Daily Archives: February 6, 2021

Bingo and AI: The changing relation between entertainment and artificial intelligence – Analytics Insight

Posted: February 6, 2021 at 8:21 am

Bingo and AI The changing relation between entertainment and artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has been on the tech agenda for more than two decades now, although its impact on our day-to-day lives is perhaps yet to be fully realized. Perceptions of AIs innovation are broad and have altered over time.

For many, AI is an exciting new tool that will improve the quality of our lives, at home and work, by being able to deliver functions that will save us time and enhance our experiences in the world of leisure and entertainment. But for others, AI is perceived as a threat to our livelihoods. Old-fashioned perceptions push the narrative that technology must be managed and developed slowly or not developed at all to protect our ways of life.

This has contributed to AI receiving only sporadic funding and being dismissed by some as a pipe dream. However, we will discuss the positive impact that AI is having on the world of digital entertainment, and in particular in the world of bingo and online casino gaming.

Although many may not realize AI is already readily utilized as a part of several mainstream digital entertainment experiences. For example, Netflix viewers will receive recommendations of what to watch next based on the technology. AI is used to interpret data and produce an algorithm that displays film and TV suggestions that will likely appeal to the user based on their previous habits. In this instance, AI is helping to deliver a much more bespoke, personalized experience to paying subscribers.

In gaming, AI can be used to set a difficultly level based on the players abilities and can make configuration recommendations to enhance the players experience. Where human guidance is not possible, AI helps to keep new players on track.

Source: Pexels

Other gaming sectors, such as online casino gaming, have contrasting relationships with AI. Some platforms utilize the technology in a similar way to traditional console titles to automatically change personalization. It can also be usedto speed up manualprocesses, such as repeating a previous bet or warning the player against twisting in a game of blackjack when they have a good hand.Others instead use more tried and tested innovations such as random number generators to ensure games are fair.

Some businesses in the casino sector have adopted the technology to try and enhance the experience for players. Sue Dawson from Best New Bingo Sites explains how In real money online gaming, AI can be used for targeting marketing and advertising so that players receive promotional offers that are tailored to their preferences and behavior. For instance, you might receive an offer of free spins for the slot game you play most oftenat the time of day youre most likely to play. The games themselves are strictly regulated, though, and must use verified RNG to ensure that all players have the same chance of winning.

Source: Pexels

As is the case in any area of technology, its fascinating to speculate what the future may hold for AI. Already developers are experimenting with its use in spheres like art and even literature. Art AI Gallery offers images for sale that have been generated by artificial intelligence, while developers have experimented with using AI to write plays, make music, and script films.

Its clear from the evidence that AI is already a major part of many lives, and as the technology behind it advances, its likely that will see further leaps forward taken in the years and decades to come.

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Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence with High-Performance Computing: Dell Technologies – CRN – India – CRN.in

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to change lives. From fueling medical discoveries to smart collars that can decipher and display the emotions of our household pets, this emerging technology is enabling organisations to innovate. According to IDC[1], by 2025, AI-powered enterprises will see a 100% increase in productivity and new product introduction success rates, higher than those of their non-intelligent peers. By being able to anticipate the market and operational changes with AI, organisations will respond much faster than their competitors. They will be agile enough to adapt to changes in the market and innovate.

Hence, accelerating AI solutions for businesses should be the focus for organizations in India. For example, HPC workloads are becoming more data centric and adding AI technologies to advance the capabilities of traditional HPC modeling and simulation. In the next few years, HPC technologies, such as HPC-enabled machine learning training, will go from experimentation models to production models. As CTOs and CIOs in India look to create an enterprise infrastructure that provides robust performance and scalability for large and highly complex AI models while keeping deployment costs low, the answer may lie in HPC for three key reasons:

Data analytics: Businesses relying heavily on data analytics generate new insights which improve efficiencies and give them a competitive edge. However, when it comes to analysing large sets of unstructured data that are exponentially increasing in volume and velocity, traditional IT infrastructure is often hamstrung due to slow storage speeds. To adapt to significantly larger data sets and compute-intensive analytics processes, researchers are looking to exascale computing systems, capable of performing one quintillion calculations per second. Powered with HPC, these advanced performance systems are expected to have a profound impact in the faster identification of pandemics, discovery of effective medication and indication of hazardous weather conditions before they happen.

Acceleration of AI deployments: According to a study, in India, almost 70% of organisations are currently investing in Artificial Intelligence to deliver better business results. As HPC and AI continue to converge and evolve to involve more use cases across industries, the possibilities are nearly endless. Organisations are increasingly looking for pre-designed and pre-validated solutions to generate value instead of constructing IT infrastructure. To help companies with roadblocks involved in setting up an AI system, large vendors are also beginning to introduce reference architectures together with HPC infrastructure for data scientists and researchers working. With HPC and software combined, launching new AI applications is becoming easier and faster. Technology vendors are helping data scientists focus less on maintaining AI systems but more on experimenting, exploring and uncovering insights. Organizations do not need to walk their AI journey alone. By collaborating and working with end-to-end technology infrastructure providers, organisations can co-design and customise unique HPC infrastructures to meet AI research, development and AI model deployment needs.

