. officials learn about them ahead of time.

Speaking alongside Esper, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the embassy compound, which contains hardened offices and residences and occupies more than 100 acres in Baghdad’s international zone, remained secure.

“There is sufficient combat power there, air and ground, that anyone who attempts to overrun that will run into a buzz saw,” Milley said.

In response to the attack on the embassy, the administration has deployed 750 troops from a special quick-action battalion from the 82nd Airborne Division to Kuwait, a staging ground for forces going into Iraq. About 100 Marines were sent into Baghdad to protect the embassy.

Milley said the increase in forces in Kuwait was needed in part to compensate for the Marine deployment and ensure readiness to respond to other possible incidents in the region.

About 5,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq as part of efforts to combat the remnants of the Islamic State and support Iraqi security forces. While the number of diplomats there is far fewer than it has been in past years, hundreds of embassy personnel were forced to shelter in safe rooms during the militia siege.

Milley also appeared to question whether the Iraqi government, which includes senior officials seen as having strong allegiances to Tehran, intended to take action to check militia groups.

Last year, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi issued an order aimed at strengthening government control over militia units, which have gained new military and political clout since 2014 because of their instrumental role in battling the Islamic State.

“They have the capability,” Milley said. “It’s a question of political will, and that’s not for us to decide. That’s for the internal political dynamics of Iraq.”

The Iraqi government has been in crisis for months amid massive popular protests focused on widespread corruption and, to a lesser extent, Iranian influence in Iraq. The mass mobilizations prompted Abdul Mahdi to resign late last year, though he remains in office in a caretaker capacity.

It is unclear in the wake of the U.S. strikes and the embassy episode whether some Iraqi politicians’ calls for a full American withdrawal will gain momentum.

Speaking in a subsequent Fox News interview, Esper suggested a potential shift in U.S. strategy in Iraq, saying the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate “remains physically defeated, if you will,” and now the administration’s “aim is to deter further Iranian bad behavior that has been going on now for over 40 years.”

Asked whether Iranian leaders needed a “punch in the nose” that goes beyond sanctions and tough rhetoric, Esper declined to answer directly. The Trump administration has already sent thousands of troops and additional assets to the Middle East, including missile defense systems, in response to the perceived Iranian threat.

Esper said Iran must end its nuclear and long-range missile programs, stop taking hostages and move away from “malign behavior where they are inspiring terrorist groups, and resourcing and directing them all the way from Africa across the Middle East and into Afghanistan.”

Col. Myles Caggins, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, said the embassy episode had not damaged efforts to target the once-powerful militant group, which no longer holds territory but continues to conduct insurgent attacks.

“Although they are a dangerous distraction, recent attacks from Kataib Hezbollah militias have not deterred us from partnering with local security forces for training missions and outside-the-wire operations to catch ISIS members,” he said in an email, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

Phroyd

[loudlytransparenttrash]

Donald Trump may have perfectly played the Iran conflict. He’s been criticized for different reasons by the left and the right but it seems like Trump has effectively ended Iran’s continuing escalations without putting more American lives on the line. If this is where it ends, it’s a major win for Trump. 

Viewers of mainstream media were quick to assume Trump had just ignited the start of World War III. Of course, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, Trump’s actions in Iran proved to be critical in deterring war. The media were quick to focus on Trump’s supposed “random” “assassination” of a “revered military figure” and called it an “act of war” but even today, none have bothered to cover the crucial details that led up to that decision.

Last May, Iran began deterring, seizing and attacking ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a channel for a third of the world’s petroleum, including bombing three oil tankers. One of the ships was set to deliver oil to the U.S. In June, Iran shot down a U.S. drone. Trump ordered and then called off retaliatory strikes. In September, rebels attacked Abqaiq, the massive Saudi oil processing facility, resulting in a loss of 5 percent of the world’s oil production. Germany, the U.K. and France concluded that Iran was behind the attacks. In November, Iran announced they were increasing the enrichment of uranium, ignoring the limits in their nuclear agreement. Finally, in December, Iran attacked U.S. interests in Iraq, killed an American contractor and then used proxies to directly attack the U.S. embassy. After every Iranian attack, Trump decided against retaliation, so Iran pushed harder, eventually doing the one thing Trump used to draw his red line. Rather than push, Trump punched back, just as he promised he would.  

In May, Trump sent Mike Pompeo to deliver a message to Iran that if even one American were killed by the regime or its proxies, there’d be a U.S. military counterattack. Trump kept his word. Every one of these attacks crossed the red line Trump had set for Iran and each deserved a strong response. But Trump chose not to, until they killed an American citizen and attacked the embassy. Yet the media and Democrat politicians pretended it was a random and unlawful stunt by Trump and frequently suggested Iran is now justified to do whatever they wish in their own retaliation, and it’s all Trump’s fault. They’ve even gone so far to blame Trump for Iran shooting down the Ukrainian plane.

Democrat Jackie Speier appeared on CNN declaring that Iran shooting down Flight 752 “is yet another example of collateral damage from the actions that have been taken in a provocative way by the President of the United States.” 2020 Democratic contender Pete Buttigieg hinted at a similar notion, tweeting, “Innocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat.” He also insinuated that Trump’s decision was unlawful. Another 2020 Democrat candidate, Amy Klobuchar, also falsely claimed Trump had acted without congressional authority. Elizabeth Warren described Soleimani simply as “a senior foreign military official” that was “assassinated” by the “reckless president” and blamed it all on Trump’s “escalations.” First off, American troops are lawfully in Iraq, the airstrike was duly authorized, justified and in no need of congressional authorization. Second, there was no “crossfire.” Iran was the only one shooting missiles. Trying to equate or tie America into Iran killing 176 people to “own” Trump is sick. Also, what’s up with making a terrorist leader out to be a decent guy? 

Soleimani was the head of the Quds Force, a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a terrorist organization. For more than two decades, Suleimani provided Islamic terrorists in Iraq with rockets, bombs and projectiles designed to slice through American tanks. In 2011, he was sanctioned for plotting to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. Suleimani also provided arms and aid to Hezbollah and Hamas - the terrorist groups hellbent on destroying Israel and killing Jews - and orchestrating their operations throughout the Middle East. He rallied militias in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan whose members were deployed to fight against the U.S. He glorified jihad, personally funded and empowered terrorists groups which killed hundreds of American soldiers. 

Media reports shared the Iranian propaganda that Iranian citizens were saddened by the death of Soleimani. NBC News showcased the “huge crowds” that turned out to allegedly mourn Soleimani’s death. CNN also reported, “crowds swarm Tehran to mourn slain Iran military leader Soleimani.” These reports conveniently omit the fact that most of this crowd was forced to attend Soleimani’s mourning. A free Iranian journalist wrote that the government forced students and officials to attending Soleimani’s funeral by busing students in and ordering businesses closed. “According to videos sent to me by people inside the country, the authorities are making kids write essays praising the fallen commander. First-graders who didn’t know how to write were encouraged to cry for Soleimani.” 

Over the weekend, as a result of the confession from Iran that it did in fact kill the 176 passengers after denying any wrongdoing and accusing America of a false flag and “psychological warfare,” hundreds of Iranians took to the street, demanding that their leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei step down. Videos circulating Twitter feature Iranian students gathered outside their university in Tehran, shouting “Commander-in-Chief resign, resign.” While the American left blames Trump for everything that has gone wrong in Iran, Iranian protesters continue to fiercely condemn the Iranian regime. Much to the left’s shock, Iranians aren’t sharing their same level of hatred of America and Trump, that’s why not a single Democrat has mentioned the protests. In a recent video, it shows university students in Tehran refusing to tread on the American flag. Also, Trump’s tweet of support to the protesters quickly became the most liked tweet ever in the region. These protests are especially monumental considering 1,500 Iranian protesters were killed in less than two weeks late last year. 

The day after America responded, Trump said: “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war. Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world.” This does not sound like a guy trying to begin a world war, as many have stated. Donald Trump is many things but he’s not an ideologue. He stood by for months while Iran took increasingly belligerent actions that threatened world oil markets and shipping channels. The president gave a clear warning to Iran that his red line was the loss of an American life. Iran crossed that line and Trump responded forcefully. It’s extremely likely that the Iranian regime would have pressed forward with more brazen attacks if Trump didn’t respond. There's still time that it might but in the wake of Iran’s weak response, it appears that Trump pushed back just hard enough to send a strong message to the Iranians without entangling America in another unwanted war. For now, Trump’s plan has worked. Just don’t expect the media to ever admit it. 

[radwolf76]

FLASHBack: Week 105 - Animator vs. Animation

Today on FLASHBack, we're going to get a little meta. Over the last two years, we've looked at roughly over six-hundred fifty Animations by various Flash Artists, but have only rarely taken the step back to look at the Animation process itself. So that's exactly what we're going to do, but not in the conventional way. Instead, we're going to be looking at a series of Flash Animations that takes its cues from the Looney Tunes classic Duck Amuck, in which a cartoon character ends up getting into a fight with the animator who's bringing them to life. And also touch upon intellectual property theft by a notorious content aggregator website along the way.   On 3 June 2006, Alan "noogai" Becker uploaded Animator vs. Animation to Newgrounds. The next day, it was Frontpaged and took Daily 2nd Place, and by the end of the week it was the Weekly Users' Choice and the Review Crew Pick. The animation was of a stick figure "victim" being drawn in Flash, only to be tormented by the animator until the stick figure's selection box gets broken, letting him escape across Flash's user interface to take hold of the various drawing tools to defend himself.   Five days later on 8 June 2006, the same Flash was uploaded to Albino Blacksheep. It was from there that the website eBaum's World ripped the Flash file to upload to their own site a day later. eBaum's had a bad reputation for stealing independent creators' viral content and hosting it on their own site without permission or compensation, even going so far as to strip credits and source watermarks from the content before uploading it to their own site. This is what they had done with Albino Blacksheep's authorized copy of Animator vs. Animation, but what eBaum's didn't know was that in addition to the visible "hosted at albinoblacksheep.com" that they removed, there was other tracking code embedded in the Flash that meant they'd been caught red-handed.

