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Looking for NYT Strands answers and hints? Here's all you need to know to solve today's game, including the spangram.

Looking for NYT Connections answers and hints? Here's all you need to know to solve today's game, plus my commentary on the puzzles.

Looking for Quordle clues? We can help. Plus get the answers to Quordle today and past solutions.

The iPhone 16 series is in line for several significant upgrades, including those to the cameras, chipset, and screen.

Pure Storage invests in Cerabyte's ceramic storage system to offer sustainable, immutable data solutions.

It looks as though the Pro and Pro Max models are going to get decent battery boosts for 2024.

How FOLKS VFX helped create many environments for the Apple TV+ show.In this new interview at befores & afters, FOLKS VFX visual effects supervisor Lionel Lim and CG supervisor Felix Arsenault discuss their contributions to the Apple TV+ series, Dark Matter. FOLKS delivered 12 different environments for the show, crafting worlds with CG builds and DMP.In the series, snowy environments, a desert world, views of Chicago variants and more, were made by the visual effects studio. Theres also one sequence that involved building the city for a lengthy elevator scene. Here, the pair break down the work.b&a: Where did you start with the city landscape shots? Can you talk about gathering references of Chicago (and any other cities), acquiring any data, doing any concept work, and then what general approach you took to crafting variations?Lionel Lim and Felix Arsenault: Every parallel world we worked on at FOLKS is some variation of Chicago. After our initial conversations, we started gathering as many references as possible to the city itself from various sources, including pictures, footage, maps, etc. Having a real city to match helped us a lot, as it gave us a nice ground truth we could always stick to and go back to when in doubt.To produce Blake Crouchs vision of the different worlds, our art department created concepts for each of Chicagos variations using early footage to get an early look approval.In parallel, our CG team started very early on by building a rough model of Chicago using satellite data and maps. We focused first on just recreating the actual location from real life. This environment then went through multiple iterations as necessary throughout the show. Some sections are more accurate and detailed than others, as we really focused on what we would see on camera.Later on, once we had our approved concept arts, this Chicago environment was then used as a base to feed each world variations. We then built specific props and assets to use as set dressing for the city, incorporating the unique visual language of each world, whether its snowed-in trees, snow banks, destroyed buildings, sand dunes, boats, sci-fi buildings, etc.Due to the big variety of biomes throughout the different Chicago worlds, mixed with the nature of the shots themselves, often having camera movements, we decided on using a mixed 2.5D shot-based approach. This way, we would avoid too much heavy rendering. We had detailed matte painting over 3D in almost every shot, using as good a render as we could as a base for almost every world. This allowed for quick iterations and a lot of flexibility, which always comes in handy when doing episodic work.Because we decided to go this way, we had to be very rigorous with having proper layout steps so that we would never change camera orientation once we started painting environments. We went from macro to micro so we wouldnt waste time on things we wouldnt see.b&a: Tell me about the snow world in episode 4. What approach did FOLKS take to building a snowy/city landscape here?Lionel Lim and Felix Arsenault: We generally used our 2.5D approach, but the challenge was really in making the world itself believable. We were briefed on making the snow world look grounded without it steering too much toward fantasy.The visual language for these shots focused on capturing the appearance of snow drifts, as if a massive amount of snow had accumulated over time and was then sculpted by the wind, both on the ground and around buildings. We werent looking for heavy, wet snow or something too icy for the cityscape itself.There are inherent