Michael Phelps: World Anti-Doping Agency efforts ‘have fallen short’
lead image
#Michael #Phelps #World #AntiDoping #Agency #efforts #fallen #short
By Tom Singleton, Technology reporter
Three decades on from the day it began, it is hard to get your head around the scale of Amazon.
Consider its vast warehouse in Dartford, on the outskirts of London. It has millions of stock items, with hundreds of thousands of them bought every day – and it takes two hours from the moment something is ordered, the company says, for it to be picked, packed and sent on its way.
Now, picture that scene and multiply it by 175. That’s the number of “fulfilment centres”, as Amazon likes to call them, that it has around the world.
Even if you think you can visualise that never-ending blur of parcels crisscrossing the globe, you need to remember something else: that’s just a fraction of what Amazon does.
It is also a major streamer and media company (Amazon Prime Video); a market leader in home camera systems (Ring) and smart speakers (Alexa) and tablets and e-readers (Kindle); it hosts and supports vast swathes of the internet (Amazon Web Services); and much more besides.
“For a long time it has been called ‘The Everything Store’, but I think, at this point, Amazon is sort of ‘The Everything Company’,” Bloomberg’s Amanda Mull tells me.
“It’s so large and so omnipresent and touches so many different parts of life, that after a while, people sort of take Amazon’s existence in all kinds of elements of daily life sort of as a given,” she says.
Or, as the company itself once joked, pretty much the only way you could get though a day without enriching Amazon in some way was by “living in a cave”.
So the story of Amazon, since it was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, has been one of explosive growth, and continual reinvention.
There has been plenty of criticism along the way too, over “severe” working conditions and how much tax it pays.
But the main question as it enters its fourth decade appears to be: once you are The Everything Company, what do you do next?
Or as Sucharita Kodali, who analyses Amazon for research firm Forrester, puts it: “What the heck is left?”
“Once you’re at a half a trillion dollars in revenue, which they already are, how do you continue to grow at double digits year over year?”
One option is to try to tie the threads between existing businesses: the vast amounts of shopping data Amazon has for its Prime members might help it sell adverts on its streaming service, which – like its rivals – is increasingly turning to commercials for revenue.
But that only goes so far – what benefits can Kuiper, its satellite division, bring to Whole Foods, its supermarket chain?
To some extent, says Sucharita Kodali, the answer is to “keep taking swings” at new business ventures, and not worry if they fall flat.
Just this week Amazon killed a business robot line after only nine months – Ms Kodali says that it is just one of a “whole graveyard of bad ideas” the company tried and discarded in order to find the successful ones.
But, she says, Amazon may also have to focus on something else: the increasing attention of regulators, asking difficult questions like what does it do with our data, what environmental impact is it having, and is it simply too big?
All of these issues could prompt intervention “in the same way that we rolled back the monopolies that became behemoths in the early 20th century”, Ms Kodali says.
For Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse, its size poses another problem: the places its Western customers live in simply can not take much more stuff.
“Our cities were not built for many more deliveries,” he tells the BBC.
That makes emerging economies like India, Mexico and Brazil important. But, Mr Kaziukėnas, suggests, there Amazon does not just need to enter the market but to some extent to make it.
“It’s crazy and maybe should not be the case – but that’s a conversation for another day,” he says.
Amanda Mull points to another priority for Amazon in the years ahead: staving off competition from Chinese rivals like Temu and Shein.
Amazon, she says, has “created the spending habits” of western consumers by acting as a trusted intermediary between them and Chinese manufacturers, and bolting on to that easy returns and lightening fast delivery.
But remove that last element of the deal and you can bring prices down, as the Chinese retailers have done.
“They have said ‘well, if you wait a week or 10 days for something that you’re just buying on a lark, we can give it to you for almost nothing,'” says Ms Mull – a proposition that is appealing to many people, especially during a cost of living crisis.
Juozas Kaziukėnas is not so sure – suggesting the new retailers will remain “niche”, and it will take something much more fundamental to challenge Amazon’s position.
“For as long as going shopping involves going to a search bar – Amazon has nailed that,” he says.
Thirty years ago a fledging company spotted emerging trends around internet use and realised how it could upend first retail, then much else besides.
Mr Kaziukėnas says for that to happen again will take a similar leap of imagination, perhaps around AI.
“The only threat to Amazon is something that doesn’t look like Amazon,” he says.
