Just a few weeks ago, our April/May issue hit newsstands. As Country Living’s Senior Homes + Style Editor, I always take the time to post a thank you to all the creatives who brought our issue to life on my Instagram. To celebrate our most recent issue, I led with an image of a bloom-meets-laundry room (pictured above) from designer Kendall Rabun’s stunningly fabulous West Virginia project. Almost immediately, my post was flooded with comments asking what paint color Kendall used (Oval Room Blue by Farrow & Ball, by the way). These comments confirmed a lingering suspicion I’ve had for months: We’re entering the era of duck egg blue. Stacy Zarin GoldbergDesigner Molly Singer’s kitchen feels airy and bright thanks to a coating of Backdrop’s Skywalker.Blue has long been a designer-favorite paint color (especially for kitchens), beloved for the easy, laid-back sensibility it brings to a room. The recent shift towards greener, more verdant versions follows green’s resurgence in the design mainstream. (I mean, who hasn’t seen a beautiful green kitchen and thought about immediately starting a weekend project to repaint their own kitchen cabinets?) Duck egg blue’s steely look has been perfectly poised for design dominance because it pulls notes from both beloved shades—blue and green. Chase DanielIn this Texas farmhouse galley kitchen, the homeowner chose a timeless duck egg blue paint color to pair with the reproduction wallpaper and antique mint-colored enamel gas range.Much like actual duck eggs, which get their iconic coloring from the naturally occurring pigments blue oocynian and biliverdin, duck egg blue paint colors come in a variety of shades. Hints of black or gray give the color a muddier appearance, creating a more traditional feel that pairs well with brown wood furniture or layers of bold pattern. Brighter, clearer shades can lean coastal, but also work beautifully with traditional white farmhouse interiors.Below, we’ve rounded up a few of our favorite duck egg blue paint colors for you to try. Just be sure to read our painting guide before putting brush to wall! FOR MORE ON PAINT COLORS:The Best Duck Egg Blue Paint ColorsSkywalker by Backdrop$59 at backdrophome.comDix Blue by Farrow & Ball$146 at Farrow & BallMeander Blue by Sherwin-WilliamsNow 30% Off$49 $34 at Sherwin-WilliamsWythe Blue by Benjamin Moore$56 at Benjamin MooreAnna LoganSenior Homes & Style EditorAnna Logan is the Senior Homes & Style Editor at Country Living, where she has been covering all things home design, including sharing exclusive looks at beautifully designed country kitchens, producing home features, writing everything from timely trend reports on the latest viral aesthetic to expert-driven explainers on must-read topics, and rounding up pretty much everything you’ve ever wanted to know about paint, since 2021. Anna has spent the last seven years covering every aspect of the design industry, previously having written for Traditional Home, One Kings Lane, House Beautiful, and Frederic. She holds a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia. When she’s not working, Anna can either be found digging around her flower garden or through the dusty shelves of an antique shop. Follow her adventures, or, more importantly, those of her three-year-old Maltese and official Country Living Pet Lab tester, Teddy, on Instagram.  

ChatGPT’s growth keeps hitting new heights, including last month earning the honor of top downloaded app (not game) in the world per Appfigures—no doubt thanks to Studio Ghibli. ChatGPT tops global app charts, in part thanks to iOS success When it comes to the most downloaded apps in the world, the top of the pack is usually fairly predictable. TikTok and Instagram tend to go back and forth in the one and two slots. But in March, no doubt fueled by the launch of 4o image generation and the viral Ghibli-style crazy that followed, ChatGPT claimed the top spot. Per a new Appfigures report, download numbers for apps (games are excluded) looked like this: ChatGPT: 46 million downloads (13M on iOS, 33M on Android) Instagram: 46 million downloads (5M on iOS, 41M on Android) TikTok: 45 million downloads (8M on iOS, 37M on Android) Ultimately, it was ChatGPT’s dominance on the iPhone’s App Store charts that helped it squeak across the finish line with a narrow victory. Even though most of its downloads came from Android, the AI app had a big advantage on iOS over both TikTok and Instagram. ChatGPT was the top app in Apple’s App Store, while TikTok was only number six—Instagram didn’t even make the top 10. 9to5Mac’s Take I can’t help but think about the contrast between ChatGPT’s viral image success and the seemingly little impact Apple’s Image Playground app has had. Ethical issues around AI-generated art are well worth discussing, especially as relates to ChatGPT’s skyrocketing adoption. But as someone who covers Apple for a living, I wonder how much the company is kicking itself over OpenAI’s recent success. Are you surprised ChatGPT was the number one app last month, or not so much? Let us know in the comments. Best iPhone accessories Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