Growing support for HPC globally and in India: The business benefits of AI are being increasingly recognised, with infrastructure providers now helping the research community and customers capitalise on HPC, expanding it from a niche market to a broader audience. More than ever, customers and partners have access to guidance from technology vendors on how to kick-start their AI initiatives including design, installation, maintenance and most importantly, delivering tangible business outcomes for their organisations. Organisations are focused on promoting open collaboration, bringing together the wide-ranging experience and knowledge of technology developers, service providers and end-users in a worldwide forum that promotes the advancement of innovative, powerful HPC and AI solutions.

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How Artificial intelligence is Transforming the Apparel Industry – BBN Times

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Trend Spotting

Taking into account the fast-changing fashion trends, it goes without saying that anticipating fashion trends is not only tricky but also a time-consuming task. Manually researching the previously popular styles, social media fashion trends, and customer preferences, analysts were expected to spot the upcoming trends. The guesswork done by the professionals may or may not be ac

curate. Besides the hassles of manual work, spotting fashion trends can also pose cost issues before fashion brands if not forecasted rightly. Instead, if the brands invest in leveraging AI, they can cut down all the problems quickly.

The AI tool, trained with quality and quantity data, will analyze past fashion data, check out the customer demand and preferences, gauge competitors moves, and identify the market trends. After processing the data, the AI tool will give accurate details on trendy styles and designs within minutes. With AI, fashion brands can bolster their apparel business by tracking the latest fashion trends in just minutes, which would otherwise take days or even months.

Realizing the potential of AI in design, many tech giants are already making big moves by integrating the technology for their benefit. For instance, a group of professionals inAmazon developed an AI toolthat is capable of analyzing and learning the images that are entered, and then generating an altogether new fashion design by itself. Besides, the industry behemoth - Amazon - has developed another AI application that can analyze and process the fed pictures, thereby giving a conclusion on whether a particular style will look trendy or not. Not only Amazon, but there are dozens of other such tech giants who have already embarked on their AI journey, streaming their design creation process completely.IBM, in collaboration with Tommy Hilfiger and The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is using AIto empower designers in boosting the pace of the product development lifecycle.

With customers becoming restless, irritated, and grumpy on not receiving quick assistance or service, fashion retailers are faced with constant pressure to offer what customers want almost instantaneously. Several industry giants have already come up with the newest technology-powered applications that promote enhanced customer experience, one that goes beyond personalized ads, notification alerts on price drops, or chatbot assistance. Using this sophisticated technology, fashion brands strive to put customization at the forefront for customers during their buying journey. There areAI-powered personal stylist appsin the market that allow users to browse clothes online or to click pictures of their clothes. Giving these images as inputs, the app will recommend the best style according to the user's body type, complexion, and preferences while keeping the fashion trends in mind. From providing customers with personalized advertisement notifications to alerting them on price drops to clearing their doubts or queries with chatbots to now being a personal stylist and providing instant outfit suggestions, fashion brands can meet their aim ofelevating customer experience with the help of AI. With AI being able to act as both, design assistants for designers and personal stylist for consumers, it is pretty much clear that the impact of the technology is more than what we ever imagined.

The emergence of trend-setting technology, AI, has changed the way businesses carry out their processes. And, the discussion weve had, is a proof of the fact that the apparel industry is no exception. With a majority of big fashion brands already tapping into the benefits and applications of AI, it is undeniable that soon the technology will become mainstream in medium-sized companies and startups also. So, for garment companies, who haven't planned to adopt AI yet, the right time to plan and kick-start their digital transformation journey is today. After all, no one would want to be left behind in the digital race, isnt it?

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How Airbus And Boeing Are Using Artificial Intelligence To Advance Autonomous Flight – Simple Flying

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Pilot-less jetliners may still be far off in the future due to several reasons, public trust in automated systems not being the least of them. However, this does not mean the software technology to support such operations has not developed in leaps and bounds. While there are several start-ups in tech-driven unmanned airborne vehicles, lets take a look at how the two main aircraft manufacturers use artificial intelligence in the quest for safe autonomous flight.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a divisive subject. Some herald it as the key solution to everything from Alzheimers and cancer to food shortages and climate change. Others, more pessimistically or dystopically inclined, say it will be the end of humanity or, at the very least, take most of our jobs.

One thing is for certain, though; AI is here to stay, and it will have a massive impact on our everyday lives in the future. Aviation is often critiqued for having been slow on the ball when it comes to AI. However, things have begun to change, and its various applications will transform the industry in the decades to come.

Data-driven sophisticated algorithms will revolutionize everything from ticket pricing, air traffic control, crew and maintenance schedules to aircraft assembly, natural language processing in the cockpit. And, of course, it will have an enormous impact on more advanced technology such as autonomous vision-based navigation or pilot-less planes, if you will.