#Company
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
When Emmanuel Morgan was hired as a sports reporter covering the N.F.L. and combat sports for The New York Times in 2021, the job felt familiar. After all, Mr. Morgan, who grew up playing football, had been writing about the sport since high school. He went on to cover the N.F.L. for The Los Angeles Times for nearly two years.
“I knew the N.F.L. and the U.F.C. and all these other sports so well,” said Mr. Morgan, 27, who also covered high school sports and basketball for The Los Angeles Times, including helping report on the death of Kobe Bryant in 2020.
So when The Times disbanded its Sports department last year, he took the opportunity to stretch himself and pitch a new beat: the intersection of sports and pop culture.
“I’m not a movie critic or a Broadway-goer, but I follow pop culture, I watch Netflix and I listen to music constantly — in the shower every day, on the subway,” he said. “I had my pulse on it.” Over the past eight months, Mr. Morgan, now on the Culture desk, has written about the pop culture phenomenon of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the growing relationship between the N.F.L. and streaming services and the rise of athlete podcasts.
In an interview, he discussed how his daily news consumption has changed and what his favorite reporting experience so far has been. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You’ve been in the role for a little over eight months now. How is it going so far?
I have definitely had to be a lot more creative when it comes to finding story ideas. When I was with the Sports desk, I knew the N.F.L. and the U.F.C. so well — covering sports is very formulaic. You know you have to have previews for big events like the Super Bowl and the N.F.L. draft, and as the season goes on the major story lines and the targets for profiles and features become pretty clear. But with this new beat, I’m reporting on stuff you don’t see on TV or Twitter, and there are a lot more options, since I’m not just focusing on the N.F.L. and U.F.C. anymore. I have to make a lot more phone calls and talk to more people.
In March, a meeting with a publicist led to a timely story about how Flau’jae Johnson, one of the best women’s college basketball players in the country, balanced her sports obligations with her music career.
What are some of your favorite articles you’ve written so far?
I worked on a number of pieces around the Super Bowl this year in Las Vegas — I followed a retired player around Radio Row for a day for a story about how it’s transformed into a colossus for the N.F.L. I wrote about how parties at the Super Bowl have become a business and use the event as a playing ground for brand activations. It was cool to show other people on the Culture desk that there’s more to cover than just the halftime show.
I also wrote about Joel Embiid, a basketball player who started a media production company, which is a big thing in the sports space now. And I landed a front-page story on how the N.F.L. is trying to branch out and do more long-form projects for streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Apple.
Did you play sports growing up?
I played football in high school. I was a running back and a linebacker. I also wrestled. I’ve always been an athlete, but I loved to write, too. So putting the two together made sense.
What’s the most fun thing you’ve had the chance to do for an article?
I got to follow the U.F.C. announcer Bruce Buffer around for a fight. I was able to observe how he prepared, including color-coordinating index cards he reads in the octagon, which have the fighters’ names and stats on them.
What’s been your biggest challenge?
Trying to detach myself from the games. My instinct is to want to cover what’s happening on the field or on the court. I have to step back and look for things that aren’t involved in the actual sport itself. I’m training myself to think differently.
What are your goals for future coverage of sports and culture at The Times?
To keep building it out — it’s been cool to be able to experiment and try new things; to say, “The New York Times wouldn’t have covered that story before, but it’s important.” I’m not even a year in yet, and I keep finding new stories to cover. There’s an audience for this crossover between sports and entertainment, and my goal is to find it and tell stories that resonate with them.
#Reporter #Beat #Blends #Sports #Culture
In the first century BCE, the Greek philosopher Plutarch first posed the famous question, “Which was first, the bird or the egg?” In Christian traditions, eggs symbolise the tomb of Jesus Christ, closed yet concealing life inside. The cracking of the egg is a representation of the opening of the tomb that held Jesus Christ. This is the reason we eat chocolate Easter eggs today! However, eggs have been a symbol of life, rebirth, and the advent of spring across the world, long before Christianity.
Eggs feature in ancient creation myths from Egypt, India, Persia, Finland, Oceania, China, and Greece. In the ancient Greek Orphic tradition, the god Phanes was formed amongst chaos and darkness within a silver egg, hatched, and then created the world.
The practice of decorating eggs can date as far back as 55,000 years ago in South Africa, where fragments of ostrich eggs painted in black, red, and orange have been found. Decorated ostrich eggs (rhyta) dating from the Bronze Age, have been found in elite Minoan and Mycenaean tombs across Greece. These hollowed eggs were highly regarded and used as ritual drinking vessels. While we do not know the symbolism of these eggs in Bronze Age Greece, in New Kingdom Egypt ostriches were directly connected with the dead as well as the rising of the sun.