qualities to a snowy landscape and snow in general that were fairly tricky to recreate. There are a lot of different types of snow, and snow fields themselves are very layered by nature. It both needs to reflect light a certain way but also refract some light so as to not feel too solid. Its easy for it to look like white sand, which we often had to fight against. We looked at plenty of pictures from not only our beautiful home country here in Canada but also from the Arctic and Antarctic.We also had this snowed-in house that we recreated digitally. Most of what we see is the second floor and then only hints of the ground floor, beneath the snow. It was also seen in the show through both a snowstorm at night and then in broad daylight. They built a piece of that houses second floor on-set, which we were really grateful for. It helped a lot with scale and believability when we rebuilt it in CG and added all that snow and ice.There was also a frozen sea with giant icebergs. Its not something we often see alongside city shorelines in our day-to-day. The biggest challenge was making sure it didnt clash too much with the rest of the snowy landscape, as it has very different qualities compared to the cityscape. What really helped was making sure we had a gradual transition in shape, material, and frequency: going from a few big icebergs to a lot of smaller broken ice sheets that all culminated into this big ice wall along the shore.b&a: Can you talk also about particular challenges of compositing live-action footage/characters into these snowy landscapes?Lionel Lim and Felix Arsenault: For this world, we were lucky enough to get footage that already looked like winter, which often had some interaction between characters and snow.Most of the challenge was making sure we matched the new lighting introduced by CG and developing this look. Otherwise, we had various additional enhancements added to the footage: Burying the house in the snow and adding snow to its walls, adding snow dunes on Chicagos buildings, subtle windy snow on some edges and surfaces, replacing trees with heavy snowed trees, making the snow trails the characters were going through deeper, etc. In the snowstorm sequence, we had to add all this windy snow, which was made of particles and smoke, and change the ground accordingly. But even then, we had something to lean back on to keep things grounded.b&a: For the elevator up to the restaurant in ep7, what was filmed for this scene? How did you build up the required environment outside the glass?Lionel Lim and Felix Arsenault: For this specific sequence, only the foreground elements with the actor were filmed. Everything outside the window is CG using our 2.5D approach. We went through a few iterations where we tried using drone footage, but we ended up realizing that CG would be the best approach.One important thing that helped us move forward on this one was ensuring that every camera in those elevator and restaurant shots was looking at Chicago in the right direction relative to the fictional buildings location and orientation within the city. This is where having a proper layout was key. It allowed us to only focus on what was seen but also have everything be accurate relative to the real world. We also spent some time figuring out how fast we could go up in space without it looking odd, as the elevator is supposed to go hundreds of floors up.b&a: With that elevator scene, what things do you feel really helped sell the environment shots? Lionel Lim and Felix Arsenault: Being able to sell the huge parallax you would have from going up so far so fast really helped sell this shot. To this end, layering details in depth was an important part of our process.This layering was in part achieved by having not only futuristic solarpunk buildings and greenhouses but also older historic buildings, which really helped ground it in reality.Having different types of atmospheric details also helped: atmospheric perspective, subtle god rays sandwiched between buildings, cloud shadows breaking up surfaces, feeling the curvature of the earth at a distance, having CG clouds layered around the buildings, having the camera go through those clouds, etc. All of this contributed to selling the incredible height the elevator was reaching and making the vista itself believable.

