Category Archives: Singularity

30 years ago English wine was changed forever, and a vinicultural revolution began

Among all the excitement of the Platinum Jubilee, one important anniversary seems to have been forgotten. 30 years have passed since the first harvest at Nyetimber, the Sussex estate that put English wine on the map. Rather than make pale imitations of German wine which is what most of the homegrown wine industry was doing Nyetimber aimed at the very best of Champagne. Astonishingly, it succeeded with its very first release, a 1992 Blanc des Blancs.

I was lucky enough to try a bottle last year, and after nearly three decades its still full of fruit and fizz but with a hazelnut quality like a fine old Burgundy. It came from the cellar of a Frenchman called Jerome Moisan who has a somewhat eccentric obsession with English wines, collecting old bottles and researching its history. The occasion was the launch of his business Pelegrims which makes high end toiletries from the leftovers of wine making.

Moisan thinks that first Nyetimber is every bit as important as such landmark bottles as Stags Leap Cabernet Sauvignon 1973, the wine that introduced Californian wine to the world at the Judgment of Paris tasting in 1976, or Penfolds Grange 1951, which did a similar thing for Australian wine. For him English wine is particularly fascinating because we get to witness the birth of a new wine region, a once in a generation occurrence.

As Cherie Spriggs, the estates winemaker since 2007, put it, without Nyetimber, there is no English wine industry. And we owe it all to Americans. The founders were a couple from Chicago called Stuart and Sandy Moss. He had made a fortune from manufacturing dental equipment while she was an archaeologist and antique dealer. They bought a mediaeval manor house, Nyetimber, that had previously belonged to Henry VIII.

Moisan thinks that prices at auction will top 1,000 soon

But the reason they wanted the estate was not just for the house, but for the greens and soils and warm microclimate. Their plan was audacious: to plant only Champagne varieties, chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier, and only make champagne-method sparkling wine. They werent the first in England to plant these varieties, nor were they the first to make sparkling wine. But what they did bring was money and a singularity of purpose two things that were distinctly lacking in English wine when they planted vines in 1988. According to Sandy Moss, who I spoke with recently: we couldnt figure out why we couldnt do it, so we could.

The experts thought they were mad and advised them to plant apple trees, but the Mosses were vindicated with that very first vintage. Released in 1996, this all chardonnay Sussex sparkler beat the best of France in a blind tasting in Paris. As Stuart Moss put it: The gods smiled, we had the right sites, the right varieties and everything went well for us. It started a goldrush in the English wine industry with specialist sparkling wine producers like Ridgeview coming on the scene while established names like Breaky Bottom switched to champagne-style sparkling wines.

Following a run of successful releases, the Mosses sold up in 2002 to songwriter Andy Hill who you might know from hits such as Making Your Mind Up for Bucks Fizz. Its now owned by Dutch billionaire Eric Heerema who has poured an estimated 100m into the business with the aim to turn it into a global luxury brand. The wines are made by husband and wife Canadians Brad Greatrix and Cherie Spriggs. In 2018, Spriggs became the first person from outside Champagne to win Sparkling Winemaker of the Year at the International Wine Challenge.

According to Greatrix, Nyetimber doesnt have anything planned for this important anniversary, and the 92 vintage is now too rare for them to release any more for sale. Overall there are probably fewer than 100 bottles globally, and a good many of them are in the Mosss cellar in California. Nowadays, sadly, the few left have become collectors items. Moisan thinks that prices at auction will top 1,000 soon, so its unlikely Ill ever get to try it again.

But never fear, here are five other bottles to celebrate English wine week, 18-28 June, and toast those amazing Mosses. Cheers!

Westwell Wicken Foy NV (27.50)

A special cuvee launched by this small-scale Kentish producer (who supply Pelegrims with grape matter) to celebrate independent wine merchants. Its a blend of vintages from 2014 to 2019 and aged for only 18 months to accentuate the fruit. Absolutely delicious and a snazzy label, too.

Bolney Estate Cuve Ros 2018 (30.90)

Made from 100 per cent pinot noir grapes which are given a little skin contact for colour, this is a ros with guts. Its all about big red cherry fruit and herbal notes, like a light red wine, with creamy notes from maturity. Enormous fun.

Nyetimber Classic Cuvee NV (36.50)

Nyetimbers entire range is impressive but its the classic non-vintage that shows why its still the biggest name in English wine. This is creamy with lemon and orange fruit, with a subtle richness lurking in the background; impeccably balanced.

Ridgeview Blanc de Noir 2015 (50)

Ridgeview is the master of English sparkling wine, making a variety under its own label and for other producers. This is one of its high end wines and its extremely good. Made only from pinot noir and meunier, this is rich and mature with powerful dark cherry fruit, spice and tobacco.

Breaky Bottom Cuvee Koizumi Yakumo 2010 (69)

When the rest of the English wine industry switched to champagne varieties, Peter Hall persisted with seyval blanc. Tasting this you can see why its astonishingly fresh and lemony, now deeply flavoured and perfectly balanced by 12 years ageing. A cult wine thats worth every penny.

Vines in a Cold Climate: the people behind the English wine revolution by Henry Jeffreys will be published by Atlantic summer 2023.