While there is no documented first recording of an ‘Easter egg’, it is believed that early Mesopotamian Orthodox Christians first began to dye eggs for Easter as they had for the Zoroastrian New Year, Nowruz, where they had been used as a symbol of fertility for hundreds of years. The use of coloured eggs then spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe through the Orthodox church, where the tradition continues today.
There are several traditions behind the choice of the colour red. For many, the red dye represents the blood of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross. Another explanation comes from a story about Mary Magdalene, in which Emperor Tiberius told her that he would believe in the Resurrection if the basket of eggs she held turned red – which they immediately did. Another story explains that the Virgin Mary turned a basket of eggs red with her tears upon seeing Jesus on the cross. Other reasons include using the colour red as an expression of joy for the Resurrection, or as a repellent against evil.
Traditionally dyed by women of the household on the Thursday before Easter, the eggs were boiled or painted with dye made from vinegar and onion skins, the rizari plant, turmeric, beetroot, or even coffee. Today, the most common way to dye eggs is with commercial red dye. After dyeing, the eggs are often rubbed with olive oil to make them shine.
While often left plain, red eggs can be decorated in a variety of different ways. The most common way is to wrap flowers, herbs, or leaves against the eggs with sheer fabric before boiling the eggs in dye, leaving an imprint on the egg. In Northern Greece, women use a tool called a kondili and beeswax to paint intricate flowers, leaves, birds, or words on each egg. Traditionally, women would begin dyeing and decorating the eggs just after midnight on Thursday and work throughout the day to ensure the eggs were completed before Good Friday. The kondili tool is heated over a candle so the beeswax can slowly drip through like ink. The beeswax is only wiped off after dyeing the eggs, leaving the design behind. Eggs decorated in this way are called perthikes and are similar to Ukrainian pysanky eggs. As well as these traditional decorating methods, many people also now use stickers to decorate their eggs.
On Easter Sunday, the eggs are used for a game called tsougrisma (‘clinking together’). This is either played at the church right after midnight or later in the day during the Easter Sunday feast.
The players will inspect the eggs to try to find the strongest egg for the game. Everyone has their own theories about how to pick the best egg – whether it’s by the depth of its colour, if it’s pointy or round, big, small, heavy or light! Two people will then ‘clink’ the ends of their eggs against each other to see which egg is left intact, then continue to the next person. The person tapping the egg will say ‘Christos Anesti’ (‘Christ has risen’) while the person being tapped will say ‘Alithos Anesti’ (‘Indeed he has risen).
Players are out of the game when both ends of their egg are cracked. The person with the last egg standing is said to have good luck for the year! The eggs are then eaten, and in some families, one egg is kept for the entire year.
#dye #eggs #Greek #Easter
As new coronavirus variants gain traction across the United States, summer travelers are facing a familiar and tiresome question: How will the ever-mutating virus affect travel plans?
In light of updated guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the answers may be slightly different from those in previous years.
Here’s what to know about traveling this summer if you’re worried about — or think you might have — Covid-19.
Recent C.D.C. data show that Covid infections are rising or most likely rising in more than 40 states. Hospitalization rates and deaths, while low compared with the peaks seen in previous years, are also on the rise.
The uptick is tied to a handful of variants — named KP.2, KP.3 and LB.1 — that now account for a majority of new cases.
At the same time, record numbers of people are expected to travel over July 4 and the holiday weekend.
In short: You should probably delay or cancel your trip.
If you tested positive or are experiencing Covid symptoms, which include fever, chills, fatigue, a cough, a runny nose, body aches and a headache, the C.D.C. recommends that you stay home and keep away from others.
According to its latest guidelines, the agency advises waiting until at least 24 hours after you are fever-free and your overall symptoms are improving before going back to normal activities, including travel.
New C.D.C. guidelines issued in March made significant changes to the recommended isolation period for people with Covid.
The agency now says that you can resume daily activities if you meet two requirements: You have been fever-free for at least 24 hours (without the use of fever-reducing medications) and your symptoms are improving overall. Previously, the agency recommended isolating for at least five days, plus a period of post-isolation precautions.