It's no secret that Elon Musk's wealth is staggering. At the time of writing, he's worth over $325 billion. To give that number a sense of scale, that's $62 billion more than the total annual salary of every worker in Michigan combined — all 4.3 million of them.So why is he powering his data centers with rinky-dink portable generators?New aerial surveillance footage obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center has found that Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, is using 35 methane gas generators to power its "Colossus" supercomputer facility, the backbone of its flagship Grok. That's 20 more generators than the 15 xAI filed permits for, and 35 more than it was approved to use.The data center, nestled in historic south Memphis, came online last September, despite protests from community leaders. AI data centers are notoriously loud, and hog water and electricity like a mid-sized American city. Case in point, the local utility company, Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) estimates the Memphis facility will soon be sucking up one million gallons of water per day, as well as 150 megawatts of power, once it reaches its full power.Though the MLGW says it's "executed four standard electric service agreements, one water service, and one gas service agreement" with xAI — totaling 50 megawatts of power — Musk says the facility needs much more due to rapid power fluctuations in his system of 10 to 20 megawatts at a time.But getting approval for that kind of power is a slow and cautious process, according to Bloomberg, as rapid data center construction runs up against the limits of what civilian power grids can provide. Never one to wait for approval, Musk has chosen instead to exploit a loophole in local regulations, which seemingly allow him to park a fleet of toxic methane generators outside his facility as long as they don't sit in the same location for 364 days.Local residents, meanwhile, are left to deal with the toxic fallout. One report by ProPublica found that the cancer rate in this area of Memphis is four times higher than the national average. The low, flat land here has historically been used as an out-of-site locale for megacorporations to plant industrial facilities, resulting in waves of health crises as toxins like ethylene oxide and arsenic pollute the nearby ground, water, and air.Generators like xAI's emit huge amounts of nitrogen dioxide, a highly reactive gas which causes irreversible respiratory damage over time. And that's before you consider its effects on the ozone layer, or its contribution to acid rain, smog, and nutrient pollution in local soil and waterways. With 35 generators now chugging along, that's a whole chorus of turbines spewing the toxic gas into low-income, minority-led communities 24/7.With the city urging residents to grin and bear it, and the EPA staying silent since October, the burden is falling on the communities affected to stand up to Musk's move-fast-and-spew-gas AI strategy."Nobody else should be burying their families because these rogue, rich, white, racist people continue to build projects that are suffocating us," KeShaun Pearson, a local resident and director of the Memphis Community Against Pollution told The Guardian. "This is all preventable."More on data centers: Something's Gone Wrong With Microsoft's Huge AI Data Center InvestmentsShare This Article

In the 1998 movie Sliding Doors, a woman played by Gwyneth Paltrow narrowly makes it onto a train — and, in an alternate storyline that plays out parallel to the first, misses the train. The whole film goes back and forth between the two Paltrows (the one who caught that subway, and the one who didn’t) showing how this single small action can have enormous consequences on someone’s life. Ashton Kutcher fans call this “the butterfly effect.”I don’t know if Sliding Doors is a masterpiece of cinema, but it is a fun thought experiment. Once you start pondering the little decisions that send your life in one direction or another, you can’t stop. And that same sort of thinking can be applied to movies, where every completed film, from the most beloved masterpiece to the most reviled disaster, is the accumulation of hundreds or maybe thousands of little decisions. Change one or two of them, and the entire picture could look totally different.To see this theory in action, you needn’t look any further than the list below. It contains nothing but huge movie stars, all of whom turned down the chance to play huge roles in huge movies. Generally speaking, these situations worked out in the end for everyone. The actors were largely unharmed and made other successful projects. The movies they turned down survived and even thrived with other stars in the key roles. And those replacements often became major movie and TV stars in their own right, something that might not have happened had the directors’ initial choice said yes in the first place.Here are 25 movie stars who all have their own version of Sliding Doors within their careers to think about. I’m sure Gwyneth Paltrow has her own examples, but she just missed the cut this time. (Sorry, Gwyneth. Maybe you make the next one.)25 Actors Who Turned Down Huge Movie RolesSome of the most famous actors in history turned down the chance to play cinema’s most iconic roles.READ MORE: The ABCs of Movies: The Best Film That Starts With Every Letter of the AlphabetThe 10 Funniest Movies of the Last Ten Years (2015-2024)Movie comedies may not be quite as popular as they once were, the last decade have still given us some very funny films.Categories: Lists, Movie News, Original Features