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A little over a year ago, on January 16th, 2020, Airbus completed the first fully automatic vision-based take-off and landing within the framework of its Autonomous Taxi, Take-Off and Landing (ATTOL) project. Rather than relying on an Instrument Landing System (ILS), the AI-controlled take-off was governed by image-recognition software installed on the aircraft.

Image recognition is softwares ability to identify people, places, objects, etc., in images. You are involved in it every time you respond to a prompt to identify yourself as a human online by clicking on all the images containing a cross-walk, traffic light, or motorcycle. In the video below, it is clearly distinguishable how the software reads the visual input of the aircrafts surroundings to perform the take-off procedure.

The ATTOL project was completed in June last year. However, Airbus has stated that its goal is for autonomous technologies to improve flight operations and overall performance not to reach autonomous flight as a target in itself. Pilots, the planemaker says, will remain at the heart of operations.

Over in the other corner, in December 2020, Boeing completed a series of test-flights exploring how high-performance uncrewed aircraft can operate together controlled by AI using onboard command and data sharing. Aircraft were added one by one over a period of ten days until five operated as an autonomous unit, reaching speeds of up to 167 miles per hour.

The tests demonstrated our success in applying artificial intelligence algorithms to teach the aircrafts brain to understand what is required of it, Emily Hughes, director of Phantom Works, Boeings prototyping arm for its defense branch, said in a statement shared with Vision Systems Design at the time.

With the size, number and speed of aircraft used in the test, this is a very significant step for Boeing and the industry in the progress of autonomous mission systems technology, Hughes continued.

While Decembers test-flights were part of its defense part of the business, Boeing stated that the technologies developed from the program would not only inform its developmental Airpower Teaming System (ATS) but apply to all future autonomous aircraft.

Meanwhile, Boeings subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences, part of Boeing NeXt, is building smaller autonomous flight vehicles. This includes the Centaur, configured for autonomous flight featuring a detect-and-avoid technology supported by radar.

How soon would you get on a crewless aircraft? Are you excited about the prospects of autonomous flight? What do you consider to be the main issues? Let us know in the comments.

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Syngenta Crop Protection and Insilico Medicine to Harness Artificial Intelligence to Transform Sustainable Product Innovation – Business Wire

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BASEL, Switzerland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Syngenta Crop Protection is collaborating with artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning company Insilico Medicine to accelerate the invention and development of new, more effective crop protection solutions that protect crops from diseases, weeds and pests, while also protecting ecosystems. By bringing new solutions to farmers faster and more efficiently through innovation, Syngenta will help them meet the ongoing challenges they face, in order to enhance productivity and meet global demand for affordable, quality food.

This collaboration with Insilico Medicine means that Syngenta can harness the immense potential and scope of AI to develop the next generation of sustainable crop protection solutions as part of Syngentas $2bn commitment to innovation and sustainability, said Camilla Corsi, Head Crop Protection Research at Syngenta. This will further transform agriculture by providing farmers around the world with the tools they need to produce healthy, nutritious, affordable and sustainably grown food in the most efficient way, while also minimizing the environmental impact.

Insilico Medicine has a proven track record and has delivered significant advances in pharmaceutical research, using AI and deep learning to design, synthesize and validate new ingredients. The same approach also has the potential to transform the development of new crop protection solutions that help keep plants safe, from planting to harvesting. Working closely with Syngenta, Insilico Medicine will use their AI-powered small molecule generative chemistry technology not only to invent molecules for active ingredients faster, but also actively design molecules that are more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

We are very happy to collaborate with a company that is dedicated to developing safe and sustainable solutions for growers, said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder, and CEO, Insilico Medicine. Our artificial intelligence is designed from the ground up to produce very precise chemistry to protect human health, while ensuring short-term and long-term safety. This expertise is extremely valuable for crop sciences, and especially so for businesses whose top priority is the safety of their products. Syngenta is a progressive company with many brilliant scientists, and we will be working together to use artificial intelligence for the benefit of agriculture.

Our reputation as a global leader in innovation is built on a foundation of collaboration and our understanding of the challenges faced by growers, Camilla Corsi also noted. Working together with Insilico Medicine, combining our skills, knowledge and technologies, will help ensure that new and more effective crop protection solutions will be in the hands of farmers sooner.

About Syngenta

Syngenta is one of the worlds leading agriculture companies, comprising of Syngenta Crop Protection and Syngenta Seeds. Our ambition is to help safely feed the world while taking care of the planet. We aim to improve the sustainability, quality and safety of agriculture with world class science and innovative crop solutions. Our technologies enable millions of farmers around the world to make better use of limited agricultural resources. Syngenta Crop Protection and Syngenta Seeds are part of Syngenta Group with 49,000 people in more than 100 countries and is working to transform how crops are grown. Through partnerships, collaboration and The Good Growth Plan we are committed to accelerating innovation for farmers and nature, striving for carbon neutral agriculture, helping people stay safe and healthy and partnering for impact.