Even after your isolation period, you may still be able to spread the virus to others, which is why the C.D.C. encourages you to continue to take precautions for the next five days: Use masks, wash your hands frequently, practice physical distancing, clean your air by opening windows or purifying it, and continue testing yourself before gathering around others.
Travelers no longer need to show proof of being vaccinated against Covid or take a Covid test to enter the U.S. (This applies to both U.S. citizens and noncitizens.)
The same is true in Europe and most other countries.
First, make sure you stay up-to-date with Covid vaccines.
Next, plan to bring any items that would be helpful should you become sick while traveling.
“Make sure to take a good first aid or medication kit with you,” said Vicki Sowards, the director of nursing resources for Passport Health, which provides travel medical services. Ms. Sowards recommended that your kit include medications that you usually take when you are ill, as well as Covid tests.
You may want to consider packing medications that can help alleviate the symptoms of Covid, like painkillers, cold and flu medicines, and fever reducers. Bringing along some electrolyte tablets (or powdered Gatorade) can also help if you get sick.
Ms. Sowards also suggested speaking with your physician before traveling, particularly if you’re in a vulnerable or high-risk group. Some doctors might prescribe the antiviral Paxlovid as a precautionary measure, she said, to be taken in the event of a Covid infection.
Wearing a mask on a plane or in crowded areas is still a good idea, said Ms. Sowards. Covid is spread through airborne particles and droplets, “so protecting yourself is paramount, especially if you are immunocompromised or have chronic health conditions.”
If you do get sick, start wearing a mask and using over-the-counter medications such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen for fever or joint aches, Ms. Sowards advised.
Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2024.
#Test #Positive #Covid #Travel
In The First Descendant, there’s a whole encyclopedia’s worth of materials in the game. They all have their uses, but the Ceramic Composite takes the cake. It is one of the most sought-after materials in the game, and here’s how to get Ceramic Composites in The First Descendant.
Ceramic Composites drops from only one location, the White-night Gulch. It is quite far in the main mission chain, so you must progress until you unlock the area. Once you have unlocked the White-night Gulch, you can find Ceramic Composites through the following methods:
These are quite specific, but these Resources Boxes and Munition Capsules spawn all over the area. Munitions spawn near cliffs, obstacles, and terrains, so you must look to the sides when searching for them. Resources Boxes are quite random, but you can easily spot them as these bright orange boxes. Once you find them, you can shoot or smash them with a melee attack.
Munition and Resource Boxes don’t always contain Ceramic Composites. From experience, you might get more Flectorite than Ceramic Composites. However, they seem to have the same rarity, so it might just be based on luck. If you need thousands of Ceramic Composites, you’ll spend hours running around White-night Gulch. On the bright side, you’ll get some Flectorite and other materials while farming.
These Ceramic Composites are used in several crafts or research. The extensive list of recipes is included in the table below.
Name | Type | Ceramic Composite Needed | Research Time | Gold | End Product |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gley Spiral Catalyst | Descendant | 408x | 8 hours | 200,000 | Gley |
Kyle Spiral Catalyst | Descendant | 408x | 8 hours | 200,000 | Kyle |
Yujin Spiral Catalyst | Descendant | 408x | 8 hours | 200,000 | Yujin |
Enzo Spiral Catalyst | Descendant | 408x | 8 hours | 200,000 | Enzo |
Ajax Stabilizer | Descendant | 408x | 8 hours | 200,000 | Ajax |
Ultimate Bunny Enhanced Cells | Descendant | 919x | 18 hours | 450,000 | Ultimate Bunny |
Ultimate Gley Spiral Catalyst | Descendant | 919x | 18 hours | 450,000 | Ultimate Gley |
Ultimate Ajax Stabilizer | Descendant | 919x | 18 hours | 450,000 | Ultimate Ajax |
Restored Relic Synthetic Fiber | Ultimate Weapon | 102x | 2 hours | 50,000 | Restored Relic |
Python Nano Tube | Ultimate Weapon | 102x | 2 hours | 50,000 | Python |
Enduring Legacy Synthetic Fiber | Ultimate Weapon | 102x | 2 hours | 50,000 | Enduring Legacy |
Kings guard’s Lance Synthetic Fiber | Ultimate Weapon | 102x | 2 hours | 50,000 | King’s Guard Lance |
Afterglow Sword Polymer Syncytium | Ultimate Weapon | 102x | 2 hours | 50,000 | Afterglow Sword |
Executor Polymer Syncytium | Ultimate Weapon | 102x | 2 hours | 50,000 | Executor |
Perforator Polymer Syncytium | Ultimate Weapon | 102x | 2 hours | 50,000 | Perforator |
Several of these items are highly wanted crafts, especially the Ultimate versions of the skins. Even the popular Ultimate Bunny skin needs Ceramic Composites to craft. I would suggest doing other activities in the White-night Gulch, so at least you are hitting two birds with one stone. You can unlock the Special Operations, and the Munition and Resource Boxes will still spawn in the Operation. You’ll also get some Amorphous Material Patterns through this farming strategy to get more materials.