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With Vice President Kamala Harriss ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket, Republicans are rebuilding a campaign strategy that for months focused on running against President Joe Biden. One emerging theme asserts that Harris laughs too much at inappropriate momentspart of a broader argument that Harris is weird.I call her laughing Kamala, former President Donald Trump said at a rally in Michigan on July 24. Have you ever watched her laugh? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. . . . She is nuts.As a professor of American studies with a focus on race and politics, I know that Black women in the U.S. have a history of struggle against violence and oppression. And too often when we experience joy, and show it, ridicule follows. We are said to be too loud, too emotionalwell, too Black women.History shows that this is a familiar dog whistle. Black women have been called out as sexually provocative Jezebels, emasculating Sapphires, or servile, nurturing Mammys in popular culture. Those labels clearly dont fit Harris, so Trump has created a new epithet: crazy laughing.Invisibility has long haunted Black girls and women. In response, their choices, from dress to spirituality to activist groups, often center on making themselves visible. They do this to highlight injustice and to offer a vision of justice based on their experiences.As I see it, Black women deserve for some of that visibility to be joyful. In this realm, Harris is paving the way. Then-Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris dances with a childrens group at the Des Moines Steak Fry on September 21, 2019.Elation in struggleMany public views of Harris dont reflect Trumps framing. The vice presidents anecdotes, smile, laugh, and evenshockerdancing in public have inspired a tidal wave of fan posts and videos celebrating her energy and what media scholar Jamie Cohen describes as her endearing awkwardness.For these observers, Harris embodies the idea of Black joya national movement that started in 2020 after George Floyd was killed. As NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior writer Lindsey Norward explains:Black joy is an essential part of the complete story of Black people in their fight for dignity and reclamation . . . the unfettered ability to go and enjoy all of the good things about life.Black joy is embodied in all kinds of actions, from personal fashion to sports to voting. It offers a powerful antidote to pervasive images of Black trauma.Act of self-definitionIn a book that I coedited with Wake Forest University political science professor Julia Jordan-Zachery, we examined a related concept: Black Girl Magic. Our book described how Black girls and women maintain their humanity in the face of hostility by fostering community, countering invisibility, and creating spaces for freedom.Sometimes, this means drawing attention to their struggles. One essay in the book cites African American Policy Forum executive director Kimberl Crenshaw, explaining the hashtag #SayHerName, which was coined to raise awareness of Black women victims of police brutality and anti-Black violence.Although Black women are routinely killed, raped, and beaten by the police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in popular understandings of police brutality, Crenshaw wrote. Yet, inclusion of Black womens experiences in social movements, media narratives, and policy demands around policing and police brutality is critical to effectively combating racialized state violence for Black communities and other communities of color.On July 23, 2024, Harris released a statement expressing grief at the senseless death of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot in her Illinois home by a sheriffs deputy who responded to a report of a prowler. The deputy has been fired and charged with murder, based on bodycam footage from another deputy that showed him threatening Massey after she rebuked him and then shooting her.Sonya Massey deserved to be safe, Harris wrote. The disturbing footage released yesterday confirms what we know from the lived experiences of so manywe have much work to do to ensure that our justice system fully lives up to its name. In other words, Harris said Masseys name.Writing her own storyOur book argued that in the age of Trump, whom Black women almost universally see as hostile to their interests, finding the balance between humanity and magic is more important than ever for Black girls and women.As then-First Lady Michelle Obama said in a speech at the March 2015 Black Girls Rock awards, young Black girls often hear voices that tell you that youre not good enough, that you have to look a certain way, act a certain way; that if you speak up, youre too loud; if you step up to lead, youre being bossy.Around this time, author and social media influencer CaShawn Thompson began tweeting #BlackGirlMagic because, she said, magic is something that people dont always understand. Sometimes, our accomplishments might seem to come out of thin air because a lot of times, the only people supporting us are other Black women.The hashtag went mainstream at the 2016 Black Entertainment Television Awards, where actor and activist Jesse Williams delivered an impassioned discourse about race in America. He ended with a subtle nod:[T]he burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. Thats not our job, alrightstop with all that . . . the thing is that just because were magic doesnt mean were not real.Williams was respectfully referencing the #BlackGirlMagic movement, alluding to the fact that Black girls and womens identities include resistance against narratives that exclude them and a willingness to define themselves for themselves.Harris has confronted this challenge many times through her career as a district attorney, state attorney general, senator, and vice president. Now she has to invent herself again as a presidential candidate. And even with a large campaign staff, Harris will have to do this for herself.As Nobel laureate Toni Morrison observed, the Black woman has nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.Our book highlighted the emotional fortitude that Black women draw on to accomplish so many feats while breaking unfathomable barriers. Its no exaggeration to call what they do magic.Harris will need plenty of support for a successful campaignfrom Black women and many others. There will be serious issues to debate, from border security to foreign policy to the economy. But Harris also has a real opportunity to contrast her humor and positive energy with a very dark vision from the GOPwithout letting them dictate when its okay for her to laugh.Duchess Harris is a professor of American Studies at Macalester College.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.