Monday, February 28
Sending Money to Ukraine
Bethenny Frankel is sending $10 million in aid to Ukrainian citizens affected by the Russian invasion through her disaster relief initiative, B Strong.
BStrong is a worldwide initiative in partnership with Global Empowerment Mission. Over the past couple days, the “Real Housewives of New York City” alum has been sharing updates on her nonprofit’s urgency to help Ukrainian citizens flee to safety as the crisis escalates.
On Friday night, the Skinnygirl entrepreneur took to Instagram to share that BStrong has focused its efforts on helping Ukrainian women and children who fled to the border of Poland.
“So we’re really dealing with women and children at the border in Poland. We just had an incident with a woman whose husband was pulled out of the car. He was taken because he’s Ukrainian, and the men can’t leave,” Frankel said in a video shared to her Instagram Story.
“He’s never held a gun in his life, and now he’s a soldier, so she’s coming through with her family, and we have to get her family to Spain, where she has family because she doesn’t have family in Poland,” she continued.
Frankel first announced BStrong’s assistance on Thursday. The initial commitment was to send 100,000 hygiene and survival kits, sleeping bags and aid totaling $10 million. In addition, financial donations are also going to “individual cases and families through cash, cards and plane tickets.”
Frankel said the BStrong team will be on hand at a welcome booth at an entry center in Medyka, Poland, Saturday.
“Money is flying in and this is what it’s going to be used for. We’re working with the Polish government,” Frankel said. “We will have multiple computers and volunteers. People coming in will come up to us, we’ll find out if they have family, where their family is. Hotels will not be available, so we’ll give them the crisis kits, and then we will be booking them travel to get them where they need to get to. Otherwise, there will be such a backlog at these entry points, and we’ll keep growing this to multiple, multiple entry points.”
As of Friday afternoon, Frankel said donations were coming in every three seconds, and the organization has upped its goal. READ MORE...
Closing Air Space to Russian Airplanes
Feb 27 (Reuters) - Sweden, Finland and Denmark said they were preparing to close their airspace to Russian planes on Sunday, joining a string of European countries taking this measure after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The moves follow similar closures of airspace of Britain, Poland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Romania to Russia's aircraft. Baltic countries Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are also closing their airspace to Russian airliners, while Germany said it was preparing to do so.
Iceland has also decided to shut its airspace to Russian air traffic, Icelandic Foreign Minister Thordis Kolbrun Gylfadottir tweeted on Sunday.
"It is now absolutely necessary to proceed with further touch measures to isolate Russia," Swedish EU Minister Hans Dahlgren told public service radio SR.
A European Union-wide ban for Russian flights could be part of a fresh package of sanctions on Moscow to be discussed later on Sunday by the bloc's foreign ministers, an EU official said separately.
Dahlgren said such a ban would be the most efficient way to pressure Moscow.
Denmark would also support a cross-EU ban to Russian aircraft, Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said in a tweet.
Finnish Minister of Transport and Communications Timo Harakka said in a tweet late on Saturday that Finland, which shares a long land border with Russia, was preparing a similar closure.
Russia's likely countermeasure will heavily hurt Finland's state carrier Finnair . READ MORE...
Nuclear Forces on High Alert
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — In a dramatic escalation of East-West tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian nuclear forces put on high alert Sunday in response to what he called “aggressive statements” by leading NATO powers.
The order means Putin wants Russia’s nuclear weapons prepared for increased readiness to launch and raises the threat that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s response to it could boil over into nuclear warfare.
Amid the worrying development, the office of Ukraine’s president said a delegation would meet with Russian officials as Moscow’s troops drew closer to Kyiv.
Putin, in giving the nuclear alert directive, cited not only the alleged statements by NATO members but the hard-hitting financial sanctions imposed by the West against Russia, including the Russian leader himself.
Speaking at a meeting with his top officials, Putin told his defense minister and the chief of the military’s General Staff to put the nuclear deterrent forces in a “special regime of combat duty.”
“Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading NATO members made aggressive statements regarding our country,” Putin said in televised comments.
Putin threatened in the days before Russia’s invasion to retaliate harshly against any nations that intervened directly in the conflict in Ukraine, and he specifically raised the specter of his country’s status as a nuclear power.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations responded to the news from Moscow while appearing on a Sunday news program.
“President Putin is continuing to escalate this war in a manner that is totally unacceptable,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said. “And we have to continue to condemn his actions in the most strong, strongest possible way.”
The practical meaning of Putin’s order was not immediately clear. Russia and the United States typically have the land- and submarine-based segments of their strategic nuclear forces on alert and prepared for combat at all times, but nuclear-capable bombers and other aircraft are not.
If Putin is arming or otherwise raising the nuclear combat readiness of his bombers, or if he is ordering more ballistic missile submarines to sea, then the United States might feel compelled to respond in kind, according to Hans Kristensen, a nuclear analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. That would mark a worrisome escalation and a potential crisis, he said. READ MORE...
Sunday, February 27
Restaurant Habits That Are Rude
No one wants to be the problematic customer in a restaurant. And since waitstaff at many restaurants have been subject to quite a bit of customer abuse during the pandemic, you may find yourself wanting to be the model diner more than ever. There are little things you can do to make the experience smoother for everyone—have your vaccination information ready if it's required, put on a mask when you're asked to and leave a good tip. But the other "polite" habits you may have in your back pocket could backfire on you and your server.
We're sure you mean well, but avoiding these unhelpful impulses the next time you hit your favorite restaurant could make life a little easier for employees.
1. You find your own seat.
You spot an empty table at a restaurant that doesn't take reservations. The host is busy seating another party, so you grab a couple of menus and take a seat. In your mind, you've taken an item off the host's to-do list and basically done their job for them—but you never know what the restaurant's system is for seating parties. Unless you're snagging a spot at the bar, you should wait to be seated until the host or another staff member can get you all set up.
2. You ignore the specials.
Hear us out—the kitchen staff have come up with something delicious (and possibly unique) for today's menu. Your waiter has memorized what's available. Don't interrupt when they launch into today's list. If you listen up, you may find that there's a dish to pique your interest.
You spot an empty table at a restaurant that doesn't take reservations. The host is busy seating another party, so you grab a couple of menus and take a seat. In your mind, you've taken an item off the host's to-do list and basically done their job for them—but you never know what the restaurant's system is for seating parties. Unless you're snagging a spot at the bar, you should wait to be seated until the host or another staff member can get you all set up.
2. You ignore the specials.
Hear us out—the kitchen staff have come up with something delicious (and possibly unique) for today's menu. Your waiter has memorized what's available. Don't interrupt when they launch into today's list. If you listen up, you may find that there's a dish to pique your interest.
3. You chat up your server.
It's always a good move to follow your server's lead when it comes to making small talk. Even if the restaurant doesn't look busy to you, your server may have other things to do. Putting in orders, filling drinks and checking on customers can be tough to juggle, so flagging your server down just to chat is one habit you want to avoid—they won't want to be rude, but idle conversation may cause them to fall behind with other customers.
4. You order from someone else.
You're ready to order, but your server is out of sight. Waving over a different server and ordering from them could seriously complicate things. Since your table now has two servers dealing with orders, you could end up with an error on your bill or your server not being aware of any special changes you made to your order. If you seriously don't see your waiter anywhere, just ask another server to flag them down for you. You'll cut down on your wait time and avoid pointless confusion entirely.
It's always a good move to follow your server's lead when it comes to making small talk. Even if the restaurant doesn't look busy to you, your server may have other things to do. Putting in orders, filling drinks and checking on customers can be tough to juggle, so flagging your server down just to chat is one habit you want to avoid—they won't want to be rude, but idle conversation may cause them to fall behind with other customers.