To learn more visit http://www.syngenta.com and http://www.goodgrowthplan.com

Follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Syngenta and http://www.twitter.com/SyngentaUS

About Insilico Medicine

Insilico Medicine develops software that leverages generative models, reinforcement learning (RL), and other modern machine learning techniques for the generation of new molecular structures with specific properties. Insilico Medicine also develops software for the generation of synthetic biological data, target identification, and the prediction of clinical trials outcomes. The company integrates two business models; providing AI-powered drug discovery services and software through its Pharma.AI platform (www.insilico.com/platform/) and developing its own pipeline of preclinical programs. The preclinical program is the result of pursuing novel drug targets and novel molecules discovered through its platforms. Since its inception in 2014, Insilico Medicine has raised over $52 million and received multiple industry awards. Insilico Medicine has also published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and has applied for over 25 patents. Website http://insilico.com/

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Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This document may contain forward-looking statements, which can be identified by terminology such as expect, would, will, potential, plans, prospects, estimated, aiming, on track and similar expressions. Such statements may be subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these statements. For Syngenta, such risks and uncertainties include risks relating to legal proceedings, regulatory approvals, new product development, increasing competition, customer credit risk, general economic and market conditions, compliance and remediation, intellectual property rights, implementation of organizational changes, impairment of intangible assets, consumer perceptions of genetically modified crops and organisms or crop protection chemicals, climatic variations, fluctuations in exchange rates and/or commodity prices, single source supply arrangements, political uncertainty, natural disasters, and breaches of data security or other disruptions of information technology. Syngenta assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changed assumptions or other factors.

2021 Syngenta. Rosentalstrasse 67, 4002 Basel, Switzerland. The Syngenta logo are trademarks of a Syngenta Group Company. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Canada Designates Proud Boys, Atomwaffen, and The Base as Terror Organizations – VICE

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The Canadian Department of Public Safety has designated a slew of several far-right organizations as terror groups.

In a press briefing the department said they were listing the Atomwaffen Division and the Base, two neo-Nazi terror groups founded in the U.S. and under an FBI crackdown; the well-known Proud Boys; and the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), a St. Petersburg-based organization that has provided paramilitary training for neo-Nazis from around the world.

The goverment also listed several Islamist extremist groups: Ansar Dine, Front de Liberation du Macina, and Jamaat Nusrat Al-Islam Wal-Muslimin, as well as the ISIS-affiliated groups Islamic State-Bangladesh and Islamic State-East Asia, as new additions to the terror designation list. The designations allow for the government to lay terrorism charges to people connected to the group more easily, and prevent those within the group from fundraising, selling merchandise, and owning property on the groups behalf.

Based on their actions and ideologies, each group meets the legal threshold for listing as set out in the Criminal Code, which requires reasonable grounds to believe that an entity has knowingly participated in or facilitated a terrorist activity, or has knowingly acted on behalf of, at the direction of, or in association with such an entity, read a press release.

Senior officials in the department, who spoke to journalists on the condition they were unnamed, described the Proud Boys as a neo-fascist organization that engages in political violence and asserted they espouse misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and/or white supremacist ideologies and associate with white supremacist groups.

(Disclosure: Gavin McInnes, a Canadian, was a co-founder of VICE Media. He left the company in 2008 and has had no involvement since then. He founded the Proud Boys organization in 2016.)

The Proud Boys consists of semi-autonomous chapters located in the United States (U.S.), Canada, and internationally, the release reads. The group and its members have openly encouraged, planned, and conducted violent activities against those they perceive to be opposed to their ideology and political beliefs.

Importantly, the government is designating not just the groups themselves, but offshoots. The National Socialist Order, for example, is designated alongside AWD.

In response to the latest designation the leader and founder of the Base, who is based in Russia and is suspected of Kremlin ties, was defiant and claimed the group is still active in Canada.The Base is not a terrorist organization or a neo-Nazi group, Rinaldo Nazzaro, a former Pentagon contractor, said. It is a survivalism and self-defense network for nationalists. The Base operates within the law of every jurisdiction where it is active including Canada.

Nazzaro previously denied he had any links to the Russian government.

Do you have information about the Proud Boys or other extremists? Wed love to hear from you. You can contact Mack Lamoureux and Ben Makuch securely on Wire at @mlamoureux and@benmakuch or by email at mack.lamoureux@vice.com, and ben.makuch@vice.com, or via Signal or Telegram at 267-713-9832.

While the Canadian government previously labelled two other white supremacist organizations with ties to political violence as terror groups, the latest news comes on the heels of the insurrection on Capitol Hill in Washington and its ties to extremist groups like the Proud Boys, which was cause for debate in Canadian parliament.