Go here to read the rest:

An unaccustomed wine | Henry Jeffreys - The Critic

ANNA has shared a techno remix of Jon Hopkins 2021 track Deep In The Glowing Heart, the result of "amonth-long trans-Atlantic collaborative process". Check it out below.

The original version of 'Deep In The Glowing Heart' was featured on the UK producer's recent studio album 'Music For Psychedelic Therapy', which came out last November. Hopkins said the track evokes a feeling that music can cleanse you, music can guide you through.

For her take on the track, Brazilian producer ANNA has unleashed a hard-hitting torrent of dark and stormy techno which follows her 2018 remix of Hopkins's track Singularity. Listen to 'Deep In The Glowing Heart (Night Version)' below.

I first came across ANNAs music through her track 'Hidden Beauties,' which I found myself playing in DJ sets all the time and always goes down so well," recalls Hopkins. "I then asked her to remix 'Singularity' and the results were so amazing I was super keen to work with her again but in a more collaborative way, rather than just handing over stems. We went back and forth a lot and it flowed really well. I love how this one turned out, its such a meeting of our two styles.

It is a big honor to be able to create music together with Jon," said ANNA. "His music is part of my daily life, part of my meditations, my long walks and contemplative moments. My remix for his track Singularity had a huge impact on my career and getting to know Jon better since then, and collaborate on this version of 'DITGH', it feels like our relationship has come full circle!

2021's 'Psychedelic Therapy' was the follow-up to Jon Hopkins's GRAMMY-nominated LP 'Singularity' (2018) and 2013's 'Immunity'.

ANNA also recently remixed Orbital's classic 'Belfast'. Check that out here.

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ANNA shares techno remix of Jon Hopkins' 'Deep In The Glowing Heart': Listen - DJ Mag

NEW YORK, June 08, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm, is investigating potential claims against Medallion Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: MFIN), RBB Bancorp (NASDAQ: RBB), Singularity Future Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGLY), and TG Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: TGTX). Our investigations concern whether these companies have violated the federal securities laws and/or engaged in other unlawful business practices. Additional information about each case can be found at the link provided.

Medallion Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: MFIN)

On December 29, 2021, the SEC charged Medallion and its President and Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Murstein, with illegally engaging in two schemes in an effort to reverse the companys plummeting stock price. Specifically, the two had engaged in illegal touting by paying Ichabods Cranium and others to place positive stories about the company on various websites, including Huffington Post, Seeking Alpha, and TheStreet.com.

On this news, Medallions stock fell up to 27% during intraday trading on December 29, 2021, thereby injuring investors.

For more information on the Medallion investigation go to: https://bespc.com/cases/MFIN

RBB Bancorp (NASDAQ: RBB)

On February 18, 2022, RBB Bancorp announced the abrupt departure of Tammy Song, the EVP and Chief Lending Officer of RBB Bancorps wholly owned subsidiary Royal Business Bank.

Four days later, on February 22, 2022, RBB Bancorp announced its President and CEO (Alan Thian) would take a leave of absence, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation being conducted by a special committee of the Companys board of directors.

On this news, RBB Bancorps stock price declined by $2.69 per share, or approximately 10.45%, from $25.75 to $23.06 over two trading days.

For more information on the RBB Bancorp investigation go to: https://bespc.com/cases/RBB

Singularity Future Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGLY)

On May 5, 2022, Hindenburg Research (Hindenburg) published a report entitled Singularity Future Technology: This Nasdaq-Listed Companys CEO Is a fugitive, on the Run for Allegedly Operating a Massive Ponzi Scheme. The Hindenburg report alleged, among other things, that singularitys CEO, Yang Jie, is a fugitive on the run from Chinese authorities for running an alleged $300 million Ponzi scheme that lured in over 20,000 victims and fled to the U.S. while at least 28 other individuals involved in the case were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 6 months to 15 years. The Hindenburg report further alleged that Singularitys massive [cryptocurrency] mining rig deal appears to be a brazen undisclosed related party deal and that [w]e see little evidence that Singularitys proprietary crypto mining rigs ever existed in the first place. The photos and descriptions of Singularitys miners match precisely with another brand called KOI Miner.

On this news, Singularitys stock price fell $1.95 per share, or 28.89%, to close at $4.80 per share on May 5, 2022.

For more information on the Singularity Future investigation go to: https://bespc.com/cases/SGLY

TG Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: TGTX)

On November 30, 2021, TG Therapeutics issued a press release "announc[ing] the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has notified the Company that it plans to host a meeting of the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) in connection with its review of the pending Biologics License Application (BLA)/supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) for the combination of ublituximab and UKONIQ (umbralisib) (combination referred to as U2) for the treatment of adult patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL)." TG Therapeutics advised that "[t]he FDA has notified the Company that potential questions and discussion topics for the ODAC include: the benefit-risk of the U2 combination in the treatment of CLL or SLL, and the benefit-risk of UKONIQ in relapsed/refractory marginal zone lymphoma (MZL) or follicular lymphoma (FL). In addition, as part of the benefit-risk analysis, the overall safety profile of the U2 regimen, including adverse events (serious and Grade 3-4), discontinuations due to adverse events, and dose modifications, is expected to be reviewed", stating that "[t]he FDA's concern giving rise to the ODAC meeting appears to stem from an early analysis of overall survival from the UNITY-CLL trial."