4. You order from someone else.
You're ready to order, but your server is out of sight. Waving over a different server and ordering from them could seriously complicate things. Since your table now has two servers dealing with orders, you could end up with an error on your bill or your server not being aware of any special changes you made to your order. If you seriously don't see your waiter anywhere, just ask another server to flag them down for you. You'll cut down on your wait time and avoid pointless confusion entirely.
5. You "help" unload the server's full tray.
Whether it's on their arm or balanced on the table, unloading the tray of food is always a bad idea. Your server has everything balanced to perfection, and snagging your dining partner's drink off the edge could send everything falling down. Be patient and let the expert do the serving. TO READ ABOUT THE OTHER FIVE, CLICK HERE...
Whether it's on their arm or balanced on the table, unloading the tray of food is always a bad idea. Your server has everything balanced to perfection, and snagging your dining partner's drink off the edge could send everything falling down. Be patient and let the expert do the serving. TO READ ABOUT THE OTHER FIVE, CLICK HERE...
King Tut"s Meteorite Dagger
Among the many items recovered from King Tut's tomb was a dagger made of iron, which is a material that was rarely used during Egypt's 18th dynasty.
That iron likely came from a meteorite, and a recent paper published in the journal Meteorites and Planetary Science sheds further light on precisely how that iron dagger was forged, as well as how it came into Tut's possession.
Tutankhamen was the son of Akhenaten and ascended to the throne when he was just 8 or 9 years old. He wasn't considered an especially important pharaoh in the grand scheme of things, but the treasures that were recovered from his tomb in the 1920s are what led to his fame.
Tutankhamen was the son of Akhenaten and ascended to the throne when he was just 8 or 9 years old. He wasn't considered an especially important pharaoh in the grand scheme of things, but the treasures that were recovered from his tomb in the 1920s are what led to his fame.
Those treasures included the famous gold burial mask (pictured above), a solid gold coffin, thrones, archery bows, trumpets, a lotus chalice, and various pieces of furniture.
These became part of a global touring exhibition, which received worldwide press coverage during the 1960s and 1970s in particular.
These became part of a global touring exhibition, which received worldwide press coverage during the 1960s and 1970s in particular.
The mummy even inspired a couple of songs: Steve Martin's hit "King Tut" (which debuted on Saturday Night Live in 1978) and the lesser-known "Dead Egyptian Blues," by the late folk rock singer Michael Peter Smith (which contains the immortal line, "Your sarcophagus is glowing, but your esophagus is showing"). READ MORE...
Lost Medieval Legends
CC-BY SUZANNE REITZ, DEN ARNAMAGNÆANSKE SAMLING (COPENHAGEN)
King Arthur’s lasting renown is one for the books. But a statistical spotlight now shines on medieval European literature’s round table of lost and forgotten stories.
An international team used a mathematical formula borrowed from ecology to estimate the extent to which medieval adventure and romance tales, and documents on which they were written, have been lost over the years. Only about 9 percent of these documents may have survived till modern times, the researchers found.
These findings indicate that simple statistical principles can be used to gauge losses of a range of past cultural items, such as specific types of stone tools or ancient coins, literature professor Mike Kestemont of the University of Antwerp in Belgium and his colleagues report in the Feb. 18 Science.
Their approach represents a simple but powerful tool for studying culture, says anthropologist Alex Bentley of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who did not participate in the study. “It’s like walking into an abandoned Amazon book warehouse decades later and estimating the total number of book titles based on the numbers of surviving single and double copies that you find.”
Much medieval European literature, which dates to between roughly the years 600 and 1450, has been lost, and many surviving manuscripts are fragmentary. Durable parchment documents were often recycled as small boxes or for other practical uses. That has left researchers unsure about whether surviving tales and documents are representative of what once existed.