Jagmeet Singh, the leader of Canadas third-largest federal party, the New Democratic Party, put forward a motion in Parliament demanding that the Proud Boysfounded by a Canadian and with a large contingent in the countrybe designated a terror group following the actions of January 6th. The motion was unbinding, which means it was symbolic and the government did not need to act on it. A group is not designated as a terror group as a result of a vote but instead listed via cabinet from a recommendation from the Minister of Public Safety, who typically works off guidance from intelligence officials. The groups listing on the watch list will be reconsidered after five years.

The move to mark this many white supremacist groups as designated terrorist organizations all at once, is unprecedented for a government. In May 2020, the U.S. nearly designated Atomwaffen Division a terrorist organization, but the group disbanded and instead RIM became only the first white supremacist group in the countrys history to ever be designated a terrorist organization.

Canada only recently began listing far-right groups on its terror watch list in 2019, starting with the international neo-Nazi groups Blood and Honour and Combat 18.

Stephanie Carvin, a former intelligence analyst with Canadas spy agency turned academic at Carleton University, said she believed the government has been investigating these groups since well before the 6th. Its really been months of work, she told VICE World News. Carvin, a veteran of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) had experience tracking groups like al-Qaeda, but believes the emergence of the far right as a terror threat has caught the attention of her former employer.

I strongly suspect the January 6 insurrection probably accelerated the desire to list these groups, she said. But speaking with various anti-hate groups and individuals that study these phenomena, theyve been consulted since last summer on how these groups may be listed.

I think this looks like the government is whip-snap responding to this but this is actually a process long in the making.

During a press briefing, senior officials stressed the use of the term ideologically motivated violent extremism (IMVE) rather than left-or right-wing extremism. They added that CSIS has shifted their resources to better combat IMVE actors. Bill Blair, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, said in a statement that the listings are an important step in our effort to combat violent extremism in all forms.

Canadians expect their Government to keep them safe and to keep pace with evolving threats and global trends, such as the growing threat of ideologically motivated violent extremism, said Blair. The Government of Canada will continue to take appropriate actions to counter terrorist threats to Canada, its citizens and its interests around the world.

One difficulty with designating groups like Atomwaffen Division and the Base is that they tend to rise quickly and self-immolate, or are broken up by law enforcement. While both the Base and Atomwaffen still exist in some form and have members, they are markedly smaller than they were at their height several years ago. Many previous members have moved onto new groups that are growing.

With Proud Boys, criticisms of the designations are more extreme. Critics have said that the designation could hurt left-leaning groups and people of colour as much as, if not more than, the group. One expert told VICE they could see right-leaning politicians designating Indegenous protestors blocking rail lines during the Wetsuweten crisis last year as terrorists.

Amarnath Amarasingam, an assistant professor at the school of religion at Queens University who researches terrorism, told VICE World News that he does think it's about time that some of these groups are listed.

They have operated for a long time out in the openrecruiting, fundraising, mobilizingand have grown as threats as a result, and their brazenness is only on the rise, said Amarasingam. It will give the government the tools it needs to investigate these groups as national security threats.

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The Forgotten History of Black Prohibitionism – POLITICO

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So F.E.W. Harper was already a well-known temperance/womens rights/Black rights activist in her own right when Frances Willardpresident of the influential Womans Christian Temperance Unionapproached Harper to become national superintendent of the WCTUs division for Work Among the Colored People. Harper enthusiastically agreed. Rooted in the nonviolent picketing of saloons across the upper Midwest in 1873-74, the WCTU introduced an entire generation of American women to political activism, first in the North, but soon spreading nationwide. Temperance organizations of all stripes had a difficult time establishing chapters in the former Confederacy in the generation after the Civil War, so deep were the North/South political wounds, animosity and mutual suspicions. But between Willards annual tours through the Southern states, and Harpers grassroots activism, the WCTU helped begin to heal those wounds.

Harper was hardly alone in joining the WCTU. Black women saw in the WCTU a chance to build a Christian community that could serve as a model of interracial cooperation on other fronts, claims historian Glenda Gilmore in Gender and Jim Crow. With its Do Everything focus, the WCTU advanced interracial cooperation on anti-lynching laws, educational uplift and anti-illiteracy programs that benefited both Black and white communities. The WCTU represented a place where women might see past skin color to recognize each others humanity. It also gave many women, Black and white, their first taste of political activism. In the words of one Mississippi activist, the WCTU was the generous liberator, the joyous iconoclast, the discoverer, the developer of Southern women.

The Reconstruction South was a hotbed of intersectional activism, long before that term was coined.

Still, the battle for racial equality took place even within the organization. When Black women complained of discrimination from the predominantly white Georgia WCTU, they petitioned Harper for their own, separate chapter, where African American women were free to organize themselves. Harper and Willard agreed. Soon, Black WCTU chapters were organized in states across the South.