  On 12 June 2006, the siterunner of Albino Blacksheep made a statement about the content theft. eBaum's World then approached Alan directly with an offer of $250 to buy the permission to continue to host the Flash on their site (as well as naming him the "winner" of a nebulous "Best Flash" contest that had a prize of an additional $1000). However, this money came with a price: Becker had to submit a statement for eBaum's to post, making it look like he was clearing them of blame.   Alan, who was 17 at the time, and from a family that was not well off, had initially taken the money, but then sent it back, demanding that his Flash and the "Statement" he'd made be taken down. In a post made by Albino Blacksheep on 23 June 2006, it was pointed out that the statement had been pre-scripted by eBaum's to carefully sidestep the fact that while they had contacted Alan ahead of time asking to be able to host his animation, he'd told them no, and so they went and stole his file anyways. That post included an apology to the Flash community from Becker for falling into eBaum's trap. The animation and the statement were removed from eBaum's on 26 June 2006.   After receiving funding from Atom Films, Becker would revisit the concept with Animator vs. Animation 2, posted to Newgrounds on 15 Mar 2007. It took the same slate of awards as the first, with the exception of being the Daily Feature instead of Daily 2nd Place. This time around the stick figure isn't labeled "victim" but instead "Chosen One" (possibly a Matrix reference). He immediately breaks out of his selection box on his own, and begins breaking the Flash user interface with fireballs. This time around The Animator has prepared an arsenal of weapons in Flash's library of animatable "Symbol" objects, including a SPNKR rocket launcher from Halo. However, the Chosen one breaks though Flash to get to the Windows XP desktop beneath (complete with the Bliss wallpaper). There he battles with the fox from the Firefox icon and the Stick Figure from the AOL Instant Messenger Icon. Finally, he's contained by an Avast Antivirus Scan (though alas, Avast's language settings were on plain English, and not he infinitely more fun "Pirate" setting). The animation ends with The Chosen One having been tamed and being used as a Pop-Up Blocker. Later, this animation would get a Live Orchestral Score courtesy of Joe-Pietro Abela, who used it for his Masters project at the Berklee College of Music.   On 6 August 2011, Alan would upload the third chapter in the series to Newgrounds, where it again took the quadfecta of top awards. In this installment, The Chosen One breaks free of his enslavement as a Pop-Up Blocker, to again spread havoc throughout The Animator's computer. This time around the battle ranges across such iconic windows software as Microsoft Word, Solitaire, & Minesweeper. Clippy the Office Assistant proves to be a formidable foe, but eventually, The Animator has to open up Flash to draw a new red stick figure to be "The Dark Lord", coding him to go after The Chosen One. In the end however, the two team up and end up causing a Blue Screen of Death on The Animator's computer.   It would be another three years before Becker would put Animator vs. Animation IV on Newgrounds, 2 October 2014, to the usual maximum acclaim. For this chapter, Alan had turned to Kickstarter to get support for production, raising $11,280 in donations. With that funding, he expanded the scope of the series, by not just showing what was happening on the computer screen, but also incorporating real world video of himself as The Animator. The Chosen One has a Second Coming, and when The Animator discovers this, the ensuing battle ranges from Facebook to The Animator's iPhone, and then back onto the computer via Dropbox. In his process of containing The Second Coming, The Animator realizes that The Second Coming is better at animating than he is, and strikes a bargain with him, allowing his continued existence in return for tutoring.   After that, Alan would begin doing spinoffs, such as Animation vs. Minecraft and Animation vs. YouTube, where his stick figures would begin having adventures outside the context of Adobe Flash and interactions with The Animator. These would then be followed up with Animation vs League of Legends, Animation vs Pokemon, and Animation vs Super Mario Bros. However, in between those spinoff episodes, he would continue to produce the occasional short animation for the main Animator vs. Animation series, and on 5 Dec 2020, he compiled those shorts into Animator vs. Animation V, which was uploaded to YouTube on 5 December 2020.   That's all for FLASHBack this week. Next week, THE END.

[thedcdunce]

Blue Beetle

“I got magic armor, dunno how it works. Got a magic rock inside my body, can't get it out, Went into outer space n' helped them, but now the superheroes hate me, gonna kill me, I'm the Blue Beetle.” - Blue Beetle

Real Name: Jaime Reyes

Gender: Male

Height: 5′ 8″

Weight: 145 lbs (66 kg)

Eyes: Brown

Hair: Black

Equipment:

Blue Beetle Scarab

Universe: New Earth

Base of Operations: El Paso, Texas

Citizenship: American

Parents: 

Alberto Reyes; father

Bianca Reyes; mother

Marital Status: Single

Occupation: 

Adventurer

Student

First Appearance: Infinite Crisis #3 (February, 2006)

Last Appearance: Teen Titans Vol 3 #100 (October, 2011)

Equipment

Blue Beetle Scarab: Presently bonded to Jaime's spine, this symbiosis gives Jaime access to the Scarab's powers whenever he chooses. The Scarab can, and will, use its powers of its own accord; Jaime, however, can override the Scarab if need be. Should Jaime fall prey to a mind-altering power, the Scarab will take control of the armor.

History

Jaime Reyes was the third Blue Beetle, a member of the Teen Titans.

Origin

Jaime Reyes was a relatively normal high school student from El Paso, Texas. His father ran a garage, his mother was a paramedic, and his little sister was a brat. Jaime hung out with his two best friends Brenda and Paco, the mediator between the hard-working Brenda and the laid-back Paco. By both Brenda and Paco's accounts, he was a good friend, the kind of person who could let them be themselves, and who could always make things better. Jaime aimed to help his father out at the garage, but Alberto turned him down, not wanting to see his son grow up too fast.

Everything fell apart with the onset of the Infinite Crisis.

The Blue Beetle Scarab

Some while before, Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle, had come into possession of the Blue Beetle Scarab, the artifact which had given Dan Garrett, the first Blue Beetle, his powers. The Scarab had been presumed destroyed early in Ted's superhero career, but it was discovered intact in a pyramid in the Middle East. Ted lost the Scarab on a visit to the Rock of Eternity, home of the wizard Shazam. Shortly afterwards, he met his death at the hands of Maxwell Lord, Black King of Checkmate.

The Rock of Eternity was later destroyed in mystical battle between Shazam and the Spectre, its contents blasted across the world. The Blue Beetle Scarab came down in El Paso, fire and portent in its wake.

Jaime discovered the Scarab on the way home from school with Paco and Brenda, half-buried in a disused lot. He took it home, curious as to what it might be. That night, the Scarab came alive, and grafted itself to the base of Jaime's spine, inducing strange dreams in Jaime.

He also got into trouble with a local gang of magic meta humans called the Posse. Mistaking him for a magic meta human, they attempted to magically scan him and invite him to join. Jaime declined the offer, while the Scarab had no intention of being scanned, and it almost killed Probe. It easily bested the rest of the Posse.

The next night Booster Gold sought Jaime out, and took him to meet Batman. Booster had been to the future, where he had learned that Batman would seek out Brother Eye and fail - but he had also learned the Blue Beetle Scarab was the one thing capable of seeing Brother Eye.

Jaime went into space with Batman and his team. The Scarab saw where Brother Eye was hidden, and pulled the rogue satellite back into reality. Jaime, together with Black Canary and Green Arrow, destroyed Brother Eye's dimensional stabilizer, preventing it from escaping outside reality again. Once Batman's team had sent Eye plummeting Earthwards, the Scarab shunted Jaime outside dimensions itself, seeking to escape the Green Lanterns on the spaceship.

Unfortunately, the chaos of the dimensional stabilizer's destruction dilated time for Jaime. As far as he knew, he had only been outside dimensions a couple of minutes; on Earth, however, a whole year had passed.

One Year Later

The next thing Jaime remembered, he had come down in the desert outside El Paso, and Guy Gardner was trying to kill him. Once Guy realized he was fighting a kid, he broke off the fight, but not without promising Jaime he would be back.

Jaime eventually managed to find his way back home, only to discover his year-long absence. In that time, his father had been crippled, forcing him to walk with a cane, Paco had teamed up with the Posse, and Brenda had been taken in by her aunt after her abusive father died in a DUI. He revealed his identity as the Blue Beetle to both his his family and his two friends; while his father and friends were understanding, his mother became suspicious and disbelieving that he was really Jaime, and his sister Milagro became terrified of him. It wasn't until Jaime returned to the scene of his rearrival and recalled the memories of what had happened that the two finally reconnected with and accepted him.

Jaime's attempts to learn more about the Scarab led him to the Posse - and involved him in their conflict with El Paso's resident crimelord, La Dama, as she sought to bring the magical metas of El Paso under her control.

Her henchman Diviner even got so far in manipulating The Bottom Feeder to abduct the baby daughter of the Posse leader Damper, Alina Jaime fought to save the baby, discovering he could permanently slay the Bottom Feeder but despite of the Bottom Feeders own wishes he refused as Jaime was not a murderer.

After that, Jaime and the Posse launched a raid on Warehouse 13 where La Dama was holding her collection of magic-metas, only to find most of them were happy where they were. However, the Posse managed to convince a good half of them that they could return to their ordinary lives, promising the Blue Beetle would defend them. La Dama had no choice but to accept this, or risk facing her guests' "objections." Jaime and La Dama made a reluctant truce - both knew the other's secret identity, and could make it public whenever they chose.

Jaime initially believed the Scarab was a mystical artifact, up until Peacemaker arrived, revealing that it was a piece of extraterrestrial technology. Jaime's search for more information took him back to where he had crash landed in the desert, in an attempt to find out about his missing year. He then headed out on Dan Garrett's trail, looking to find out what the first Blue Beetle had known about the Scarab.

The Reach

The current Dan Garret was the original Blue Beetles granddaughter and claimed she had the right of the scarab, but since it was stuck to Jaime's spine she let it go.

However, it was Jaime's investigation into a cattle mutilation outside El Paso that would provide his biggest lead on the Scarab. His confrontation with the monstrous creation responsible led him to the Reach, the alien civilization who had created the Scarab and left it on Earth.