Kestemont’s team turned to a formula developed by environmental statistician and study coauthor Anne Chao of National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. Chao’s statistical technique accounts for species that go undetected by researchers in field surveys of biological diversity. More generally, her approach can be used to estimate the number of unobserved events of any type that accompany relatively frequent observed events of the same type.
So, for example, this formula might be used to estimate the number of undiscovered archaeological sites in an early state society where the biggest settlements have been easier to find than smaller ones. READ MORE...
Saturday, February 26
The Rustic Appeal of a Wood Stove Inside
FROM BOB VILLA...
But is it really such a good idea? As with so many other things relating to the home, the answer depends. Before going any further, be sure to do your homework.
The simple, sleek design of this wood-burning stove features a glass door that adds a warm glow to the surrounding area. It heats up to 1,800 square feet quickly, and distributes the warm air evenly with the help of a built-in blower that features multiple speed settings.
The Pros and Cons of Heating with a Wood Stove
In areas where wood is dependably available at low cost, wood-stove heating can save money over a gas or oil system. That’s never more true than for those who harvest their own firewood. Of course, it’s a lot of work to fell trees, saw them into logs, and split those logs into stove-length pieces. There are techniques and best practices here that might take the neophyte several seasons to master. You need to be realistic about your abilities and tolerance for heavy work.
Even apart from the amount of labor involved, heating the home with a wood stove takes real commitment. Every morning, you need to start a new fire. In the absence of a backup heating system, there must always be someone at home to tend the fire, lest the plumbing pipes freeze. There are good reasons for our having moved beyond wood heat long ago. For many people who enjoy a modern lifestyle, heating with a wood stove would be a monumental inconvenience.
Of course, unlike fossil fuels, wood is a renewable resource. For some, that’s reason enough to think seriously about making the switch from a traditional oil- or gas-fueled system. And it would be a mistake not to mention that there’s something deeply satisfying, on a primal level, about wood heat. It offers a connection to the land—and to human history—that simply cannot be matched by a system that’s controlled by a thermostat on the wall.
In areas where wood is dependably available at low cost, wood-stove heating can save money over a gas or oil system. That’s never more true than for those who harvest their own firewood. Of course, it’s a lot of work to fell trees, saw them into logs, and split those logs into stove-length pieces. There are techniques and best practices here that might take the neophyte several seasons to master. You need to be realistic about your abilities and tolerance for heavy work.
Even apart from the amount of labor involved, heating the home with a wood stove takes real commitment. Every morning, you need to start a new fire. In the absence of a backup heating system, there must always be someone at home to tend the fire, lest the plumbing pipes freeze. There are good reasons for our having moved beyond wood heat long ago. For many people who enjoy a modern lifestyle, heating with a wood stove would be a monumental inconvenience.
Of course, unlike fossil fuels, wood is a renewable resource. For some, that’s reason enough to think seriously about making the switch from a traditional oil- or gas-fueled system. And it would be a mistake not to mention that there’s something deeply satisfying, on a primal level, about wood heat. It offers a connection to the land—and to human history—that simply cannot be matched by a system that’s controlled by a thermostat on the wall.
Enhancing Brain Happiness
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Omega-3s are essential nutrients with benefits that extend from your head to your toes.* And how can you get more of them? You're about to find out! This episode of the mindbodygreen podcast was created in partnership with Kori Krill Oil, the omega-3 superfood with more nutrients in their natural form for superior absorption.*
To lighten your mood and melt away negativity, you have to start with basic brain health. Your brain is an organ, after all, and its proper function is the foundation of cognitive and emotional well-being. "If you get your brain right, odds are you're going to think right, you're going to feel right, and you're going to behave right," says clinical neuroscientist psychiatrist Daniel Amen, M.D., author of You, Happier: The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type, on this episode of the mindbodygreen podcast.