Despite such organizational tensions, the WCTUand the temperance movement more generallywere engines of progressive reform, reconciliation and civil liberties: demanding liberation from unjust political and economic subordination. In the 1880s, even as violence and lynchings ended Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era began, prohibitionist rallies made the point of announcing that all were welcome to attend, regardless of color. Black and white temperance speakers shared the same stage and applauded each others accomplishments despite organizational segregation, as Black voters were courted by white politicians. Such interracial bridges were reinforced by religious and class sympathies. Those who took all of Christs teachings seriously recognized both the fundamental precepts of human equality, and the need to uplift downtrodden communities. In all these ways, concludes historian Edward L. Ayers in his Promise of the New South (2007), the prohibitionists forged relatively open and democraticif temporaryracial coalitions.

For most of the American South, prohibition did not come with the ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919, nor the enactment of the Volstead Act in 1920. It actually came a decade earlier, as from 1907 to 1910, a dry wave of prohibitionism swept from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi to Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina. Nor was prohibition imposed from abovefrom the federal government or whites in the Jim Crow Southbut rather emerged from genuine biracial grassroots cooperation.

If Black temperance is a largely ignored chapter in American history, explaining Southern prohibitionism presents a double conundrum for historians. After all, shouldnt we expect prohibitions triumph in the North, where every city and town could boast of multiple temperance chapters, rather than the South, where activistsincluding the WCTUadmitted difficulty establishing an organizational foothold?

Historians usual answer is to fall back on the same, discredited colonizers discourse about alcohol: chalking-up Southern prohibition to the Ku Klux Klan and white racists, fearful of Black drunkenness, intent on disciplining African Americans.

The Ku Klux Klan marches down Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington D.C. in 1925. | AP Photo

While it makes sense that the KKK and white supremacists would hold fast to a white-supremacist alcohol discourse, that doesnt mean modern historians should, too; especially since it doesnt hold water. For one, the modern KKK emerged in 1915, making it unlikely to have caused prohibition in 1908. Second, the whole point of prohibitionism was to oppose the predatory liquor traffic, which was overwhelmingly in affluent white hands, while its victims were poor whites and poor Blacks alike. If the goal was really to keep African Americans down and ensure white dominance, no better system couldve been devised than the unregulated saloon business that already existed.

Third, by simply blaming the Klan, historians fall into the same trap of disempowering Black activism: portraying African Americans as passive objects, subject to the whims of white actors, rather than legitimate actors in their own right. From the Reconstruction era in the Southand even generations before that in the antebellum NorthBlack churches and temperance activists had clearly, consistently and loudly articulated that liquor was subjugation, and that the route to freedom and community uplift meant reining in the predatory liquor traffic through prohibition.

A better explanation for the dry wave that swept the South from 1907 to 1910 would be to point out that Southern wet forces were far weaker, more dispersed geographically, and far less organized than the well-entrenched brewing and distilling trusts of the North, and were therefore less able to defend against united community activism. Also, in the Democrats one-party South, liquor interests had less opportunity to flex their political muscle by throwing their financial weight behind rival political parties or candidates more willing to defend their interests. At the very least, incorporating political and economic factors rather than just cultural ones gives us a far better sense of those prohibition dynamics across the South, which were quite obvious to the political players of the day.

After Georgia voted itself dry in 1908, journalist Frank Foxcroft of the Atlantic Monthly explained for his predominantly Northern readership that racial dynamics furnishes only a partial explanation of the prohibition movement of the south. It is a noticeable fact that, during the debate in the Georgia legislature upon the pending prohibitory bill, the negro was not once mentioned as a reason for the enactment of prohibition. Instead, he noted that liquor-traffic predations were suffered both by white communities and Black, and were opposed by white communities and Black, and were being roused by the ablest and most far-sighted leaders of Southern opinion, both white and Black.

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The True History Behind Netflix’s ‘The Dig’ and Sutton Hoo – Smithsonian Magazine

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In the summer of 1937, as the specter of World War II loomed over Europe, Edith Pretty, a wealthy widow living near Woodbridge, a small town in Suffolk, England, met with the curator of a local museum to discuss excavating three mounds of land on the far side of her estate, Sutton Hoo. (The name is derived from Old English: Sut combined with tun means settlement, and hoh translates to shaped like a heel spur.) After Pretty hired self-taught amateur archaeologist Basil Brown, the dig began the following spring.

Over the next year or so, Brown, who was later joined by archaeologists from the British Museum, struck gold, unearthing the richest medieval burial ever found in Europe. Dating back to the sixth or seventh century A.D., the 1,400-year-old gravebelieved to belong to an Anglo-Saxon kingcontained fragments of an 88-foot-long ship (the original wood structure had deteriorated) and a burial chamber filled with hundreds of opulent treasures. The British Museum, which houses the trove today, deemed the find a spectacular funerary monument on epic scale.

The importance of the Sutton Hoo burial cannot be understated. Not only did the site shed light on life during the early medieval Anglo-Saxon period (roughly 410 to 1066) but it also prompted historians to revise their thinking about the Dark Ages, the era that followed the Roman Empires departure from the British Isles in the early fifth century. Contrary to long-held beliefs that the period was devoid of the arts or cultural richness, the Sutton Hoo artifacts reflected a vibrant, worldly society.