On this news, TG Therapeutics' stock price fell $8.16 per share, or 34.93%, to close at $15.20 per share on November 30, 2021.

For more information on the TG Therapeutics investigation go to: https://bespc.com/cases/TGTX

About Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.:

Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. is a nationally recognized law firm with offices in New York, California, and South Carolina. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in commercial, securities, derivative, and other complex litigation in state and federal courts across the country. For more information about the firm, please visit http://www.bespc.com. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Contact Information:

Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.Brandon Walker, Esq. Melissa Fortunato, Esq.(212) 355-4648investigations@bespc.comwww.bespc.com

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Bragar Eagel & Squire, PC Is Investigating Medallion, RBB, Singularity Future, and TG Therapeutics and Encourages Investors to Contact the Firm -...

War, disease, divisionthings arent looking too rosy for humanity at the moment. But thanks to Microsoft, at least well be listening to Stevie Wonder after the apocalypse. The tech giant is partnering with Elire Group to etch the worlds music onto glass plates, and bury them in a remote arctic mountainside to ride out the end of the world.

The Global Music Vault will share space with the Global Seed Vault (better known as the Doomsday Vault) in Svalbard, Norway. The Doomsday Vault houses the largest collection of agricultural seeds on the planet. The Global Music Vault aims to match its neighbor seed for song.

Whereas seeds are prepackaged, music is not. So if eternity is the goal, whats the best medium for the job? Your laptop or smartphone wont do. Hard drives last about five years before they start to fail; tape is good for no more than 10 years; and CDs and DVDs last 15 years.

Microsoft was already working on a long-term storage solutiona technology critical for purposes beyond musicknown as Project Silica, when they partnered with Elire. The team can encode music with super-fast laser pulses that etch 3D nanoscale patterns into thin three-inch quartz glass wafers. Each wafer holds 100 gigabytes of music, or a little over 2,000 songs. They may soon hold a terabyte and eventually 10 terabytes or more. To retrieve the data, the team shines polarized light through the glass, and a machine learning algorithm translates the patterns it picks up in the glass back into music.

Now, about eternity.

The plates can survive baking, boiling, scouring, flooding, and electromagnetic pulses. (No word on shattering or zombies.) Microsoft estimates the plates, and the data they house, can live up to 10,000 years. The goal is to be able to store archival and preservation data at cloud scale in glass, Ant Rowstron, distinguished engineer and deputy lab director at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, toldFast Company.

The Global Music Vault proof-of-concept glass plate, to be deposited in 2023, will include recordings from the International Library of African Music, Kenyas Ketebul Music archive, and Lebanons Fayha Choir. It will also feature Patti Smith and Paul Simon interviews, Manfred Mann and Stevie Wonder concerts, and works by singer-songwriter Beatie Wolfe.

In an age wheremusic hasbecome increasinglydisposable anddevalued, thisis awonderful reminderof itslong-term valuefor humanity, Wolfe told Billboard.

The Global Music Vault isnt yet committed to using Microsofts glass, however. Theyve also experimented with other tech, like high-density QR codes on durable optical film. Future options for archival storage may even include DNAwhich Microsoft, among others, is also looking intobecause lifes source code offers incredibly high-density storage that can survive thousands of years at low temperatures.

Of course, if the world ends, we may not have the technologylike high-power computing and machine learningto unlock the vault for a long time. But despite doomsday nicknames for storage libraries like this, its not just the end of the world motivating long-term archiving. As weve moved information onto digital formats, the limited longevity of those formatsnot to mention their decentralized nature, with no librarian to curate and preserve valueis a concern. Were already losing information, and this trend is sure to accelerate.

Work like Microsofts (and others) is crucial if were to avoid losing todays important cultural, legal, philosophical, and scientific contributions. And if some culture-starved pilgrim of the future were to stumble on a mysterious vault lost to time in the permafrosta cornucopia of seeds and some live Stevie Wonder tracks wouldnt be a bad find.

Image Credit: Global Music Vault

Originally posted here:

Microsoft to Archive Music on Futuristic Slivers of Glass That Will Live 10,000 Years - Singularity Hub

Part of the Juneteenth issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.

Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was legally freed in 1848 in Ohio when she was about 30. She only basked in that freedom for five years.

In 1853, a white sheriff empowered by the fugitive slave law abducted Wood and sold her back into bondage, taking her on a journey from Kentucky to Mississippi and finally to Texas, where shed toil on a plantation through the Civil War. Though President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Wood did not regain her freedom until 1866, months after Union soldiers traveled to Texas on June 19, 1865 Juneteenth to enforce emancipation.

Wood whose pathbreaking story was only recently surfaced returned to Ohio and sued her abductor for $20,000 (worth more than $440,000 today). In the lawsuit, she claimed that because she had been abducted, sold back into slavery, and lost wages (about $500 per year), she was entitled to payment.

After eight years of meandering litigation, 12 white jurors in a federal courtroom in Cincinnati found Woods claim valid and assessed her damages at $2,500. The final decision was just a pittance compared with what Wood demanded, but 144 years later, it remains the largest known payment ordered by an American institution in restitution for slavery.