To that end, Amen shares some nonnegotiable brain health tips that can ultimately help you become a happier person. Below, find his practical advice for a positive mood long-term:
1. Cultivate purpose
A sense of purpose affects your mood in a very specific way: "Purpose, all by itself, increases dopamine, but it doesn't dump it—it drips it," Amen shares. You see, the more dopamine your brain produces, the more it starts to "wear out the pleasure centers in your brain," says Amen, and your brain craves more and more of it. While purpose does increase dopamine, it doesn't frontload your brain with it—rather, it keeps it at a steady pace over time.
Plus: "Purposeful people live longer," declares Amen. "They're happier, they have better relationships, and their overall physical health is better." And when all of those aspects are thriving, a positive mood doesn't fall too far behind.
As for why a sense of purpose enhances just about every facet of your body and brain health, Amen believes it's all about connection. "When your life is all about you, you're not connected," he explains. Whereas if you have a bigger purpose in life, you're able to see outside of yourself and connect to a larger force. "And our connections are absolutely essential, foundational to happiness," he says. TO LEARN ABOUT THE OTHER THREE, CLICK HERE...
Demonology
When I (Ed Simon) reveal that I wrote a book about demonology, I’m invariably asked if I believe that demons are actually real. “Of course, I don’t think that demons are actually real,” is the expected response and the one that I give. “I’m a modern, secular, educated, liberal, agnostic man. I don’t believe in demons and devils, goblins and ghouls, imps, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, or poltergeists either.” Yet whenever giving the doxology of all of that which we’re not to have faith in, I’m mentally keeping my fingers crossed, because so much of that question depends on the definitions of the words “believe,” “demons,” “actually,” and “real.”
Since the Enlightenment, Western intelligentsia have been the inheritors to a rather anemic model of knowledge known as the correspondence theory of truth, whereby the validity of a statement is ascertained simply by whether or not it matches empirical reality. If I say, “The dog is in the yard,” that statement is either true or false depending on whether or not said dog is in said yard. Easy enough, but then what of statements like “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” “I think that I shall never see/a poem as lovely as a tree,” or “I wondered lonely as a cloud?”
A fundamentalist adherence to the correspondence theory of truth, trumpeted by logical positivists and other philosophical heretics, would consign John Keats, Joyce Kilmer, and William Wordsworth into a bin marked “meaningless” (even though I think we can all ascertain that there is meaning, even if it’s the “slant” truth that Emily Dickinson writes about). And so, you can imagine what is made of statements about divinity and diabology (though theology has, in my estimation, always just been a branch of poetics anyhow).
That the correspondence theory of truth doesn’t even match its own exacting prescriptions to what is legitimate or not is a bit of self-referential absurdity best passed over; concluding that as a model it’s clearly ineffectual in describing whole swaths of human experience is sufficient enough. You can see my difficulty with the question of whether or not I “actually” believe in demons—I reject the entire epistemological attitude in which the query is posed. If the question is asked in the spirit of ascertaining whether or not demons exist as tangibly as a dog in the yard, then obviously the answer is in the negative, and yet in those moments of sublime terror when approaching the core of the cracked numinous, I can’t help but know what I felt. That warped smile and those red eyes might not be staring back at me from the yard, but they’re staring back from somewhere. READ MORE...
Friday, February 25
What is Putin's ENDGAME?
Putin’s slumped posture and deadened affect led me to suspect that he is not as stable as we would hope. He had the presence not of a confident president, but of a surly adolescent caught in a misadventure, rolling his eyes at the stupid adults who do not understand how cruel the world has been to him. Teenagers, of course, do not have hundreds of thousands of troops and nuclear weapons.
Even discounting Putin’s delivery, the speech was, in many places, simply unhinged. Putin began with a history lesson about how and why Ukraine even exists. For all his Soviet nostalgia, the Russian president is right that his Soviet predecessors intentionally created a demographic nightmare when drawing the internal borders of the U.S.S.R., a subject I’ve explained at length here.