Jaime discovered that the Reach were galactic conquerors, who planned to add Earth to their list of conquests. Initially, the Scarab had been programmed to be obedient to the Reach, and to subordinate its host's will to them as well. The Reach had intended to present the Scarab's host as Earth's protector, before moving to establish their influence over the planet.

However, during the centuries the Scarab had spent on Earth, it had been infused with magic, the magical "corruption" preventing the Reach from controlling it. With Jaime's assistance, it had started to develop free will and independence, overriding the Reach's deepest programming.

Nevertheless, the Reach still intended to take over the planet, even without the Scarab to help them. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, the Reach were peaceful "galactic traders." Their secret bases and technology were hidden away, out of phase with the rest of the world, and Jaime was the only one who could see them.

Seeing Jaime and the Scarab as the biggest threat to their plans, the Reach attempted to eliminate them through the use of deniable agents, including Earth's supervillains. Jaime, meanwhile, tried to find out what the Reach were up to, and how he could stop them.

Worried that the Scarab might still be a threat, Jaime sought help from the local branch of S.T.A.R. Labs. An encounter with Livewire, who was being assessed there at the time, triggered a strange reaction in both Livewire and the Scarab, resulting in a fight. Superman put a halt to the battle, and helped to reassure Jaime about himself and the Scarab.

Jaime also assisted Traci Thirteen in foiling Eclipso's attempt to kidnap a baby with great magical potential and use it as a new, uncorrupted host. During the course of the adventure, Jaime and Traci developed a romantic interest in each other, and remained in long-distance contact after Eclipso' defeat.

When the Reach recruited Lobo to prevent the launch of a rocket containing anti-Reach technology, Jaime teamed up with the Teen Titans to make sure the rocket lifted off safely. Afterwards, the Titans invited Jaime to Titans Tower, so he could hang out with them, get training, and learn how to fight. Jaime took them up on the invitation - and found himself helping the Titans fight off their future incarnations, the Titans of Tomorrow.

Finally, Jaime and the Scarab managed to uncover the Reach's scheme and destroy it, but also ended up destroying any evidence of the scheme,

By this point, the Scarab had become an independent, free-willed entity in its own right, naming itself Khaji Da. Together, Jaime and the Scarab devised a plan to bring the Reach down before they tried conquering Earth again.

Jaime allowed himself to be captured by the Reach, giving the Scarab the chance to hack into the Reach's computers and broadcast their invasion plans worldwide. The Reach's Negotiator, driven to breaking point, ordered Earth's destruction - but again, Jaime and the Scarab intervened, stopping the world-rippers before they could be activated.

The Reach were forced to withdraw, claiming that the Negotiator had "gone rogue." The Scarab, however, had had a conversation with the other Scarabs onboard the Reach ship - a little surprise for the Reach.

Battle For The Border

Jaime is next seen with a man dog creature who was battling another man for the name Hell Hound. He tried to convince both of them to take other names and quit there fighting. The two did not and attacked Jaime. He quickly dispatched them both. Flying away he came to the border where Peacemaker was fighting a group of super powered criminals. When he arrived they took a hostage. Jaime had to call of Peacemaker to save her but the kidnapper threw her off the side of the cliff. Jaime saved her but the group had run away when he tried to use the Beetle to track them he found out there was to much interference. The girl he saved ended up needing a place to stay and ended up staying with Paco and his family.

Fun Facts

Jaime is Mexican-American; one of his grandmothers lives in Mexico City.

Jaime, or at least his family, is Christian; there is a picture of Jesus in the Reyes house, and Alberto makes mention of attending church.

One disturbing event in the Scarab's history suggests how alien the Scarab may be. During Ted Kord's time as Blue Beetle, the Scarab - or something using it - resurrected Dan Garrett, and the half-crazed Dan went on a rampage, searching for Ted. When Ted finally confronted Dan, the Scarab offered him its powers, claiming it needed a new host; Ted refused, and convinced Dan to break the Scarab's control over him, shattering the Scarab's physical form and sending Dan to his final rest.

Jaime's deepest desire is to be a dentist as revealed by Eclipso when she attempted to turn Jaime against Paco by using her powers to transform Jaime into his deepest darkest desires, expecting him to become a killing machine. This ends up working against her as Paco slaps Jaime down with a large stick and defeats him with ease.

[ionecoffman]

83 Things That Blew Our Minds in 2018

Most “Himalayan” pink salt is from the Punjab area of Pakistan, not the actual Himalayas.

Hippos poop so much that sometimes all the fish die.

In addition to the supermassive black hole at its center, the Milky Way galaxy may be home to thousands of smaller black holes, invisible to even our finest scientific instruments.

There’s a parasitic fungus that doses cicadas with the hallucinogen found in shrooms before making their butts fall off.

The Arctic Ocean is now so warm that its floating sea ice can melt even during the coldest, darkest times of the year.

You can make thousands of dollars a week charging electric scooters.

When your eyes look right, your eardrums bulge to the left, and vice versa. And the eardrums move 10 milliseconds before the eyes do.

More than 2 million years ago, well before Homo sapiens evolved, one of our ancient-human relatives lived in what is now China.

Women who have had six to 10 sexual partners in their lives have the lowest odds of marital happiness, according to one study.

When Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium opened in 1930, the inland aquarium had to ship a million gallons of ocean water by train from Key West, Florida.

Twitter is the preferred social network for nudists to meet and connect online.

The population of older adults who misuse opioids is projected to double from 2004 to 2020.

The data economy didn’t begin with Google or Facebook in the 2000s, but with electronic information systems called a relational databases, first conceived of in 1969.

At their most voracious, wildfires can grow 100 feet high and consume a football field of forest every second.

People with autism are 10 times as likely to die by suicide as those in the general population.

The number of exclamation points now necessary to convey genuine enthusiasm online is, according to most internet users, three.

An “ice tsunami” killed a herd of musk oxen in February 2011 and kept their bodies perfectly entombed for seven years.

Ten thousand years ago, the people who lived in Europe had dark skin and blue eyes.

Facebook sent huge volumes of data about you and your friends to millions of apps from 2007 to 2014, and you have no way to control—or even know—how that information gets used.

A fishing cat is a water-loving cat species that lives in swamps, quacks like a duck, and dives from riverbanks to snag unsuspecting fish.

Astrology is experiencing a resurgence among Millennials, fueled by meme culture, stress, and a desire for subjectivity in an increasingly quantified world.

In the beginning of 2018, Amazon had 342 fulfillment centers, Prime hubs, and sortation centers in the United States, up from 18 in 2007.

Ivy League universities took nude photos of incoming freshman students for decades.

Some fundamentalist Christian groups think the spread of implantable technology is a key sign of the impending apocalypse.

The shopping mall put a cap on consumerism as much as it promoted it.

Bees stop buzzing during total solar eclipses.

The scientist who advised the production team of Interstellar made so much progress on his research in the process that it led him to publish multiple scientific papers.

High fibrinogen content can help a blood clot stay in a shape like putty—even if it gets violently coughed up.

Many butterflies in the nymphalid group can hear with their wings.

Some scientists think the reason you want to squeeze or nibble on a particularly cute baby is to snap your brain out of the euphoria that cuteness can summon, making you able to tend to the baby’s needs.

In the fourth quarter of last year, 25 percent of all new office space leased or built in the United States was taken by Amazon.

The first scooter was invented in 1990 by a guy who really wanted a bratwurst.

The streets of Boston carry an average of four gas leaks a mile.

In August, Oxford University’s Said Business School came up with a clever way for homeless people to receive cashless donations: Donors could scan the barcodes on homeless people’s lanyards to send them money.

Don’t worry if you forget all the facts you read in this article by tomorrow—that’s normal.

Many doctors have difficulty accessing the health records of patients treated previously at another facility; less than half of hospitals integrate electronic patient data from outside their system.

The original indigenous American dogs are completely gone, and their closest living relative isn’t even a dog—it’s a contagious global cancer.

Donald Trump can’t really send a message directly to your phone. In fact, the president’s ability to address the nation directly in a time of crisis, available since the 1960s, has never been used.

In 1995, a man in Germany realized his pet crayfish was cloning itself. Clones of that crayfish have now spread all over the world.

Four hundred years after Galileo discovered Jupiter’s largest moons, astronomers are still discovering some tiny ones.

The fastest someone has ever hiked all 2,189 miles of the Appalachian Trail is 41 days, seven hours, and 39 minutes. That averages out to roughly two marathons a day.

The lifespan of a meme has shrunk from several months in 2012 to just a few days in 2018.

Elon Musk’s $20 million SEC fine might make his ill-advised “funding secured” tweets the most expensive ever.

Thousands of horseshoe crabs are bled every year to create a miraculous medical product that keeps humans alive.

Single-celled microorganisms can survive in lab conditions that simulate the icy environment of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

Only 10 major hurricanes have ever made landfall along the Southeast Atlantic coast, if you don’t count Florida.

Animals that live in cities are sometimes found to outperform their rural counterparts on intelligence tests.

Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot is shrinking.

The paleontology consultant for Jurassic Park had a Tyrannosaurus rex eat a doppelgänger of another researcher with whom he had academic beef.

Some people think tennis balls are green while others think they’re yellow, and the disagreement has a lot to do with how our brains perceive color.

Conservatives tend to find life more meaningful than liberals do.

It’s easier for spacecraft to leave the solar system than to reach the sun. Thanks, physics.

Despite giving away hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was worth $20 billion when he died, 48 percent more than when he signed the Giving Pledge in 2010 and promised to give away at least half his wealth.

China consumes 28 percent of the world’s meat—with the average resident eating 140 pounds a year.

Europa, a moon of Jupiter, may be covered in 50-foot-tall blades of ice.

You can reconstruct a pretty decent record of historical whaling intensity by measuring the stress hormones in the earwax of a few dozen whales.

Doing a good deed—or even imagining doing a good deed—can boost an athlete’s endurance by reinforcing his or her sense of agency in the world.

A science adviser on Stargate: Atlantis imagined a fictional astronomical phenomenon called a binary pulsar system for the show. Years later, such a system was found in real life.