The First Descendant
#Ceramic #Composite #Descendant
Offering a foretaste of what’s to come once it is fully commissioned, ESA’s EarthCARE satellite has returned the first images from its broadband radiometer instrument. These initial images offer a tantalizing glimpse into the intricacies of our planet’s energy balance—a delicate balance that governs our climate.
Earth’s energy balance accounts the amount of energy it receives from the sun, solar radiation, and the amount of thermal radiation that Earth emits back out to space.
Influenced by numerous factors, including clouds, aerosols and greenhouse gases, this balance is vital for maintaining Earth’s relatively stable temperatures.
Although it is well-known that human activities are increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, aerosols also enter the atmosphere from industrial plants, traffic and agricultural practices, as well as from natural sources.
Global temperatures are rising, so understanding and monitoring the radiation balance is crucial for studying and addressing climate-related issues, which is why ESA, together with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, built the EarthCARE satellite.
EarthCARE has been designed to measure various aspects of our atmosphere to help us understand how clouds and aerosols reflect incoming solar energy back out to space and how they trap outgoing infrared energy.
This information is crucial to understand climate change and to predict the rate at which clouds and aerosols could lose their current overall cooling effect in the future.
Remarkably, despite only being launched a little over a month ago, EarthCARE has already returned the first data from its cloud profiling radar.
And now, its broadband radiometer is also demonstrating its impressive capabilities.
ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programs, Simonetta Cheli, said, “Of course we have never doubted the EarthCARE broadband radiometer’s potential, but here we see, at such an early stage in the mission, that the instrument is working very well and delivering excellent data.
“Each of the satellite’s different instruments has an extremely important role to play—and when all of them are working in harmony and the satellite is commissioned, then the scientific community and weather forecasters will have a powerful tool to advance our understanding of Earth’s energy balance, advance climate science and improve weather predictions.”
Crucial to the mission, the broadband radiometer measures radiative fluxes at the top of Earth’s atmosphere.
As the satellite travels along its orbit, the broadband radiometer is unique in the fact that it views the atmosphere from three directions simultaneously.
This information will allow scientists to accurately measure how much incoming energy from the sun is being reflected back out to space and how much thermal energy is being emitted from Earth’s surface at the same time.
The broadband radiometer’s three different viewing angles—one directly down from the satellite, one in front of the satellite’s path (forward) and one behind the satellite’s path (backward)—are key to capturing systematic three-dimensional views of both reflected and emitted radiation.
Comparing this to the radiation calculated from the combined measurements from the satellite’s other instruments will significantly improve our understanding of aerosol–cloud–radiation interactions.
The image above was taken on 18 July, just a few hours after the broadband radiometer started its measurements. It shows brightness in the forward view along EarthCARE’s orbital path across the western Mediterranean, around a 1,300 km stretch from northern Spain to Algeria.
The brightness indicates how much solar energy is reflected back to space. For example, white bright clouds reflect a lot of sunlight, shown in red, while the sea reflects little sunlight back to the satellite and appears dark, shown in blue.
While the data show a distinct transition between the coast of Spain and the Mediterranean Sea, there is little difference over the open sea. The switch from darker to brighter colors over the Algerian coast is down to the presence of aerosols and thin cloud.
The image below zooms into the Atlas Mountains where thunder clouds tower 10 km into the atmosphere. The broadband radiometer’s three different viewing angles capture the clouds from slightly different positions.
This can be seen in the apparent positions of the cloud’s shadows relative to the clouds: they seem to be north of the cloud for the forward view, east for the down view, and south for the backward view.
This combination of viewing angles is the instrument’s strength—one view only would not fully reveal the sunlight or the thermal radiation being reflected or emitted by cloud and other features. The view from multiple angles gathers information about the directional distribution of the energy that is seen at the top of the atmosphere.