But Putin’s point wasn’t that the former subjects of the Soviet Union needed to iron out their differences. Rather, he was suggesting that none of the new states that emerged from the Soviet collapse—except for Russia—were real countries. “As a result of Bolshevik policy,” Putin intoned, “Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine’. He is its author and architect.”
It is true that Soviet leaders created the 1991 borders. That is also true of what we now call the Russian Federation. Putin, however, went even further back in history: “Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood.”
By that kind of historical reasoning, few nations in Europe, or anywhere else, are safe. Putin’s foray into history was nothing less than a demand that only Moscow—and only the Kremlin’s supreme leader—has the right to judge what is or is not a sovereign state (as I recently discussed here). Putin’s claims are hardly different from Saddam Hussein’s rewriting of Middle East history when Iraq tried to erase Kuwait from the map. READ MORE...
About the author: Tom Nichols is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Peacefield.
Waiting For A Star To Explode
Supernova 1987A appears as a bright spot near the centre of this image of the Tarantula nebula, taken by the ESO Schmidt Telescope.Credit: ESO
He was just starting out in science the last time it happened, in February 1987, when a dot of light suddenly appeared in the southern sky. This is the closest supernova seen during modern times; and the event, known as SN 1987A, gained worldwide media attention and led to dramatic advances in astrophysics.
Nakahata was a graduate student at the time, working on what was then one of the world’s foremost neutrino catchers, the Kamiokande-II detector at the Kamioka Underground Observatory near Hida, Japan. He and a fellow student, Keiko Hirata, spotted evidence of neutrinos pouring out of the supernova — the first time anyone had seen these fundamental particles originating from anywhere outside the Solar System.
Now, Nakahata, a physicist at the University of Tokyo, is ready for when a supernova goes off. He is head of the world’s largest neutrino experiment of its kind, Super-Kamiokande, where upgrades to its supernova alert system were completed late last year. The improvements will enable the observatory’s computers to recognize when it is detecting neutrinos from a supernova, almost in real time, and to send out an automated alert to conventional telescopes worldwide.
Astronomers will be waiting. “It’s gonna give everybody the willies,” says Alec Habig, an astrophysicist at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Early warning from Super-Kamiokande and other neutrino observatories will trigger robotic telescopes — in many cases responding with no human intervention — to swivel in the direction of the dying star to catch the first light from the supernova, which will come after the neutrino storm.
But when the light arrives, it could be too much of a good thing, says Patrice Bouchet, an astrophysicist at the University of Paris-Saclay who made crucial observations of SN 1987A, from the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The brightest events, which would shine brighter than a full Moon and be visible during the day, would overwhelm the ultra-sensitive but delicate sensors in the telescopes used by professional astronomers.
Fighting Child Poverty in America
It was heralded as a game-changer for America's social safety net. It dramatically reduced child poverty. But, last month, the enhanced Child Tax Credit — a kind of "Social Security for kids" — expired, and millions of American children sank back into poverty.
In March 2021, President Biden and congressional Democrats revamped the Child Tax Credit as part of the American Rescue Plan. They restructured it, so that parents could get a monthly check from the government. They increased the credit's size, allowing parents to claim as much as $3,600 a year per child, or $300 a month. And they made the credit fully refundable, so that even super-low-income families who don't pay much — or anything — in federal taxes could get it.
For those primarily concerned with ending child poverty, these changes were a resounding success. Scholars at Columbia University found they reduced child poverty by about 30%. Another study found the enhanced program cut household food insufficiency by 26%.
But President Biden's efforts to renew the credit have been thwarted by opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and congressional Republicans. They disliked how much the program cost and how generous it was, and they worried that it would encourage parents to stop working because it did not have a work requirement.