The discovery in 1939 changed our understanding of some of the first chapters of English history, says Sue Brunning, a curator of early medieval European collections who oversees the British Museums Sutton Hoo artifacts. A time that had been seen as being backward was illuminated as cultured and sophisticated. The quality and quantity of the artifacts found inside the burial chamber were of such technical artistry that it changed our understanding of this period.

Given the inherent drama of the excavations at Sutton Hoo, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood offered its own take on the events. The Dig, the new Netflix film starring Carey Mulligan as Pretty and Ralph Fiennes as Brown, is adapted from a 2016 novel of the same name by John Preston, nephew of Peggy Piggott, a junior archaeologist on the Sutton Hoo team. The film follows the excavation, including the stories of the main characters, tensions between them, and romantic involvements. Pretty, who had a young son, has always been fascinated by archaeology and recruits Brown to begin excavating the mounds which they both believe to be Viking burial grounds. When Brown unearths the first fragments of a ship, the excavation proceeds full steam ahead.

Minus a few plot points inserted for the sake of dramatic storytelling (Browns relationship with British Museum archaeologist Charles Phillips wasnt nearly as contentious as portrayed, for instance), the movie mostly adheres to the real story, according to screenwriter Moira Buffini. But Buffini professes that in the script, she did omit Prettys obsession with spiritualism and penchant for speaking to the dead.

Even with its historical discrepancies, the Netflix film does a public service in that it introduces the extraordinary Sutton Hoo story to a new generation of viewers. At the same time, The Dig illuminates the role archaeology plays in unearthing previously unknown narratives.

Buffini, who adapted Jane Eyre for the screen in 2011, conducted extensive research on Sutton Hoo, poring over Browns notebooks, inquest reports and photos and drawing inspiration from each bit of treasure recorded, measured and drawn for posterity.

One is struck by the tenderness Brown felt for all of the artifacts, Buffini says. He spoke of the respect and almost familial love hidden in the artifacts, and how there was incredible culture and craftsmanship outside and beyond the Roman Empire.

Over the course of several excavations in 1938 and 1939, Brown and the archaeological team found 263 objects buried in the central chamber of the enormous Anglo-Saxon ship. Iron rivets, identified as being part of the seafaring vessel, was the first clue that alerted the archaeologist of the huge ship buried on the site, according to Brunning.

As the archaeologists dug deeper, they found themselves stunned by the scale, quality and sheer diversity of the trove. Among the artifacts unearthed were fine feasting vessels, deluxe hanging bowls, silverware from Byzantium, luxurious textiles and gold dress accessories set with Sri Lankan garnets.

The graves burial chamber was laden with weapons and high-quality military equipment. A shield found inside is believed to have been a diplomatic gift from Scandinavia; shoulder clasps appear to be modeled on those worn by Roman emperors, suggesting the armors owner drew from different cultures and power bases to assert his own authority.

The artifacts also included a belt buckle with a triple-lock mechanism, its surface adorned with semi-abstract imagery featuring snakes slithering beneath each other. Brown found gold coins that had been minted in the Aquitaine region of France with an ornate lid adorned in reddish garnet. The purses cover is now considered one of the finest examples of cloisonn, a style in which stones are held by gold strips.

Though metal items survived in Suffolks acidic soil better than organic objects like fabric and wood, the team did find a number of unexpected artifacts, including a well-preserved yellow ladybug.

Every part of the burial site is an important piece of the puzzle, even something as simple as small wooden cups, says Brunning. Most people (who see the collection) tend to walk past them because theyre not shiny. But when we analyze these objects and look at how they are laid out and the type of labor that went into them, they would have taken time to make. So even the smallest, most shriveled objects are important.

Elaborate ship burials filled with treasures were rare in Anglo-Saxon England, particularly toward the latter end of the early medieval period. The wealth of grave goods found at Sutton Hooas well as the positioning of the ship and its contents, which wouldve required a considerable amount of manpower to transportsuggest its onetime inhabitant was of a very high social status, perhaps even royalty, but the individuals identity remains a mystery. (An oft-cited candidate is King Raedwald of East Anglia, who died around 625.) By 1939, notes the British Museum, all that was left of the deceased was a human-shaped gap among the treasures within.

According to Brunning, Raedwald ruled around that time and may have had power over neighboring kingdoms, which would have earned him a good send-off.

The most iconic item to come out of Sutton Hoo is a helmet decorated with images of fighting and dancing warriors and fierce creatures, including a dragon whose wings form the headgears eyebrows and tail its body and mouth. Garnets line the eyebrows, one of which is backed with gold foil reflectors. Found highly corroded and broken into hundreds of fragments, the armor was painstakingly restored by conservators at the British Museum in the early 1970s.

On July 25, 1939, Pretty hosted a reception at the Sutton Hoo site to celebrate the conclusion of the dig. The land next to the excavation site was fashioned into a viewing platform. The British Museums Phillips delivered a short speech about the ship, but was drowned out by the roar of the engine of a Spitfire flying overhead as England prepared for war. Shortly after that, news of the excavations findings started to appear in the press, in part from information leaked by a member of the excavating team. A few days later, the Sutton Hoo artifacts were transported to the British Museum, and after some legal wrangling, they officially became part of the collection as a gift from Pretty.