The lowercase g in Google’s original logo is really, really weird.

Sixty percent of gun deaths in 2017 were suicides.

From 1984 to 2015, the area of forest in the American West that burned in wildfires was double what it would have been without climate change.

An astrologer came up with the phrase “super blue blood moon” to describe a celestial event that’s much less scary than it sounds.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal caused 42 percent of Facebook users to change their behavior on the platform, according to a survey conducted by The Atlantic. Ten percent of those people deleted or deactivated their accounts.

In the absence of federal regulation or good research about how skin-care products work, communities of citizen scientists have started compiling pretty decent resources.

The figure-eight trajectory flown by the Apollo moon missions was the very same path followed by fictional astronauts in a classic silent film from 1929, Woman in the Moon.

After one year in America, just 8 percent of immigrants are obese, but among those who have lived in the U.S. for 15 years, the obesity rate is 19 percent.

There’s a spider that makes milk.

Goats love to feast on weeds, and you can rent dozens of them to landscape your lawn.

Some people have a bony growth on the back of their heel, called a pump bump, that makes it hard to wear pumps and other kinds of dressy shoes.

Astronomers can still detect ripples in the Milky Way caused by a close encounter with another galaxy hundreds of millions of years ago.

China built its rocket-launch facilities deep inland to protect them during the Cold War, but decades later it actually makes launching rockets into space more dangerous.

The folks who make Piaggio scooters hope you might buy an R2D2-like cargo robot to haul a case of Aperol home from the market.

Shifting the pitch of an audio recording can make it sound like an entirely different word.

Kids under the age of 8 spend 65 percent of their online time on YouTube.

A reservoir of liquid water may lurk just a mile beneath the ice-covered surface of Mars’s south pole.

When people overdose in public bathrooms, many service workers become the unwitting first line of medical responders.

Some people think that quantum computing will bring about the end of free will.

Mouse urine is a major cause of asthma for poor kids in Baltimore.

The House of Representatives’ longest-serving member, Alaska’s Don Young, was first elected to his seat after his opponent died.

In September, Hurricane Florence dropped about 18 trillion gallons of rain over the Carolinas—enough water to completely refill the Chesapeake Bay.

Europe suffered its worst carbon dioxide shortage in decades (think of the beer and the crumpets!) because of a closed ammonia fertilizer plant. Yes, these two things are related.

Americans spent $240 billion on jewelry, watches, books, luggage, and communication equipment such as telephones in 2017, twice as much as they spent in 2002, even though the population grew just 13 percent during that time.

People get more colds in winter because chilly temperatures make it easier for microbes to reproduce inside your nose.

Article source here:The Atlantic

[orbemnews]

Janet Yellen just proved markets can't handle the truth The details: At an event hosted by The Atlantic, Yellen, an economist who previously led the Federal Reserve, indicated that the central bank may need to hike interest rates to prevent prices from rising too quickly. “It may be that interest rates will have to rise somewhat to make sure that our economy doesn’t overheat,” Yellen said. Her comments rippled through markets, feeding a selloff in tech stocks that could take a beating when rates rise. She later clarified that she wasn’t predicting or making any recommendations to the Fed, whose independence she respects, and does not expect inflation to be a persistent, major issue. “I don’t think there’s going to be an inflationary problem, but if there is, the Fed can be counted on to address [it],” Yellen said later Tuesday at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit. Step back: The content of what Yellen said wasn’t revolutionary. The US economy is on track to stage a full recovery from the pandemic this year as demand bounces back and the employment situation improves. As the economy strengthens, the Federal Reserve will eventually have to raise rates, which can’t stay at rock bottom levels indefinitely. “Markets were unhappy at this statement of the blindingly obvious,” said Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management. “Rates will clearly rise in the future.” But investors remain on edge about when, exactly, that will happen — especially with valuations of assets like stocks looking extremely rich and vulnerable to a pullback. Most Federal Reserve officials think the central bank won’t move away from super-low interest rates until after 2023. At the same time, signs of price pressures in different parts of the economy are growing. See here: Bottlenecks following the pandemic are causing all kind of problems in supply chains that could lead to higher prices. Carmaker Stellantis (FCAU) said Wednesday that the computer chip shortage roiling the auto industry is getting worse. Meanwhile, the price of commodities is climbing, with the Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index, which tracks 23 raw materials, hitting its highest level since 2011. In a survey of manufacturers from the Institute for Supply Management released earlier this week, suppliers complained of rising prices, as well as limited availability of parts and materials that were making it difficult to meet the burst of demand. “The current electronics/semiconductor shortage is having tremendous impacts on lead times and pricing,” one respondent said. “Additionally, there appears to be a general inflation of prices across most, if not all, supply lines.” Big picture: Whether investors want it to or not, post-Covid inflation has arrived. What matters is whether higher prices are transient, as Yellen forecasts, or turn out to have staying power. “The question is not whether there will be some inflation this year, but whether it will represent ‘overheating’ of the economy as a whole,” J. Bradford DeLong, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote in a column published Tuesday. Wall Street is ready to end the era of Zoom meetings Fed up with remote work, Wall Street’s bosses are preparing to bring employees back to the office on a large scale — moves that could reinvigorate the US financial center after more than a year of pandemic life. The latest: Most Goldman Sachs (GS) workers will be back in lower Manhattan by mid-June, according to a memo sent to staff on Tuesday. “We are focused on progressing on our journey to gradually bring our people back together again, where it is safe to do so, and are now in a position to activate the next steps in our return to office strategy,” CEO David Solomon, President John Waldron and CFO Stephen Scherr wrote. The executives said they “continue to be encouraged by the rollout of vaccines” in many areas and the “effectiveness of the health and safety protocols we have put in place.” Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon said he’s sick of remote working, which hurts corporate culture and makes it difficult to compete for clients. Last week, the bank announced it will open its US offices to all employees on May 17, subject to a 50% occupancy cap. “We want people back at work and my view is some time in September, October, it will look just like it did before,” Dimon said. “Yes, people don’t like commuting, but so what?” That said: Some fixtures of the pre-pandemic financial world aren’t ever coming back. CME Group announced Tuesday that it won’t reopen physical trading pits that were closed in Chicago last March due to Covid-19. Once iconic hubs for trading commodities like soybeans, such locations have been made superfluous by electronic trading — and after staying empty for many months, they may be on their way out for good. Ethereum’s 27-year-old creator is now a billionaire Vitalik Buterin, a 27-year-old Russian-Canadian programmer, created ethereum in 2013 when he was 19 years old. Now, as the cryptocurrency skyrockets, his net worth is soaring. Buterin holds about 333,500 ether in his public wallet, my CNN Business colleague Alexis Benveniste reports. Multiply that by the $3,500 record high it hit on Tuesday, and you get more than $1.1 billion. Not bad. What we know: Buterin co-founded Bitcoin Magazine, a publication that covers bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, in 2012. In 2014, he was selected to be part of the Thiel Fellowship, a two-year program created by billionaire Peter Thiel that “gives $100,000 to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom.” But Buterin keeps a fairly low profile. He isn’t super active on social media — even though he boasts 1.4 million Twitter followers. Big picture: Ethereum is down from recent highs on Wednesday, but is still trading at more than $3,300. It’s surged more than 350% since the start of 2021. Part of the digital coin’s success can be credited to the fact that it’s the cryptocurrency of choice for purchasing many non-fungible tokens, or NFTs — digital artwork and other collectibles that are transformed into one-of-a-kind, verifiable assets that are easy to trade on the blockchain. But questions remain about whether NFTs are a game changer, or just a passing fad. Up next Dine Brands (DIN), General Motors (GM), Hilton (HLT), New York Times (NYT) and Scott’s Miracle-Gro (SMG) report results before US markets open. Booking Holdings, Etsy (ETSY), MetLife (MET), PayPal (PYPL), Rocket Companies and Uber (UBER) follow after the close. Also today: The ADP private employment report for April arrives at 8:15 a.m. ET. The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index, an important read of the US services sector, follows at 10 a.m. ET. Coming tomorrow: Earnings from Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD), ArcelorMittal (AMSYF), Moderna (MRNA) and Volkswagen (VLKAF). Source link Orbem News #handle #investing #Janet #Markets #Premarketstocks:JanetYellenjustprovedmarketscan'thandlethetruth-CNN #proved #truth #Yellen

[nasa]

The Past, Present and Future of Exploration on Mars

Today, we’re celebrating the Red Planet! Since our first close-up picture of Mars in 1965, spacecraft voyages to the Red Planet have revealed a world strangely familiar, yet different enough to challenge our perceptions of what makes a planet work.

You’d think Mars would be easier to understand. Like Earth, Mars has polar ice caps and clouds in its atmosphere, seasonal weather patterns, volcanoes, canyons and other recognizable features. However, conditions on Mars vary wildly from what we know on our own planet.

Join us as we highlight some of the exploration on Mars from the past, present and future:

PAST

Viking Landers

Our Viking Project found a place in history when it became the first U.S. mission to land a spacecraft safely on the surface of Mars and return images of the surface. Two identical spacecraft, each consisting of a lander and an orbiter, were built. Each orbiter-lander pair flew together and entered Mars orbit; the landers then separated and descended to the planet’s surface.

Besides taking photographs and collecting other science data, the two landers conducted three biology experiments designed to look for possible signs of life.

Pathfinder Rover

In 1997, Pathfinder was the first-ever robotic rover to land on the surface of Mars. It was designed as a technology demonstration of a new way to deliver an instrumented lander to the surface of a planet. Mars Pathfinder used an innovative method of directly entering the Martian atmosphere, assisted by a parachute to slow its descent and a giant system of airbags to cushion the impact.

Pathfinder not only accomplished its goal but also returned an unprecedented amount of data and outlived its primary design life.

PRESENT

Spirit and Opportunity

In January 2004, two robotic geologists named Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of the Red Planet. With far greater mobility than the 1997 Mars Pathfinder rover, these robotic explorers have trekked for miles across the Martian surface, conducting field geology and making atmospheric observations. Carrying identical, sophisticated sets of science instruments, both rovers have found evidence of ancient Martian environments where intermittently wet and habitable conditions existed.