Archway plans, which include 27-storey tower, had been recommended for rejection View of the tower as seen from Highgate Hill Opposition to the Archway scheme has mainly focused on the height and appearance of the 27-storey student tower 1/6 show caption Niall McLaughlin’s 27-storey student accommodation in Islington has been called in by Sadiq Khan after being rejected by the local council. It is the latest intervention by the London mayor on a major scheme in the capital following his decision last month to become the planning authority for Make’s Baltic Wharf scheme in Paddington. Make Architects’ plans for a 20-storey student accommodation scheme were rejected for the second time by Westminster council in January. Now he has written to Islington council to say he will also make the decision on 2022 Stirling Prize-winner Niall McLaughlin’s 250-bed Archway Campus scheme in north London. This would see the redevelopment of the former Holborn Union Hospital on a 1.5 ha site in Archway. The scheme has faced local opposition, including from Islington North MP and former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, over the height and appearance of the planned student tower. Built as a Victorian workhouse infirmary, the buildings at the site became a hospital and later a medical teaching campus but have been vacant since 2013. Under plans brought forward by Seven Capital, three historic buildings would be refurbished and extended, mostly for 87 market sale homes. Three other buildings constructed in the second half of the 20th century would be demolished and replaced with three new blocks comprising 91 affordable homes. Grid Architects is responsible for retrofitting and extending the heritage buildings, while Niall McLaughlin has designed the new build masterplan, including three affordable housing blocks and two student buildings.

The Switch 2 will work only with microSD Express cards, so it's likely your old Switch card won't do the trick. We've found all the places where you can pick up a new one before the launch.

April 11, 20253 min readJWST Spots Remains of Alien Planet That Fell into a StarNASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provided a closer look at the aftermath of a star that wreaked violence on its planetBy Meghan Bartels edited by Dean VisserNASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has followed up on what is thought to be the first known observations of a star engulfing a planet. This artist’s concept depicts a ring of hot gas left by the event around the star and an expanding cloud of cooler dust enveloping the scene. NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Crawford (STScI)NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has determined that a discovery that could be likened to a cosmic crime scene isn’t what astronomers thought: rather than pointing to a star that swelled up to swallow its planet, the finding seems to reveal that the planet spiraled into its own sun.The BackgroundIn 2020 astronomers spotted an intriguing event that they labeled ZTF SLRN-2020. Over about 10 days, optical light from a certain location in our galaxy spiked, then faded over about six months. When scientists started investigating, they found that data from another telescope, called NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer), showed that this galactic neighborhood had begun glowing even more brightly in infrared light about seven months before the optical light began—and that this lasted for more than a year.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The researchers also pinpointed the light to a Milky Way star about 12,000 light-years away from Earth. And they suggested that the drama indicated that a sunlike star absorbed a planet less than 10 times the mass of Jupiter. That’s a very reasonable scenario—and one scientists already expect to play out in our own solar system some five billion years from now, with our sun ballooning up and absorbing at least the innermost planets.What’s NewMore than two years after the initial outburst, researchers (including some of the scientists who conducted the original study) arranged for JWST to turn its piercing vision on ZTF SLRN-2020 using two key instruments: the telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). Their observations change the story of this strange event in intriguing ways, the scientists reported on Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal.Illustrations show an artist’s depiction of a planet (orbit shown in light blue) falling into a star. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of what is thought to be the first ever recorded planetary engulfment event revealed a hot accretion disk surrounding the star (shown in brown), with an expanding cloud of cooler dust enveloping the scene (in blue). JWST also revealed that the star did not swell to swallow the planet, but the planet’s orbit actually slowly decayed over time. The star is located in the Milky Way galaxy about 12,000 light-years away from Earth.NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Crawford (STScI)First, MIRI determined that the star wasn’t bright enough to be a red giant, a type of star that forms when a sunlike object swells up. That means the star couldn’t have engulfed its planet directly, as originally proposed. Instead scientists now think that the planet was originally about the size of Jupiter but orbited closer to the star than Mercury orbits our sun. Eventually it slipped too close and began to inexorably fall into the star.During the final merger, scientists think the plant’s impact sent gas from the star’s outer layers flying into space, where it cooled and became a large halo of cold dust. But surprisingly, NIRSpec also identified a thin ring of molecular gas closer to the star, complicating scientists’ understanding of how planets meet their demise.“This is truly the precipice of studying these events. This is the only one we’ve observed in action, and this is the best detection of the aftermath after things have settled back down,” said the new study’s co-author Ryan Lau, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NSF NOIRLab), in a recent NASA statement. “We hope this is just the start of our sample.”More from JWSTHere at Scientific American, we’re also excited about plans for JWST’s fourth year of observations, which begin this summer. Exoplanet-related work will tackle questions that include whether habitable worlds can be found orbiting stellar corpses known as white dwarfs. JWST will also examine whether a handful of particularly interesting exoplanets have an atmosphere, a characteristic that is important to the plausibility of finding life on such worlds.