Woods story was widely covered at the time for its singularity, but fell out of the news as white Americans tried to distance themselves from slavery and its aftermath. Yet the questions that Woods victory raised then are the same ones hanging sullenly over America today.

Who will recompense the millions of men and women for the years of liberty of which they have been defrauded? an 1878 New York Times article about the courts decision asked. Who will make good to the thousands of kidnapped freemen the agony, distress, and bondage of a lifetime?

What the writer recognized was the growing call for reparations that began at the close of the Civil War and continues to this day. When slavery ended, the federal government promised to provide 40 acres and a mule an idea proposed by Black leaders at the time to nearly 4 million recently freed men and women. The effort would have redistributed land previously owned by the Confederates, giving the formerly enslaved a chance to own their own land and become economically self-sufficient until the government, after Lincolns assassination, reneged.

That early proposal helped establish the concept of reparations as compensation to be paid to Black Americans for slavery. When it was overturned, the struggle for reparations only grew. Activists such as Callie House led a movement after Reconstruction and into the early 20th century to demand pensions for poor and aging formerly enslaved people, suing the federal government and arguing that it owed ex-slaves $68 million. HR 40, a federal bill named after the federal promise more than 150 years ago for 40 acres of land, was introduced in Congress to task a commission to study and develop reparations proposals, but it has floundered in the House for more than three decades, leaving advocates wondering why America is still keeping freedom out of reach.

At the beginning of May, a coalition of organizers, including the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA), Color of Change, and the Black Voters Matter Fund, sent a letter to President Joe Biden to demand that he create a federal commission by Juneteenth to study and develop reparations proposals for Black Americans. (The administration had not responded to the coalition by the time this article was published.)

The demand, the continued organizing for racial justice, and the recent recognition of Juneteenth as a day of national importance calling for solemnity as well as celebration, have all brought a new wave of urgency to the centuries-long reparations debate.

We need something much more substantive than the Juneteenth federal holiday. We need reparatory justice, and we need it now, said Nkechi Taifa, the director of the Reparation Education Project, a nonprofit organization that teaches about reparations, and one of the signatories of the letter. Our communities are crying out for it. Our communities are demanding it.

Over time, a more comprehensive reparations framework has emerged. In addition to cash payments, true reparations would be a program of acknowledgement, redress and closure for a grievous injustice including slavery, legal segregation (Jim Crow), and ongoing discrimination and stigmatization, economist William A. Darity and folklorist A. Kirsten Mullen argued in their 2020 book From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.

Decades of demands on the federal government to atone for the harm it inflicted on enslaved people and the resultant racism, discrimination, and segregation that cripple the Black community today havent moved federal leaders to act, not toward acknowledgement nor apology, nor toward the kind of redress that economists say would be necessary to level the field for Black Americans.

Darity and Mullen estimate that restitution in the form of direct cash payments would cost the American government $10 trillion to $12 trillion, or about $800,000 for each eligible Black household. The payments could eradicate long-standing racial disparities in wealth, health, income, education, incarceration rates, and overall quality of life, experts have argued.

We dont have reparations right now because America isnt sorry. We have not had an adequate apology for slavery, said Edgar Villanueva, founder of the philanthropic organization Decolonizing Wealth Project, which funds reparative giving efforts. Theres a deep-seated fear of even the word reparations and a related scarcity mindset around Americas unwillingness to grapple with its history that connects back to colonization. So instead, were experiencing the rewriting of history, the banning of books, and a fear of truth-telling.

If the federal governments commitment to reparations is doubtful, at the local level, a movement is gathering.

Asheville, North Carolinas city council established a Community Reparations Commission in 2020. That year, Providence, Rhode Islands mayor signed an executive order to pursue a truth-telling and reparations process in the city; Burlington, Vermont, established a reparations task force; and Wilmington, North Carolina, considered doing the same. The following year also saw momentum: California launched its reparations task force in 2021, while separately, a group of mayors, Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity, pledged to pay reparations to small groups of Black residents in their cities to show the federal government what is possible. Greenbelt, Maryland, voters approved a commission to study reparations, as did Detroit voters and the New York state assembly.

Other forms of repayment that some have called reparations are worth noting. This year, in Evanston, Illinois, 16 Black families were selected at random from a pool of applicants to receive up to $25,000 in tax-free grants that can be used to pay for a home, pay off a mortgage or make home improvements. Almost 100 years after California seized a Black familys Bruces Beach property via eminent domain, the state agreed to return it to the descendants of the family who owned it. Finally, a judge last month ruled that the three known living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa white mob massacre could move forward with their lawsuit seeking reparations, despite motions by the defendants, including the city of Tulsa, to dismiss the case.

If local leaders can find the space to grapple with reparations, why cant the federal government?

At a federal level, President Bidens evolving stance on reparations illustrates the countrys glacial pace of change and glaring unwillingness to engage in the reconciliation that would bring healing and closure to the people it has harmed.

In a 1975 interview, he criticized the idea: I do not buy the concept, popular in the 60s, which said, We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the Black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race.

As Biden campaigned for the presidency in 2020, however, the nation saw what may be the largest uprising against systemic injustice after a white police officer murdered George Floyd in daylight, and he embraced the idea of studying reparations. But in the past two years, as he navigated his priorities and failed to garner enough congressional support to pass some of his biggest agenda items, his administration has put the idea out of view.