Both missions exceeded their planned 90-day mission lifetimes by many years. Spirit lasted 20 times longer than its original design until its final communication to Earth on March 22, 2010. Opportunity continues to operate more than a decade after launch.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter left Earth in 2005 on a search for evidence that water persisted on the surface of Mars for a long period of time. While other Mars missions have shown that water flowed across the surface in Mars’ history, it remained a mystery whether water was ever around long enough to provide a habitat for life.

In addition to using the rover to study Mars, we’re using data and imagery from this mission to survey possible future human landing sites on the Red Planet.

Curiosity

The Curiosity rover is the largest and most capable rover ever sent to Mars. It launched November 26, 2011 and landed on Mars on Aug. 5, 2012. Curiosity set out to answer the question: Did Mars ever have the right environmental conditions to support small life forms called microbes? 

Early in its mission, Curiosity’s scientific tools found chemical and mineral evidence of past habitable environments on Mars. It continues to explore the rock record from a time when Mars could have been home to microbial life.

FUTURE

Space Launch System Rocket

We’re currently building the world’s most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). When completed, this rocket will enable astronauts to begin their journey to explore destinations far into the solar system, including Mars.

Orion Spacecraft

The Orion spacecraft will sit atop the Space Launch System rocket as it launches humans deeper into space than ever before. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.

Mars 2020

The Mars 2020 rover mission takes the next step in exploration of the Red Planet by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself.

The Mars 2020 rover introduces a drill that can collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside in a “cache” on the surface of Mars. The mission will also test a method for producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, identify other resources (such as subsurface water), improve landing techniques and characterize weather, dust and other potential environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on the Red Planet.

For decades, we’ve sent orbiters, landers and rovers, dramatically increasing our knowledge about the Red Planet and paving the way for future human explorers. Mars is the next tangible frontier for human exploration, and it’s an achievable goal. There are challenges to pioneering Mars, but we know they are solvable. 

To discover more about Mars exploration, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/journeytomars/index.html

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

[pharmaphorumuk]

Fresh doubts over BMS’ merger payout as FDA delays key drug review

Holders of a risky “bet” on three Bristol-Myers Squibb drugs are looking increasingly unlikely to get their pay-out after the company said COVID-19 travel restrictions are delaying a key regulatory review.

Shareholders in Celgene received a contingent value right (CVR) at the time of the company’s $74 billion merger with BMS last year, which pay out $9 each if the FDA approves three medicines before certain deadlines.

There were already concerns at the beginning of the month when BMS said in its Q3 results that the FDA had not yet inspected a manufacturing facility for the B-cell lymphoma CAR-T therapy lisocabtagene maraleucel (liso-cel), one of the three drugs.

BMS has confirmed the worst, saying in a statement that the FDA has delayed a decision on liso-cel until it can visit the facility – something that is proving difficult because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. Liso-cel has to be approved by the end of the year for the CVR to pay out.

The FDA was due to make a regulatory decision on liso-cel next week, and with the deadline laid out in the CVR looming there are now serious concerns about whether holders of the publicly traded instrument will receive their cash.

The announcement sent the value of the CVR down sharply in pre-market trading as there are also concerns about whether the third drug in the “bet” will be approved on time as well.

Multiple myeloma CAR-T idecabtagene vicleucel (ide-cel) – has to be approved by 31 March next year, just four days after the FDA’s action date.

The first of the three CVR medicines, Celgene’s multiple sclerosis drug Zeposia (ozanimod) was approved in March.

While CVR holders are feeling the pressure, there are no such worries for BMS, which has seen its revenues rocket thanks to the merger.

BMS revenues rose 75% in Q3 to $10.5 billion thanks to the addition of Celgene, but were up 6% on a pro forma basis

BMS said that it is “committed to working with the FDA to progress both applications to achieve the remaining regulatory milestones required by the CVR.”

But if the CVR does not pay out, it won’t be the first time that investors have been burnt by such a deal.

Last year Sanofi settled a long-running dispute with shareholders in the biotech Genzyme, who claimed the French pharma held back development of a multiple sclerosis drug to avoid CVR payments after a takeover in 2011.

Sanofi said it had agreed to pay Genzyme investors $315 million to settle the lawsuit.

As part of Sanofi’s $20 billion takeover of Genzyme, the French drugmaker promised shareholders in the US biotech payouts under a CVR that was due when MS drug Lemtrada (alemtuzumab) achieved certain regulatory and sales milestones.

The post Fresh doubts over BMS’ merger payout as FDA delays key drug review appeared first on .

from https://pharmaphorum.com/news/fresh-doubts-over-bms-merger-payout-as-fda-delays-key-drug-review/

[dpinoycosmonaut]

THE BUBBLE FINALS: AN UNLIKELY MATCHUP

by Reuel Hermoso / 02 October 2020

Two of the best all-around swingmen in the game - Heat star Jimmy Butler and Laker legend LeBron James - square off for all the marbles.  (Photo from slamonline.com)

               The smoke has cleared from both the Eastern and Western Conferences, and expectedly, the Los Angeles Lakers cinched their conference finals and the first NBA finals berth.  But in the Eastern Conference, an unlikely winner emerged – the Miami Heat, who just defeated the fancied Boston Celtics.  

               Eric Spoelstra’s troops are now marching on to the NBA finals, that glorious Nirvana that they have not been to since 2014 when they had current Lakers superstar LeBron James.  They lost that series to the San Antonio Spurs, winning just a game (to the Spurs’ four) in the seven-game series, and James returned to his homestate and its team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the following year, and even conspired with celebrated backcourt wizard Kyrie Irving to give Cleveland its first NBA championship in 2016.  The Heat last won the NBA crown in 2013.  That makes for a really hungry team longing to feast on a championship glory.

               But if a seven-year fast looks bad, the Lakers are in a worse famine, last appearing – and winning – the NBA finals in 2010, when the late great Kobe Bryant was still their unquestioned leader.  Acquiring James’s services after he left the Cavs was a watershed event for the Lakers in their quest to finally end that 10-year title drought.  And signing up the highly-prized former New Orleans Pelicans power forward-center Anthony Davis was the last key to unlock the display chest holding the Larry O’Brien trophy for the Lakers to finally take home.

               Getting other pieces like former Houston Rockets big man Dwight Howard and young gunners Kentavius Caldwell-Pope and Alex Caruso to pace the backcourt, as well as versatile wingmen like the young Kyle Kuzma and the more experienced Markieff Morris to beef up the frontline, helped to complete this powerful Laker roster. Coach Frank Vogel, acquired just last year, has done some pretty admirable work in that short period, piloting the Lakers to a 52-19 win-loss card in just his first season – the best record in the Western Conference and the third-best in the entire league.  This is a team that was put together precisely to restore the Lakers’ lost glory, and with this ticket to the Big Dance, they’re just four wins away from accomplishing that.

               The Heat, however, are looking to spoil the Lakers’ date with destiny, believing that they have their own destiny to meet – and have proven they will not be denied that other finals slot.  The face of the Heat today, Jimmy Butler, is himself a story that mirrors the struggles of his team to get back its own former glory.  Thrown out of the house by his mother at the age of 13, Butler spent the following year hopping from house to house, living with friends who would take him in for a day, a week, or more if he was lucky.  Finally, a friend’s family decided to adopt him.

               They sent him to school, and later saw him off to college to fulfill his dreams of playing varsity basketball.  Initially, he played for Tyler College in his home state of Texas, and was later offered an academic scholarship at Marquette, a perennial March Madness contender in the US NCAA, for which former Heat superstar Dwyane Wade also played.  In his junior year, Butler helped the Golden Eagles to an 11-7 win-loss card that season in the NCAA’s Big East Conference and a fifth consecutive March Madness appearance.

               In the NBA, Butler became a journeyman of sorts, suiting up for the Chicago Bulls, which drafted him in 2011.  Although he played well in his long stint with the Bulls – at one point breaking Michael Jordan’s team record for most points in a half in a game they won against the Toronto Raptors on January 3, 2016 –Butler was plagued by injuries.  In 2017, he was traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the following year he was again traded to the Philadelphia 76ers.  Finally, in a sign-and-trade deal, the guy famously known as “Jimmy Buckets” “moved (his) talent to South Beach,” in the famous words of James himself when he first left the Cavs in 2010 to join the Heat.

               With all this moving and seeming lack of rootedness even from his early adolescence, any lesser man would probably have called it quits.  Certainly not Butler though.  He couldn’t care less how people felt about him, whether they felt pity on him or hated his guts.  As sportswriter Garth Johnson put it in fansided.com: “A lot of guys in the league view basketball as a way to a lifestyle.  Jimmy Butler viewed basketball as a way to a life.  On his own since 13 in a small Texas town outside Houston, Butler had more to worry about than rubbing some people the wrong way.”  Read more about it in https://fansided.com/2020/02/29/jimmy-butler-heat-sledgehammer-greatness/.

               To cut to the chase, this Heat squad today is now Butler’s team – his and his alone.  Sure, he had his chances to carve out a leadership position with the Bulls, but that wasn’t meant to be.  He wasn’t exactly welcomed in Minnesota, and some like Johnson even think Butler broke the Timberwolves apart during his stint there.  But even then, as Johnson observes, “in his one season there they made their first playoff appearance in 14 years.”  The Timberwolves even had their first winning season in 13 years and had a win-loss card of 38-24 with Butler while going 9-11 without him.  They even fell from third in the West when he hurt his knee, to eighth going into the playoffs.

               “You don’t have to be a stat geek to see how they are (now) faring without him,” Johnson argues.

               More importantly, though, it’s what the Heat braintrust decided to do to get those other pieces they needed to put together a team that’s primed to surprise the NBA by achieving what it has in so short a time.  Butler is their crowning recruitment achievement in the offseason, but consider as well coach Spo’s starting five to give you an idea of this team’s ability to continue perplexing the league and its fans.  