According to the Tax Policy Center, the beefed-up Child Tax Credit would cost around $225 billion per year (about $100 billion more per year than the original version, which is now back in effect). For context, that's less than a quarter of the annual cost of Social Security, about a third of the cost of Medicare, and about the same as the budget for the Department of Agriculture. A report from the Urban Institute finds that even with the enhanced Child Tax Credit, America spent only about 7% of its federal budget on kids in 2021 — and that is now projected to decline.
As for how many parents stopped working as a result of the enhanced Child Tax Credit, estimates range from about 300,000 to 1.5 million. There are about 50 million working parents in the United States, so even if we accept only the highest estimate, more than 97% of parents continued working after receiving the payments. That makes sense because 300 bucks a month is hardly enough for most families to live on.
The failure of Washington to renew the enhanced Child Tax Credit continues a long tradition in America: Our welfare system has long spent generously on the old, but it has consistently skimped on the young. While America spends about as much, or even more on the elderly than many other rich nations, it spends significantly less on kids. Among the almost 40 countries in the OECD, only Turkey spends less per child as a percentage of their GDP. It's a big reason why the United States has a much higher rate of child poverty than most other affluent countries — and even has a higher rate of child poverty than some not-so-affluent countries.
In a new paper, the economists Anna Aizer, Hilary W. Hoynes, and Adriana Lleras-Muney explore the reasons why the United States is such an outlier when it comes to fighting child poverty. While they acknowledge the reasons are varied and complex, they focus their analysis on one factor: American policymakers, influenced by economists, have dwelled much more on the costs of social programs than their benefits. TO FIND OUT THE COST OF FOCUSING JUST ON COSTS, CLICK HERE...
Thursday, February 24
Australia Wants Investigation of China
A PLA-N Yuzhao-class amphibious transport dock vessel transits the Torres Strait February 18, 2022. Picture taken February 18, 2022. Australian Defence Department/Handout via REUTERS
SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said a Chinese naval vessel that pointed a laser at an Australian defense plane was potentially visible from Australia’s mainland, as Canberra demands a “full investigation” by Beijing.
Morrison said on radio on Monday his government had not received an explanation from China over the incident last Thursday, considered by Canberra as a “dangerous and reckless act”.
A Chinese navy vessel within Australia’s exclusive economic zone directed a laser at an Australian military aircraft in flight over Australia’s northern approaches, illuminating the plane and potentially endangering lives, Australia’s defense said on Saturday.
The P-8A Poseidon – a maritime patrol aircraft – detected a laser emanating from a People’s Liberation Army – Navy (PLA-N) vessel, the Defense Department said, releasing photographs of two Chinese vessels sailing close to Australia’s northern coast.
A Chinese guided missile destroyer and an amphibious transport dock were sailing east through the Arafura Sea between New Guinea and Australia at the time of the incident, and later passed through the narrow Torres Strait.
“It’s possible people could even see the vessel from our mainland, potentially,” Morrison told reporters in Tasmania on Monday. READ MORE...
Folding Phone
It's been well over a month since the OnePlus 10 Pro got its official announcement, but thanks to its region-locked exclusivity to China, it almost feels like the phone doesn't exist yet.
While recent rumors point to a global release in March, famed durability tester Zack from JerryRigEverything managed to get his hands on the device a little early. Unfortunately, it seems like this is one OnePlus device that might not make it out unscathed.
Avid JRE fans know how this usually goes: scratch test, burn test, bend test, all to see if a specific device can hold up to daily wear and tear. For the most part, the OnePlus 10 Pro performs as you'd expect.
Avid JRE fans know how this usually goes: scratch test, burn test, bend test, all to see if a specific device can hold up to daily wear and tear. For the most part, the OnePlus 10 Pro performs as you'd expect.
Its glass display scratches around a level 6 on the Mohs hardness scale (once the screen protector is removed, at least), and the OLED display permanently burns after about 45 seconds under a lighter. That's all pretty usual for a smartphone in 2022.
It's the bend test where the real challenge comes in. Glass slabs usually handle this process pretty well, especially when reinforced with some sort of metal or steel.