The public first got a look at the artifacts in a 1940 exhibit, but that opportunity would be short-lived as they were secreted away in the tunnels of the London Underground for safekeeping during the war. After the Allies victory in 1945, the trove was returned to the British Museum where conservation and reconstruction work began.

But analysis of the artifacts generated more questions, and the Sutton Hoo burial ground was re-excavated using advances in science to improve analysis. In 1983, a third excavation of the site led to the discovery of another mound, which contained a warrior and his horse.

Today, the Sutton Hoo artifacts remain on exhibition at the British Museum, where each year, in non-pandemic times, visitors view the extraordinary treasures of an Anglo-Saxon king buried in grandeur 1,400 years ago. More than 80 years after Brown started sifting through the sandy soil of Sutton Hoo, the treasures he unearthed are undiminished. As he wrote in his diary in 1939, Its the find of a lifetime.

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A look at the top rotations in Dodgers history – Los Angeles Times

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With the signing of Trevor Bauer on Friday, plus the expected return of David Price, the 2021 Dodgers rotation that includes Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler will, on paper, be one of the franchises best ever. How will it compare with great Dodgers rotations of the past?

A good way to compare rotations from different periods in baseball history is to use the ERA+ stat. What that does is compare an ERA to the league average ERA that season and convert it into a number. If a pitcher or team has an ERA+ of 100, then they are exactly the league average. If it is 110, then they are 10% better than average, 90 is 10% worse, and so on.

If you added Trevor Bauer to last seasons Dodgers rotation, their top four starters of Bauer (276), Kershaw (196), Buehler (124) and Dustin May (165) would have an approximate ERA+ of 180. Last season was only 60 games, so that number is more than likely deceptively high. Heres a look at some other top Dodgers rotations, using the ERA+ for the top four starters:

1916 Brooklyn Robins: Jeff Pfeffer (141), Larry Cheney (140), Sherry Smith (115), Rube Marquard (171). The first Dodgers team to advance to the World Series, where they lost to the Boston Red Sox and their star pitcher, Babe Ruth.

1930 Brooklyn Robins: Dazzy Vance (189), Watty Clark (118), Jumbo Elliott (125), Ray Phelps (120). Vance is the most overlooked great pitcher in team history. This team led the National League until August, when it faded to a fourth-place finish.

1955 Brooklyn Dodgers: Don Newcombe (128), Billy Loes (114), Carl Erskine (108), Johnny Podres (103). Won the first World Series title in team history.

1965: Sandy Koufax (160), Don Drysdale (118), Claude Osteen (117), Johnny Podres (95). The last World Series title for the Koufax-Drysdale duo.

1977: Burt Hooton (147), Tommy John (138), Don Sutton (121), Doug Rau (112). You could also go with the 1976 team, which had the same four. The 1977 team advanced to the World Series, where they lost to the New York Yankees.

1985: Orel Hershiser (171), Fernando Valenzuela (141), Bob Welch (150), Jerry Reuss (119). Valenzuela was near the end of his prime, and Hershiser was at the start of his. It resulted in a loss in the NLCS to Jack Clark and the St. Louis Cardinals.

1996: Hideo Nomo (122), Ismael Valdez (117), Ramon Martinez (114), Pedro Astacio (113). Wild-card team lost to Atlanta in the NLDS.

2015: Zack Greinke (222), Clayton Kershaw (173), Mike Bolsinger (102), Brett Anderson (100). Granted, Bolsinger and Anderson arent standouts, but its hard to leave out a rotation featuring two Cy Young candidates.

2019: Hyun-Jin Ryu (179), Rich Hill (169), Clayton Kershaw (137), Walker Buehler (127). Just two seasons ago, and this team lost to Washington in the NLDS.

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Today in History | National News – Tulsa World

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Today is Saturday, Feb. 6, the 37th day of 2021. There are 328 days left in the year.

Todays Highlight in History:

On Feb. 6, 1778, during the American Revolutionary War, the United States won official recognition and military support from France with the signing of a Treaty of Alliance in Paris.

In 1756, Americas third vice president, Aaron Burr, was born in Newark, N.J.

In 1788, Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

In 1815, the state of New Jersey issued the first American railroad charter to John Stevens, who proposed a rail link between Trenton and New Brunswick. (The line, however, was never built.)

In 1862, during the Civil War, Fort Henry in Tennessee fell to Union forces.

In 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, was born in Tampico, Illinois.

In 1933, the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the so-called lame duck amendment, was proclaimed in effect by Secretary of State Henry Stimson.

In 1952, Britains King George VI, 56, died at Sandringham House in Norfolk, England; he was succeeded as monarch by his 25-year-old elder daughter, who became Queen Elizabeth II.

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