Beyond the few local lawmakers and federal officials who already back HR 40, support for reparations in general remains low. In 2014, 68 percent of Americans polled by YouGov opposed financial payments to Black Americans as compensation for slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining, while only 15 percent supported them. Recent polling found similar results. In 2020, 63 percent of Americans polled by ABC News and the Washington Post opposed cash payments, while 61 percent were opposed in 2021. Yet in 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, more people than ever (76 percent of Americans surveyed) agreed that racial discrimination is a big problem in the United States.

Smaller-scale local programs help keep the reparations dialogue going and may bring the country closer to a wider-scale reparations program but they fall short of the countrys national imperative.

No amount of material resources can ever compensate for what Black folks went through. Whatever ends up happening is going to be a negotiated settlement, Taifa said. Whether [reparations make] a material difference or not, the fact is theres a debt that is owed and a debt that is due. If I choose to just keep the money under my pillow and never do anything with it, thats my right.

Major questions motivate the activists and thinkers pushing for reparations. Where would the descendants of enslaved Americans be if it werent for the more than 200 years of forced labor? Does the United States want to live up to the ideals and exceptionalism it has touted for centuries?

More than any logistical quandary about reparations, these questions lie at the heart of the fight. They get to the center of what America represents and whether it has the power to truly change. Our national debt is already now up to around $26-27 trillion given the money were spending on Covid, Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute, told CNBC in 2020 about paying reparations. And were losing more money because were not picking up the revenue because economic growth is so slow right now. This hardly seems the time to burden the economy with more debt, more taxes. Essentially what you want to do is stimulate economic growth for all our benefits.

But most reparations advocates agree that stimulus plans that stand to boost all Americans wont close the Black-white wealth gap. They note that the formation of the republic after slavery intentionally excluded the formerly enslaved and their descendants in the decades after. During the Reconstruction era, Blacks were routinely disenfranchised, while the New Deal and GI Bill later also failed to fully include Black people. Even the passage of civil rights legislation didnt open the door for America to fully grapple with racism.

Questions about who should be eligible for reparations and how much ought to be paid remain.

Some believe that only descendants of people enslaved in the United States who can prove their lineage that at least one ancestor was enslaved can be eligible. (Californias task force, for example, decided that only residents with direct lineage to people formerly enslaved in America should be eligible for reparations.) The plan mapped out by Darity and Mullen adds that eligible recipients must pass an identity standard they must be able to prove that they self-identified as Black, Negro, or African American for 12 years prior to the enactment of a reparations plan.

Others believe that eligibility must be more inclusive, arguing that Black people who are third, fourth, and fifth generation in the United States could be part of the global network of enslavement that saw their ancestors enslaved in the Caribbean or South America. They, too, have suffered under American racism and discrimination. The system of enslavement was intertwined to the point that we do not know and could never know for certain if ones ancestor was not harmed by US enslavers and the US government based on a geographical North American residence of enslavement, NCOBRA activists wrote in a memo.

Theres also discussion about the window for the reparations claim. Should 1619, the year enslaved people landed in Jamestown, Virginia, be the beginning date for the claim, or the year 1776, when America was founded?

What would constitute reparations? Some have argued that reparations dont have to be direct cash payments but can take the form of programs like housing vouchers, as in the case of Evanston, Illinois, or educational grants, as in the case of Georgetown University. The university has said it would help the descendants of enslaved people pay off school debts, an effort to contend with the fact that its founding relied on stolen Black labor. Some warn, however, that these limited programs can muddy efforts to secure federal cash payments. Reparations seems to be all over right now, but as we have these discussions, we have to be cautious to not to water it down or let [reparations] be co-opted, Villanueva said.

Many also believe that there is a grave need for a truth-telling effort that makes way for an apology: Without acknowledgment and a formal apology from the federal government, there can be no closure. Though Henrietta Wood got money that helped her raise her son at the turn of the century, she never received an apology from the man who re-enslaved her. Nor did she get an apology for being born into a system that reduced her to bondage. Instead, Woods abductor tried to deny his crime and even boasted about growing famous for having bought one of the last slaves before the end of slavery.

He cannot escape the law, which will follow him and his property into the remotest nook of the Republic, the New York Times wrote of Woods captor. Why should America?

Fabiola Cineas is a reporter for Vox covering voting rights, education, race, and policy.

Continued here:

Juneteenth, reparations, and the unmet promise of 40 acres and a mule - Vox.com

Europeans love art - high art but also all sorts of other art: architecture, music, gardens, festivals. The comments come from Charles Kelley, a Californian artist living in Latvia. In a large room filled with paintings and sculptures, he briefly responds to questions before the start of a new session.

Kelley is leading the artists network, a group of 25 people gathered in Wisla (Poland) as part of the larger programme of the European Leadership conference (ELF).

Artists need encouragement, and this is my number one goal, he continues, as the conversation around him starts to quiet down after the coffee break. You need to recognise that your talent is from God, and God gives both talent and responsibility. We want people to get the opportunity to inspire each other and to ask the question: what can we do together that we cannot do alone.