               As civil engineer and casual basketball pundit Ramby Nolido observed, they first cornered Kentucky Wildcat sniper Tyler Herro – who now comes off the bench as a deadly sixth man – ahead of their Eastern Conference finals opponents, the Celtics, who were hoping the Heat would overlook him before making Herro the 13th overall draft pick, depriving the Celtics of a chance to get him in the next draft slot at 14th.  Then they acquired former Golden State Warriors small forward Andre Iguodala and two former Celtics – Jae Crowder and Kelly Olynyk – with Crowder playing with an ax to grind against his former team in the just-concluded Eastern Conference finals.  Heat management then brought up deadshot Duncan Robinson from their G-League team to light things up from rainbow country.

               “That’s four steps in the season that they got things right,” says Nolido.  And from their previous roster, they kept Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragic, a deadly frontline-backcourt tandem on both ends of the floor.

               The question thus inevitably surfaces: Who will win the NBA title – the first held in a “bubble” in its long history?  Who will get to take the Larry O’Brien trophy out of the bubble?

               Clearly, the advantage is in LA’s favor.  The combined firepower alone of James and Davis in the 2019-20 season is a whopping 51.5 points per game on the average.  The supporting cast is just as potent, with inside-outside threats Kuzma and Caruso combining with Davis, who has decent three-point shooting numbers and can take the ball inside with his vaunted size and athleticism.  Caldwell-Pope is also another recognized perimeter threat, but is a solid slasher as well.  Morris, JaVale McGee, and even Howard are also known to be able to hit it from the perimeter, although that isn’t their strong suit.

               What is their strong suit – and that of the rest of the Lakers – is their astounding inside scoring and, on the defensive end, their protection of the shaded lane.  Indeed, LA has dominated the paint throughout much of the season, and obviously the Lakers will continue to use their size and length to their fullest advantage.  Because despite the timely three-point bombs that guys like Kuzma, Caruso, Caldwell-Pope, and even the superstars James and Davis have unleashed with deadly accuracy during the playoffs, the Lakers are not exactly an outside scoring juggernaut, averaging just 34.9 percent from trifecta range (averaging home and road three-point shooting percentages prior to the lockdown, according to https://www.nba.com/lakers/stats/team).  In the bubble, that percentage has dropped even lower to 30.6 percent in July and 30.2 percent in August.  

 Source: https://www.nba.com/article/2020/09/28/2020-playoffs-numbers-preview-lakers-heat-finals

                In contrast, the Lakers own the low post.  They are monsters in the restricted area, scoring a gargantuan 88 points underneath the basket compared to the Heat’s 74.  Here’s the thing though – elsewhere in the paint, Miami outscores LA but not by much.  Total points in the shaded area will expectedly go the way of the Lakers.  This accounts for many of their wins, since inside points are higher-percentage shots compared to perimeter attempts.

               Still, the numbers for outside points seem to be going the way of the Lakers.  Total mid-rangers and three-balls have them up 26 points over the Heat.  But where the boys from South Beach have the upper hand scoring-wise is from the free-throw line.  There, they outscore the Hollywood boys by a whopping 18 markers.  They also run the break better, beating LA in transition by nine points – both crucial advantages in the clutch.  Where the Lakers are better off with the game on the line is in second-chance points, where they lord it over the Heat by 20 points.

               Indeed, offense and offensive efficiency will spell the difference for both teams, despite their respective claims to being defensive juggernauts.  As John Schuhmann of nba.com wrote: “Both teams have had success on both ends of the floor, but offense was the story in the conference finals. The Lakers and Denver Nuggets combined to score 115.3 points per 100 possessions, while the Heat and Boston Celtics combined to score 114.1.  Those were the third- and fourth-most efficient series of the 14 we've seen thus far.”

               We should thus expect that offense will remain the most compelling reason for their respective coaching staffs to continue as that is what has brought them both this far.

               Or is it?  Perhaps both teams will be wise to revisit their defensive narrative and give it more of the importance it truly deserves.  As University of Alabama legendary football coach Bear Bryant (no relation to Kobe) famously said (and which Ateneo sniper Jai Reyes repeated after his Blue Eagles successfully wrested the UAAP men’s basketball title from the La Salle Green Archers in 2008): “Offense wins games, but defense wins championships!”

               The team with the better defensive strategy will take the series – and the championship.  As Schuhmann of nba.com correctly observes: “To win their 17th championship, the Lakers will have to keep up with the Heat's ball and player movement.  To win their fourth, the Heat will have to protect the rim.  In both cases, it's much easier said than done.”  (As an aside, as a Celtics fan, I just want to say that this is one reason why I’m rooting for the Heat; it’s not just because of our natural aversion to the Purple-and-Gold but also because Boston diehards want to keep that record of most number of NBA titles ever.  Touché!)

               Each game, each quarter, maybe even each possession, will boil down to how the individual and roster matchups will fare between these two protagonists.  Key here will be the substitution patterns of Messrs. Vogel and Spoelstra, and how they can effectively use the chess pieces they each have.  

               Coach Vogel has largely stuck with his starting five of James as point forward, Davis at the forward spot, Caldwell-Pope as swingman, JaVale McGee at center, and Danny Green as shooting guard, while coach Spo has from time to time experimented in his backcourt lineup, but with schoolboy charm Duncan Robinson and Dragic in the perimeter, Adebayo at center, and Butler and Dragic in the wings as the mainstays.  He has a potent bench, with boy wonder Herro as his sixth man and Crowder at the forward spots (the latter’s versatility allows him to play both the small and power positions), with both players having reliable deep-three shots that can spread the Laker defense to its limits.  It is a fast lineup, well, at least faster than that of the Lakers, and should leverage on that speed to run the floor before the Lakers’ transition defense can react.

               What’s also interesting and has been fun to watch thus far is the Butler-Adebayo tandem.  Schuhmann at nba.com notes that, when the two are on the floor together, the Heat outscore their opponents by 10.6 points more per 100 possessions.  But they’ve been outscored by their opponents by 3.0 points per 100 possessions in 103 minutes with just Adebayo without Butler on the floor, and by 14.4 points per 100 possessions in 99 minutes of play with just Butler without Adebayo.  It would seem that, if coach Spo had to keep either one on the bench longer, it would have to be Butler.  

               Indeed, as Schuhmann demonstrates, “the Heat have scored 16.9 more points per 100 possessions with Bam Adebayo on the floor (116.1) than they have with him off the floor (99.2).  That's the fourth-biggest on-off offense rating differential among 73 players who've played at least 200 total minutes in the postseason.”

               Adebayo clearly has proven himself to have a greater impact on the game for the Heat, and the last game against Boston in the Eastern Conference finals showed the value he brings to the table.  Though a center, Adebayo moves like a power forward with the way he screens and passes (especially his interior passing), and even his turnaround jumper in the key is cash.  And that's how he could wreak havoc on the Lakers' post defenders like Howard and McGee – maybe even Davis as a rim defender.  

               On the offensive end, those guys may also have fits trying to score against him in the post, Adebayo being the most athletic big on the Heat roster, with more than ample length and heft.  Of course, we can’t forget Iguodala, who brings with him championship experience from Golden State, having been with the Warriors in all their three NBA championships thus far in the 21st century (2015, 2017 and 2018).  It will be remembered that in the 2015 title series, Iguodala fashioned a defensive masterpiece on James, limiting the latter to 38.1 percent field-goal shooting compared to 44 percent when Iguodala was on the bench.  Both Iguodala and James are in their mid-30s, and have had their fair share of NBA glory.  For sure, James will look at settling an old score, while Iguodala will look at putting the cuffs on The King once again via his tried-and-tested lockdown D that made James bleed for every point, giving the Warriors a superior 3-1 finals win-loss card in all their NBA finals showdowns that only saw a failure in 2016.

               So who will be the Bubble Champions of the NBA?  The numbers coming out of the Las Vegas bookies give the clear advantage to the Lakers, if only for the James-Davis pairing.  But as many hoops pundits have seen through decades of watching this game, stranger things have happened in basketball.  Just last August, the Milwaukee Bucks were the indubitable favorite to win the NBA crown among the bookies and oddsmakers.  Everyone and his mother now know Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, Eric Bledsoe, the Lopez twins and company are now vacationing wherever.

               Actually, folks were looking at a Bucks-Lakers finals.  And I thought we’d be having a revival of the famous Celtics-Lakers rivalry of the ages.

              ��The bottomline: sit back, relax.  Or stand up, and bite your nails.  Either way, this will be a great series.  James up against his old team.  Or Heat president Pat Riley up against the old team that he coached.  No plot could have been better contrived.

[orbemnews]