Baldur's Gate 3's enormous final content update - which has been undergoing public stress testing for a good few months now on PC - finally has a release date, and is launching for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC next Tuesday, 15th April. Read more

When it comes to designing a bedroom, the goal is usually about prioritizing stylish tranquility. Fixtures that remind us of hotel stays—like blackout curtains, upholstered bed frames, and luxury bedding—can be shortcuts to achieving more serene sleep. At the same time, most of us don’t want to feel like we’re checking into a hotel every night before bed.So we incorporate customizable details that don’t strip a space of its coziness, like high-quality sheets that match our sleep patterns, down pillows with customizable loft, and even high-quality toiletries like a luxurious shampoo or nourishing body wash. And while each of these details can be easily swapped out by preference or what’s decidedly on trend in color and pattern, blackout curtains, which can be a valuable tool to have in your sleep arsenal, don’t have the same versatility.“I’m a big believer that your environment should support rest and restoration, and blackout curtains can help create that,” says designer Alvin Wayne. “That said, I’ll pause on them if a space needs more natural light during the day or if the curtains visually overpower the room. It’s all about balance.”Curtains are among the most important finishing touches of a bedroom, and to ensure that yours effortlessly balances style with function, two designers are sharing their tips for shopping and hanging the best ones.How to Shop for Blackout CurtainsGiven that blackout curtains are made for utility—making it possible to sleep until noon if you’re not careful—it can be difficult to source options that don’t showcase their strong suit. After all, if the rest of your bedroom is an exercise in luxury, then function-first curtains might stick out like a sore thumb.“They should still fit your aesthetic, while also providing the light blockage that you are looking for,” says Lee Crowder, national director of design and model experience at Taylor Morrison.But before you even start the search, measure the length of your ideal panels. You want your curtains to gently “kiss” the floor of your space, ever-so-slightly touching the floor without pooling at the bottom. Next, you’ll want to make sure that the width of your panels will cover the full scope of your window—if you want blackout curtains, then they should be installed to do their job. The magic of these types of drapes is in a tightly woven middle lining that’s typically a darkened hue. Since it’s possible to select curtains that dim rather than entirely shield the sun, you’ll want to determine the level of darkness you’re comfortable with.“Always hang them high and wide, which will make the room feel taller and allow the window to feel larger,” Wayne says. “And don’t be afraid to layer! You can pair blackout curtains with sheers underneath for softness and versatility.”The Best Blackout CurtainsIf you’re hoping to find blackout curtains that will enhance the look of your space while guaranteeing a pitch-back room late in the morning, here are four designer-approved options to consider.The Shade Store Custom Blackout Drapes“Custom drapes with blackout lining from the Shade Store are a go-to when I want a tailored, elevated look,” Wayne says. “The customization options are endless—from fabric to pleat style—and the quality is top-notch.”Pepper Home Ruby Burgundy Custom Curtain“Pepper Home is my favorite online custom company for draperies and pillows,” Crowder says. “They have high quality fabric and trim options, plus customization for the material, rod pocket, width, length, and privacy lining. Currently, the floral-printed cotton curtains in ruby burgundy are my favorite.”West Elm Worn Velvet Blackout Curtain“I love the luxe texture of the worn velvet curtain with blackout lining from West Elm,” Wayne says. “The velvet adds depth to a room, and the blackout lining is incredibly effective without sacrificing style.”Pottery Barn Emery Linen Blackout Curtain“The Emery linen blackout curtains from Pottery Barn are great for a more relaxed, organic look, because they have the softness of linen but the function of a full blackout,” Wayne says. “They’re ideal for coastal or minimalist bedrooms.”Photo: Audrey LeePhoto: Audrey LeeThe Hues Cronin CurtainsFor a custom service that still has an approachable price tag, look to The Hues, a service that commerce editor Audrey Lee tested to turn her bedroom into a suite. “These curtains are amazing for keeping the sun out,” says Lee. “The first few weeks I had them, it felt bizarre to be woken up by my alarm in such darkness—however, soundproof they are not.” With everything done online, you can browse the website and choose a fabric color, grommets, header and lining type, and size. You can also either choose from pre-set standard sizes or enter custom measurements for a bespoke treatment.

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