It's the bend test where the real challenge comes in. Glass slabs usually handle this process pretty well, especially when reinforced with some sort of metal or steel.
Every now and then, though, a phone's construction just can't hold up to this sort of torture, and it seems like the OnePlus 10 Pro falls squarely into this category. READ MORE...
Working in a Metaverse
Facebook’s metaverse was always intended to be more than another virtual reality application. It would provide users with infinite space and infinite possibilities, to move around, interact, engage, and even earn in a VR world. One of the key use cases the company has factored in is work.
“By 2030, the new generations of Oculus will allow users to teleport from one place to another without moving from their couch — not only for gaming and entertainment but also for work,” Mark Zuckerberg said in a March podcast. Then, in August, the company introduced a VR collaboration solution called Horizon Workrooms. And now, Facebook has completely rebranded as Meta, with a clear vision for a VR-enabled metaverse.
The notion of the metaverse contains within it several elements: multiple VR worlds, interactive and near-real digital assets, the ability to move around and teleport without restrictions, and problem-solving in 3D. All of these are extremely conducive to work-related use cases.
What Is the Metaverse?
The metaverse is defined as a three-dimensional internet powered by virtual reality and augmented reality. It is persistent (exists regardless of the user’s presence), real-time (users can experience live events), infinite (supports unlimited concurrent users and VR worlds), self-sustaining (users can work for and pay for things in the metaverse), and interoperable (there’s only one metaverse and everything is integrated within it).
Importantly, this definition of the metaverse exists independent of Facebook (now rebranded as Meta). The term was coined in the 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash and there have been several attempts to build the metaverse since then. However, early attempts like Second Life, Roblox, and NeosVR were all limited gaming applications. The new metaverses put forward by Facebook and also Microsoft are geared for work-related use cases – i.e., communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.
The metaverse is defined as a three-dimensional internet powered by virtual reality and augmented reality. It is persistent (exists regardless of the user’s presence), real-time (users can experience live events), infinite (supports unlimited concurrent users and VR worlds), self-sustaining (users can work for and pay for things in the metaverse), and interoperable (there’s only one metaverse and everything is integrated within it).
Importantly, this definition of the metaverse exists independent of Facebook (now rebranded as Meta). The term was coined in the 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash and there have been several attempts to build the metaverse since then. However, early attempts like Second Life, Roblox, and NeosVR were all limited gaming applications. The new metaverses put forward by Facebook and also Microsoft are geared for work-related use cases – i.e., communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.
Working in the Metaverse: Key Advantages
What are the advantages of working in the metaverse? In 2019, this question might have been slightly harder to answer. But now, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions around the world were forced to switch to digital-only modes of communication and some kind of a virtual workspace. Working in the metaverse takes this a step further to bring you all the capabilities of the real world, with very little of its challenges or limitations.
Overcome the challenges of remote work
This is the biggest advantage of working in the metaverse. When telecommuting, users often complain that they are unable to read body language and communicate effectively. Managers struggle to maintain visibility over team productivity. And, due to the prolonged absence of in-person interactions, there is risk of disengagement. The metaverse creates an immersive virtual workplace where 3D avatars of employees can work together just like in the real world. READ MORE...
What are the advantages of working in the metaverse? In 2019, this question might have been slightly harder to answer. But now, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions around the world were forced to switch to digital-only modes of communication and some kind of a virtual workspace. Working in the metaverse takes this a step further to bring you all the capabilities of the real world, with very little of its challenges or limitations.
Overcome the challenges of remote work
This is the biggest advantage of working in the metaverse. When telecommuting, users often complain that they are unable to read body language and communicate effectively. Managers struggle to maintain visibility over team productivity. And, due to the prolonged absence of in-person interactions, there is risk of disengagement. The metaverse creates an immersive virtual workplace where 3D avatars of employees can work together just like in the real world. READ MORE...
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