China’s Mars Mission Is Up Next to Orbit the Red Planet China’s space agency has a penchant for secrecy around its missions. It has shown more openness in the past year, providing a live video on state media of its Chang’e-4 mission’s launch to the moon. Should it announce a more precise arrival time, we will provide it here. What will the spacecraft do on Wednesday? Tianwen-1 launched from China last July, taking advantage of a period when Mars and Earth were closest to each other during their journeys around the sun. This allows a relatively short transit between the two worlds. To catch up with Mars, the spacecraft has fired its engines on several occasions, correcting its course so it can approach the red planet at the correct angle. The most recent engine firing occurred on Feb. 5, and the probe sent back pictures of the red planet from a distance of about 1.3 million miles. On Wednesday, the engine will light up again, expending much of the spacecraft’s remaining fuel in a braking maneuver. That should slow it considerably, and allow the probe to be captured by Martian gravity. There it will circle at a safe distance, joining the other cast of robotic explorers in Martian orbit and preparing for that later surface landing attempt. Could anything go wrong? The history of spaceflight is littered with failed voyages to Mars, including a Chinese mission in 2011 that never got out of Earth’s orbit after the Russian rocket it was traveling on failed. And a few spacecraft have stumbled during this final step of preparing to enter Martian orbit. For instance, in 1999, NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter suffered a navigation error — English units were not converted to metric — and the spacecraft burned in the Martian atmosphere. In 1992, NASA lost contact with its Mars Observer spacecraft days before it was to arrive at Mars, perhaps because of a fuel line rupture. After a Soviet mission in 1974, Mars 4, failed to fire its retro rockets, the spacecraft sailed away from Mars. Still, the challenge of orbiting Mars is nothing compared with landing there. When will China land on Mars? The orbiter carries a lander and a rover which will make the difficult transit to the surface. China says it will attempt to land on Mars in May, but it has not specified a date. Its destination is Utopia Planitia, a large basin in the northern hemisphere that most likely was once impacted by a meteor, and which was visited by NASA’s Viking 2 lander in 1976. One goal of the Tianwen-1 mission is to better understand the distribution of ice in this region, which future human colonists on Mars could use to sustain themselves. Landing on the red planet is perilous. Spacecraft descend at a high speed and the thin atmosphere does little to help slow the trip to the ground. Air friction still generates extreme heat that must be absorbed or dissipated. A number of Soviet, NASA and European missions have crashed. Only NASA has landed intact more than once. The Chinese spacecraft will spend months orbiting Mars to check systems and pick a landing spot that will not be too treacherous. Should it land in one piece, the rover will need a name. After nominations from people in China, a panel of experts selected 10 semifinalists. Among them, according to state media, are Hongyi, from a Chinese word for ambition and persistence; Qilin, a hoofed creature of Chinese legend; and Nezha, a young deity who is considered a patron of rebellious youth. What else has China accomplished in space recently? Since China launched its mission to Mars in July, it has been to the moon and back. The Chang’e-5 mission lifted off in November, collected lunar samples and then brought them back to Earth for scientists to study. It was the first new cache of moon rocks since the Soviet Union’s last lunar mission in 1976. China’s Chang’e-4 mission, the first to land on the moon’s far side, is still in operation and its Yutu-2 rover is still studying the lunar surface more than two years after it launched. What else is arriving at the red planet in 2021? The first robotic probe to arrive at Mars this year was Hope, an orbiter from the United Arab Emirates’ emerging space agency. It arrived on Tuesday, and will embark on a study of the red planet’s atmosphere, helping planetary scientists understand the weather dynamics of Mars. The third new visitor to Mars will be Perseverance, NASA’s newest rover. It launched a bit later than the other two spacecraft last July, and will skip Martian orbit, heading directly to the planet’s surface on Feb. 18. The robotic explorer would be NASA’s fifth rover on Mars, and it is very similar to Curiosity, which is now exploring the Gale crater. The new rover carries a different set of scientific instruments and will explore the Jezero crater, a dried-out lake that scientists believe could be a good target to seek fossilized evidence of extinct Martian microbial life. The mission will also attempt a new first on the red planet: flying a helicopter in the wispy Martian atmosphere. NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter will be dropped off by the rover not long after landing. Then it will attempt a number of test flights in air as thin as the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere, aiming to demonstrate that Mars can be explored through the air as well as on the ground. What other spacecraft are currently studying Mars? It’s getting a bit crowded around the red planet. Six orbiters are currently studying the planet from space. Three were sent there by NASA: Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, and MAVEN, which left Earth in 2013. Europe has two spacecraft in orbit. Its Mars Express orbiter was launched in 2003, and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter lifted off in 2016 and is shared with Russia’s space program. India operates the sixth spacecraft, the Mars Orbiter Mission, also known as Mangalyaan, which launched in 2013. Two American missions are currently operating on the ground. Curiosity has been roving since 2012. It is joined by InSight, which has been studying marsquakes and other inner properties of the red planet since 2018. A third American mission, the Opportunity rover, expired in 2019 when a dust storm caused it to lose power. Source link Orbem News #Chinas #Mars #mission #Orbit #planet #red

[dipulb3]

Janet Yellen just proved markets can't handle the truth

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/janet-yellen-just-proved-markets-cant-handle-the-truth/

Janet Yellen just proved markets can't handle the truth

The details: At an event hosted by The Atlantic, Yellen, an economist who previously led the Federal Reserve, indicated that the central bank may need to hike interest rates to prevent prices from rising too quickly.

“It may be that interest rates will have to rise somewhat to make sure that our economy doesn’t overheat,” Yellen said.

Her comments rippled through markets, feeding a selloff in tech stocks that could take a beating when rates rise. She later clarified that she wasn’t predicting or making any recommendations to the Fed, whose independence she respects, and does not expect inflation to be a persistent, major issue.

“I don’t think there’s going to be an inflationary problem, but if there is, the Fed can be counted on to address [it],” Yellen said later Tuesday at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit.

Step back: The content of what Yellen said wasn’t revolutionary. The US economy is on track to stage a full recovery from the pandemic this year as demand bounces back and the employment situation improves. As the economy strengthens, the Federal Reserve will eventually have to raise rates, which can’t stay at rock bottom levels indefinitely.

“Markets were unhappy at this statement of the blindingly obvious,” said Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management. “Rates will clearly rise in the future.”

But investors remain on edge about when, exactly, that will happen — especially with valuations of assets like stocks looking extremely rich and vulnerable to a pullback.

Most Federal Reserve officials think the central bank won’t move away from super-low interest rates until after 2023. At the same time, signs of price pressures in different parts of the economy are growing.

See here: Bottlenecks following the pandemic are causing all kind of problems in supply chains that could lead to higher prices. Carmaker Stellantis (FCAU) said Wednesday that the computer chip shortage roiling the auto industry is getting worse.

Meanwhile, the price of commodities is climbing, with the Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index, which tracks 23 raw materials, hitting its highest level since 2011.

In a survey of manufacturers from the Institute for Supply Management released earlier this week, suppliers complained of rising prices, as well as limited availability of parts and materials that were making it difficult to meet the burst of demand.

“The current electronics/semiconductor shortage is having tremendous impacts on lead times and pricing,” one respondent said. “Additionally, there appears to be a general inflation of prices across most, if not all, supply lines.”

Big picture: Whether investors want it to or not, post-Covid inflation has arrived. What matters is whether higher prices are transient, as Yellen forecasts, or turn out to have staying power.

“The question is not whether there will be some inflation this year, but whether it will represent ‘overheating’ of the economy as a whole,” J. Bradford DeLong, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote in a column published Tuesday.

Wall Street is ready to end the era of Zoom meetings

Fed up with remote work, Wall Street’s bosses are preparing to bring employees back to the office on a large scale — moves that could reinvigorate the US financial center after more than a year of pandemic life.

The latest: Most Goldman Sachs (GS) workers will be back in lower Manhattan by mid-June, according to a memo sent to staff on Tuesday.

“We are focused on progressing on our journey to gradually bring our people back together again, where it is safe to do so, and are now in a position to activate the next steps in our return to office strategy,” CEO David Solomon, President John Waldron and CFO Stephen Scherr wrote.

The executives said they “continue to be encouraged by the rollout of vaccines” in many areas and the “effectiveness of the health and safety protocols we have put in place.”

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon said he’s sick of remote working, which hurts corporate culture and makes it difficult to compete for clients.

Last week, the bank announced it will open its US offices to all employees on May 17, subject to a 50% occupancy cap.

“We want people back at work and my view is some time in September, October, it will look just like it did before,” Dimon said. “Yes, people don’t like commuting, but so what?”

That said: Some fixtures of the pre-pandemic financial world aren’t ever coming back. CME Group announced Tuesday that it won’t reopen physical trading pits that were closed in Chicago last March due to Covid-19.

Once iconic hubs for trading commodities like soybeans, such locations have been made superfluous by electronic trading — and after staying empty for many months, they may be on their way out for good.

Ethereum’s 27-year-old creator is now a billionaire

Vitalik Buterin, a 27-year-old Russian-Canadian programmer, created ethereum in 2013 when he was 19 years old. Now, as the cryptocurrency skyrockets, his net worth is soaring.

Buterin holds about 333,500 ether in his public wallet, my Appradab Business colleague Alexis Benveniste reports. Multiply that by the $3,500 record high it hit on Tuesday, and you get more than $1.1 billion. Not bad.

What we know: Buterin co-founded Bitcoin Magazine, a publication that covers bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, in 2012. In 2014, he was selected to be part of the Thiel Fellowship, a two-year program created by billionaire Peter Thiel that “gives $100,000 to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom.”

But Buterin keeps a fairly low profile. He isn’t super active on social media — even though he boasts 1.4 million Twitter followers.

Big picture: Ethereum is down from recent highs on Wednesday, but is still trading at more than $3,300. It’s surged more than 350% since the start of 2021.

Part of the digital coin’s success can be credited to the fact that it’s the cryptocurrency of choice for purchasing many non-fungible tokens, or NFTs — digital artwork and other collectibles that are transformed into one-of-a-kind, verifiable assets that are easy to trade on the blockchain. But questions remain about whether NFTs are a game changer, or just a passing fad.

Up next

Dine Brands (DIN), General Motors (GM), Hilton (HLT), New York Times (NYT) and Scott’s Miracle-Gro (SMG) report results before US markets open. Booking Holdings, Etsy (ETSY), MetLife (MET), PayPal (PYPL), Rocket Companies and Uber (UBER) follow after the close.

Also today:

The ADP private employment report for April arrives at 8:15 a.m. ET.

The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index, an important read of the US services sector, follows at 10 a.m. ET.

Coming tomorrow: Earnings from Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD), ArcelorMittal (AMSYF), Moderna (MRNA) and Volkswagen (VLKAF).