Another desire is to see conversations happen. Im very interested in bringing artists together, not only Christians, but non-Christians also. Because art is an amazing bridge in countless situations and categories, Kelly says before he stands up to open a group discussion on the issue: why creativity requires risk.

One of these artistic bridges should be built between theology and technology, thinks Egl Tamulyt, better known for her artistic name, Aglaja Ray. Formed in the Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuania), she defines her work as interdisciplinary: graphic art, performances, video art, painting on canvas

We must understand the times we are living in, she explains. Technology is moving so fast, and movements such as transhumanism are strong. We need to raise bioethical questions because so many people are leaning on science for questions that matter, for instance, eternity.

Recently, Aglaja has become more and more interested in research. I explore the places where theology and technology intersect, my art describes these questions with visual storytelling.

I have this project in which I show the two ways that there are to access eternity: an artificial identity, through which some believe they can reach eternity with technologies like singularity. But there is also the Christian approach, that says you can reach eternity through Jesus Christ.

Creative endeavours have something metaphysical in them, a sense of transcendence. They bring us to something that is unseen but that does exist. This is why I believe we should have arts around us as a reminder of these unseen realities.

Adi Hunyadi is another participants of this years Arts network of the ELF. He is half Hungarian and half Romanian. I am a painter. Impressionist, conceptual, in a sense quite traditional. Oil on canva, oil on cardboard. But I want to go farther.

He is on a journey. It took him some time to realise that this gift is from God. Before, I was designer of interiors, I was in the same courtyard but in another room, so to say. I realised that painting is my thing, for my soul, and the way I can speak to the world about God.

Also Elena Kaminsien from Lithuania has been experiencing for years now, but in the field of poetry. She has now been able to publish Another Kind Of Love, a collection of poems from the last 20 years. I consider them to be prayers to God. I try to express a cry to God that is in many other hearts as well.

The group also includes church leaders. Among them is Luca Illiano, an Italian sculptor. I work in a church planting project in the place I was born. I see lots of barriers, people who are sceptic and dont want to have a chat about the gospel - but they are more open to art.

Lately, Luca has been working on a series of clay sculptures called The Prophets. The idea is to communicate to the viewers that God spoke and is still speaking. Each sculpture symbolises the main idea that God wanted to say through that specific prophet.

Are Italians still so much into art? Yes, recent statistics showed that on a Sunday morning there a more people in museums and art galleries than in churches. As an artist, this makes me think I should do something to be involved where the people are.

Also Sasa Nikolinovic leads a local church, in his case, in Bosnia Herzegovina. His aim is to raise awareness about the importance of arts for the spiritual life. He organises exhibitions in church contexts but also in larger public spheres. His diagnosis is that in the evangelical world, many have a problematic relationship with art. With the Protestant Reformation, we threw the baby out with the dirty water, so in this generation we are trying to re-introduce art in our ways of living Christianity, both in our church communities and our individual spirituality.

If Christians want to make a difference in a secularised Europe, our art needs first to be very, very good, concludes Charles Kelley.

He quotes a Swedish author: If you understand art immediately, it is propaganda, if you have to think, it is art. So many Christians are influenced by their churches and subcultures to communicate propaganda, he admits. The challenge is to encourage more and more artists to create beautiful bridges in a culture that often has lost its ability to connect with the deeper spiritual realities of life.

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Art as a bridge to unexplored faith conversations - Evangelical Focus

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MicroStrategys CEO, Michael Saylor, has pointed out that anyone who has held Bitcoin for four years has never lost money.

Mr. Saylor shared his Bitcoin insights during an interview on CNBCs Squawk Street, where he also pointed out that a good indicator of Bitcoins value is its four-year simple moving average around the $21.6k price level.

He said:

Yeah, I think if you think about Bitcoin if your time horizon is one month, it looks like a volatile risk asset. But if your time horizon is 10 years, it looks like a risk-off store of value asset.

So the crossover point is four years. Nobodys ever lost money investing in Bitcoin for four years and if you want to surrogate for the book value of the Bitcoin network. It would be the four-year simple moving average. The simple moving average of Bitcoin over four years is about $21,685.

With respect to the ongoing concern that MicroStrategys Bitcoin is underwater with an average entry of $30,700, Mr. Saylor explained that the company had backtested its BTC strategy against every other alternative beginning August 10th, 2020. This includes gold and the Nasdaq.

According to Mr. Saylor, Bitcoin has performed better than anything else by a factor of ten. He stated that gold is down ten percent, the Nasdaq is flat, and Bitcoin has been up 86% since August 2020.

Furthermore, when asked whether now was a good time to buy Bitcoin, Mr. Saylor said that current prices could provide a good entry point. He explained:

Absolutely. Bitcoins backed by the most powerful secure computer network in the world. If I gave you a hundred billion dollars, you cant reproduce it, and its beyond a nation-state attack or corporate attack.

So once you understand that and the fact that its a singularity theres nothing like it in the worldthen yeah. This is in fact an ideal entry point to get into this thing all right.

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MicroStrategy CEO: No One Has Ever Lost Money Investing in Bitcoin for Four Years - Ethereum World News

The earth shook for some

If you noticed your lampshades do a little jiggle-jiggle (not hold) this morning at around 10am, theres a good reason for it. An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.3, rippled across the Arabian Gulf from its epicentre 22km off the coast of Kish, an island of Iran.