Having this three-dimensional view globally, along with data from EarthCARE’s three other instruments—the cloud profiling radar, the atmospheric lidar and the multispectral imager—is key to advancing climate science.
Citation:
EarthCARE offers a sneak peek into Earth’s energy balance (2024, July 5)
retrieved 5 July 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-07-earthcare-peek-earth-energy.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Science, Physics News, Science news, Technology News, Physics, Materials, Nanotech, Technology, Science
#EarthCARE #offers #sneak #peek #Earths #energy #balance
Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Copilot has reportedly received a new update that gives it the capability of managing certain tasks on a linked Android smartphone. The feature has some requirements that must be fulfilled before it can function as designed, as per the report. After setting it up, users can ask Copilot to send a text message or summarise messages in their smartphone’s inbox. The feature is currently available to some beta testers and is said to be only available on the Copilot web portal.
Windows Latest reports that the new feature was added as a server-side update, bringing new capabilities to the AI chatbot’s via the Phone Link plugin. The feature is said to be in the beta phase currently, and only those who have signed up for the Copilot beta programme will have access to it.
To access the feature, users will need to be on Windows 11 and connect their Android 14-based smartphone via the Phone Link app, according to the publication. Alternatively, users can also use the Link Devices feature to connect their handset to the service.
Once connected, the Copilot chat interface will reportedly be able to control certain functions in the smartphone. For instance, users can set an alarm, get text message summaries, and even receive and send messages. The AI chatbot is also said to access the contacts available on the smartphone.
With this integration, users on their PC can ask the AI to check and summarise the latest messages, ask Copilot to draft and send messages, and even ask it to share contact details of specific people.
The main benefit of this setup is that users can carry out several tasks with simple text prompts without needing to scroll through apps or move between interfaces. Since the feature is in beta, there are no clear timelines for when it can be rolled out to the public.
microsoft copilot manage linked android smartphone feature windows 11 report copilot,microsoft,windows 11,phone link app,android,ai,artificial intelligence
#Microsoft #Copilot #Reportedly #Tests #Ability #Perform #Tasks #Windows #11Linked #Android #Phones
Hill Street Studios | Digitalvision | Getty Images
The perceived benefits of financial education are so great that in a 2022 survey from the National Endowment for Financial Education, more than 85% of Americans polled said learning about personal finance should be a requirement to graduate from high school.
Lawmakers have responded to this need with the unanimous passage this week of a bill in the California Legislature to guarantee rising generations with one semester of a stand-alone personal finance course. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2927 on Saturday, assuring that future California high school students will receive a huge leg up in terms of their understanding and managing their own personal finances.
As a proponent of this legislation and co-founder of Next Gen Personal Finance, I am elated that with the stroke of Newsom’s pen, fully 64% of all U.S. high schoolers will be required to take a one-semester personal finance course as a condition for graduation.
Here’s a look at more stories on how to manage, grow and protect your money for the years ahead.
California becomes the 26th state to require a stand-alone personal finance class. Just five years ago, only five states did so, covering 17% of high school students, according to Next Gen Personal Finance 2019 State of Financial Education report.
The dramatic adoption of this policy across the country speaks to the impact and equity inherent in providing real world skills that will help prepare every student to navigate a life after graduation, whether that involves college or a career.
So many adults I have met over the years share with me this common refrain about personal finance: “This is a class that I wish I had.” They have shared with me how they struggled to manage credit and the deleterious impact it had on their credit scores, or how their lack of investing knowledge prevented them from starting early to benefit from compounding.
There’s also the economic benefit for the student.
California students who take a one-semester course in personal finance experience a $127,000 lifetime positive benefit, according to research from Next Gen Personal Finance and consulting firm Tyton Partners.
The benefits don’t stop with the student. As a volunteer teacher at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, California, I saw this impact extend beyond the classroom as students brought lessons home to siblings and parents. This experience inspired me to co-found Next Gen Personal Finance.
It is high time that the most populous state in the nation and one of the most diverse, the home of innovation and opportunity, joined other states in requiring a personal finance class as a high school graduation requirement. Its dismal performance in this subject area got the state an “F” in financial literacy in a 2023 report from Champlain College’s Center for Financial Literacy. Hardly something to hang on the fridge.
Currently in California, a personal finance course as a condition for graduation is required of only 1% of high school students, according to the Next Gen Personal Finance 2024 State of Financial Education report. Compare that to 53% nationally. With the passage of this requirement, California puts a welcomed end to that failure.