[bbcbreakingnews]

China launches attempt to land rover on Mars

BEIJING: China launched its most ambitious Mars mission yet on Thursday in a bold attempt to join the United States in successfully landing a spacecraft on the red planet. Tianwen-1 was launched on a Long March-5 carrier rocket from Hainan Island, a resort province off the south coast of the mainland, state media said. Livestreams showed a successful liftoff, with rockets blazing orange and the spacecraft heading upward across clear blue skies. Hundreds of space enthusiasts cried out excitedly on a beach across the bay from the launch site. It marked the second flight to Mars this week, after a United Arab Emirates orbiter blasted off on a rocket from Japan on Monday. And the U.S. is aiming to launch Perseverance, its most sophisticated Mars rover ever, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, next week. China’s tandem spacecraft – with both an orbiter and a rover – will take seven months to reach Mars, like the others. If all goes well, Tianwen-1, or “quest for heavenly truth,” will look for underground water, if it’s present, as well as evidence of possible ancient life. This isn’t China’s first attempt at Mars. In 2011, a Chinese orbiter accompanying a Russian mission was lost when the spacecraft failed to get out of Earth’s orbit after launching from Kazakhstan, eventually burning up in the atmosphere. This time, China is going at it alone. It also is fast-tracking, launching an orbiter and rover on the same mission instead of stringing them out. China’s secretive space program has developed rapidly in recent decades. Yang Liwei became the first Chinese astronaut in 2003, and last year, Chang’e-4 became the first spacecraft from any country to land on the far side of the moon. Conquering Mars would put China in an elite club. “There is a whole lot of prestige riding on this,” said Dean Cheng, an expert on Chinese aerospace programs at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Landing on Mars is notoriously difficult. Only the US has successfully landed a spacecraft on Martian soil, doing it eight times since 1976. NASA’s InSight and Curiosity rovers still operate today. Six other spacecraft are exploring Mars from orbit: three American, two European and one from India. Unlike the two other Mars missions launching this month, China has tightly controlled information about the program – even withholding any name for its rover. National security concerns led the US to curb cooperation between NASA and China’s space program. In an article published earlier this month in Nature Astronomy, mission chief engineer Wan Weixing said Tianwen-1 would slip into orbit around Mars in February and look for a landing site on Utopia Planitia – a plain where NASA has detected possible evidence of underground ice. Wan died in May from cancer. The landing would then be attempted in April or May, according to the article. If all goes well, the 240-kilogram (530-pound) golf cart-sized, solar-powered rover is expected to operate for about three months, and the orbiter for two years. Though small compared to America’s hulking, car-sized 1,025-kilogram (2,260-pound) Perseverance, it’s almost twice as big as the two rovers China has sent to the moon in 2013 and 2019. Perseverance is expected to operate for at least two years. This Mars-launching season – which occurs every 26 months when Earth and Mars are at their closest – is especially busy. The UAE spacecraft Amal, or Hope, which will orbit Mars but not land, is the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. NASA’s Perseverance rover is up next. “At no other time in our history have we seen anything like what is unfolding with these three unique missions to Mars. Each of them is a science and engineering marvel,” the Space Foundation’s chief executive officer Thomas Zelibor said in an online panel discussion earlier this week. China’s road to Mars hit a few bumps: A Long March-5 rocket, nicknamed “Fat 5” because of its bulky shape, failed to launch earlier this year. The coronavirus pandemic forced scientists to work from home. In March, when instruments needed to be transported from Beijing to Shanghai, three team members drove 12 hours to deliver them. While China is joining the US, Russia and Europe in creating a satellite-based global navigation system, experts say it isn’t trying to overtake the US lead in space exploration. Instead, Cheng of the Heritage Foundation said China is in a “slow race” with Japan and India to establish itself as Asia’s space power.

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[watching-movies-alone]

Ad Astra (2019)

disclaimer: this has spoilers. 

So, it's been a hot minute.

But we're not here for a life update, so let's jump straight to it.

Ad Astra. James Gray, Brad Pitt, you might've heard of it.

Straight off the bat, "ad astra" is Latin for "to the stars" (roughly). It has all the makings of a good Sci-Fi movie, from the tags on IMDb as "Adventure/Drama/Mystery", to Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, and a bunch of other incredibly well known names.

For the technical information, the film was shot in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio (this is pretty wide for an aspect ratio, and used frequently for more dramatic films, such as Ad Astra).

And, sure, 'dramatic' definitely suits the film. They also spent towards ninety million USD on the movie, and saw barely over nineteen million USD returned in the US opening weekend (September of 2019). So, I wasn't the only one who saw the trailer and was mildly interested, but at least I waited until it was available on HBO or whatever so I didn't need to give James Gray money. At least, directly.

Because, wow.

Let's start with some positives, because who doesn't love those (this is where I glare at my anti-depressants).

Ad Astra has some phenomenal shots. The cinematography was done by Hoyte Van Hoytema, who brought us the breathtaking art in Dunkirk (2017), Interstellar (2014), Spectre (2015), and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), amongst many others.

The visual appeal of the movie is not to be disregarded. Its breathtaking stills, even in the trailers, played a large factor in me watching it at all.

Also, on the non-visual side, it was a nominee for the Best Achievement in Sound Mixing at the Oscars in 2020, with Gary Rydstrom (Skywalker Sound, Jurassic Park (1991), Saving Private Ryan (1998), as well as Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015), et cetra), Tom Johnson (Children of Men (2006), Titanic (1997), and several other Disney-owned franchise movies). and Mark Ulano (Titanic (1997), Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood (2019), and Iron Man (2008), as well as quite a few others) up for the award. It was up for other awards for production design, as well as visual effects, and several film critics awards.

From a technical standpoint, the movie was pleasing to watch.

However, it was also 123 fucking minutes, and dragged on worse than the first hour and a half of Alien (1979), but with less Sigourney Weaver, and more zoning out because what was the plot, again?

This movie is a counterpart to Alien in a few ways. First off: they both nail the idea of space being big and monotonous. Second of all, they both have senses of isolation, and how one can keep their mind intact after prolonged isolation in the aforementioned emptiness of space. Yet, here is where it stops.

As Alien has a riveting plot, so that the whole time the shots drag on, with the visuals stretching on just long enough to make you incredibly apprehensive, Ad Astra lacks the apprehension. The only thing I was worried about was if I was actually awake or not. And I watched Inception two nights ago, so there was already due cause to question my wakefulness.

Let's start with the synopsis, and then break that shit down, alrighty?

Astronaut Roy McBride undertakes a mission across an unforgiving solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father and his doomed expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the universe.

Issue 1: this should have been totally awesome.

Issue 1a: this was not.

Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is a very complex, yet insufferably flat character. Brad Pitt is such a well-known, and widely loved actor, so obviously I had high hopes. And he lived up to them. It was the script, which wrote Roy as an uncomfortably unstable character with deep-strung emotions. Now, this is important to note, I am not saying that emotional male characters are unwelcome, because they absolutely are, and we need more of them. What I am saying, is that the character being so completely not-alright for the entirety of the film made it difficult to like him. Yes, we saw him overcome the shadow of a missing father, hailed as a hero, yes we saw him cope (or try to) with his love life being Batman-level off the walls because of his work ethic and the demands of his field. But, it just became tiring to watch him so constantly on-edge. After a while, it's less like you're rooting for him to succeed than it's rooting for him to simply not say 'fuck it' and die. The bar kept getting lower for him.

And, the script itself was overwhelmingly wearisome. There was hardly any comedic relief (or any sort of relief), and the "unforgiving solar system" is just odd in the way that things were brought up as challenges for him to overcome. And, christ, the plot holes.

So, what the fuck was it with the baboons? And the moon pirates?

Two moments that were memorable, but drowned out by the monotony of the film.

And, sure, if the film sought to capture the monotony of space, in all of its glory, this film sure hit the fucking nail on the head.

I'm picking up that the message at the end of the film was that one didn't need to search for aliens when they should learn how to appreciate what it is to be human, or whatever.

Also? The storyline.

Or, what was supposed to be the storyline.

Starting with Roy on a giant space ladder-type thing, something explodes, and he plummets to earth, after doing a last-minute save to help stop it spreading. This is referred to as a 'surge' and was supposed to be a large plot device for the rest of the film?

Anyhow, Roy ends up on the ground, and miraculously, is alive. The free-fall shot was quite interesting to watch, but I couldn't get over how confused I was. So, the 'surges' were Bad Energy Vibes being sent from far space that could prove to be the universe's undoing. From this, he, an American Space Trooper (what a fucking cliché), has to go to the moon, where he will then catch a flight to mars, from where he will go to aforementioned Deep Space to stop, gasp!, his absentee father. Who turns out to be a massive prick, and Tommy Lee Jones, your acting, much like Mr Pitt's, couldn't save the character. I'm sorry sweetie.

So, this already has many many many plot holes, especially in the science, and dare I say, logic, of it. If the Bad Space Vibes were from just beneath the rings of Neptune, where the Absentee Asshole Space Daddy is, and managing to hit earth… why couldn't Roy have sent a signal from earth to mars, and have the colonists on mars relay that signal to Neptune? Why did the moon pirates show up with a really artsy space laser fight with heavy casualties and then become so irrelevant to the plot? Why was nobody prepared to go into the lunar warzone, despite knowing that it was an active warzone? Why the fuck did Roy answer a mayday call from a ship on the way from the moon to mars, find some rabid baboons, who ate the fucking crew, and then just fucking dip after exploding them via letting the pressure out of the section of the ship? Why, when on mars, did this dude have to sit in a room designed to 'calm him down' when it looks like a prison? And the bad science. 

Why was the mars detour so necessary that it warranted a giant chunk of screen time? God, don't even get me started on the 'getting-off-mars' sequence. Really? Underground lake tunnels that Brad here has to swim/cable-drag himself through to get to a ship? And when the ship was about to take off, he barely made it in, with 20something seconds on the countdown, and didn't fucking die because of the g-force?! How the fuck did he get in the rocket? Why are so many airlocks not LOCKED?! Why wasn't he arrested when he pretty much slaughtered the three occupants of the ship? How did he not grow ANY fucking facial hair/head hair on his 79-ish day trip from mars to Neptune? Is that realistically far? 

I'm done with the futile questions, for now, because I'm tired, and the movie has successfully cured my insomnia.

The film is beautiful, but goddamn at WHAT cost? It was disappointing. And I don't have the inclination, nor the desire, to find the script for you guys so that I have more ammunition with which to tear it to shreds. Or would you prefer I moodily mumble some Deep Thoughts™ while gazing out at the cold vacuum of space, with my visuals needing a flimsy screenplay to make it a film?

Overall, beautiful movie, terrible execution.

 Cinematography: 95

Screenplay: 10

Delivery: 40

Average: 48.33%, F