Theres no reason for concern of course, 5.3is a mere tremor on the Richter scale (the scale that measures the intensity of seismic waves). At that sort of strength, and at the UAEs distance from the centre of the earthquake, its barely doily displacing energy, in fact the shaking will be imperceptible to many. Generally, seismologists only tend to worry about quakes with a magnitude of six and over, thats the stage where within the immediate vicinity, damage to infrastructure and buildings can potentially occur.

We know those geography lessons on fault lines and tectonic plates are still fresh in your mind and ready for pub quiz application, so we wont bore you with the basics. But Iran is a convergence point for several major plates theIranian Plate makes contact with the Indian Plate, the Eurasian Plate,and the Arabian Plate, giving rise to a patchwork network of fault lines and significant tectonic activity.

This means that earthquakes (and to some extent, volcanic eruptions) are relatively common in Iran, and whilst most of the time theyre relatively minor there have been some monsters in the past. In fact its estimated that there have been around 126,000 fatalities from earthquakes in Iran since 1900.

And we only have to look back to 2017, Kermanshah to see the sorts of devastation that can be reaped from a quake. The death toll from the 7.3 magnitude event stood at 630. And still, well within recent living memory, after surveying the aftermath of 2003s infamous Bam earthquake in the Kerman province of south east Iran, authorities recorded a final figure of at least 30,000 dead.

Nope, look were not here to tell you how to prioritise your own hierarchy of anxieties thats for your own subconsciousness to decide. But if we were you wed be much more concerned about comet impact, pathogens, nuclear war, and the AI singularity.

The UAE is considered only a moderate risk country theres only an estimated 10 per cent chance of a potentially damaging earthquake in the next 50 years and because almost all buildngs are hyper-modern, they were constructed with high-tech quake-proofing built into the design.

Images: USGS/Unsplash

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Did you feel the earthquake in the UAE? - What's On Dubai

Posted on Jun 12, 2022 in Alien Life, Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change, Extraterrestrial Life, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA, Origin of Life, Planet Earth, Plate Tectonics, quantum physics, Science, Technology

Todays stories range from Could the Blueprint for Life Have Been Generated in Asteroids to Do AI Systems Really Have Their Own Secret Language to How Plate Tectonics, Mountains, and Deep-Sea Sediments Have Maintained Earths Goldilocks Climate, and much more.

Could the Blueprint for Life Have Been Generated in Asteroids? asks NASA. While it is unlikely that DNA could be formed in a meteorite, this discovery demonstrates that these genetic parts are available for delivery and could have contributed to the development of the instructional molecules on early Earth. The discovery, by an international team with NASA researchers, gives more evidence that chemical reactions in asteroids can make some of lifes ingredients, which could have been delivered to ancient Earth by meteorite impacts or perhaps the infall of dust.

Do AI Systems Really Have Their Own Secret Language? asks Singularity Hub. AI language models dont read text the way you and I do. Instead, they break input text up into tokens before processing it.

James Webb Space Telescope Set to Study Two Strange Super-Earths Space agency officials promise to deliver geology results from worlds dozens of light-years away, reports Elizabeth Howell, at Space.com

Is life the result of the laws of entropy? Nearly 80 years ago, Erwin Schrdinger used the physics of the day to try to understand the origins of life. Now, Stephon Alexander and Salvador Almagro-Moreno try to do the same with modern science, reports New Scientist.

NASA is putting together a research team to study UFOs. Still not saying its aliens, though, reports The Verge. The study team, to be led by astrophysicist David Spergel under NASAs Science Mission Directorate, will attempt to identify what data is out there on UAPs and figure out how to best capture data on UAPs in the future. NASA noted that the limitations in sightings make it hard to come to logical conclusions about where UAPs come from.

Why havent plastic-eating bacteria fixed the ocean plastic pollution problem? Scientists have discovered enzymes from several plastic-eating bacteria. So, why are our oceans still full of plastic pollution? asks Big THink.

Could we live without plastic? How our lives would change if we lost access to plastic, reports BBC Future. Of the 8,300 million tons of virgin plastic produced up to the end of 2015, 6,300 million tons has been discarded. In fact, plastic waste is now so widespread that researchers have suggested it could be used as a geological indicator of the Anthropocene.

How the universe got its magnetic field Where did the seed magnetic field come from in the first place? asks Big Think. Professor Ellen Zweibel of the University of Wisconsin at Madison notes that despite decades of remarkable progress in cosmology, the origin of magnetic fields in the universe remains unknown. It is wonderful to see state-of-the-art plasma physics theory and numerical simulation brought to bear on this fundamental problem.

Can gravity batteries solve our energy storage problems? asks BBC Future. Could a cutting-edge technology that harnesses one of the universes fundamental forces help solve our energy storage challenge?

What Is It About the Human Brain That Makes Us Smarter Than Other Animals? asks Singularity Hub. Our understanding of brain function has changed over the years. But current theoretical models describe the brain as a distributed information-processing system. This means it has distinct components that are tightly networked through the brains wiring. To interact with each other, regions exchange information though a system of input and output signal.