Every student in the state — regardless of where they go to school or their economic status — will now have equal opportunity to learn such vital 21st century skills including budgeting, credit management and understanding financial options for career or college.
For those states yet to make a commitment to universal personal finance education in high school, they need only recognize how these skills empower students. I have listened to hundreds of students testifying in state capitals across the country, and they often describe how the critical thinking skills they have gained inoculate them against the questionable advice proliferating on social media.
This matters to our future and to that of the next generation. As Newsom said in announcing his commitment to sign the measure into law, “We need to help Californians prepare for their financial futures as early as possible. Saving for the future, making investments and spending wisely are lifelong skills that young adults need to learn before they start their careers, not after.”
He’s right, and the kids in California will be all right, because now managing their finances will be part of their life’s toolbox. After all, the future success and stability of our countless generations is at the heart of the matter.
— Tim Ranzetta is co-founder of Next Gen Personal Finance and a member of the CNBC Global Financial Wellness Advisory Board.
Gavin Newsom,Personal finance,business news
#California #financial #literacy #law #commitment #future
More than two decades after the Strokes led an indie rock renaissance in New York City, a Strokes cover band called the Brokes played a sold-out show at Arlene’s Grocery, a small venue on the Lower East Side.
Hailing from Toronto, the Brokes were on their first American tour, and this gig held special meaning: The Strokes used to play Arlene’s back when they were the garage rock princes of downtown Manhattan honing their act at clubs like this one.
During a 45-minute set, the Brokes blazed through early Strokes hits like “The Modern Age” and “Last Nite” as fans chanted lyrics and pumped their fists into the air. The frontman, Marlon Chaplin, wore sunglasses and fingerless gloves while singing through a distortion effect to match Julian Casablancas’ vocal style.
The Brokes guitarist Adrian Traub-Rees, wearing a white suit and Converse sneakers, looked and sounded like Albert Hammond Jr. as he played a white Fender Stratocaster. The crowd roared when he traded licks with Brandon Wall, who plays Nick Valensi’s guitar parts, during another Strokes fan favorite, “Reptilia.”
Mr. Chaplin addressed the crowd in his Casablancas-esque tone: “We’re taking you back to ‘Room on Fire’ with this next tune.”
After a few more Strokes hits, Mr. Chaplin alluded to the past: “I don’t need to tell you all about the history of the Strokes here at Arlene’s.”
The grainy footage posted to YouTube of the Strokes at Arlene’s in 2000 is now an artifact of a bygone scene. Scruffy and unsigned, the band throws itself into “New York City Cops” and “Soma” from the tiny stage. Three years later, the group would appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. Along with Interpol and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Strokes became part of the sleazy indie rock epoch chronicled in Lizzy Goodman’s book “Meet Me in the Bathroom,” and the documentary based on it.
It is the romance of the early aughts that the Brokes recreate for their fans, who are not, as you might expect, aging millennials who grew up listening to “Is This It” on iPods during the George W. Bush administration. Instead, the crowd at Arlene’s was made up predominantly of Gen-Zers who had discovered the Strokes through later albums like “Comedown Machine” (2013) and “The New Abnormal” (2020) and now find themselves yearning for the band’s gritty genesis.
“They sound just like them,” said Bonnie Astrid, 23, who came to the show from New Haven, Conn. “Seeing them feels like I’m seeing the Strokes if they were young again. If Julian was young again.”
Caroline Anchor, 26, concurred. “Being here feels like being at a Strokes nerd fest,” she said. “The Brokes play deep cuts, songs the Strokes would never play live at some big stadium today.”
Sammy Moran, 25, said he felt a fan’s excitement when he bumped into a member of the Brokes on his way to the bathroom. “My parents didn’t create me early enough to see that time when the Strokes were the ultimate New York band,” he said. “I feel robbed because of that.”
He added, “I’d rather see the Brokes a million times over than the Strokes.”
Hours before the show, the Brokes pulled into the Lower East Side in a silver Dodge Caravan and hauled their gear into the venue. Before sound check, they took a walking tour of sorts to visit sites of Strokes history.
Their first stop was 171 Ludlow Street, the former address of Luna Lounge, an early venue for the Strokes that closed in 2005. Now it’s a boutique hotel — Hotel Indigo — but that didn’t stop the Brokes from nerding out as guests with shopping bags stood outside waiting for Ubers.