How Plate Tectonics, Mountains, and Deep-Sea Sediments Have Maintained Earths Goldilocks Climate, reports Singularity Hub. New research published in Nature shows how tectonic plates, volcanoes, eroding mountains, and seabed sediment have controlled Earths climate in the geological past. Harnessing these processes may play a part in maintaining the Goldilocks climate our planet has enjoyed.

Pandemic, war, and climate change have brought matters to a head. The world faces what the United Nations secretary general, Antnio Guterres, this week called an unprecedented wave of hunger and destitution.

Scientists Have Established a Key Biological Difference Between Psychopaths and Normal People, reports SciTechDaily. The research found that the striatum region of the brain was on average ten percent larger in psychopathic individuals compared to a control group of individuals that had low or no psychopathic traits.

Geology from 50 Light-Years: Webb Gets Ready to Study Rocky Worlds, reports NASA. Among the investigations planned for the first year are studies of two hot exoplanets classified as super-Earths for their size and rocky composition: the lava-covered 55 Cancri e and the airless LHS 3844 b. Researchers will train Webbs high-precision spectrographs on these planets with a view to understanding the geologic diversity of planets across the galaxy, and the evolution of rocky planets like Earth.

Can humanity leave nature behind? asks BBC Future. In the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature how might we avoid the most dystopian of these futures? Researcher Lauren Holt makes the case for a broader form of offsetting to help balance technology with natural systems.

Notes on E.T., now that we are both in our 40s. In a never-ending homage economy, the lack of a sequel doesnt necessarily mean a story can be at rest, reports Salon.com.

Galapagos tortoise thought extinct for 100 years has been found alive A single female of the Fernandina Island tortoise species that was thought to be extinct for a century has been found in the Galapagos Islands, reports New Scientist.

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NASA Zooms in on UFOs to Is Life the Result of Entropy? (Planet Earth Report) - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

Just under a year ago, a think tank called Autonomy released a report on what was at the time the worlds biggest four-day work week trial. It took place in Iceland and involved more than one percent of the countrys total working population with over 2,500 participants. They reported decreases in stress, increases in energy levels, improved focus, more independence and control over their pace of work, and less conflict between their work and home lives. Managers reported boosts in employee morale, with productivity levels maintained if not improved.

Now a similar but even bigger trial is kicking off in the UK. With over 3,300 employees from 70 different companies taking part, its the most expansive such pilot to take place anywhere in the world so far. All types of companies are involved, from large corporations to small neighborhood pubs.

Participants will get 100 percent of their pay while working 80 percent of their typical schedule and aiming to maintain 100 percent productivity. The trial is being run by 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit coalition of business leaders, community strategists, designers, and advocacy thought leaders invested in the transition to reduced working hours. In a somewhat creepy video the organization posted recently on Twitter, they point out that the week and the weekend are concepts we created, and they dont have to keep looking the same way they always have.

Autonomy think tank is also involved, as are researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford University, and Boston College will work with the companies participating to measure the impact the experiment has on employee productivity and well-being. Well be analyzing how employees respond to having an extra day off, in terms of stress and burnout, job and life satisfaction, health, sleep, energy use, travel, and many other aspects of life, said Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College and the lead researcher on the pilot.

Covid-19 turned many of our pre-existing work norms on their head. After learning they could be equally as productive at home as they were at the office, if not more so, millions of workers are now adopting hybrid work schedules. This likely would have happened eventually, but the proliferation of remote work wouldve taken many more years if not for the pandemic.

As we emerge from the pandemic, more and more companies are recognizing that the new frontier for competition is quality of life, and that reduced-hour, output-focused working is the vehicle to give them a competitive edge, said Joe OConnor, 4 Day Week Globals CEO.

Similarly, the increase in four-day work week experiments going on all over the world is at least partly attributable to the new ways of working the pandemic imposed on us, and the reconsideration of work-life balance they prompted. Besides Iceland, Spain, Scotland, Japan, and New Zealand have all looked into or trialed a reduced work week.

If were being honest, few to none of us work for eight hours straight on any given day, much less five days a week (though there are, of course, people who work much more than this). We wander around the office (or more recently, our homes), watch videos or search for things we want to buy online, or just stare mindlessly into space for a while.

We tend to adapt the work we have to the amount of time we have to do it; ever notice how, when you have just one simple task to complete, it somehow ends up taking hours, if not the entire day? Yet when you have a long to-do list and no time to waste, youre able to get it all done in the same eight-hour window, going into a sort of hyper-productivity mode.

With the same amount of work to do but less time to do it in, most people will simply find ways to waste less time. So why not kick that hyper-productivity mode into action four days a week, then take the fifth day off?

After the success of its four-day week pilot, organizations in Iceland have made some big adjustments: 86 percent of the countrys working population has now either moved to a shorter work week, or been given the option to negotiate one.

Its worth noting, though, that broadly implementing a four-day week will be more complicated in countries with bigger populations or more pronounced income inequality than Iceland has. The countrys total population is around 343,000, and its one of the most equitable societies in the world. The UK, meanwhile, has almost 68.5 million people, and while inequality isnt as bad as in the US, its far outranked by Iceland.

The UK pilot started this week and will run for six months.

Image Credit: chafleks / 47 images

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The World's Biggest 4-Day Work Week Pilot Just Launched in the UK - Singularity Hub