“We’re on sacred territory,” Mr. Chaplin, the frontman, said. “This is where it started.”
Mr. Traub-Rees, the guitarist, noted the line of tourists outside Katz’s Deli.
“We know a lot has changed here, but to me there’s still an energy on the Lower East Side,” he said. “Maybe it’s the tourist in me, but even despite the Luna Lounge now being a hotel, I am still seeing ghosts and resident spirits. I’m not ashamed to get a pretzel and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Dan Bedard, the group’s bassist, dropped the G word. “We know what New Yorkers think of the Lower East Side’s gentrification,” he said. “But we’re not too cool to be in a tribute band, and we’re not too cool to say we love New York.”
The Brokes continued their ruminations as they marched to the Mercury Lounge on Houston Street. “This was their Cavern Club,” Mr. Traub-Rees said, referring to the Liverpool, England, venue that served as a testing ground for the Beatles. “Standing here, I can visualize the long lines that formed for people to see the Strokes as they started to take off.”
The Brokes ambled into the East Village to seek out the graffiti-marked doorway that once led to Transporterraum, the basement studio where the Strokes recorded their debut album, released in 2001. It’s still a recording studio, known now as Flux Studios. When an engineer stepped out for a smoke, he said a hip-hop session was underway. The Brokes craned their necks to peer inside before the door slammed shut.
Finally, they stepped into 2A, a bar that was once a hangout for the Strokes. Over Brooklyn Lagers, the Brokes reflected on their journey.
It all started, Mr. Chaplin said, on a night out with some friends in Toronto in 2017. They ended up at a karaoke event, and Mr. Chaplin took the stage on a whim to sing the Strokes song “Someday.”
“When I got offstage, everyone said I sounded just like Julian,” he recalled. “A guy at the bar told me he was convinced it was a Strokes recording playing on the speakers.”
It wasn’t until 2022 that Mr. Chaplin assembled some friends to perform as the Brokes, pretty much as a gag, for a Halloween party. Three months later, when they played a Toronto club, The Baby G, they had to turn people away at the door.
“That’s when we realized we had something,” he said.
The Brokes still have day jobs. Mr. Traub-Rees (Albert) is a carpenter. Mr. Bedard (Nikolai Fraiture) works at a nursing home. Mr. Wall (Nick) is a guitar teacher. Mr. Chaplin (Julian) is a video director and editor. And the drummer, Connor MacArthur (Fabrizio Moretti), recently graduated from Toronto Metropolitan University.
Have they heard from the Strokes?
Not yet. But they claim that Mr. Hammond had watched one of their Instagram stories. And Mr. Traub-Rees hugged Mr. Casablancas onstage when he was performing with the Voidz at a Toronto club. “I’m still trying to find someone who has footage,” he sighed.
Mr. Traub-Rees said they occasionally hear from trolls.
“On the internet and in social media comments, people say, ‘Hey, don’t you think it’s a little early for a Strokes cover band?’” he said. “Well, I’m sorry to tell those people that 20 years have gone by, but they have.”
Later that night, after the Brokes finished performing at Arlene’s, some fans made the band members feel like the real thing as they mobbed them for autographs and selfies. Others bought Brokes stickers and T-shirts from a merch table. By the bar, a woman tried to get Mr. Chaplin’s number.
But with a long road ahead of them the next day — a six-hour drive to Buffalo to play their last tour date — the Brokes were eager to catch a few hours’ sleep at their Airbnb in Elizabeth, N.J. And their day jobs awaited them on Monday.
While his bandmates lugged gear back into the Dodge Caravan, Mr. Bedard, now wearing reading glasses, had a smoke outside the venue.
“Playing here tonight, that felt like the New York I’d always romanticized,” he said. “That was a joy playing to those people, seeing them get teleported.”
“Some musicians turn their nose up at playing in a tribute band, but I think we’re an anti-cynical act,” he added. “The irony is that the Strokes always had the ultimate frosty ‘too cool’ attitude. They never wanted to become icons. But we’re happy to play for their fans on stages 365 days a year if they don’t want to.”
#Brokes #Play #Strokes #York #Rock #Club
To provide the best experiences, we and our partners use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us and our partners to process personal data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site and show (non-) personalized ads. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Click below to consent to the above or make granular choices. Your choices will be applied to this site only. You can change your settings at any time, including withdrawing your consent, by using the toggles on the Cookie Policy, or by clicking on the manage consent button at the bottom of the screen.